Snow and Thanksgiving

Awoke this morning somewhat bleary eyed and wondered whether to face the cold and go for a run. As I peered out of the kitchen window, I noticed it was  SNOWING!!!! I haven't seen snow since 2002 (when we went to Vermont skiing with Sarah and Scott - with the twins on board-  followed by the perfect Christmas in Connecticut) and the girls have never seen it except in the movies. Needless to say the desire for running outdoors was replaced by running about the house yelling for the girls to stop fighting and look out of their windows.  It was really nothing more than flurries but hopefully a sign of things yet to come. I took these shots from my bedroom window. I've ordered sleighs online, as we anticipate a return of the massive snow enjoyed (?) here last year, we went ice skating at the rink in the town centre on Friday night (a lesson in humiliation if ever there was one) and have already started listening to Christmas music and watching Christmas movies - last night Home Alone.

We had a great Saturday morning around the corner with new friends Cathy and Dom and their kids today before strolling across to the park for the Christmas fair. I then spent an enjoyable hour this afternoon at home decorating our mantelpiece with holly, ivy and fir foilage I pilfered from the park. I had two brilliant days in London midweek pottering at Borough Market and the Tate Modern, while I was in the city meeting people about work. I also managed another hilarious catch up in Kentish Town with Ruth, Paul and old mate Rupert. Laugh! Not so funny was the way my feet - used to 13 years in Birkenstocks and flip flops, - totally failed me in boots, leaving me limping along with bleeding blisters. Back in Hastings (safely in Uggboots) we celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday night at Maria and Lol's with an amazing feast for 15  of turkey, pumpkin pie and much more. While we left at a conservative 9pm, unconfirmed reports suggest the hosts and other guests retired at 4am. Tut tut.

Nativity play update - Stop the press!

Mrs Croucher ( I know that's what I said. And she looks like a Dickens character too), head of the Nursery School, told me this morning that Florence has been upgraded from angel in the Christmas play to the role of .......... Mary!. Well you can only imagine the headlines. "The new Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland take to the boards - both in the starring role of Mary!!" Although hopefully without the deep-seated hatred that those two sisters enjoyed for most of their lives. 

Here are our girls celebrating their roles!

Let it snow!

Enjoying the run up to Christmas even though it's still November. In Hastings the outdoor ice rink opened this week and Scarlett brought home a letter letting us know she is playing Mary in the school Christmas play. That's right - you read it correctly - our little girl is playing Mary! Thrilled of Braybrooke Road. She only has two very short lines, but that's hardly the point. Florence meanwhile has been typecast as an angel in her nursery school performance. We have had our wood-burning stove lit all week in the sitting room. It went in on Rob's birthday and is brilliant, sending out enough heat to warm the whole house. We have put the American quilt on our bed and the girls have two duvets each in their duvet covers. Best of all, the weatherman announced this morning we might even have snow by Thursday. V excited. I go to London this week for a couple of days to meet up with old friends and magazine contacts in the hope of some freelance work for January, but in the meantime, although I've been a bit up and down about not working, I've decided to make the most of not being at work and looking forward to the weeks ahead. You cannot imagine how excited I am at the thought of the girls seeing snow for the first time. There's a Christmas fair  on in the park this weekend and over the next few weekends we have a trip to London, friends to stay, the Cinderella panto, visiting Santa at Bodium Castle and of course the girls' school plays and Christmas Bazaar. Sleighs bells ring...are you listening.....?

It's starting to look a lot like Rob's birthday

The Festival of Rob began on Saturday as we celebrated his birthday with a lunch at home with family and other interested parties. One of the things I loved about our house in Lilyfield was the vast family room that made events with large groups easy - this is much harder to pull off in a house where the dining and living spaces are spread over two floors. Still, I was thrilled to be able to fit my trusty trestle table on the end of the dining table in the kitchen, even if it went in diagonally. After Champagne and canapes of tuna 'cooked' in lime juice, we squeezed 13 around the table. I made two huge roasting pans of five hour roast lamb. There were dramas in the preparation (I realised one of the roasting pans wouldn't fit in the oven  - enter Rob, stage left , with a new pan he raced off to Sainbury's to buy). The resulting melt-in-the-mouth lamb, and vegetables that had soaked up all the flavour of the wine and herbs was pretty amazing, even if I do say so myself. It was a lovely long lunch with the last guests still here at 6.30pm. Thanks to everyone for coming, especially those who made the trip down from London. Anyhoo, here's a little film of the lunch.

 

Another one of the reasons we came back to Britain is that Christmas here cannot be beaten. Even the build up is exciting. The Christmas ads have started appearing on Tv now. The following one is the latest from John Lewis. Rob and I watched in silence before looking at each other at the end to find we were both in tears. 

A final note to Lenka whose latest blog entry was a clearly blatant attempt designed to make us want to move back to Sydney - it almost worked! Speedboats to islands on Pittwater, and the coffee boat sells ice cream now!  Hard to beat.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November

Our weekend started with Scarlett's first class assembly on Friday morning. 2D told the story (hilariously) of Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot before reading poems they had written about bonfire night. A group of us parents sat at the back chuckling away. Scarlett played one of the guards who catch the evil Fawkes at his game. 

On Saturday after some general lolling about with the papers, we went to the woods for a lovely walk in truly Autumnal scenery. It's a smashing time of year here at the moment and I'm really trying to get us out into it as much as possible before the colder more inhospitable weather comes with Winter and we are more housebound. Only a few metres nto the woods, Flo slipped and fell in a huge section of thick slippery mud, which caused mirth for us onlookers and tears from Flo because "I didn't want to be dirty". Fair enough. 

 On Saturday evening, after an early roast chicken dinner, we drove to nearby Winchelsea to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night. There was a lot of choice locally when it came to bonfires but we chose this one because it's meant to be small and family friendly. Larger celebrations, like the one in Lewes which includes five separate fires and calls for the windows of the High Street to be bordered up against drunken revellers, were not for us. In Winchelsea, a group of about 100 people gathered by the village well at 7pm to see the local dramatic players act out a funny version of the gunpowder plot, not dismilar to the one performed by Scarlett's class. With Guy Fawkes captured, he was loaded onto a cart that led a procession of booing onlookers through the streets to a field where he was tossed onto the huge bonfire stack and set alight. Once he was well ablaze, a really good fireworks display began that had us oohing and ahhing. It was a super night and we were back home in time for X Factor.

 

Talking of fires, tomorrow morning the scafolding goes up on the front of our house so that next week our new chimney liner and wood-burning stove can be fitted. Only then can the really cold weather descend.