June 4, 2008

Good morning.  

I'm tapping away on my new lap top, an anniversary gift from my desperate husband (16 years of bliss, by the way...5 houses, 4 kids, 3 dogs, 2 countries, 1 cat.  Our life together has the cheer and rhythm of a Peter, Paul and Mary song, don't you think?).  J, a normally undemanding sort, has all but chained me to this computer, basically telling me not to get up until a book is published.  God, I hope my weak bladder holds out.

So much has gone on since my last newsy email.  We have had visits from my friend Devon and her darling baby, Hollis.  My friend Cindy popped in as did another high school friend, Colleen, during Gold Cup week.  I am still trying to recover.  We managed to come home for a short time and head to Florida for sun and thrill rides on the back of my cousin Mike's Harley.  Our garage roof has collapsed countless times.  We got a dog.  We managed to live through our first heart arresting heating bill for this big, old beautiful house of ours (hence the urgent need for book royalties).  All this without so much as an email home.  

So I got to thinking.  Actually, I am following the advice that my dear friend, Elizabeth, has been giving me for over two years:  blog.  Yes.  That is it.  I need to blog.  It makes sense for me to plop all of these stories into cyberspace and not necessarily into your inboxes, which, to be honest, makes me feel like a pest.  So going forward I will write with much more frequency and less length and post my entries to a blog.  This way it is a win-win for everyone:  I can record our lives in greater detail (which is really what this whole thing is about:  capturing this experience of living abroad) without the guilt of clogging up my loved ones' emails.  You can access my blog when and if it is convenient for you.  My blog address is  http://englandtoprairie.blogspot.com

 Add it to your favorites and tell everyone you know to read it.  It would be a treat if the book that is inside me is simply a running commentary of my life and not some novel that would actually take research and perseverance to crank out.

Having said all that, I will fill you in.  My parents returned home recently after a two week visit.  It was so good to be with them.  I sat the kids down before they arrived and begged for cooperation:  Their grandparents would be here for only two weeks.  Could everyone please be on their best behavior because it would be great to not have to yell at anyone in front of Maga and Bompers.  Within two days every kid had committed some heinous grievance, yet somehow my parents found it all a bit charming. During their visit, they saw R ski the dry slope and play cricket (even my mother had to agree that cricket is tolerable and even pleasant with enough champagne). They held long conversations with the kids who, to my parents' delight, are grown up enough to have opinions and senses of humor.   A pretty much just bossed them around.  It was an especially meaningful visit for M and S who had my parents as confirmation sponsors as they made their confirmation May 4.  Their confirmation was lovely in the chapel at school.  The bishop of Tewkesbury presided and S was the reader.  We lunched afterwards with our friends, the Spades, at the Greenway Hotel in Cheltenham, an old manor home.  Posh, posh.  If the weather had been kinder we no doubt would have enjoyed a few Pimms while playing crochet on the lawn which was enclosed by massive topiaries in the shapes of trains and such.  So English it hurt.

So now that M and S are adults in the eyes of God we can get down to the serious business of preparing for Speech Day at Cheltenham College Senior School.  It is a day of competitive picnicking and, for once, this is an arena in which I can compete (as long as I purchase all the food).  I am nothing if not able to make the back of the Volvo look like a glossy magazine photo shoot.  Call it a gift.  So the day is as follows:  chapel, followed by the awards ceremony, drinks at the houses, picnics and cricket watching.  We are looking forward to the awards ceremony.  Many and most students go a full five years at the school without receiving a single award.  S has received FOUR (for history, religious studies, chemistry and one secretive one to be announced.  M suspects it is the Biggest Brown Noser Award).  Four awards is unheard of. My reaction was one of pride, awe and wonder.  And by way of congratulations, I bellowed, "Man, M.  It must really SUCK to be her twin!"  Good thing M has a strong sense of his laid back self.  The pressure could crush a weaker individual.  

In the early hours of the following morning, we will drive to Portsmouth to catch the ferry to Normandy, France in order take in the WW2 history.  We will duplicate parts of the school trip that R took last year including the American cemetery and hotel (As best we can guess, we have made reservations.  Hard to say.  The French would be much more endearing if they spoke English).  We will then race back over the Channel to get M back in time to climb into a bus, headed to a ferry so he can again cross the Channel, this time destined for Belgium.  He is participating in a WW1 class trip.   

I will update you on our trip to France via my blog.  I'll send out emails to let you know my blog has been updated and will be sure to include a daily running total of my combined butter and cream intake as well any freak friendly encounters we have with the French.  

With love from England, 

T-Ann