Old friends visit

We had a lovely surprise visit from Nev and Ana, Nev being an old friend of mine from back in the old days of doing marine electromagnetic work offshore on various research ships. Nev and I worked together a couple of times back around 2000-2002 and have kept in touch ever since. Now he lives in Oslo with his lovely fiance Ana, and they were touring Britain for a long weekend and stayed with us last night before flying back today. We had a really nice evening catching up with them. We are always happy when people call in to visit us!

The blur of January

After we laid Bentley to rest, we had a few weeks of difficult adjustment and plain ol' hard work in all of our respective lives. Work has been really busy for Rhodri and also really busy for me, and Tryfan has been struggling a little bit with his teacher, while Rhiannon has been working hard to keep up with all of her homework.

The weekends in January were spent doing projects around the house and outside in the yard - things we have been talking about doing for ages but just hadn't actually done. So it has felt good to actually get those things done: painting the base boards and walls in the entry way with a fresh coat of paint so we could hang up the long-awaited coat rack; cleaning out closets; raking the leaves off the 'campground' part of our back garden; and finally hiring a skip (aka 'dumpster') so we could fill it with the random bit of junk and rubbish that were too big to go in the roadside bin. 

Yes, the kids complained heartily and yes there were bribes of hot chocolate, sweets, and even money in order to get them to put in a good effort on above chores.  But it is awfully nice to come inside to a warm cozy house after working hard on a cold, rainy Saturday afternoon!  The one thing we didn't do a lot of was photography during the hard work. They really were not very photographic events so instead I am putting photos of the beautiful coat rack finally installed above the radiator in the entry hall.

Goodbye Bentley

Bentley riding a boat in Mexico in 2005

Today was a truly, deeply sad day for us in the Lewis family as we said goodbye to our dearest Bentley after 15 years. He was nearly 16 years old, which is "good innings" for a dog his size, and he was healthy and happy until the very end.

After picking Bentley up from the kennel on Sunday (Dec 31st) at noon, and having him all happy and wiggly and bouncy like his normal self, we got home and he went downhill very rapidly. The kennel people had said that he had a dodgy tummy with loose stools the past couple of days, but that is sort of normal for Bents so we didn't think much.

But then on New Years Day he just laid around, drank a lot of water, and wasn't interested in buttered toast (which was his favorite). By late afternoon he couldn't walk properly and he kept trembling / shivering for no apparent reason. We just snuggled with him and let him sleep wherever he wanted, and kept trying to get him to eat something. This morning we took him to Alex the vet in Forest Row, and Alex took one look and said that his time had come. There was no question and there were no options. We took our time saying goodbye to him, holding him and cuddling him close, and I stayed with him in my arms until after his last breath had gone. He went quickly and calmly, without resistance. But it was so, so sad. The four of us spent the rest of the day grieving and sharing memories about him.

We were truly grateful that we could all be there to give him the best send off a dog could have. This was a special day in that regard, since it was the one day of grace between the holiday period and back to work/school which starts tomorrow. Bentley definitely knew how much we loved him, and he also had a bit of a reputation due to all of his adventures and close calls with danger (some called him "Bentley Nine-Lives"). He was a pretty special dog and he stole the hearts of a lot of people over the years who will be sad to be reading this. But we buried him in the back garden in front of his favorite hole in the hedge. This is the hole he would always sneak through to get to the wider world of other people's backyards. Now he has gone through the "hedge of life", but we can visit him whenever we want, and that is a nice thought.  We are really going to miss him.
RIP, dear Bents. You were a great friend to me and to all of us.
Hope you can go keep Grandpa "Meat Guy" Carl company up in heaven.

Last day in the sun

The week of loveliness had to come to an end eventually, but we did make the most of our final hours. After sailing, we also did some kayaking and snorkeling. Here are Rhods and I with the hotel in the background.

Eric and I after snorkeling together

We also had a professional photographer do a session with our family. This was right before going to dinner at the semi-fancy restaurant in the hotel so we were all in our dinner outfits.

On Saturday afternoon, our family started to peel off to head to the airport. Our flight back to Gatwick wasn't until 8:45 pm so we had the whole day to hang around the hotel. No problem! Just a bit more swimming and relaxing. 

 And then just before getting in the taxi to the airport, Rhiannon and I had a bitey-fish spa pedicure. I don't think either of us will be having one of those again any time soon! It was so tickley and at times pinchy. But we had a good time laughing together through it all.

 Eventually we got to the airport, had burritos for dinner, did a bit of poking around the shops, and then got on the plane and slept most of the way back to Gatwick. Adios, Mexico. Hope to come back again sometime...

We are now sailors

Rhodri, Will and I took a 30 minute sailing lesson on a little Hobie cat, and then we were turned loose in the wide ocean! Our Lewis family of 4 took the boot out for an hour straight after that, and then the next day we rented 3 Hobie cats and each one of us skippered a boat loaded with family members! Grandma Debi and Grandma Bucky politely declined, so it was just the 16 of us out there distributed amongst the 3 sailboats, but this ended up being one of our favorite memories of the entire trip.

Our little flotilla chased each other around and some of us even jumped overboard for a quick swim before climbing back up. Some of the small kids fell asleep while we were cruising around and the rest of us just enjoyed the hour of fun. It was a little tricky getting back to the landing spot. Rhodri ended up kayaking out to give me some moral support, but we got there in the end. The only bummer was that we didn't bring a camera to capture the glorious colors and smiles of the event but hopefully these are seared onto all of our memories. It was super fun. The fact that there was a guy with a jet ski on the shore standing by in case we got into trouble was reassuring too!

Christmas bliss in Mexico

We had such a wonderful week at the Royal Haciendas.
There were 18 of us - 10 adults and 8 kids - and although we didn't have adjacent rooms (kind of a sore point), we were able to coordinate pretty effectively throughout the week so that we could maximize our time together and make the most out of this amazing opportunity! We spent a lot of time in and around the pools, especially in the mornings and throughout the lunching hour(s). The water was warm, the air was warm, the sea was warm, the sun was shining and we normally had a bit (or more) of a breeze.  It was absolute bliss!

 The actual Christmas event turned out to be a themed buffet dinner on Christmas Eve, i.e. the first full day we were there. The Palapa restaurant had a live musician who sang and played the sax and piano.  And Grandma Bucky got to ride in an ice sleigh!

When Phoebe and Rhodri finally got to dance together to the crooner performing "Feliz Navidad", sweet Phoebe was mesmerized and literally stood gawping and frozen while Mr Crooner sang directly to her. It was so funny to watch. So that was Christmas Eve, and then the next morning on Christmas Day, all 18 of us piled into our suite to open stockings and then do a white elephant gift exchange. We ordered breakfast burritos, pancakes, coffee and juice for everyone to be delivered to the room! Here is a little video of the scene:

 We got all the cousins to pose together in the balcony hot tub and then we headed down to play in the pool.

Luke, Phoebe, Billy, Ingrid, Rhiannon, Tryfan, Evan and Jordan

Each morning after that, we would meet for breakfast at the Palapa buffet restaurant which was right on the beach. We'd take over a big long table or a few tables and various members of the family would come and go between 7:00 am and 9:30 am. One morning our two went down by themselves when they woke up early and hungry! Normally Grandma Debi would go down with them since we were all staying in one suite.

After breakfast we would head to the beach or the pool and set up camp for the day, at least until lunchtime after which was nap time for 6 of the 8 kids (i.e. not our two!). We went kayaking, snorkeling, walking/ shell collecting, running, and general swimming in the gorgeous sea water during the first several days. Some of us preferred to stay by the pool reading books in the shade, doing aqua aerobics, and generally playing in the water. We all worked really hard to make sure that nobody got sun burnt, so that was good.

The whole week was a blur of wonderfulness, although everyone had "their moments" at some point along the way. We are family, after all!

Mexico, here we come!

Today we left for a week with my family in the Riviera Maya south of Cancun. Direct flights from Gatwick to Cancun - woohoo!

It was a 10.5 hour flight, and both kids were buzzing with excitement the whole time... "just 8 hours to go, Mama!" We watched 'Elf' together and a few other movies and the hours went by. Rhods sat across the aisle and did his own thing. Soon enough we had landed, gone through immigration, gathered our bags, and met our driver who took us to the Royal Haciendas resort which is ~45 minutes drive south of the airport.
We checked in and located our suite, where Grandma had already set up camp. We had very happy reunions with her and with Eric, Will, Kristin, Rebecca, and Heidi who came in turn to visit us down at the pool cafe where we had a late dinner and some celebratory margaritas!

Farewell to good friends

We've become good friends with a Danish family that have been living here for the past 3 years. Casper is in Tryfan's class, and both parents Ole and Bettina had become friends of ours. We knew that they wouldn't be here forever, but we couldn't quite believe it when the day came that they had to actually move back to Denmark.

We went to their leaving do at the Coach & Horses pub (Ole's favorite place) last night, and then Casper came by today before we left for Mexico. We have vowed to come visit them in 2018. We sure will miss them.

I'll never forget Casper's smiling face back when he first arrived (when Tryfan and Casper were in Year 2) and came to Forest School. He didn't know a word of English except for his name, but he had the greatest smile and such a sweet demeanor. Hope these two will stay friends over the years.

Henna party

Rhiannon had a 2nd birthday party this year with all of her friends from her new school. She wanted to hire a private henna tattoo artist to come over, so that is what we did. It was actually a really nice, easy going party and we really enjoyed meeting her new friends.

 

This was also the last day of the term for Rhiannon's school, so that is why she wanted to do henna tattoos now - they will wear off in 2 weeks time, just enough for the Christmas and New Year holidays to pass.

Girlfriends from the hood

Rhiannon had her birthday party tonight after a full day of working at the Christmas Fair. It was a small gathering with just the 4 other girls from her year at primary school. They never get to see each other altogether, so it was a bit special to have them together at once. In fact, we invited the parents to linger for a bit after dropping them here so that we could catch up a bit with them too.

 In fact, their teacher even called by to see them all for a bit. Since it was Mrs GJ's first year at this school last year, this particular group of girls occupies a piece of her heart. They were all so happy to see her again and tell her all about their new schools.

They watched a movie and then went up to bed, though not to sleep until after 11pm. Then poor Aggie work up retching and had to go home early this morning. The rest of them had a leisurely morning and we had a quiet day after they all went home.

The best night of the year

Tonight was the annual Chelwood Gate Christmas Tree Party at the village hall.
This was our 8th consecutive year attending the event, and it was probably the best one yet.
There are some aspects which are the same every year: it always starts just after 6pm on the 2nd Friday of December, and every year this particular day happens to be an extra busy, stressful, frantic day with a mad rush to get everyone fed and out the door in time to walk down to the hall. This means that every year, both Rhodri and I (and most other parents who make it) are grumpy and stressed and fed up already with the whole thing.
But then a little bit of actual Christmas magic happens.

Once everyone had squeezed into the hall - kids in the front, several rows of chairs for elderly and other lucky ones who managed to get a seat, and then the majority of the crowd standing in the back - the MC welcomed us all and then invited everyone to get up and go back outside to gather round the huge Christmas tree that had been set up. Kids bolted for the door and immediately recommenced their chasing games, adults reluctantly clustered in groups of 2 or 3, and many people refused to go back outside anyway (it was 2 deg C, so quite cold). It was pretty dark out there with only the single emergency light on the side of the hall, but the MC started the crowd off by singing "O Christmas Tree" with the words conveniently printed in the event handouts. The first run through was pretty weak, so we had another go with encouragement to sing as loud as we could in order to get the tree to show her lights. So we all shouted/ sang "O Christmas Tree" a second time and the lights came on. Cheers all around, and we were ushered back into the hall to continue the program.

The program consisted of the "National Headache Society" (i.e. Danehill Primary school choir & orchestra) performing a few numbers including "Daddy wouldn't buy me a bow wow" and "Eye of the Tiger", then a few jokes from Mr Fish the MC, the annual performance by the Danehill Handbell Ringers, a teenage boy "Dan" playing a couple of songs on the piano, and then a little intermission to refill drinks and have mince pies. The final half of the program included a sort of creepy edition of "The music of the night" from Phantom of the opera and then a couple of duets by Charlie Chuckles & Zoe and some final jokes from Mr Fish. The whole event was over around 8:30 pm and everyone pitched in to put the chairs back into the storage room and tidy up the hall. But the whole evening was just so endearing and funny and sweet.

The only thing about tonight was that it marked the first year that we did not have Rhiannon's birthday party in the afternoon hours previous to the event.  That used to be such a lovely way to kick off the Christmas season, but this year she wanted to have her party on Saturday night.

India!

I've just come back from a week in Pune, India! This was a business trip which was rather impromptu. I left early Sunday morning after Tryfan's rugby thing the night before.  Since I need a visa to travel to India and a lot of logistics had to be arranged, I wasn't sure at all that this was going to happen until the last minute. But it all went to plan and was actually a really great week. I got to reunite with my old friend Anand who I used to work with in Gatwick but he moved to Pune a couple of years ago.

I traveled with my colleague Suha and her husband. We were on the same flight from Abu Dhabi to Pune, and India was new to all of us. That made it fun to share the experience of traveling by taxi on the roads. We had some really exciting car journeys between the hotel and the office! Despite huge trucks, cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, bicycles and walkers all sharing the same space, with apparently no rules (e.g., one way street signs don't actually seem to mean anything), we didn't see any crashes. People go fairly slow and use a lot of hand gesturing and eye contact, but each journey was a thrill.

  

 On the stretch between the mental asylum and the prison which are near the office, there is a row of crazy banyan trees. I've never seen anything like them - they are creepy and viney, but magnificent in their size and intricacy. Apparently Pune is famous for these particular specimens. In fact, Pune is surprisingly lush and green (though also extremely polluted).

 The work itself involved a small team of us - 5 from our company and 3 from another company and we were doing a workshop together in person since it would have been too hard to work remotely. It was really great to meet my colleagues in person after spending over a year working closely with them by phone, instant message and email. Here are Fayas, Nisha, me and Suha (Richard was missing from this photo).
Anyway, now I'm safely back home and its Saturday afternoon. And its December! Time for mince pies and brandy cream... yay!

Rugby under the floodlights

Tonight Tryfan had a rugby festival that started at 6pm at a rugby pitch about an hour away. This was new since they got to play at night under the big floodlights, so it was pretty exciting.

Tryfan is in the red skullcap going in for the tackle in the middle

 It was also right around freezing, so Rhiannon and I had a challenge to stay warm while standing around watching. We made a few trips into the clubhouse for warm drinks, and that was nice.

 

The team played 4 games and did pretty well. They sure played hard! It was a bit difficult to watch sometimes since they were really crashing into each other. All good, though, and we got home around 10pm. 

Thanksgiving in Paris

This week I had to go to Paris for a meeting, so I traveled on Thursday morning and then back home tonight. A quick trip, and I didn't organize anything ahead of time with dear Flo because she moved to the outskirts of Paris and I knew that I wouldn't have time to get out there. But actually, it turned out that she was available to come visit me! We met for dinner and a really great catch up, and as it happened it was also Thanksgiving so that made it extra special.

The rest of the trip was not that great for me actually, and I was really glad to get home. Seeing Flo on this occasion was such a wonderful gift.

Beautiful day for a birthday

Today Rhodri and Tryfan were at a rugby thing all day, from about 8:30am until 3! That meant I got to celebrate my special day with my girl. We had a lovely relaxing morning and then decided to go to our friends' art exhibition. Mary and Julian are both artists - she does oil painting and he does metal sculpture. They were doing a winter exhibition at a beautiful property in the neighboring village.

 

We reunited with Rhodri and Tryfs in the late afternoon and then went for an earlyish dinner at Smith & Western where we got to listen to some great country western music and have a good feed.

It was a great day all around! Thanks for making it special, family.

Birthday girls night out

On Saturday night, a few of my best girlfriends and I went out for dinner to the Hop Yard in Forest Row. It was relatively civilized, at least at our table... there was a fight that broke out at the pool table behind us which led to some pushing and shoving and various people being escorted off the premises. Exciting! The last time I saw a bit of a fight was.... the last time that I went to the Hop Yard in Forest Row which was about 3 years ago with Rhodri.

Anyway, it was nice to get out. Here are Anne Marie, Cat, me, Emma and Corinne.

Visitors back for a fun filled day

Rhiannon and I met Will & Rebecca in Haywards Heath at the train station and we did a bit of grocery shopping before going home. Again, we had a biiig breakfast with loads of nice things and then we headed out for an adventure!

Our destination was Urban Jump, which is 30 minutes drive from our house. We piled into the car and arrived in time to get our safety briefing. Nearly every sentence of the safety briefing ended with "...and could result in injury including broken bones". Anyway, then we were set free to play in this awesome place!

It was soooooo fun and the hour flew by! We were all quite tired and sweaty by the end. And even now, some days later, my muscles are still aching from playing dodgeball on the dedicated dodgeball court where there were 9x9 individual trampolines with padded edges and 3 or 4 balls in circulation. Uncle Woo was throwing "quite hard" and one brave little fellow came up to him and asked him to please not throw quite so hard. Some of the other kids seemed to really enjoy the ferocity of the game though. Anyway, it was great. All too soon the fun came to an end and we had to go home in time to watch the rugby game and then have fish & chips for dinner.

Special visitors

We were delighted to learn that my brother Will and his wife Rebecca were planning to visit us for a few days! It was a semi-spontaneous trip but just enough notice to sort the back room out and get excited about their arrival. I was able to take the day off and pick them up at the airport, bring them home in time to surprise Tryfan and Rhiannon before they left for school, and then we had such a great day together.  What a treat to have beloved family members come and stay with us during this semi-bleak month of November.

First we had a biiiig breakfast with all the fixings and a couple rounds of coffee. Then we sat around chatting for a little bit while Rhods did some work, and then we headed off on a long walk in the hood.

On a stretch of the walk with wide sweeping views of the countryside

 We called into our favorite local pub, the Coach and Horses, for a warming and delicious lunch and then we continued back home in time for a cup of tea before heading out to pick up Rhiannon from school! After gathering her up, the 4 of us (Will, Rebecca, Rhiannon and me) stopped through the high street in Uckfield and did some thrift store (charity shop) shopping. Then we called in to Waitrose to get a few items for dinner.

Approaching the Coach and Horses pub (in the background)

After dinner we chatted a bit more and soon they headed to bed in preparation for their next few days where they would be visiting (and staying in) London. But we will get to see them on Saturday so we are already planning how to make the most of that day!