Best Skype Chat EVER!

My dad is spending this week and the two surrounding weekends on the East Coast. In Ohio both weekends to visit family, and in Toronto during the week for business. The BEST part of this for me is that I got to Skype with my Grandma, who is 88 years old. Just this past week, my cousins Matt and TerriLynn had a baby girl, Madison Lynn, bringing my grandma's great-grandchild count up to 9...Then more cousins, Lex and Lindsey, announced that they're expecting their second baby! Very exciting!!!

My dad's not 100% perfect at aiming the camera, so he cut Grandma's head off a few times, but honestly this was the best Skype chat I've ever had!!!
She didn't entirely know what to think, I think...She thought it was super expensive, then dad told her it was free..and she tired to kick me off a few times "okay well you have a lovely time and I miss you and I love you" type things, then we'd stop her and say I wasn't going anywhere yet. It was funny. Hopefully we'll get to do it again when dad is there next weekend.


Grandma and Dad.

Uncle Bob, Dad, Aunt Monica, Uncle Terry and Aunt Chris around Grandma's head.

Dad giving Grandma bunny ears...how rude! ;-]

And bonus: two shots of what I sent dad for his birthday...


He was moving it around in front of the camera and singing the Jaws theme song.....Yup, this is my father...

Pictures!

This weekend I went to London again. I left on Saturday afternoon after taking Ellie to judo [which was fun to watch, I've never seen so many small kids safely tackling each other!]. I met up with Hannah and Mollie at Oxford St. where they were shopping. We had plans to go to Church, another Australian bar that people flock to on Sundays, the next day. Apparently people wear what they call "fancy dress" to Church...In my mind, fancy dress means, well, a dress and heels and the like. Here, it means costumes. This place was like being at a high school dance that had a theme...but with booze. Anyway, we were going as crayons, and had to make my dress/buy fabric to make it. We made a pit stop in Hamley's, a HUGE toy store. It had 5 stories and basically every toy EVER.

I promised pictures, and here they are! Instead of a loooooong scroll through of photos, I made a slide show! It might go a little fast [sorry! I'm going to try to find a better site to make the slide shows on...], but you can pause it and just click through the pictures at your own pace. It's pretty much the whole past month, from the Adidas Women's 5K challenge that Penny, Kari and Ellie ran to the trip to London from this past weekend.

Picture summary!:
A few shots from the Adidas 5K that Penny, Kari and Ellie did.
The "American food" section at the grocery store near here. Penny's sister found a website called usafoodstore.com that imports a bunch of American food [mostly cake mixes and cereal, but still cool!] that I'm excited about.
London weekend: On Saturday we went to the London Aquarium. No flash photography allowed, and honestly, I'm not going to bore you all with photos of fish. A turtle shot, but no other fishies. We tried to go up to the Prime Minister's house but it was blocked off, so Mollie took a few pictures of me outside the gates. We went to Buckingham Palace also, which I remember from my People to People trip from 2001, but not too well. The Pope was here over the weekend, so there was a lot of security stuff set up on the way to the Palace, which was cool to see. No real need to see the man himself though.
Then shots from the crayon's trip to Church on Sunday.

Random!

Michaela just sent me a link to this picture...It's definitely how I've felt pretty much my whole life!



Thanks, Michaela! =]


Anyway, I might be off to London this weekend to stay with Hannah and Mollie again...I want to try to go do something touristy, and they want to take me to another Australian bar that we couldn't go to the last weekend I was there. I have to take Ellie to judo at her school Saturday morning because...
BIG NEWS!:

Kari made the lacrosse team at school!!!!!

She's super excited! She was singing and dancing around the kitchen all afternoon [not that singing and dancing are completely unusual behaviors for her, but I promise, this was different], and we ordered Dominos for a celebratory dinner, much to Ellie's delight! This is the first team sport she's done [in the past she's done tennis and swimming and stuff like that]. They have a match on Saturday morning and Kevin won't be home, so I told her it's not a problem for me to take Ellie to judo so she can take Kari to the match. Plus, I've never seen judo so it should be interesting.
Anyway, I won't be able to go until Saturday afternoon, which is fine. I promise more pictures from London this time if I go!

Tomorrow Ellie is going to let me do something completely new to her hair for school. Usually it's just a low pony tail, since she has to wear a [very cute] hat to school, but I put a little side braid in my hair yesterday, and again today, and practiced on hers today, and we convinced her to do it for school tomorrow. She's very simple and kind of set in her ways when it comes to her hair, so I'm exited that she said yes to something else! I told her I'd do it to mine too so we can match, and I'll have Penny take a picture or two of our matching hair, so there might even be THREE posts in a week! =]

Please please PLEASE let me know if you're reading. So far just my parents have let me know...and I already knew they were [I still like that you are though, mom & dad!]!

Another week!

Last week all three kids started school. Harry went back on Tuesday night, since he boards during the week and classes started Wednesday. Ellie started Wednesday morning as well, and Penny, Kari and I took her to school, since it's also Kari's old school. We went to Westfield, a huge mall, that day, and I gave in to my love of stationary and pens at Paperchase, which was awesome.

Kari started school on Thursday, so that was the first day all the kids were gone all day. Friday I watched Cassidy for the morning while Penny and Kevin were out, and we had a great time.

I had a nice weekend, I went out on Saturday afternoon with two other au pairs, Marika and Elin. Marika drives here and HAS A HONDA FIT. Okay well it's a Jazz here, but it's a Honda Fit and makes me miss Little Blue! We had a nice time in High Wycombe at the Eden Center.

This week is the first full week of the kids being in school. Here's an idea of what my schedule is every day:

7:00 am-7:20 am Get up and dressed.
7:20 am-7:35 am Eat breakfast, usually make Ellie breakfast and get Ellie upstairs to get ready. Usually around 7:35 Kari and Penny leave to take Kari to the bus.
7:35 am-8:20 am Make sure Ellie is totally ready for school, has all her stuff for the day, do Ellie's hair, and usually we have a few minutes that Ellie will use to play a game before we have to leave for school at 8:20.
8:20 am-8:35 am Either Penny or I will take Ellie to school and come back home.
8:35 am-3:40 pm Do whatever needs to be done at home during the day. Each week it's cleaning the floors downstairs and dusting, ironing, cleaning/dusting the kid's rooms and bathrooms, cleaning the stairs, and anything else that comes up during the week.
3:40 pm Leave to go pick Ellie up at school, come home.
3:40 pm-7 pm Eat, do homework with the girls, help get Ellie into bed for the night.

That's pretty much it during the week.

Yesterday Kari and I were brushing up on our British history...She's preparing for her common entrance tests in the spring, which is basically what she'll be studying for all year. The exams are a pretty big deal. We learned about Edward I, Alexander III, and that back in the day [okay, and today still, but not as bad] that people are SUPER uncreative in naming their kids. Alexander III's wife was named Margaret, they named their daughter Margaret, and SHE named HER daughter Margaret. Um, like that's not confusing...

Tonight I'm going to a meeting with some other au pairs which will be nice.

I sent out some more letters, so write me back or send me your address so I can send you some too! Oh, and let me know who's out there reading this, leave me a comment [with your name, pretty please...Jess P, was that you with the ranch comment???]


Edit!!!
I can't believe I almost forgot this!!!! I finally got my diploma in the mail this week!!! Here are some [okay a lot of] Skype screen shots of my dad opening it, and a Sparky appearance!

Birthday celebration and more!

Last week was my 22nd birthday, and I spent the weekend in London with my Australian friends Mollie and Hannah.

After my last post, Penny, Kevin and the kids brought out a cake for me after tea, which was so nice and unexpected! Kari very loudly sang "Happy Birthday" [though she rarely does anything quietly...], throwing in the word "tomorrow" after "birthday," since it wasn't really my birthday yet.


Yummy cake!

For tea that night we had pasta, and Penny and Kari were making a cream sauce that was SO GOOD. Kari and I made it again last night...mmmm! I ate way too much that night and wasn't expecting cake after that, so I was REALLY full that night!


I took the train out on Saturday along with 5,000 people going to a football match. I only had one minor mishap with the trains...I thought I bought an all-day pass for all of the tube system when I left GX, but it turns out I didn't, and had to call Mollie to figure out what I DID have to buy. The trains in London [aka the Tube] are really nice inside compared to BART or Muni. The seats are reallllly padded, but nicely kept up. The biggest/most annoying difference to me was that unlike on Muni and BART, each line and direction has different platforms, so you have to make sure you know what line you're looking for, otherwise you'll never be at the right platform at the downtown stations.

We were trying to go to the Notting Hill Carnival, which was conveniently supposed to be over my birthday weekend. But, when I got there Saturday afternoon, Mollie got a call from a friend who was there and said that it wasn't on until Sunday, and Sunday was "kids day" rather than the main part of the carnival. So instead of spending that night at the carnival, we went to Leicester Square. AND WE GOT THERE ON A DOUBLE DECKER BUS. I seriously think Muni should consider these, because it's so much easier to see where you are if you're on the top section [these were all enclosed]. It was really awesome to be able to see where we were going and actually have a better view on things than if we were just at street level.


Mollie, Hannah and me waiting for the bus to Leicester Square.

Anyway, in Leicester Square we ate dinner at a Pizza Hut [my choice]. Pizza Hut is very different in England...it's a more legit restaurant than in the US. The three of us stuffed our faces with pizza, and Mollie thought they had ranch, but it turns out they stopped carrying it, much to my disappointment. Mollie and Hannah love ranch now too, apparently, so I'm glad I have some comrades in my hunt for ranch dressing in the UK.

We saw "Salt" that night, which was really good but totally left wide open for a sequel, it really didn't even have an ending.

That night we went out to this huge park behind their house, Hampstead Heath. It reminded me a lot of Dolores Park back in San Francisco, which was kind of neat. We climbed up to the top of the hill in the park and could see pretty much all of London lit up in the dark. Everything was so cool lit up!

Sunday Rey [another au pair from near where I am who was out in the city with us] made potato pancakes [I made eggs...], and the girls dipped theirs in ranch, which I never would have thought of. There are a few Australian bars in London that Mollie and Hannah go to every Sunday, so we knew we were going to one of those, Walkabout. Before we went there though we went to the Camden Markets, which are like a HUGE flea-market, but permanent. Every type of food you could imagine was there, including this crazy potato-chip stand that spiral-cut a potato and then fried it. Someday, I promise there will be a video of this.


Part of Camden Markets used to be a horse stable, and they have HUGE fake horses in there.


We got to Walkabout and it was kind of weird to be in a bar at 3pm on a Sunday, but since Monday was a Bank Holiday, there were even more people there than usual. We left for a bit to check out "kids day" at the carnival, but then came back before leaving about an hour later. When we got back, I passed out pretty fast.

Monday morning Rey had to leave to go back home, and the girls and I spent a majority of the day in bed before finally getting up to check out the carnival. There was a 12-hour parade involved, and we couldn't figure out why it was sooooo long. Well, it's because the parade moves about 1 mile an hour. We accidentally ended up in the line that was only allowed back in the tube station, but we'd gotten the feel of it, and I had my backpack with my weekend stuff in it, and since it was so crowded, we didn't want to risk anything bad happening to my stuff, so we went to the Marylebone station, got McDonald's [tastes EXACTLY like home], and then I got on the train back to GX.

Overall, I had a nice birthday weekend!

This week has been pretty low-key. I got all three of the kids playing Words with Friends now, and Kari and Ellie want to play really fast, so they like to pounce on me when it's my turn, which is funny. Ellie even BEAT me once...but I helped her play "quiz" with the q and z on double-letter spots, so she got 42 points for that word. This time I'm not helping her find words as much.

Yesterday, Ellie started teaching me how to play tennis. Yeah, start laughing! It wasn't TOO bad, nothing was broken and no one was injured. It actually wasn't too bad! 


More language differences for dad:

1. "Red Route" instead of "Red Zone" for fire lanes.
2. Things aren't for rent or for lease, they're "to let."
3. Gas stations are called petrol stations. 
4. Some houses here just have a name and no actual number. 
5. You go to the cinema, not the movies.
6. TJ Maxx is called TK Maxx, but the logo is exactly the same.