Shopping Trip Gone Bad

This past week I decided to take a trip to Costco. It had been several weeks since I had been there last and I was out of all kinds of things like diapers, wipes, toilet paper, frozen chicken etc. After dropping the girls off at school I headed down to the nearest Costco which is about 30 minutes from our house. I got there around 10:30am. I got Alexandra out of the car and loaded her into the cart and found my way to the door. As I flashed my Costco card toward the man at the door, I was abruptly stopped by him and told I was not allowed to enter. What? Not allowed to enter? Apparently here in England, traders are the only ones allowed in in the morning. Individual members like me can shop after 12 noon. Lovely! I now had an hour and a half to kill waiting to get into Costco.


I went back to my car. I thought about going to the Indian/Pakistani grocery store I have wanted to visit that is in the area. However, I did not have the postcode for it to program into my trusty GPS (they call it a SatNav here) and find it. I thought of calling Charles so that he could quickly look it up for me and I would be on my way. However just that same morning before leaving for Costco, I had changed my cell phone provider and as a result switched my old sim card for a new one. Therefore, I had NO ONE's phone numbers (including Charles) in my phone. Actually that is not true. By some fluke, I had ONE phone number - a friend of mine who's husband is a partner at Charles' current firm. So I called and had a chat with her for a few minutes and I snuck in the exit of Costco and went to the restaurant and got Alex and I a snack. By the time I had done all this and wasted some more time, it was finally noon and I could enter Costco. Hooray!


I went in and promptly loaded up my cart with all sorts of groceries, Christmas presents, Christmas decorations, rugs, diapers, wipes, buckets of pretzels, toilet paper, large bags and boxes of this and that. For anyone who shops at Costco, you know everything is BIG and your cart fills up quickly because everything looks delicious or appeals to you in such a way that you must buy it because you have never wanted anything more in your life. So my cart was overflowing with items and I could barely fit the large box of diapers and wipes on at the end. I get in line to pay and unload all my items onto the conveyor belt (which is a chore within itself). The woman rings everything up and we manage to pile it all back into my cart. I reach for my debit card (since they don't take credit cards) and throw it in the card reader. The clerk announces to me that it has been declined. She tries again. Declined. Three times is a charm. NOPE. Declined! I turn red and start to panic. There are LOADS of people in the line waiting to check out. Christmas shopping begins in earnest on November 1st here since we don't even have a holiday like Thanksgiving to distract us. Every cashier has a huge line. People start looking at me in frustration. What do I do? I can't call Charles (I don't have his phone number). I can't pay with check. I don't have my check book. The cashier suggests I go try my card in the ATM. So out of a panic, I leave Alexandra with the cashier and run down to the ATM. (Wow what was I thinking there? I would never normally do that.) My card is declined. If it didn't work for the cashier, why would it work in the machine? I race back to the cashier who suggests that I step aside and figure something out while she starts checking out another customer.


I stand there with my loaded cart dumbfounded. I had just used my debit card that morning to pay my new cell phone provider to put minutes on my phone. It worked then. I finally just give up. I tell the woman that I will just leave the cart and all the items except for the large box of kid's lunch-sized juice boxes. Alexandra started getting restless at one point while I was shopping so I had given her one of the juice boxes I was buying so I had to at least pay for those. I pay the woman cash for the juice boxes and take the awkward box under my arm. It is heavy and awkward so I cannot carry Alex. So Alex is walking through crowds of people and their enormous carts lined up quite a way back so the man at the exit can check their receipts at let them out of the store.


I continue to encourage (a nice way to put it) Alexandra to walk forward. She is easily distracted by anything shiny or that moves. We finally get up to the man who must check our receipt and to my horror, I have misplaced it. He sends me ALL the way back to find it or get a new one. So I again make my way, WITH MY TODDLER, all the way back through what feels like hundreds of shoppers and their gi-normous carts all the way back to the cashier. We have no luck finding the receipt. The cashier flags down her manager who goes in the back room and has to print out a receipt SPECIAL for my stupid box of juice boxes! He brings it out after a few minutes and I again fight my way all the way back up to the front of the store, while barking at Alex to follow me, show the man my blasted receipt and exit the store with my ONE item. I drive home and arrive at 2:30pm with 30 minutes before I have to pick up Abby and Sammy. I feel so upset that I have truly WASTED the ENTIRE day, including the HOUR AND A HALF of doing nothing while waiting to get into the store. I call the bank and find out that between the time that I paid for my cell phone minutes and I tried to make a purchase at Costco they had decided to put a stop on my card because they thought there were some strange transactions on it, one being a purchase in Istanbul several days previous made by Charles! I do appreciate them looking out for us but could it be at a worse time?


I end up going back to Costco the very next day and reloading my cart with all of my needed items (as well as a few more) and this time my card works.What a nightmare. I don't think I can handle another trip to Costco for quite a while.

Take a Drive Thru England at OneTrueMedia.com

Come take a drive with us and see the narrow country lanes of England that we use all the time. The fall colors are also so beautiful but I am not sure you can see them too well. Hopefully this will at least give you an idea of what we get to see everyday when we go out.

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
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Two of My Favorite Things...

These bowls are now counted as some of my favorite things. Charles just brought them back from Istanbul. Aren't they gorgeous? The two above are bigger and the three below are very small - just big enough for a personal portion of soy sauce to dip your sushi in or something.

I actually already had two of these bowls (the yellow and orange ones) from our 2008 trip to Istanbul. I bought four of them at the time.  However, two were broken (one by Charles) over the years. I was so pleased that he remembered and got me more. I really thought after we moved to Chicago there would never be another chance to get more! He is going again next week to Istanbul, let's hope he picks up MORE!

My other favorite thing lately is my juicer. I just made carrot, apple (just picked fresh off the tree from my friend's orchard) and ginger juice. I feel so healthy drinking it. I did learn that only a little bit of ginger goes a long way though.

It makes me even happier to see this little one drinking it. Now if I can just get the other two to drink it as well....

Half Term and Halloween

Butterfly World, Celtic Harmony Camp, Millenium Bridge, Tate Modern, No Man's Land and the Lea Singers Swansong for an Empress - this sums up our week of half term.


The last week of October the girls had a week break from school. They are on a year-round system here where you have six weeks of school and then a week break. We didn't travel anywhere because I felt like we needed to explore the local area and explore we did!


Butterfly World
Our first stop was Butterfly World www.butterflyworldproject.com. This is a lovely park about a 15-20 minute drive from our house.

There is an array of different gardens from ‘The Theatre of Insects’ to ‘Through the Flowerpot Garden’, in which you are transformed into ‘insect size’ and can walk through a giant flowerpot. Butterfly World also has a designer gardens exhibition where garden designers from around the world created 12 thought-provoking and inspiring gardens in the shape of a caterpillar. It was so fun to explore each one and see the different designs. Oh and yes, they had lots of butterflies for us to see.

Celtic Harmony Camp

The next day we went to the Samhain Winter Festival at Celtic Harmony Camp celebrating the Celtic New Year.  I just happened to run across this while I was doing a search online of things to do. It turned into a fantastic day out. When we first arrived there was a warrior demonstration. The girls were so excited because they helped the "local celtic warrior" carry all his gear - swords and shields and spears etc. 

Here is Alexandra eating her apple while watching the warrior demonstration. I think she was giving me a proud warrior growl too.

Here is Sammy in front of the children's size Celtic home. There were several large ones at the camp that actually had camp fires in them.

I had a picture of Abby and Sammy with all the gear on but somehow it got deleted or lost.

After the warrior demonstration, there was storytelling. The story they told was about a dragon and this fire-breathing woman would breathe out fire (really she would spit out some kind of fuel to make a mini fire explosion) every time the dragon did in the story. 
Unfortunately, just after I took this picture of the fire-breathing woman my camera batteries died. So sad because I missed out on some great photo opportunities. Next we saw the Owl display where a handler brought out three large owls. The largest was almost the size of Alex. But she didn't mind she still thought that she could hold him so she kept wandering up to the man in front of the crowd putting out her hand. At one point, the owl leaped at her with wings spread but she didn't even flinch. She just wanted to "hold the bubby." (Note: Bubby is what she calls birds even though she can say the word "bird." None of the rest of us will let her say the right word.  We all make her continue to say "bubby" because it is so cute.) After the owls, the girls had their faces painted. It was pretty exciting for them because it was the first time they have had it done. Abby got an angel and Sammy had a butterfly. The most unfortunate part was that after they painted their faces, they went and did archery. Here is where I was dying to have my camera. Not only did Abby and Sammy do archery which would have been great to get pictures of (by the way, Sammy was a natural and got the target every time) but Alexandra - MY TWO YEAR OLD - insisted on doing archery as well! I asked if they ever had a two year old do it before and they said no but were willing to give it a try since she was pretty adamant about it. It was hilarious and she was pretty darn proud of herself. After archery, we went over fed the goats and had some "Celtic" hot chocolate! All in all, it was such a fun day. I was so pleased with myself for finding this activity for the girls. We all really enjoyed it.  

London - Millenium Bridge and Tate Modern

The next day, we got on the train that Charles rides everyday to work and went into London. The girls have been dying to do this. They complain that it is not fair that Daddy gets to ride the train to work everyday. We got on and experienced what a lovely commute Daddy really does have. It does not take long at all - about 20 minutes and you are in the middle of London. We got off at Charles stop and met him. He showed us his firm's building and then we all went for a picnic by Millenium Bridge. Charles works about a block or two from St. Paul's cathedral which is where all the sympathetic wall street protests are happening. There is quite a nice sized tent village set up outside with the protesters about their "down with government" duties. After lunch we walked across Millenium bridge and went into the Tate Modern museum. The girls enjoyed the day but loved riding the train most of all. No pictures since at this point, I had not even charged my camera batteries because I was unsure of what adaptor/transformer to plug it in to.

  

No Man's Land

No Man's Land is less than a five minute drive from our house. This is a large wooded area where people walk their dogs and fly model airplanes, ride horses and generally get out to enjoy the outdoors. Abby was dying to take us there because her school had a field trip to the area a few weeks before. They had walked the two or three miles all the way there and back. Abby showed us the huts they made out of large branches. I must say, we were all rather impressed by them. The girls all had fun running in and out of them all. We had a picnic up there that day as well. The funny thing is was that was October 30th and we were enjoying gorgeous weather while the east coast of America was being blanketed with snow! 

Lea Singers - Swansong for an Empress

That night Charles and I had an evening out (which has not happened in ages). We attended the Lea Singers performance of "Swansong for an Empress." Our landlord is in the choir and we have attended two of his performances now. The first one was geared to children during harvest and was all about food. This one was mostly in Latin and was performed in a lovely old church in Hemel Hampstead (a village not far from us). It was a perfect end to an active week. 

Halloween

Several people have asked if they do Halloween here. Yes, they do. It seems to get bigger every year but seems to be only a recent thing in the past ten years or so. I took the girls to a Halloween party at the church that sponsors their school. The party was right after school and so we rushed home and got ready and rushed back to the party. The party had storytelling, crafts, games, cupcake decorating,  and singing. The girls really enjoyed it. However, by the time we got home they were exhausted. I was trying to rush them around and get ready to go out trick-or-treating but we had some very grumpy girls. There was lots of drama and needless to say, there was not much trick-or-treating for us. The girls went to three houses on our street and Charles called it quits after all the complaining and moaning. They didn't seem too bothered. They got enough candy at the party with a little bit more from the few neighbors. They went to bed promptly at 8pm. Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures because of all the chaos and grumpiness. Abby was Cinderella wearing a lovely dress made by our Naperville friend with long gloves and plenty of jewelry and high heel shoes. Sammy was a witch with hot pink fake eyelashes, black long haired wig and a broom. Alexandra refused to dress up which I found surprising since everything else Abby and Sammy does she seems to insist on doing. I think next year we just the party OR trick-or-treating but NOT both!

 

Out and About

I feel like since we moved to England (which was only two months ago) we have had so many opportunities to be outside and explore. I have really enjoyed this because it has not been typical for our family but of course there is so much to see and do outside here that even we can't resist. I really like getting us all outdoors. We seem to get along better and are generally happier when we are outdoors.  Of course we have been enjoying the most spectacular weather for the past two months as well so that has been helpful too.
At the beginning of October, we went up to Buckinghamshire to visit some friends of ours who just bought a house there. Above is the view from their house.

Their house is the Old Rectory behind this very old little church in a quaint, little hamlet. We love visiting them and seem to go now almost every Sunday.

On this particular visit, we all took to the fields for a walk, as is customary. We also picked apples and collected conkers.

This visit was also a farewell party for some friends of ours moving back to the States (Goodbye Weylands!). Here we all are posing again in the field during our walk.

This is in the cemetery on the grounds of the old church. Our friends said that their neighbors who were out that day have not talked to them since. I hope we didn't offend them with our disrespectful picture-taking. 

This one is a bit random but here is Alexandra in her adorable dress given to her by Auntie Susi! (Thanks Susi!) I put her hair in pigtails for the first time. Pretty adorable!

On this particular day, we ventured over to the neighboring village (Wheathampstead) where the girls go to school and explored the park there. It is gorgeous with a little stream and lots of wooded areas. You can even stop in at the local pub for a nice snack or meal afterward.The girls were amazingly good at posing for pictures that day.

We love this park. It is a favorite after school destination.

The view of the park from Abby and Sammy's perspective

Here is another random photo that has nothing to do with the outdoors, but I just have to throw it in here. I thought this homework of Sammy's was so cute. Sammy was asked to write a few sentences about herself and she did it "by herself." I love it when kids are first learning to spell.  I will translate in case you can't tell what she wrote.
"I'm Samantha Marie Farnsworth. I like pepperoni pizza. My favorite color is all the colors in the world except black, I don't mind. My favorite thing to do is going to Birthday parties. I have 2 sisters named Abby and Alex." (I am not sure what the last three words say.) 
That's all. More of our outdoor adventure over half term will be in my next post.