God Bless the USA!
Happy birthday to Evan today!
Buffalo Sighting
Wall Drug
9.11.10
God Bless the USA!
Snails or Slugs?
8.24.10
I never knew the difference, but according to Wikipedia, snail-like creatures that lack a shell (or have only a very small one) are called slugs. These little guys are all over our back yard. One night we had two of them outside our kitchen window. To me this was pretty cool and I had to share!
All Work and No More Play!
8.22.10 Sad....my long, stress-free summer is coming to an end! I'm a little sad that I won't be teaching full-time and setting up my own classroom this year.....ok not that sad...but I feel a little lost. I'm sure some of you can relate, when you're used to doing something and have a routine and then suddenly it changes and you're like, ok now what do I do? There are a lot of unknowns at the moment, but that's all part of starting something new. I haven't officially received word on when I am to report to work for orientation, but I know teachers go back this Thursday and then the kids next Monday, which is when I officially start! I'm anxious to meet new people and make new friends, hanging out with the boys is getting a little old. Lord knows I need a gal pal to shop and gossip with! haha! I did meet a girl last weekend who is from Wales and is a second grade teacher in Brandon. She invited me (ok, more like I invited myself) to her classroom for a day or two to see how they operate in the British schools. I requested to come in during one of her Victorian themed lessons when they dress up. How fun! I'm obsessed with British history! I can't wait to start season 2 of The Tudors, but I'm afraid I won't have much time for it. Side note, no more being a couch potato for me. Time to start waking up early, pushing play on P90X and eating clean! So far I have done very well and I'm on day 20 of 90. Fingers crossed I am still blogging about sticking with it in a month and will have pictures posted of my new "guns"!! Time to really Bring It! and work hard!
RAF Lakenheath Country Club
I'm A Working Girl Again!
I interviewed for a kinder aide position on base yesterday. The interview itself lasted for oh, 5 minutes. As soon as I told her I had been teaching for nearly 9 years, her eyes lit up and I knew I had it. (confidence is good, right?) So, needless to say Darren is happy I got a job and I'm happy because I'm not going to bounce around from classroom to classroom as a substitute. I get to pull kids to do mini lessons and testing as well as recess and lunch duty, yuck. But my foot is officially in the door and I hope this will lead to a full time teaching position. This is a school with over 700 students, just in K-3. The biggest elementary school I have ever worked in! At least one of the 60 teachers is bound to leave. :)
Congrats to my student teacher, Stephanie who got the
Academic Intervention Aide position at Hunter. I'm so proud!
Thinking of all my Alaskan teacher friends and how much
I will miss working with everyone this year.
Yes, even these two!
Have a great first week back and a successful year, everyone!!
Congrats to my student teacher, Stephanie who got the
Academic Intervention Aide position at Hunter. I'm so proud!
Thinking of all my Alaskan teacher friends and how much
I will miss working with everyone this year.
Yes, even these two!
Have a great first week back and a successful year, everyone!!
There's A mini Stonehenge in Thetford?!
What a great find! Ruins from an old priory in our city center.
This has been a very busy summer of site seeing. Especially in and around England. Darren's parents visited for two weeks in July and I think Jack has gotten me into cathedrals now. I am just in awe of the history and architecture. I was most fascinated with Ely Cathedral and probably took 100 pictures, although they're nothing like seeing it up close. Here is a link to some of the pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=211785&id=503826551&l=39778d4838
We also toured the well-known West Minster Abbey in London.
Norwich Cathedral, 30 miles from our house
We took a day trip to Cambridge, where Darren and I
argued about who was better at punting...
I think I won that bet!
Another weekend we finally found a beach in Great Yarmouth.
We had a lot of fun....as you can see.
The best part was having family around.
This was the only picture I managed to get of the four
of us and Roxanne was too busy drinking her pint! haha!
Our favorite place in Thetford, The Riverside.
Inside there are license plates from the states.
The owner didn't have Alaska up yet, so Darren
gave him his old one off the vette. Pretty cool.
Pure.Dead.Brilliant!
Edinburgh Castle
Little did we know that phrase was not only an airport slogan, but a phrase commonly used in Glasgow, Scotland to describe something extraordinarily special. Hence the title of this post and the perfect way to describe my two week holiday to Scotland, Belgium and Germany. My very good friend Kelcey and her friend from college, Ashley flew into London the weekend of June 12th. We had no plan of where we were going, but we knew we wanted to travel to a few places that would be relatively cheap to get to and back from. So we found an internet cafe, in which most of our beginning days of our trip were spent. We began looking for cheap airline tickets via Ryanair, then hostels, bus and train transportation to and from each stop. The internet is a beautiful thing by the way, and after many hours of stress and "just book it" decisions, we set out for Glasgow, Scotland. We then took a train to Edinburgh, flew to Brussels, Belgium and rode a bus for six hours to Frankfurt, Germany. A final plane trip brought us back to London, Stansted. Our trip started and ended in London, where there were far more of us in the pictures than by the end of the journey.
Here we are in the Tower of London where the crown jewels can be seen.
All of the places were unique in their own way, especially Brussels! (We stayed in the ghetto of Brussels.) Of course the best part of any trip is trying out new things, and boy did we indulge in what there was to offer!
Glasgow didn't have much, but the architecture itself was enough to keep us satisfied. Edinburgh had indescribable views and a haunted past. We didn't try the Haggis (sheep's heart, liver and lungs) but we found a new love for kebabs and a quaint little cafe, The Elephant House. It's the birthplace of Harry Potter by J.K.Rowling, you may have heard of him. We also toured Edinburgh Castle and a wool factory during the day and at night we took a Ghost Tour into the vaults and underground to find out some of the town's dark past.
Then on to Brussels, oh Brussels. We stayed mostly in the town center and were in our room before dark if that tells you anything of where our hostel was located. Despite the creepy men trying to pick us up on every corner, we kept busy during the day eating Belgian waffles, taste testing the best chocolate in the world, and trying out some of their flavored beers -Framboise, which taste more like sparkling fruit juice(below).
I also had an amazing mussels dish, which they are also known for.
We really enjoyed Frankfurt, mostly because it was a lot cleaner than Brussels, and there was a mixture of the old and new. We could communicate a lot more with people there, unlike Brussels. French was hard to understand and few people spoke english very well. We ended our time there with a cruise on the Rhine River where we were able to see the beautiful vineyards on the hillsides and several castles unfortunately made into hotels. We learned about delicious Eiswein or Ice Wine. The grapes are picked when frozen, which makes for a much sweeter and more concentrated wine. Frankfurt also had enormous soft pretzels, tasty grapefruit Hefeweizen and of course sausages and brats. We had a hard time finding a brat with sauerkraut on a bun, but I guess that's the American way of eating them.
This is Frankfurt AM Main, some of the older buildings that have been renovated.
The food definitely didn't disappoint us at any location and if it wasn't for all the walking, we would have surely gained 20 pounds instead of 10, lol! oh, I can't forget to mention, Frankfurt was the one place that had an elevator! We needed that by the end of the trip, that's for sure. We also were able to be there when Germany won a World Cup match, so we didn't sleep for at least 2 hours with all the horn honking taking place outside our window!
So many stories to tell that I just can't begin to describe without the girls chiming in. Overall a pure dead brilliant trip!
This is one we took our last night together in front of the London Eye, Patrick not pictured. :)
Darren and I celebrated 9 years of wedded bliss-haha- July 7....we went to Wimbledon to celebrate!!! Although we didn't see Serena play, we were there when she won and got a glimpse at Martina Navratilova trying to enjoy her lunch, lol! We sat in Court 1 and were 3 rows up from the action. This is a picture at one of the surrounding courts in Wimbledon Stadium.
And me trying to get some shade, it was extremely hot that day!
Household goods come tomorrow, WHOO! Jack and Roxanne will be visiting next Friday, lots to do before then!
Little did we know that phrase was not only an airport slogan, but a phrase commonly used in Glasgow, Scotland to describe something extraordinarily special. Hence the title of this post and the perfect way to describe my two week holiday to Scotland, Belgium and Germany. My very good friend Kelcey and her friend from college, Ashley flew into London the weekend of June 12th. We had no plan of where we were going, but we knew we wanted to travel to a few places that would be relatively cheap to get to and back from. So we found an internet cafe, in which most of our beginning days of our trip were spent. We began looking for cheap airline tickets via Ryanair, then hostels, bus and train transportation to and from each stop. The internet is a beautiful thing by the way, and after many hours of stress and "just book it" decisions, we set out for Glasgow, Scotland. We then took a train to Edinburgh, flew to Brussels, Belgium and rode a bus for six hours to Frankfurt, Germany. A final plane trip brought us back to London, Stansted. Our trip started and ended in London, where there were far more of us in the pictures than by the end of the journey.
Here we are in the Tower of London where the crown jewels can be seen.
All of the places were unique in their own way, especially Brussels! (We stayed in the ghetto of Brussels.) Of course the best part of any trip is trying out new things, and boy did we indulge in what there was to offer!
Glasgow didn't have much, but the architecture itself was enough to keep us satisfied. Edinburgh had indescribable views and a haunted past. We didn't try the Haggis (sheep's heart, liver and lungs) but we found a new love for kebabs and a quaint little cafe, The Elephant House. It's the birthplace of Harry Potter by J.K.Rowling, you may have heard of him. We also toured Edinburgh Castle and a wool factory during the day and at night we took a Ghost Tour into the vaults and underground to find out some of the town's dark past.
Then on to Brussels, oh Brussels. We stayed mostly in the town center and were in our room before dark if that tells you anything of where our hostel was located. Despite the creepy men trying to pick us up on every corner, we kept busy during the day eating Belgian waffles, taste testing the best chocolate in the world, and trying out some of their flavored beers -Framboise, which taste more like sparkling fruit juice(below).
I also had an amazing mussels dish, which they are also known for.
We really enjoyed Frankfurt, mostly because it was a lot cleaner than Brussels, and there was a mixture of the old and new. We could communicate a lot more with people there, unlike Brussels. French was hard to understand and few people spoke english very well. We ended our time there with a cruise on the Rhine River where we were able to see the beautiful vineyards on the hillsides and several castles unfortunately made into hotels. We learned about delicious Eiswein or Ice Wine. The grapes are picked when frozen, which makes for a much sweeter and more concentrated wine. Frankfurt also had enormous soft pretzels, tasty grapefruit Hefeweizen and of course sausages and brats. We had a hard time finding a brat with sauerkraut on a bun, but I guess that's the American way of eating them.
This is Frankfurt AM Main, some of the older buildings that have been renovated.
The food definitely didn't disappoint us at any location and if it wasn't for all the walking, we would have surely gained 20 pounds instead of 10, lol! oh, I can't forget to mention, Frankfurt was the one place that had an elevator! We needed that by the end of the trip, that's for sure. We also were able to be there when Germany won a World Cup match, so we didn't sleep for at least 2 hours with all the horn honking taking place outside our window!
So many stories to tell that I just can't begin to describe without the girls chiming in. Overall a pure dead brilliant trip!
This is one we took our last night together in front of the London Eye, Patrick not pictured. :)
Darren and I celebrated 9 years of wedded bliss-haha- July 7....we went to Wimbledon to celebrate!!! Although we didn't see Serena play, we were there when she won and got a glimpse at Martina Navratilova trying to enjoy her lunch, lol! We sat in Court 1 and were 3 rows up from the action. This is a picture at one of the surrounding courts in Wimbledon Stadium.
And me trying to get some shade, it was extremely hot that day!
Household goods come tomorrow, WHOO! Jack and Roxanne will be visiting next Friday, lots to do before then!
This and That
Our new home in Thetford
I'm so behind on this blog. I suppose I should start updating in case anyone out there might be reading it! So here is a little of this and a little of that!
First our new house, we moved in two weeks ago today. WOW! The internet connection is bad right now, but I managed to post a few pics of the inside. The table and chairs we got from our landlord, who says the chairs are 80 years old! Other than that, we have a futon, bed, tv and computer. Our household goods should arrive in the next 4 weeks, if we're lucky. Darren's vette (his baby) is also enroute and should be here June 21. (Sidebar, he's currently trying to get us tv and maneuvering the satellite dish....while I sit here and tell him if there is a signal or not. LOL!) We'll have a phone and better connection starting June 8. So that's most likely when we'll be able to call via land line, but I still prefer SKYPE!
We just got back from London this afternoon, so all I can do right now is sit I'm so sore and tired from the walking we did. It was worth it! We saw more in 2 days than most people I'd say. We were just in awe of it all and I think we finally have the hang of train and tube transportation. Sounds like we will have our first visitors soon: Patrick (Darren's step-brother) June 11 followed by my friend Kelcey, June 13!! We are very anxious to show them around our part of England!
It's Memorial Day, so I'm also taking time to remember those whom we've lost and especially those soldiers who have fallen fighting for our freedom. I hope you are too! God Bless all of you!
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