Anniversaries and Birthdays

This month has a few anniversaries. It was our second anniversary on the 9th. We went to a very nice restaurant, which I'll review in another post.

We picked up our turkey for Christmas today. It was sourced very locally, Copas Turkeys, in Cookham Dean. Copas celebrates their 50 year anniversary this year. We got a lovely free-range bronze turkey from them. If you want to see our turkey enjoying its free range life, check out the start of this BBC video. It is GIGANTIC though. It could feed the entire village, not just the 4 adults and one child who will be here. You can't see it exactly, but it's inside this box. I'm also holding my yummy complimentary mulled wine, which also helped widen the smile on my face.

Speaking of Christmas, the Queen sends a Christmas message out to her subjects every year. Another gold anniversary (50 years) this year marks how many years it's been televised. To celebrate this, this year you will be able to watch her speech on YouTube. The royal family now has their own channel there - www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel.

I think it's cool that the Queen has her own channel, but I don't think it's as cool as my channel - www.youtube.com/showem06. I'm pretty sure Lena's grandparents would agree, since nearly all the videos feature her. In fact, here's the latest one:




And of course, the big birthday today, amongst all these anniversaries was Lena's! She had a very nice day, thanks. Here she is enjoying her birthday cake.

In case I don't make another post beforehand, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

Pictures!

G. has put up lots of photos from the last few weeks. From his mum's visit, to my parents' visit, our trip to Devon and our big day in London visiting friends. If you want to take a look-see, click here!

Empty Nest

It's just me and Lena today; all our visitors left this morning. It's great having visitors, but it's nice to have the place back to ourselves as well. It's a tiny house, and having 5 full-grown adults plus a baby in it makes it tight. So I'm taking today to relax and to fully recover from a cold that suddenly cropped up on the weekend. To amuse you in the meantime, here's (yet another) cute shot of Lena.

I call it, "All Eyes and Soother".

Photo Updates

Just a couple of photos from our grand day out at the Thame Spring Show. Next time I think I'll have to take my camera, as G didn't get many pictures. He claims it's because he didn't have his "big lens" with him, but I'm not so sure. I think he just didn't find the animals as interesting as others did. I know at least one person who would have liked some close-ups of the hamsters in their castle.

Lena and Gramma watching the fun dog race. Well, Gramma was watching it, Lena was watching the grass grow.

One of the scurry drivers, waiting her turn. The counterweight passenger sits on the little seat behind her.

Beergardening in Munich

Some pictures from our biergarten visit back in March. Not everyone's picture is here, but stay tuned, they should be up on our website gallery soon enough.

Kathie cuddling the kid.

Katie cuddling the kid.

Katrina cuddling the kid. (do you see a trend here?)

Phil and myself. It was Phil's brilliant idea to go to have a slackers' beer garden visit. Thanks Phil! It was chilly, but fun.

Nicola giving us tips on how one truly disciplines children.

Maybe this is more like it...

I would like you to note two things in this photo. One, all the Hashers are looking rather spiffy, which is not a usual state for them. Two, note all the beer glasses, (Maß) which is a normal state for Hashers.

Lunar Eclipse

There's a total eclipse of the moon happening tonight and we are lucky enough to have clear skies for it. Here are some pictures; I'll be updating it as it happens.

Warnings!

Both of these signs can be found in Cookham village. They scream "Look out! There are criminals about!" to me. And yet, I don't get the feeling that Cookham suffers that much crime. Yes, I've read that some cars have been broken into for laptops, satellite navigation systems or mobile phones; but it's not like it's a huge number of vehicles.

So why the very visible signs all over the place? I would think that it's only common sense not to leave valuables out on display. Why do the police have to tell us? Is that their way of passing the buck back when someone reports a car break-in? A sort-of "we told you so"?

Britain has lots of these warnings. On the radio there are regular community announcements telling you to be careful of all sorts of things. People coming to your door and offering services or telling you to not put boxes of expensive Christmas presents out for the paper recycling collection too early or in one piece (in that criminals could scope out what you got and decide if your home is worth breaking into). There's a couple such ads on TV right now too. One has a couple showing a would-be burglar around their house, showing how their burglar alarm doesn't work, how their valuables are out on display, how flimsy their back door is, etc etc. The other has a guy in a bar showing the would-be thief his new flashy mobile phone and telling him he'll just leave it on the table while he goes to the toilet so he has a good opportunity to take it.

Coming from Germany, where this type of ad or warning isn't common, I don't know quite what to think. So rather than letting myself get worked up by an ad, I went and read the EU crime and safety survey. Actually, I didn't read all 118 pages of the report, I read the press release summaries for the UK and Germany and skimmed through some of the points in the report.

All in all, the UK does have a higher crime rate than Germany. In fact, the UK has the second highest level for theft from cars out of the 18 countries measured. Only Estonia is higher. Germany in contrast, has the second lowest rate. But that isn't quite as dramatic as it sounds. Germany's rate for theft from cars is just under 2% and the UK's is 6%. So four more out of every 100 cars will be broken into. I admit, I don't want our car to be one of those extra 4 (or the first 2 either), but I'm not sure it justifies the warning signs. I think having signs like that just creates an atmosphere of fear. Perhaps others think differently...

Sightseeing in London

On Friday Lena and I headed into town to get a friend to sign for her passport. He works in "the City", which means right in the heart of London. It's where lots of banks and financial companies are located. You can't swing a cat without hitting someone in a suit. Since we were on a mission, it wasn't really sightseeing, but we did walk right past 30 St. Mary Axe. That's the official name of the Swiss Re building, but it's known affectionately as "The Gherkin" to Brits. A gherkin is a small pickle, something I didn't know for the longest time. Probably because I don't like them very much. But I do like the look of this big pickle building, it's quite sleek and cool. I tried to take a couple of shots of Lena in front of it, but it wasn't easy as she was in a carrier attached to me, so the angle was poor. None of them are very good pictures, but all together I think it's a funny little collage of our Friday trip. Note, Lena doesn't always look quite so grumpy and jowly. The angle I took it from, about 15cm from her face causes the extra-thick jawline. Her wondering what the heck that is in front of my face causes the frown of concentration.

To get a Canadian passport, I needed someone to sign as guarantor that Lena is who we say she is. It's a very short list of people who the Canadian government will accept as a guarantor. These are the requirements:

1. Have known you personally for at least two years.
2. Live within the jurisdiction of the passport issuing office and be accessible for verification.
3. Be one of the following:
   Dentist
   Judge
   Practising lawyer
   Magistrate
   Mayor
   Medical doctor
   Notary public
   Police officer
   Signing officer of a bank

Living within the jurisdiction means someone living in England. Considering we just moved here, how am I supposed to have known a mayor for 2 years? There are hoops you can jump through to get away without a guarantor signing for you (they involve a trip to the consulate and paying a substantial amount of money), but fortunately this wasn't necessary. A lovely fellow who I will call James, used to live in Munich and that's where I got to know him a couple of years back. He now works as a notary in London and was very obliging and willing in signing for Lena's passport. He even gave her paperwork his official notary seal, which should impress some bureaucrat along the line. That gets sent off tomorrow (along with her Canadian citizenship forms) and hopefully will get a passport back in 2-3 weeks.

Gratuitous cute photo

I was sorting some of Lena's clothes by size and wanted to see how this hat fit her. It's much too big right now, but it made for a very cute photo. Our own little Cabbage Patch Kid.

Sunday walk through Cookham

We had beautiful weather this past weekend, so we decided to go for a nice walk around Cookham. It was also the first real cross-country test drive of our new stroller. Worked a treat, once we got the tired properly inflated.

Here you can see G. with the stroller walking down towards the train station. I don't think you can see it in the picture, but way in the background is Cliveden, a large manor near us.
G getting aquainted with some of the friendly neighbours. What's funny is that this is about 200 meters from a regular side street in Cookham Rise.
We continued our walk through Cookham village and visited the Holy Trinity Church. It is quite old, well, parts of it are old. Before this church, there was a Saxon church built here, dating back at least as far as 750 AD. It was refurbished to more along its current form in the 1400s. If you visit, there is a good explanation of the architecture and history available to read.
From the church we went to The Ferry, a nice restaurant and bar right on the riverside, for a drink. It was the first time I had breastfed Lena out in the open, which was a slightly weird feeling, but actually was no big deal.

After the drink we headed for home, but took a side path to see if it also led towards our place. It didn't and we started to encounter fairly rough countryside with just the narrowest of paths. It's good our stroller is 3-wheel drive. But along with being a bit rough, it was leading us away from home, with no easy or short way back. But we were walking right beside some houses and I could see that if we cut through the yard of one place, we could get from their driveway to the street. G wasn't keen on doing it, but I was even less keen on walking an extra kilometre or so over rough ground, especially in the wrong direction. So we decided to go for it. Sure enough, the second we were on their grass, a window in the house flew open and a woman shouted out at us, "Just what do you think you're doing?" She sounded fairly annoyed, as I would be with someone walking in my yard. But I pulled the ultimate trump card, an apologetic tone and a baby. I immediately apologised and explained we were just trying to get to the road because we had lost the path. She quickly came around and was much friendlier once she saw we had the baby and a stroller to push. She let us go across to her driveway which led to the street - it was only about 30 meters from the edge of her property anyways. I was as sorry as my tone to her indicated; I didn't want to trespass, but I'm glad we did in the end. So thanks to the lady who by the end of our little encounter was making gentle small talk with us for letting us take a shortcut home. We promise not to do it again.

Measuring our walk using Gmaps Pedometer, we walked nearly exactly 6km. (Sorry, if you want the uncivilized mile measurement, you'll have to figure it out yourself.) Not bad for our first big walk out. The weather has become far more winter-like today, so we are unlikely to repeat it this weekend, but will be trying to do more and more in the future.

January flurries bring January flowers

Today's post title is of course a play on the saying "April showers bring May flowers". In Canada, I was never convinced of this, feeling that May showers bringing June flowers was more appropriate to the climate. It doesn't seem to be that appropriate here in England either. It snowed a considerable amount early Wednesday and again there was a dusting of the stuff last night. But today, this is what I saw in our front garden - 3 different types of flowers blooming like it was spring.

With a little help from my readers (see comments), I realise this one is a crocus.

These are snowdrops, I believe.
I'm really not sure what this is. It's blue and grows on a sort of vine.

There is one flower I'm sure about. I spotted this sweet flower in her Moses basket:
She's learning to smile, isn't that cute?

A Pictorial Update

G has been on my back to put up more pictures, so here's a few that my mother has taken so far.

Here is G with Lena, apparently she is the newest Man U supporter.

Me with Lena, both of us very excited by Charlie, her newest toy.

And the proud grandmother as well.