Goodbye England......

Wow, did that week ever fly by!!! We are officially over the jetlag now, and on more of a regular routine which has been really nice!!! We've been staying with my cousin Shelly and her young family, which has worked out really well. We have our own room with a private bathroom, three kids (boys 4 and 8, girl 6) to play with, and a huge playroom on the main floor that helped occupy many hours in the middle of the night!!!! The kids often play together in one of the kid's rooms, then they all have a bath and go to bed, and then the adults enjoy a nice meal, some wine and then chocolate!! It's been hard to adjust to eating at 8 or 9 at night, but on the other hand I could get used to nice long meals full of adult conversation after the kids go to bed!

And although it would have been smart to just rest and adjust to the time change while we were here, we wouldn't be us if we didn't try to fit in a million and one things from our 'to do in England' list!!!!! There's so much to see and do, I could live here for a year and barely touch it! As it is, I'm determined to come back in the near future and see a lot more! We made our way to Rochester Castle where we explored the ancient ruins and then wandered around the town that inspired much of Dicken's writing. We wandered along the pantiles of Royal Tunbridge Wells. We took the train up to Hampton Court for the day, where Kea was able to see how princesses used to live!!! And on Monday Jamie and Kea stayed home for a rest day while Tiegan and I headed in to London for a special day! We took a two hour guided walk with London Walks all about Shakespeare's London, which ended at The Globe Theatre where we took another tour. Fascinating social history, and I could have kept going, but 3 hours was the max for Tiegan! So we stopped at a pub for some fish&chips and to watch the "big blue boats" on the Thames!!!!! A lot packed in to a few days, and it has only served to whet my appetite for more!!!

And after all that, we still haven't even really begun our trip! Tomorrow we pack up our bags once more, and board our British Airways flight to Accra!!! Hopefully we'll have internet access shortly after our arrival, and I'll be able to update you again! For now, sweet dreams everyone!

jetlag....

Dealing with jet lag and a two year old is sooooooooooooooooo not a lot of fun! Tiegan is up for hours and hours, and of course when we're the most paranoid about her being silent as the whole household is asleep, she decides to howl and cry and stomp her feet. Lastnight I was pretty tired by 1am, so Jamie offered to stay awake with the girls while I went to bed early. I'd finally gotten into a nice sleep when they came up to bed, and Tiegan was not really ready for bed but I was bound and determined to get her to sleep. She was so restless, kicking and turning this way and that way, and it got to the point that I thought I would hurt her I was sooooooooooooo desperate for sleep, when luckily she finally succumbed to her tired body! And then, wouldn't you know I ended up laying there for two hours tossing and turning and unable to fall back asleep. Bugger.

We leave tomorrow!!!!!!

How crazy is that? The time has just flown by! Of course, not helped by the fact that Tiegan has been up puking for the past two nights and I might have gotten 4 hours of sleep all-told! Ugh. I think she is feeling much better this afternoon, which is great because as much as I don't mind travelling with a lethargic child, I'm not so fond of airplane rides with puking kids!!!!!

A couple more errands to go pick up odds and ends, and some final packing to do and then we're as ready to board that plane as we'll ever be! We're getting really excited now, and are looking forward to the month together as a family! I'm going to try and update this blog a bit while we're gone, and even see if I can download some photos onto it.....but if not, we'll have more than enough photos on our return! I just bought 10 rolls of prepaid film, and our digital camera can take 400-750 photos depending on the quality. I think that might just do us for the month!!!! Anyways, off to sort through clothes and pack my backpack - only to unpack it and eliminate half of the stuff!!!!! We're DETERMINED to travel light this trip! And this time, we really mean it!

And a bit late.......Christmas morning

New clothes!
Originally uploaded by the four mckays.

Here's a few photos from our Christmas morning, which we shared with Clare and Alex. We had a great time, opening stockings, eating waffles with strawberry sauce, and then opening all our gifts. Tiegan really got into the gift opening this year, and was thrilled with all of her new clothes!!!!! As usual, click on the photo to see more photos from the same set!

old kitchen, new kitchen, yellow kitchen, elegant kitchen!

old kitchen
Originally uploaded by the four mckays.

So, I've finally uploaded a few new photos of the house - I started with a few photos of the old kitchen just to refresh your memory of what it used ot look like, and then moved on to the different stages until the kitchen as it stands today. Still some finishing work to do, like you know, windows and counters. But that will wait until our return!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry, no photos yet......

But they are coming soon. Kea's at a sleepover tonight, with a friend who is going on a trip so we won't see them until we're back from Ghana in Feb. Jamie and I had big plans of finally sorting through a lot of our boxes and setting up the house more or less, but Tiegan has been wide awake all evening and is at that delightful 'helpful' stage right now!!!! She was following Jamie around, basically undoing everything that he had just done, and finally he got really frustrated. And my "welcome to my life these days" probably didn't help :-) But it's nice for me that he actually sees why I'm not able to sort a lot of this stuff out during the days. Not only is Tiegan wanting to do everything with (or even better FOR) me, she is going through a crazy violent stage with Kea. She wants to do everything that Kea is doing, including drawing on the exact paper that Kea is drawing on, or playing with the exact Polly Pocket that Kea is playing with - and her frustration level very quickly increases to the point that she is pinching or hitting or biting Kea. Frustrating stage all around! I imagine it has a lot to do with the major developing she is doing these days - huge leaps and bounds in the language department, getting her final molar, using the potty more and more, etc. This too will pass, this too will pass!!!!!!

So, instead of photo updates, I'll give you a quick version of likes and dislikes now that we've lived in the house for a bit.....

- LOVE our new kitchen in that it is very spacious, tonnes of counter and cupboard space, new stove, an actual dishwasher, etc. The style itself is okay - definitely what works with this house, but I feel like I'm playing house in a grown-up kitchen! It's just not us! But I'm not going to complain about that - it's so nice to use, and one day we'll build our straw bale house that will suit us much more!
- Our phone line is crystal clear, and I can hear everyone who calls now. Anyone who tried to call us before and heard the major static will appreciate it when I say that this alone was well worth the investment!!!!!
- We can turn our lights off at the top of the stairs OR at the bottom, depending where we need to. Wow, no more running up and down or groping around a pitch dark basement to make our way up the stairs to the light switch!
- Love having our washer drier upstairs with us, even though the spin cycle tends to shake the house a little
- Hate how the new furnace and ductwork in the basement seems to shake the house, as that's much more constant! We'll have to talk to the furnace guy and see if he can fix it!!!!
- I also feel really frustrated by how much work we still have to do. All the trades do as little as possible, and always assume that the next guy will do the finishing work, so we end up having all these wierd areas that we have to patch up so it looks finished. Also, everyone's in such a hurry to get on to their next job, that noone does a fabulous job. I just have to stop looking so closely!

Overall, it's great and so much more comfortable than it was before, I know we'll live quite happily here for years to come!!!! As soon as we get rid of a bunch of stuff - we have WAY TOO MUCH STUFF, and it's time to stop trying to create extra storage for it!!! That's my new years resolution - declutter!!!!!!

Tomorrow, photos, I hope!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

May 2006 be a happy and healthy year for you all!!!! And may it inspire me to write much more frequently!

We had a great holiday, we're back in our house, we have boxes everywhere that need to be unpacked, half-written thank you cards lying on the table, various wires that still need to get hooked up by the electricians *hopefully* sometime this week, half-finished stairs down to our basement, a coughing Kea up in our bed......oh and did I mention we have so much to do before we fly overseas next week! Life is feeling a wee bit chaotic - but we definitely feel blessed as we bring in a new year!

I'll write more soon, and this time with photos. I promise!!! The nagging is working!!!!!!! ;-)