Golden Rules

At the dinner table. Richard is trying to talk to the girls about how we are to love others more than ourselves.

Richard: “Sydney, say there is only one cookie and you both want it, who should get the cookie?

Sydney: “We cut it in half – motions with her hands how to cut it – and we both get some!”

Richard: “Uh…ok. There is only one candy that cannot be cut in half. Who gets the candy?”

Sydney: “Meeee! Norah gets the cookie!”

“No. Ok there’s no cookie. There is only one candy. Who should get the candy?”

“Me!”

“Well, that’s not what Jesus is saying. He is saying that we need to think about others first”

Sydney: “Oh. Right”

“Ok, Norah, why do you need to share?”

Norah: “Beetud [because] I haff to.”

“Well that’s one reason….”

worm hole

Yesterday at snack time Sydney grabbed an apple and bit right into it … and then realized she’d bit into a worm hole. Completely disgusted, she yelled “Mom, a worm! A worm!”and showed me the apple. (The picture above is of her fussing about it on the couch.) So I took the apple from her and went to cut it up and throw away the piece with the worm in it. On my way (and apparently this was the wrong thing to do) I started singing the first song that came to my head. Can you take a guess? Well it has to do with an old lady. “There was a little girl who swallowed a worm”–she didn’t even get near the worm–”… that wriggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.” I was trying to make light of a situation that was slowly escalating. I reassured her that she didn’t actually eat it and that mommy has accidentally eaten bugs before. I told her that the French eat snails and some people eat ants and grasshoppers. This confused her a little, but there was nothing I could do. Her mind was already turning and her imagination going wild. The next thing I knew she was freaking out on the couch, going hysterical because she thought she felt a bug crawling up her back! What drama.

I suppose fear of creepy crawlies is natural because I have tried to teach my girls not to be scared of spiders and bugs. They have no idea that I hate the things and am scared of them myself. I just never let them see that and take care of whatever insect is offending them calmly. Oh well.

May 21st 2012

For my birthday Richard took the day off to take us to the Aquarium. He first made omelettes for breakfast and even cleaned up house afterwards! The girls made me some lovely birthday cards and then we set out for downtown to the London Sea Life Aquarium. I have been hoping to go since I have such great memories from when I was a child there. So Richard bought us tickets to go!

The London Sea Life Aquarium is right across the bridge from Big Ben, which I did not know was connected to the House of Parliament (or Westminster Palace)…. although I am Canadian, I am fairly ignorant of British history. Woops. Well it’s time to learn now! Anyway, Big Ben is quite a sight. It’s so ornate (the whole Palace is). Man, it would be so neat to climb its stairs and see inside. But apparently not just anyone can go on a whim. Only UK residents can arrange a tour (well in advance) through their MP. So no tour for me. Would have gotten a good work-out too

The Aquarium is not very big, at least if you compare it to the Vancouver Aquarium (totally worth going to!) but it was a lot of fun. The girls were just transfixed by each and every aquarium there, lingering before moving on to the next. Close to the entrance is a large open aquarium with rays (not the stinging kind), fish and small sharks. When I was here 16 years ago (time sure does fly) you were allowed to touch any of the sea life that came up to you – and many did. They love to show off and be touched! Now they still do, but you aren’t allowed to touch them anymore (conservation issues apparently). Sydney touched one anyway. It was so much fun. They haven’t changed the tank at all and the fish still swim right up to you, moving slowly by, expecting you to scratch that old itch of theirs. Do they ever feel neat too. The rays in particular are soft and smooth and rubbery, but slightly rough at the same time. We lingered there for quite a while.

I had forgotten that this aquarium doesn’t have whales or dolphins which was a little disappointing, but we did have a lot of fun. We stopped by one station with a fellow who taught us about starfish, and shark and ray eggs. They are really neat. Apparently sharks and rays only lay one, maybe two eggs in their lifetime and don’t do so until they are mature at around 15 years old. The egg shells are made of a tough rubbery substance and looks very much like seaweed. So that’s where sharks lay their egg – they attached them to a bunch of seaweed. I may have even unknowingly stepped on an old discarded shark egg shell on a beach on the West Coast.

We spent the whole day there and slowly made our way back home around dinner time. Dinner was just simple quesadillas, but my sweet hubby went out and bought me some ice cream and chocolate for dessert. Over all it was a great birthday and I am so very grateful for my wonderful children and the love of my life. God is good. Thanks for a great day Richard. You are the best!

Chestnuts Park

The surprise package in the mail: Scooters! Yay. It was so much fun for Sydney scooting around Paris (and so convenient for that she had one) that we thought it would be a good idea for the girls to have them here too. It lets us to a lot more walking.

What better way to test out the new scooters than to check out a new park. Chestnuts Park is about a 15 minute walk (… well a 15 minute walk with kids. Maybe 10 minutes without them ) It was suggested to us by the landlady, who has a daughter Norah’s age. Norah did a great job riding her scooter. She stayed beside me the whole time, waiting for me when I needed to get something from the stroller and yelling at Sydney when she went too far ahead. Bossy little thing, but so cute. Sydney is a pro on the scooter! She is fast and confident. She loves it, and loves that I trust her on it. I think the scooter is good for her and me. I am less anxious with her going ahead of me on her scooter than I am with her running. She likes the freedom and so do I.

What a great park! There are lots of fun and different things to play on, including a zip line (I loved those as a kid), a little climbing wall, and this contraption that was somewhere between a swing and a teeter-totter (or see-saw)! All of it is fenced in so you don’t have to worry about kids escaping (not easily anyway) they can just run around, jetting to as many stations as they like. There were lots of other families there too. The only problem is that the community center does not have public washrooms!!! This is a kids park, with a community center–and I can’t take my kids in to pee? Sometimes I wonder about Europe! I am fussing about this because as soon as we approached the park, Norah starts to pinch and bend over and says “Mommy I haff to pee” (Yes, thanks for telling me as you are peeing). Anyway, we found a spot in a corner where there were bushes and tall grass. Oh joy!

We had a wonderful time and will be making this a regular event. There are, however, more parks that we are supposed to check out. One apparently has a pond that we’d like to check out.

Ta ta for now.

Thursday afternoon fun.

Today started off cloudy and rainy…again. But by the afternoon the sun came out! We were planning on staying in today because we are waiting for a surprise (for the girls) in the mail, but I could not keep the girls locked up when we haven’t had a sunny day here yet. So I packed Judah into the Ergo and we walked over to the park to play. We found the little park a few days ago while walking around (I posted pictures earlier). Probably around a 5-10 minute walk away. There are lots of dead ends around here so we had to do some weaving around to get back. Yesterday though, when I was out running I found a short-cut. Hidden at the end of our street behind our row of buildings is a small concrete walkway. Trees hang over top of the passageway which give it a little bit of a secret garden feel (…. Though I’m sure that didn’t have a slight smell of cat pee). When you emerge you can see the park. It turns out it’s really only two blocks away!

I think we made it back before the package came since there’s no delivery notice…but we are still waiting. Now I am making dinner. I found a recipe that looked really good online. It’s a butternut squash and quinoa soup. I could not find quinoa anywhere, so it’s now a butternut squash and couscous soup. I think it’s still really good. Here are some pics! Oh and some more of burgers we had last night!

Did I mention there was a family of foxes in our back yard? The girls are watching them from our bedroom window right now. Actually, as I write this they are yelling “come back, foxes, we won’t scare you this time!”. Lol. Silly girls.

Hope you all have a great dinner awaiting you too.

Our first Sunday in London

Today we decided to attend St Helen’s Bishopgate (a conservative Anglican church).

St Helen’s Bishopsgate is the largest surviving church in the City of London. It was built in the 12th century, but many additions have been made to it since then. At the beginning of the 13th century a second (parallel) nave was built on the north side of the building for a nunnery. For the next 300 years the addition would accommodate Benedictine nuns on the one side and parishioners on the other. The priory was dissolved in 1538 by Henry VIII (it seems he did a lot of that) . Since then the building has gone through many renovations. For one, the walls separating the two naves (north and south) was taken down to create a more open space. It was later used by the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers, until it was demolished in 1799. It took the next 90 odd years to restore the old building and reopened in 1893 on St John the Baptist Day by the Bishop of London Frederick Temple.

St. Helen’s Bishopsgate is one of the few churches in London to survive the Great Fire of London, the Blitz and WWII . However, it did not manage to escape loss entirely; years later in 1992/3 it was heavily damaged by a couple of IRA bombs which lifted the roof and shattered what were the city’s largest medieval stained glass windows as well as many monuments. St Helen’s Bishopgate, however, still holds more monuments than any other church in London (second only to Westminster Abby… naturally).

It is said that William Shakespeare attended St. Helen’s Bishopsgate in 1590. Though it would help to first know who Shakespeare really was, but who knows, it could be true.

It is now a very large congregation so they have three services every Sunday. Since we had a hard time getting out this morning we thought it best to try to make it to their afternoon service instead. We now had a little extra time before we had to be at church so we thought we would just take the bus in early and walk around.

All the buses here are red two story story buses, but every time one goes by (which is frequently) Norah let’s us know that there is “another red bus!” We of course sat at the top and watched London as we rode on through town. The girls just loved it. I think we have a pair of city girls on our hands. They love it when the world is busy around them, they just follow in line, watching, listening and playing. It’s is marvelous to watch. Judah loves being out too. We took him in his carrier today. He bounced and laughed and talked the whole way. Our little man has a lot to say.

We got out of the bus a few blocks early to walk around and bumped right into a large street market! YAY! So we walked around wide eyed. The sweet, spicy smell of all kinds of food drifting in the air (there was even a lady who was selling espresso from the back of her car!) was enchanting. Oh it was fun. On our way out, we gave the girls a couple of carrots for a snack to eat on the way to church. So there were our girls walking and talking, carrot in hand, happy as could be.

Eventually we found the church (just in time for service). I didn’t hear any of the sermon really, Judah was hungry so I went straight up to nurse him. I did hear some music that I recognized though.  There was one other lady in the nursing room with me. She was very nice and suggested quite a few places for us to visit. Apparently the Science Museum in Kensington is fantastic for kids (it’s an award winning museum). She said that it is always swimming with children. Maybe this week we’ll make our way over there to check it out. The best part: the museum is free! So we can go as much as we like!

After the service, we walked over to the building where the kids are brought for Sunday School, which was about two blocks away (we let the girls go with the other kids during the service… I did not realize that they were taken so far away. Oh well), to pick up the girls and fellowship with some of the parents there. We met some great people who were all very welcoming.

While on the bus on our way home, Norah asks “When do we have church?”. You see at Michiana Covenant the kids go to Sunday School at 9:15am and then afterwards at 10:30am we all head into service where we sit and worship together. At St. Helen’s kids don’t sit in the service, they are taken out before the sermon starts to another building to play instead. I am so glad that my girls missed that this week. We did too

We had a great Sunday. We hope you all did too!

Oh and I totally forgot the camera today. So there are no pictures today. We really missed having the camera too. There was much to see today. Here is a picture of the church from wikipedia.

    

Saturday May 5th

Seven Sister’s Market is about a quarter mile away from where we are staying. There are no signs, arrows, anything to indicate where the market is. There are only two doors with “Entrance” printed on them in the middle of a row of restaurants and shops. If we hadn’t looked online, we would have missed it completely. But to be honest, if we had never found it we would not have been worse off. It was sad. You enter and feel like you are in an small old indoor strip mall. Except this one (in a space of just a couple thousand square feet) has about 5 hair salons, something like a dollar plus store, some jewelry stores and an electronics place. A lot of the stores were closed. Yesterday on Richard’s way home he stopped in to take a peek and found a much more lively place than we did this morning. Maybe it’s mostly a night market. Either way, it’s not my sort of market. I didn’t see a single fresh thing there. Bummer! I suppose I will have to stick to the Tesco for my groceries. After walking through the market (which took all of about 3 minutes) we wondered around and found a park. The girls were so excited. We played around for a while and then went home for a nap…for me. I was exhausted, lol) Poor little Norah was freezing, but she did not want to leave! I was a tad disappointed that the market was a bust, so we decided on our way home to check out downtown since we had the whole afternoon left. Of course being a Saturday it was bustling! So much fun. It’s good to be back in a big city again. Downtown London is so diverse. My favourite part of walking around were the little hole in the wall restaurants where you can pick up all sorts of asian food just like you would pick up a hotdog on the streets of Chicago, Toronto, etc. Of course we stopped in for Indian food! How could I possible resist the smell of all those curried dishes wafting into the streets? How could any one really? Well Sydney can. I will teach her to love spice yet! I wish I had taken a picture but forgot. Richard ordered a beef dish and I a shrimp noodle soup. Man they were good! Since the girls don’t like Indian food and we had to wake Norah to eat (never a pleasant thing to wake Norah … unless you have something good to offer her) we bought them a banana chocolate pancake crèpe thingy that an adjacent booth was selling. Needless to say the girls had no complaints and Richard and I enjoyed our food in peace. After that we made our way back home, onto the Tube and back to North London, where we are staying. It was a good day after all and we all felt just a little better about being here.