Harvest Festival Songs at OneTrueMedia.com

Here is a video of Abby and Sammy singing the songs from the school's Harvest Festival Concert. Please excuse Abby for having no skirt on.

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Our Lovely New Life

We are finally feeling settled in enough that I have found a bit of time to update my blog for anyone who cares. I still plan on making it private but have not figure it all out yet. Anyway, we are LOVING our new life here and are so glad to be back in England. The above picture is of a car we saw in the grocery store parking lot. The girls loved the headlight-eyelashes and wanted a pair for our car - somehow I don't think Charles would be real keen on driving such a girlie car.  P.S. the following pictures are a bit out of order because I am too lazy to figure out how to rearrange them. Sorry!

This is the greenhouse in our backyard. The girls play in it and pretend it is a store. They also keep their "collection of stuff" (i.e. various items found around the yard that they deem to be beautiful or somehow important enough to keep) in there.

Our house came with a trampoline. As you can see, we don't need a fence we have hedges to do the job. They surround our entire yard and are much nicer to look at than a fence.

Alex's favorite spot to take a rest is on the ledge of the conservatory.

Abby and Sammy in their school uniforms. I believe children everywhere should wear uniforms. No more wasted time in the mornings trying to figure out what to wear and no more spending gobbs of money on clothes. The children all look the same at school and no one is judged on their clothing. I love it! The girls got accepted to a Church of England school. It has very high ratings. There are only 200 students total in the school of 4-11 year olds. Abby is in Year 3 and Sammy is in Year 1. They both feel special because they feel like they skipped a grade (Abby would have been in 2nd grade in the US and Sammy would have been in kindergarten.)

This is the view from my bedroom window. We have nothing behind us but a pasture and beautiful English countryside. I liked living in the city of London previously but I LOVE living in the country far more. I can't get over the beauty of everything every time I go out for a drive or even just look out my window. These horses graze on the grass behind our hedge all day long. We throw the apples from our trees over to them to eat as well. Abby is now determined to take horseback riding lessons. I think that is a good possibility.  

This is another shot of the backyard. Gorgeous! This is the little patio as you come out of the conservatory. Our BBQ is on the right.

Beyond this gate where Charles is mowing the lawn is a little garden plot and compost area - it is all part of our yard. Don't get me started about composting. I am a believer and may even do a separate post all together on it.

The house has these lovely vines in the back growing all over it. I came out one day and realized the leaves on the vines had all turned red. It was so beautiful. This picture doesn't do it justice.

My lovely rosemary bush. Herbs make me so happy. I also discovered we have a large sage bush as well. I am also growing basil and parsley in the kitchen window.

This is the shed. We need to take down the old satellite dish in the middle. But isn't it gorgeous just covered with greenery?

This is looking back toward the greenhouse from the garden (where Charles was pictured mowing). The trees are apple trees. We also have a pear tree and cherry tree. The girls loved picking apples off the trees right in our own backyard and then taking them into the house and....

...juicing them to make apple juice! It was delicious too! Notice my lovely stove (or cooker as they call it here) in the background. Double oven - It rocks!

Posing for a picture with the sunflowers in the garden.

Sammy wanted another posed picture.

This is our bowl of apples freshly picked from OUR trees. Can I just say, that I was excited to move to England when we first found out but since moving here it has been better than I ever expect. I am so happy to be back in this country. It sounds odd but I feel like it is a magical place. I want to go looking for fairies and read Harry Potter for the first time in my life. I love driving fast down narrow country roads with high walls of greenery that hang over making tunnels, only to slam on my brakes upon spotting an oncoming car and then barely inching our way past each other as slow as possible so as not to scrape each other's car.  Other interesting facts about our new place: apparently the red-headed guy from Harry Potter (Ron Weasley - I just looked up his name) lives in the area and drives an orange hummer or range rover. Also, Victoria Beckham's sister lives here so David and Victoria have been spotted here on occasion. Perhaps I am still in the honeymoon phase of the move but I am loving it. I feel like I am back in my element. I especially look forward to winter because I know it doesn't get anywhere close to being as cold as Chicago and that makes me happy!

 

 

 

 

3 Movies by Maijke, Abby and Sammy at OneTrueMedia.com

In case you can't totally understand them, the movies (in this order) are:
"Selling Lemonade"
"Lemonade Thief"
"Worm Cookies"
Enjoy!
Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

PRIVATE

I have been contemplating making my blog "private" lately. I have been thinking about it for a few months now. After all, I do have three growing girls to worry about and going "private" gives me an extra peace of mind. I think that since we are moving to London in August, it would be the perfect time to do it. Hopefully, the curiosity of our life and transition there will be enough to lure some of my faithful readers and friends to follow me and make the extra effort to sign in and read my blog. So if you are still interested in reading and viewing this blog, contact me and let me know.

Thank you!!

We had a very busy but fun 4th of July. I guess you could say we made the most of it since we are not sure when we will be in the country for another one. We started the day hosting two families for a breakfast of Charles' whole-wheat pancakes, sausage, fruit, whole-wheat banana chocolate-chip muffins and a bunch of other lovely breakfast treats. We then headed over to the parade in our neighborhood and then down to the neighborhood party. Above are some of the kids watching the parade.

After the parade, the girls headed off to friends' houses and Charles went to the movies with his buddies. I took a nap and prepared for hosting a second party at our house - dinner. We had four families come so that made five families total or 10 adults and 17 kids. We had the biggest pile of hamburgers and hot dogs I have ever seen at my house before. The lines for the bathroom before we left for the fireworks were so long it made me laugh. We watched the fireworks downtown and had the best seats ever. We got home at almost 11pm and were all exhausted. I think we definitely made the most of our holiday.

Here are the kids crammed into the wagon because they were all too lazy to walk the two blocks to see the parade. It looked like they enjoyed the ride though.

Saturday, July 2nd we spent the day at Silver Beach in St. Joseph's, Michigan (our second time this week) as part of our 4th of July weekend celebration. Abby rarely came out of the water so I don't have too many pictures of her.

Two Beach Babes soaking up the sand! (Alexandra and her friend Nora)

My sand!

The big kids found a giant hole to jump into. (This is Sammy in mid-jump.)

The little ones found their own hole.

Sammy was pretty exhausted.

Here is Alexandra on the beach with the ENTIRE bag of sandy Cheetos - delicious! She never seemed to mind how much sand was in any of the food. She happily ate it regardless.

All the girls (including friends of ours) on the beach building some kind of damn. It was a team effort. They worked long and hard to keep the buckets of water inside the walls of sand. Even Alexandra helped though I am not sure how much "help" she was...

Abby has been taking swimming lesson lately and has made HUGE progress. We are so happy that she can now put her head UNDER the water. Hooray! She loves it. This is her at her last swimming lesson over at the high school.

This was a spontaneous photo-shoot of Sammy. What a poser!

Beautiful!

We have spent so much time cleaning out our house and doing various projects to get our house ready to sell, that I was feeling bad about neglecting the girls so much. I was constantly shipping them off to friend's houses or having playdates here to keep them occupied so I could get something done. So after our house was up on the market and we had no showings one day, we decided to make cars out of cardboard boxes. They were so excited to be doing something with ME for once. Sammy's was a "candy car" (I guess that means it was made of candy).

Abby's car was a Nissan.

Little Alexandra in her tutu and one dress-up high heel shoe

This is how these two watch t.v. these days. I think it is so sweet.

That's all for now!

It's Official...

It's official, we are moving back to London, England. When we left three years ago, I never thought we would move back. (We lived there previously from 2003 - 2008.) We are excited though because we still have many good friends there and many countries left unexplored. Abby and Sammy understand we are moving but in some ways it has not completely sunk in for them yet. They still talk about going to school here next year etc. I have to remind them that we won't be here. They are excited to go on an airplane again though. They look forward to that a lot. But first they look forward to visiting our family in Utah first. It has been two years since we have made that trip. We will certainly miss our friends here in Naperville when we move. Our time here has gone by so fast but well worth the three years. I didn't get to do nearly any of the projects, updates or changes to my house that I envisioned but in some ways it will be a relief NOT to be a homeowner again. So if you are ever flying through London, please stop by and fee lfree to stay a while but give us a little time to find and place and get settled first. We leave some time in August.

Back to The Little Girls...

It has been a while since I posted pictures of my girls so here is a blog post devoted solely to cuteness.

We played "restaurant" one day with Sammy, Alex and Sammy's friend. The restaurant was Filangi's and they loved the food and service!

This is Abby's first grade class. I went and helped with field day. She is now done with the first grade, I can't believe it. She worshipped her teacher again this year. She has really lucked out with such awesome teachers suited perfectly for her. She even got her first little crush on a little Jewish neighbor boy in her class.

Alex is quite the independent little girl these days. She climbs up the ladder to the tree house with no problem. She is constantly outside and wants to go everywhere and do everything that Abby and Sammy do. She loves to go around the house and say, "Daddy where are you?" She is also constantly pointing out her different body parts as well as everyone else's. She hides in cupboards, helps herself to the food in the cupboard and loves to go up in her room, close the door and sit on her rocking chair and sing to herself. She's a keeper!

Why is it that when my girls play with "boy toys" it makes me so happy? I love that they were swording fighting with their masks on and running around as wild as ever yet at the same time wearing their cute skirts and outfits while being furocious! I have got to invest in some light sabers and air guns.

Our good friends came to town. It is ALWAYS good to see them!

These pictures are a little out of order but here is the fighting action.

I must admit, I too got a sword and was fighting them all. It was great. Makes me long for the days when I did fencing.

Picnic in the backyard under my favorite tree

What is better than a bath with a good friend?