Christmas 2017

Christmas time has been and gone once again, although as there was no Boxing Day it felt a bit shorter than normal, still – we did get a Christmas Eve so that’s something. We stopped by Kim’s neighbour’s house for their annual Chinese meal get together which was nice. Kim’s parents are very close with their next door neighbours and they all have kids around the same age as Kim who have all grown up together. And who says no to Chinese food with punch?

The next morning we awoke to a white Christmas, I haven’t had a white Christmas since the early 90s where we went out to play in the snow and whilst my parents were enjoying a snowball fight I crept up to my little brother Charles, put a load of snow in his hood and then pulled it up and made him afraid of snow for years… ha.. I’m a brat, sorry Chaz. The kitties enjoyed watching the snow from inside.

Kim was meant to work in the morning but luckily she got put on call so we could open up our gifts, the kitties were quite pleased with their offerings.

Mostly…

Then we went to go out to visit Kim’s parents for a couple of hours and unwrap gifts with them, only the roads hadn’t been ploughed yet (I suppose because it was Christmas Day!) so after a good 30 minutes of clearing off the snow and ice and shoveling the drive way out we were finally off.

Then we saw an army of ploughs on the way there. There were a lot of stupid drivers out, we saw a woman spun off the road and some idiot in a Volvo tried to race us on single carriage way and was slipping all over the road into oncoming traffic…

The ploughs were particularly unkind to about 15 mailboxes we saw on the way there and back.

After we visited Kim’s parents we came back and I made a nice cauliflower cheese (I have yet to find this pre-made in the stores).

And we had a nice assortment of deli food with some bucks fizz.

Supervised by the man of the house.

We got a ton of nice gifts, Kim’s parents got us a canoe which should be delivered this month and will be nice to use on the lake, Crissy got me a penguin suit for our gag gift contest. I got more board games for the collection including a new backgammon set (backgammon is my family’s game of choice), lots of nice clothes and PJs and bits and bobs.

And Kim enjoyed her gifts from everybody.

We watched Home Alone and built this years gingerbread houses.

Kim’s needed a few repairs but we got there in the end.

Santa got my crystal trees again, I got three this year.

So I left them to mature and we played some Jenga (which I cheated at) and drank quite a bit of Baileys.

Then the next day my lovely trees had bloomed and poor Santa got lymph oedema in what I assume are his legs. A good result.

Fish, Ballet and Hanukkah

So Santa bought my fish and we got them all set up early, howwwww exciting! I have two halfmoon female betta fish. One is blue, she’s called Briney.

The red one is called Bathilda.

We’ve got them all kitted out with a fishy paradise complete with heater and leaf hammocks. The kitties aren’t that interested but every now and then I catch our girl cat Bunny staring at Briney.

We went to see the Nutcracker ballet in Hartford.

And then after we went for Jewish food because it’s Hannukah and why not?

I tried matzo ball soup.

Latkes as part of a chicken burger.

Then we took rugelach home and watched Fiddler On The Roof (my Christmas movie of choice).

So that was fun. The snow has almost all cleared up but there’s some more due at the end of the week… ugh… I’m fed up of shoveling. I got told I can switch job roles at the company I work for which is sad because I like where I am but also good because I can work 40 hours in the New Year and we need more dolla dolla billz y’all. I have all but one gift wrapped and Kim specially ordered me some minced pies from England so we’re all set… 4 more sleeps…

Snow Comes To Coventry

So this Saturday we were all geared up to take a trip to New York City until we woke up to…

There was about 3 or 4 inches in the end, we took a little walk down to the lake which was all chilly.

We took the cats out for a little exploration.

They didn’t stay out long…

Kim’s cat bunny acted like we were torturing her and hid under the steps in our garden.

We’ve been getting ready for Christmas, I’ve done two secret Santa’s and a grab bag for work so far. I hadn’t done a grab bag before, you buy a random gift and wrap it and take it there then when you’re ready everyone picks a number. When your number is called you pick a gift and unwrap it then you choose whether to keep it or steal a gift that someone else before you has unwrapped. After the last person goes the first person gets to choose to steal or keep their gift so getting number 1 is the best. I wasn’t sure what to take so I got a bag of miniatures (which the Americans call ‘nippers’).

Kim’s Auntie Linda sent us a wreath she made in the post which was nice and it lights up, that side of Kim’s family is very good with crafts. She also sent this little candle thing which wizzed round and is very fun to fiddle with.

We’ve set up the fish tank all ready for our new arrivals. I just labelled the Christmas cards so hopefully they’ll get to the UK in time, we got some of those cheesy photo cards the Americans love because I think they’re funny. I only have a few more presents to buy so that’s a relief!

The Driving Test & Coventry Christmas In The Village

I spent two nights last week taking an 8 hour drug and alcohol course that was mandatory before I was allowed to take my practical driving test. I had passed my written test fine (it was much easier than the UK test) so this course was the last step. It cost $140 (ugh) and was run in a little class room full of teenagers with blue hair… and me. It was run by a rootin tootin sort of American man who kept saying “veehickle” and gave such tips as “do not wear sunglasses at night” and “if a pedestrian crosses the road in a place that is not a crossing, you are still not allowed to run them down” – well thanks so much. There were endless videos that had funky dance music and featured grinning actors saying “Hey I’m Scott and I am here to teach you the rules of the road!”. It was extremely painful.

Finally yesterday I was able to take my practical driving test – what a difference to the UK! It lasted 15 minutes, I had a very friendly tester who was thrilled I was from the UK as he kept a list of different countries he had tested people from and he didn’t have the UK yet so he could check that one off. We literally just drove round the block in a long loop and I had to reverse into a bay and that was it. My brother Oliver kept saying how easy the test was and I thought surely not but there we are – easy!

Last Sunday we parked up and walked into town because they had a Christmas event down Main Street in Coventry with places you could buy different things and crafts, bake sales etc.

Kim got her annual spiced apple and we browsed.

One of the stalls sold pet things and we bought Barclay a catnip pumpkin pie (Bunny doesn’t care for catnip too much). Bar immediately sniffed out his gift.

And unwrapped it himself. Guess he doesn’t know Santa is watching…

Christmas Tree Time 2017

We’ve been thinking about Christmas Trees for a little while and hoping we could get a potted Christmas Tree like we always had in England. It was a bit like Chinese whispers, people would tell us to try one store, we’d get there then the store would tell us to try a different store and so on. So we finally tracked some down and hit a slight snag – the trees were about $200 each! In England they’re the same price as the cut trees, and a fake tree was out of the question. Kim had her heart set on spending out for a potted tree but spending that much every single year is a bit much so we decided to settle for a cut tree. We got the stand and some tree feeder and lights and planned to go out the next day. Off we set in the car with no idea where we were going until Kim spotted a sign saying ‘Christmas Tree Farm’ just down the road from us. Great we thought… until we pulled up to a small shack and an old man who looked like Father Christmas handed us this and said to drive down and pick any one we liked… huh…

So Kim chose the tree she liked and I got under it and cut it down, this photo of Kim below is staged, I didn’t trust her with the hacksaw so I gave her the important task of putting down the seats in the car!

Then we took it back to Santa to pay for the tree and get it wrapped up which was easier said than done – firstly he couldn’t understand a word I was saying, he could barely understand a word Kim was saying. Secondly he was just old and doddery, we sort of took over wrapping the tree, I even did the little winch part to wrap the tree because he was faffing around with god only knows what. We ushered him away and loaded it on the car ourselves whilst he was still wondering aloud where his wife was… I can only assume she escaped him to get away from his incessant talking bless him.

So home we got it and it looked so small until we fluffed it out.

We located the Christmas decorations box and hung up our stockings. As a child I used to have a M&S stocking that was huge, there was no end to presents you could fit in there, I think I could fit both my legs in there like a mermaid! It was a matching one with my brother Charles’ – I think mine hand Santa skiing on it and his had bells (the bells were how you could catch Santa out – obviously) and maybe a reindeer.  Now we have skiing snowmen.

So we put all the lights and decorations up and now our house smells lovely, just missing some chocolate tree decorations.