London calling Again! Not that I'm complaining😉

Danny has this extra week of Christmas break and Jer has meetings in the U.K. -- I call that kismet!
We popped over on the Chunnel this morning, and I'm sorry, but I never get over thinking "how cool is this?!"  when we drive our car, onto a train, and it drives us under the English Channel! After a quick rest stop to grab the loo, some £'s and some coffee we hit the wrong side of the roadway and were off!

Hampton court palace is our first stop. The apartments of Henry VIII are closed for two weeks--downside=they are closed...upside=tickets are half price! And believe me, there is more than enough to see there. And this also provides the perfect excuse to return in the spring when the 700 fruit trees and million bulbs,etc are blooming. A chilly Wednesday the week after Christmas must be the slowest time of year here, we had much of the palace to ourselves, especially at the start of the morning. We began in Henry's kitchens. Mainstay of the diet was meat, which jerry and Danny loved hearing about! They had six enormous fireplaces with multiple spits on them in the roasting room. They are so much meat they got scurvy from lack of fruit and veg! Fun fact we learned; they didn't eat any meat at all during the 40 days of lent and on the other holy days and Fridays of the year, and this was a problem. So they classified geese as fish, because they lived on the water and they classified beaver as fish, because "well, they acted like fish" HILARIOUS! We loved the chapel, with its original ceiling from the 1500's, and charming older docent who wanted to tell us special facts! We also went through the life of young Henry, the Georgian apartments, the various courtyards and the cafe. Nothing says "You Are In England" like Steak pie and mushy peas! We finished up with the maze, a delight with only a couple of other people running through. Settled in to our homestay in Shepards Bush and watched Great Railway Journeys on BBCOne. Life.Is.Good!

Christmas and The New Year(just found this didn't publish last year!)

We had a lovely first Christmas in Belgium. We celebrated on Christmas Eve with a big pork dinner with lots of trimmings and then went to mass at 16:30. Danny did the readings, our family led the singing and I was a Eucharistic Minister.  What a blessing to get to be so involved in the mass! Afterward we came home and had a delicious dessert and opened a gift....what a surprise...new pajamas for all!

Christmas morning was a lovely family time with coffee, overnight baked French toast and melon, lots of gifts and laughter (the bad German!). In the afternoon I invited some friends that were also in Waterloo for the holiday to stop by for a drink and some gingerbread cake. Of course I went a bit overboard and had loads of cookies, oatmeal cranberry bars, chocolates, cheeses and sausages from the Christmas market, dips and pates, you name it--our table was groaning! The Foster came by first and were with us for an hour, allowing us a chance to get to know their older son Mike who is a college senior in the U.S., in Iowa. Then the doorbell started ringing and we had French and American friends filling the house! You know me, this is just what I love, and I was so happy to share our Christmas joy with others. On the 26th we ran and hung out, cooked a bit, played UNO, all the happy day after Christmas things. The 27th, Bright and Early, we were all at Zaventum airport to pick up Samantha Stewart. The funny thing is that that exact time, exactly one year ago to the day, our family landed in Belgium. As we watched people coming through the customs doorway we imagined how we must have looked