Christmas Morning

This Christmas was a different one. It was the first away from our families, but trying to make the most of it, I tried my hand at a turkey. I guess I'm an official adult now. I bought a small one, seasoned it, and put it in the crock pot. It worked like a charm!

Here I am pulling out the insides. Blech.

Nathan wanted to eat the neck straight away. Gross!

I opened an early Christmas present from Hannah, a tree topper! Don't you think it looks nice on our Christmas tree?

Here are the Nathans, distributing the gifts after our Christmas breakfast.

Nathan got Nathan a matching hat. How English!

One of the kind gifts from my in-laws was this address stamp. I was so excited to get it! However, I cracked up when I realized that England is spelled incorrectly. EnglNAD. My mother-in-law had a fit! Her e-mail address is grammarmom@thatemailserverdotcom and she prides herself on her grammar and spelling. Today she called American Stationery and gave them a piece of her mind.

Nathan was so excited complete his Seinfeld collection with the last two seasons. Now he has all nine, and my mind cannot get rid of that stupid baseline opener. We've already watched two discs.

Here's the last one. True emotion captured on digital film.

I got this St. John's scarf for Nathan. Each college within the university has its own scarf with its own colors. All you Harry Potter fans know what I'm talking about. 

Nathan got some women's Christmas socks from his family.

Nathan got an English scarf to complement his hat.

My Nathan got me some "yeti socks" for bed. They're a fuzzy on the outside and fleecy on the inside. Just another essential for keeping his baby warm. :)

Our guest Nathan gave us some Turkish delights for Christmas. Nathan took to calling himself Edmund when eating them.

Our favorite gift was a calendar from Nathan's family that had different pictures of family and friends on each month. As you can see, Nathan started tearing up, especially when he saw the picture of him and his brothers inspecting their belly buttons on the January page.

Here we are opening a box of Christmas cheer from our friends Bev and Natalie. They sent us such nice treats! The reindeer headband broke in transit, and his feelers were down because we missed them. 

Self-portrait time!

The final treat from Bev and Natalie includes our Christmas message!

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, we had an open house for all of our ex-pat friends, neighbors, and international students. I knew that Christmas Eve would be the hardest day away from family for me, so I thought distracting myself with a party was a good idea. We had a good time with friends and meeting new ones as well. 

We had lots of Christmas treats, and many more made it to the table before the night was over. 

I found this little Christmas tree in a cupboard at work, and I brought it home to make the house more festive. I placed it on top of the TV, and we put the presents under the Christmas tree... technically.

Do you remember our friends Dave and Mindy? We also had our friend Nathan Dicks visiting us from Bosnia for several days as well. His family and my Nathan's family have been friends for a long time, and we loved hearing about his life and work in Sarajevo. 

Here we are! All of the Christmas cards we've received are on our bathroom door behind us.

Aaron, Eleanor, and Lucy stopped by and brought some delicious treats as well.

Steve, Enoch, Sarah, Nathan, Nathan, Jason, Peggy, and a girl whose name I can't remember now. Sorry!  There were several others who stopped by, but I didn't get pictures of everyone. 

Merry Christmas!

And happy anniversary to my wonderful parents who are celebrating 32 years of marriage today. I love you!

We Are So Hungry

After Mom and Dad left, Nathan and I settled back into the barn and got ready for Christmas. On Tuesday night, we checked into the possibility of getting some pizza. We ordered from Dominoes online, which we thought was so fun. It was Two for Tuesday, with a buy one get one free deal. Do you know what that means? It means that I got a whole large pizza all to myself with whatever I wanted on it. Nathan got one for himself too. It was awesome. 

There was a space to make any extra comments about how to find our house, but Nathan typed in "We are so hungry!!!" just to be funny. We didn't know it would end up on our pizza box.

Travel Nightmares

We woke up early on our last morning with my mom and dad. Because of our horrible day of weather related travel the day before, we were worried that they might not get out of Heathrow. However, the website said that their flight was still due to leave. We hugged and kissed them goodbye, put them on the Tube to the airport, and went to the Rubies to wait. If their flight was cancelled, we were going to go pick them up. However, if we had heard the horror stories from our friends Dave and Mindy before we dropped them off, we totally would not have sent them down in the first place. 

This sweet couple went through all kinds of horrors before Nathan and Will picked them up at a nearby Tube station. Dave said he felt like Joseph, keeping watch over Mary when there was no room in the inn. Mindy, who was 30 weeks pregnant at the time, had to sleep on the floor in the airport all night. They said that people were fighting, getting drunk, weeping, kids were screaming, the bathrooms were overused and undercleaned, there was not enough food and water, no information was being given, the airport was closed, the Tube was closed, airport employees were not coming to work (who can blame them?) and it was generally a complete nightmare. They couldn't rebook their flights in time to get to California until after Christmas, so they decided to just cancel their trip altogether. The question was, however, how to get back to Durham?

Thankfully, God took care of them in remarkable ways, and they were able to make contact with the Rubies. They came to the Rubies' house completely exhausted. We heard about God's provision for them in truly terrible and disappointing circumstances. This was the first Christmas Mindy and Dave were away from their families. 

Meanwhile, I was keeping an eye on their flights online and I was able to give Mom and Dad updates by calling them on a friendly stranger's cell phone. They said that they had been locked out of the airport for an hour in the cold, and they would only let women and children in at first. Talk about another Titanic reference! They were not allowed to speak with any airport or airline employees and were generally pretty hopeless about being able to get out. Heathrow was basically in hysterics.

Events transpired later that included my mother interpreting for an American Deaf couple stranded in the airport, which got their seats moved being in the middle in the back of the plane to an exit row. Then they actually got ON the plane a few hours later, sat on the runway for a few more hours, and miraculously took off - one of three planes that left the airport that day out of more than 700.

After showers for Dave and Mindy and another hot meal by Rachael, the four of us got in the car and drove back to Durham. We are still in awe that my parents got home and that we were able to get our friends home too.

Here we all are... tired and travel weary but very happy for the Lord's gift of friendship. Me, Nathan, Emily, Rachael, Mindy, Dave, and Will.

Here's Dave and Mindy's Facebook status update that they posted Sunday night when they got home.

Well, after 16 hours at Newcastle airport due to cancellations, a 4 1/2 hour bus ride to Heathrow airport in London, 7 hours on our plane to LAX that never left the departure gate, 12 hours overnight at Heathrow airport on the floor, a 1 1/2 hour ride on the tube to get to the Rubie's wonderful (and warm) home, and then a 4 hour car ride up to Durham thanks to Nathan and Nicole, we're finally back in Durham...where we started on Friday morning. Thanks be to God for His grace and the love and concern of so many.

London With the 'Rents - Part 2

After a good sleep at Oak Hill, we woke up and had a delicious breakfast with the Rubies at their place. Rachael made us crepes, and we oohed and aahed over Emily. Isn't she the cutest baby?

I could have used a little hair color, make up, and Botox. Emily posed sweetly for the camera.

Rachael took a break from her masterful cooking to smile with us.

We went to the Tube to head to the Tower of London, and we were delayed at one of our change overs. It was dumping snow outside. We thought, "It won't be bad once we get there." After 30 minutes of standing around in the cold with no sign of our train, we decided to walk "about 10 minutes," in Nathan's estimation.

Before setting out, we took a picture with Dad's hat off...

and one with it on. I loved it.

We walked and walked and walked. Everything was closed nearby because it was Saturday and because it was snowing. It was cold. It was way longer than a 10 minute walk. Finally, we made it to the Tower of London. There it was in all its glory. Success! 

Until we got to the window to pay for tickets to get in. "Sorry," the young woman in the ticket booth said to Nathan. "We're closed due to inclement weather."

"Are you serious?" his eyes bulged. "Then what are you still doing here?"

"I'm just giving people refunds."

A guy next to the booth, who was also an employee, said to Nathan, "You should have stayed at home, mate."

"Yes, that would have been valuable advice two hours ago!" 

I was definitely in a grumpy mood. It was about 1 p.m. on our last day, and we hadn't "done" anything besides walk around in the snow looking at closed buildings. After thawing out in the KFC in a cluster of gift shops selling Tower of London paraphernalia, we came up with a plan and decided to try Buckingham Palace. 

"It's completely indoors," I said. It shouldn't be closed. So we walked yet again through the snow, trying to "do" something in London.

Wrong. Closed. I momentarily considered a tantrum on the ground, but I didn't want to get my clothes muddy and wet.

So close to warmth and entertainment and learning more about the monarchy, yet so far.

These guys looked really cold. I guess I couldn't complain too loudly.

I was definitely not smiling in my heart in this picture.

Or this one.

Or this one.

We had officially been not "doing" anything in London for four hours, and I was despairing for my poor parents who came all this way not to do nothing. I was cold and discouraged. Despite of our better judgement not to go to the biggest department store in England the Saturday before Christmas, we decided to try to find Harrod's, and after another hour or so of Tube trains and walking, we found it. It was open, which we considered a victory. 

The sidewalks outside the store were jam-packed with people. The windows were dressed up for Christmas with a Peter Pan theme, which was a little weird, but nice. I mean, it was strange to see mannequin mermaids dressed in lingerie with a little boy mannequin next to them. We headed indoors. 

Big mistake.

We were herded around like cattle, not being able to move of our own accord either forwards or backwards because of the sheer volume of people. It was crazy crowded. I may or may not have had a small panic attack. We lasted five minutes. I stumbled back out into the snowy outdoors, gasping for breath. It was 4 p.m., completely dark outside, and all of us were hungry, tired, cold, and done with trying to be tourists. It just wasn't meant to be.

We buzzed around the block to Pizza Express, snacked on some way overpriced pizza, and decided to just go back to Oak Hill for dinner. My parents needed to reserve their plane seats online and pack. 

We walked to the closest Tube station. Closed. For the weather. Of course. We walked to the next closest one. Closed. For the weather. But would re-open in 15 minutes. We decided to just wait. 

Standing out there in the cold with a closely compacted group of people waiting to go underground, I was just so sad. The metal gates they shut that separated us from the warmth of the Underground below reminded me of the Titanic, when they wouldn't let the third class escape the ship at first. It felt like a failure of a day in terms of not being able to really "do" London, despite our best efforts. And I thought about my poor attitude for all of those hours when I could have just been happy to have my parents with me at all. I thought about improving that, but then we were met with another challenge.

After standing outside in that huddle for more like 30 minutes, they opened the metal gates and people poured down to the trains. It started getting so crowded again that I thought people would get pushed off the platform and onto the track. Every train that came through was so packed that only a handful of people could smash in at a time. The four of us just slinked back to the wall in defeat and tried to think of another plan. A taxi? The line for taxis outside of Harrod's was really, really long. A bus? We had no idea which one/s to take. It was too far to walk back up to Oak Hill. We decided to just stay put, link arms, get in some sort of line for a train, and hope for the best. We inched up toward the front with each passing train. It would finally be our turn next. I braced myself for a heave forward into the already crowded car.

All of a sudden we heard cries of delight from people further down the pavement. The train was nearly empty! We yipped with joy and the four of us actually got a seat for our 45 minute Tube journey back to our station.

Whenever my mom gets in some sort of moving transportation, be they trains, planes, or automobiles, she falls asleep almost immediately. These pictures of her snoozing were taken throughout our adventures of the day.

We finally made it back to our station, had a pub dinner nearby and then dessert at a Greek confectionery across the street, and made it back to the Rubies so my parents could reserve their seats on the plane the next day. Will and Rachael told us that our friends Dave and Mindy were stuck at Heathrow and had been trying to fly out to California that day on the same flight number as the one my parents had the next day.

Uh oh...

London With the 'Rents - Part 1

After touring York, we jumped back in the car and drove down to London.We stayed at a seminary where our former pastor, Paul, used to teach. It's called Oak Hill, and it's on the North side of the city. Some of our first English friends, Will and Rachael Rubie and their baby Emily, live and study there, and they were an absolute blessing in every way. They fed us, cared for us, gave us maps and guide books, let us use their internet, Oyster cards, etc. (which came in handy, which I will explain in a later post). We started out our time there by ordering Chinese takeaway and talking late into the night with the Rubies. Good times!

The next morning, the Rubies recommended going to Covent Gardens for breakfast and a little shopping. My mother absolutely went bananas over the place. It was decorated festively for Christmas, and the French bakery we went to for breakfast served delicious girly foods. The flowers above I saw on the way to the bathroom, and they  smelled fantastic. I think those are pickled pears at the bottom of the vase.

We went outside and took our picture next to the Christmas tree.

Then we took the tube to Westminster and popped out from underground to see Big Ben. The sky looked ominous, and indeed, it started snowing on our walk around the Thames.

The rest of the day we went indoors because of the cold and snow. We first tried the National Portrait Gallery, because they had some amazing photographs of Princess Diana that I wanted to show my mom.  Later, Nathan had an appointment at the Dr. William's Library to look at a manuscript he needed for his research, and Mom, Dad, and I went to the British Museum. Nathan took the camera with him in case they would let him take pictures of the old manuscript (they didn't), so we don't have pictures from our afternoon museum hopping. To see more of London and the British Museum from Nathan's and my trip in March, click here. 

After going to evensong at Westminster Abbey, we finished the day at the Whole Foods mecca on High Street Kensington. Do you remember me raving about the food there this spring? We just had to take mom and dad back there, and it was just a little bit less amazing than I remembered, but still amazing. We were more than a little tired and hungry by this point.