Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday with family or friends :) We spent a nice Christmas Eve freezing our butts off going to the Church of England's Christmas service in the beautiful Ely Cathedral. We thought it was going to just be some Christmas caroling, but it turns out the caroling was part of the church service. It ended up being a very beautiful service, like church and a concert all in one! We just didn't think about the very old cathedral not having heating...which led to me shivering through the whole service and not being able to feel my toes for 2 hours after we got home. I was convinced I had frostbite, but I didn't lose any toes ;)

Christmas turned out to be really fun. Thomas and I enjoyed our morning together (with the dogs of course), opened presents, and ate monkey bread. We had another couple and two of Thomas' buddies over from work, and we all had a nice Christmas dinner together. We got to open presents "with" my family (thanks to Skype), and had fun playing the Wii for the rest of the night.

Max with his stocking stuffer

Zo with her stocking stuffer

Then they switched bones and Zo got the huge one :)

I beat Thomas at Mario Kart TWICE - first and second time ever!

Watch Thomas' face - he shot a basket in their game

He's waiting for it to go in...

It went in!! :) 

Zo in her new Christmas sweater 

I feel bad putting clothes on dogs...but it's cute on her, and I feel like it really does help her keep warm :)

The Perrin's

Thomas and the boys playing games

Merry Christmas! We love you all :)

Thomas' Birthday

Thomas turned 24 a couple of weeks ago, and boy did we party. Actually we went to bed at 8pm because he had to get up at 4am the next morning, but we'll pretend :) We carried his birthday into the next weekend (I learned how to drag out birthday celebrations from my Grandpa Keith!) and went into Cambridge to try a new restaurant that we both had heard good things about. It was a Portuguese Chicken place called Nando's, and we really liked it! We were really excited because there was a soda fountain where you get your own refills - yeah we're nerds, but it's rare to find unlimited refills around here! 

Cute beer candles for his brownies (husband doesn't like cake much)


My homemade decorations :)

the loot


Thomas' nephew signed his birthday card - Thomas loved it!

The DVD I ordered him didn't arrive in time, so I had to improvise :)

Max likes to help Thomas blow out candles

I love these two.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a low-key Thanksgiving here - we are too new to have friends to celebrate it with, so we enjoyed a nice quiet day at home. We relaxed in our P.J.'s all day then enjoyed our Thanksgiving meal - there was a ton of food for just the two of us, but we didn't want to leave any of our favorites out. We enjoyed leftovers for a while afterwards :) After dinner we got to Skype with both of our families, so we still got to enjoy some virtual family time!

Zoe helped me cook!

Thomas carving the turkey

 

The dogs' Thanksgiving feast

The dogs in their "turkey coma" :)

Hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well!

Dover

Thanksgiving weekend we road-tripped to the White Cliffs of Dover. It's about 2.5 hours from our house, but the drive went by fast and the scenery was beautiful - much prettier than the drive from Tucson to Phoenix ;) Once we got to the cliffs we hiked along the tops of them, explored the town a little, and found tons of stuff we want to do next time we go there :)

First time I've had to scrape ice off my car!!

The beautiful drive

The port

Castle

Thomas and the dogs on top of the cliffs

I think France is out there somewhere!

On the drive home we thought our GPS was taking us the way with no toll roads, but...we were wrong. We ended up in central London in line for a toll booth, with no British money. Well, we had 1 pound and 20 pence, and the toll was 1 pound and 50 pence. We had Euros, U.S. money, British checks, and all our cards, but we were 30 pence short and they wouldn't let us through. We didn't know what to do, we would have turned around if we could and found another way but apparently that wasn't an option. The supervisor came over and said they take Euro bills, but not coins (we only had coins of course), but he eventually let us through for only 1 pound and 20 pence :) Lesson learned: Always have 5 pounds in the car, just in case! 

Which one is not like the others?

This isn't relevant to anything, but I saw this on base and couldn't help but laugh:

Someone brought the Hummer from the U.S. to the U.K.! I was worried about bringing my car over here, thinking it might be too big, but I couldn't believe someone would bring their Hummer! The roads are so narrow here, plus if you buy gas off base it is about $7.50/gallon...can you imagine filling that bad boy up?!

NFL at Wembley Stadium

October 30-31

Back in March when we found out we were moving to England, we took it as a good sign when we discovered the San Francisco 49ers were going to be playing in London right after we got here. Game day finally arrived, and it was definitely a good time.

We headed into London on Saturday morning - we parked at a town about an hour from our house and took the tube into London - it was much faster that way, plus we didn't have to pay for overnight parking in London! We picked up our football tickets in Leicester Square then walked to some of the big sights in London - Parliament, Big Ben, London Eye, 10 Downing Street, and Picadilly Circus. However, we didn't really go in any of the sights...we figured we would save those for when people come to visit, hint hint ;) Are you guys picking up on my subtle hints to come visit? Good. We found a 49ers rally in Traflagar Square, so we went to that and got to see Roger Goodell (NFL commissioner), Mike Singletary (49ers head coach), some of the 49ers defensive players, and...Jerry Rice! The defensive players and Jerry Rice were really funny, they were the highlight of the rally. It was different because people weren't as excited as they would have been in the U.S., but it was still fun.

Me in front of Parliament

London Eye

I know you can't see it (neither could we!), but 10 Downing Street is in there somewhere - where the Prime Minister lives

Picadilly Circus - their version of Times Square

Westminster Abby

Trafalgar Square where the 49ers rally was

Jerry Rice!

Sunday we headed to Wembley Stadium and went to all the pregame festivities - they had quite the set up there! It was interesting because we probably saw every NFL team represented - we realized they don't necessarily care for a specific team, they just like to watch the game (even though many didn't seem to actually understand it). We could see everything from our seats, and enjoyed the elaborate pre-game show they put on - it seemed more like a playoff game than a game between two pretty mediocre teams ;) The 49ers scored a field goal first, and the crowd went crazy! We were excited because they were cheering for our team, and it really seemed like a home game for the 49ers. But then the Broncos scored a touchdown...and the crowd went crazy again!! We couldn't understand who they were cheering for because they cheered for both teams all the time! It turns out they just like big plays and didn't really have a team preference. That was a little disappointing because it definitely wasn't like going to a game back in the States, but it was still very fun :) Plus the 49ers won, so I had a happy hubby at the end of the night. And he was double happy when the Giants won the World Series that night also!

Wembley Stadium

Tailgating at the Golden Gate Bridge ;)

We loved our first taste of London, and can't wait to explore it more, especially now that we know the easiest way to get there!

We chose house...

NUMBER 2!


The many pros far outweighed the commute, so we signed the paperwork and moved in on Monday! We are so glad to have the dogs with us, and all our our household items from the U.S. should arrive within two weeks. Everything is coming together nicely and we couldn't be happier :) Thomas started back to work this week, but we're going to explore our cute new town this weekend!

P.S. There's plenty of room for visitors, hint hint ;)

Reunited and it feels so good!

After all the preparation, vet appointments, blood tests, and USDA meetings, Max and Zoe are officially in the U.K!!! I realize most people aren't as crazy about their pets as we are, but our dogs have so much character that we can't help but love them to death! Plus they're just so cute :) We are so thrilled to finally have them back with us, and we can't wait to get settled into our new house next week and introduce them to their new backyard! Today we had a great time with them in this wide open space, I think they are going to love it in England.  P.S. Sorry for the poor quality pictures, all I had with me was my phone camera!

Is it beautiful here, or what?!