October 2016

October already! This month we celebrated Rachel's 11th birthday and the kids had their "half-term break" which means the last two weeks of October they had a break from school. We thought about going somewhere in Europe for their break but since our furniture finally arrived at the beginning of October we decided to stay home and get the house unpacked and settled. We discovered an IKEA not too far away and since we now have a car we were able to get the furniture we needed. October was furniture assembly month in our house!

The car gives us the freedom to venture out a bit and find new places. One night the kids were craving cheeseburgers (happens almost every night) so we looked up the closest Five Guys restaurant online and used our 'Sat Nav' (i.e. GPS) to get us there. Took us a little while to figure out parking and such, but we finally made it and those cheeseburgers were a delicious taste of home!

Rachel and Carson love to cook. Especially sweets! Here they are making chocolate cookies.

For Rachel's birthday celebration the kids took a cooking class at Jamie Oliver Cookery School in London. They learned to make pasta and ravioli from scratch, even used a pasta roller to roll out their own pasta! We took the Tube into London and here are some typical images of the kids and Daddy playing during the Tube ride. 

After the cookery school we ventured into Hamley's Toy Store which has a Build-A-Bear on the third floor. Rachel LOVES Build-A-Bear because she loves stuffed pets. She found this dog and knew it was the right one for her.

Cake time!

The second week of the kids school break we got out to see some local attractions. Below is a model village in a nearby town. It really is amazing, a HUGE village done on a small scale. 

We also visited a place called Kidzania in London. Its designed for kids to try out lots of different careers for a short time. Rachel and Carson both wanted to work in the grocery store. They also tried out the ice-cream making and the chocolate factory. Hair nets were mandatory!

One day we went for a walk in some fields and had lunch at one of the oldest pubs in England (www.rsoe.co.uk). We came upon a herd of ponies during our walk and the kids had fun feeding them some grass.

There is a great National Trust site not too far from us called Cliveden where we spent one Sunday afternoon. The gardens on the grounds are just amazing and there is an old castle that overlooks the Thames River Valley. There was a Halloween activity going on for kids, below the kids each made their own broomstick out of twigs they found.

Lots of people celebrate Halloween here in the UK but its not quite as big as it is in the US. Fortunately the American Women's Club hosted a trunk-or-treat for Americans like us that are used to more of a celebration. The kids had a great time dressing up and going to all the different trunks to collect candy. We also went trick-or-treating in our neighborhood on Halloween night, but it was slim pickins, only about a dozen houses in our area were handing out candy.