Christmas Vacay Part Two

The mullet is growing back, my friends.
And I, at present time, cannot afford to get it cut.
So let it grow, let it grow.

Also, I am watching "Aladdin" with my nearest and dearest houseroomie, Darija. It's been awhile. The tupperware fart joke still makes me laugh.

Moving on...

So I didn't fill you all in on the rest of my Christmas vacation 2007! England what what! Well let's see...

After arriving in England after an exhausting night/morning, I got picked up at the airport by my way-too adorable cousins and their mom (whom I call Auntie Boo. yes, Auntie)(and who is awesome but not adorable because she is not under the age of 15 but I'm sure she certainly was adorable and... so yeah...)
They were holding a sign that had my name written on it. It was like the Rent-a-Car Service for the Price/Findleys. It was a really good way to arrive on the island.

We then all drove together to a service station somewhere in England (I should tell you that my knowledge of British geography is, like, negative a million. We would go to all these places when I was a kid and I would never ever look at a map. I only recently (within the past four years) found out where London really is. Shoot I just admitted that on the internet)). Anyyyyway, we went to a service station and met up with Cubca, my grandma (aka Cubs, Cubbie, the Cubster). She treated us to the world's most amazing service station food. I know, you're thinking Big Gulp, a hot dog off that rolly thing, and some Doritos. Heck no! I'm talking chicken tikka masala with rice and a muffin and a diet coke and e'erything! ohhhhhh man.

Then Cubca and I parted ways from AB and clan and headed to Bewdley. This is where my grandma lives in the coachhouse of a palace. On the top of a hill. In a small town. In England. Down the hill? The town church. Down farther from the church? The river. And a bridge. It's a beautiful place.

We stayed in Tickenhill for two days. We made mince pies and treacle tart and then I had to eat them. Dang. We went to an hors d'oeuvres party (oh crap I live in France and is that how you spell hors d'oeuvres? we'll pretend....) with my grandma to meet 'n greet her friends and say Joyeux Noel to everyone. Cubs wore a nice dress and I wore khakis and a sweater with a button-down shirt. Guess what,e veryone? I looked like every. single. (not-in-my-age-range) man. there.

My bad!

But hey, we were all stylin'. I'll repeat: Khakis, black sweater (ok, some wore dark blue), collared shirt = me and the guys!

Then we went to Auntie Boo's for Christmas! We arrived on Christmas Eve in Crowland. There's a bridge in the town that has three arches... we sang carols underneath it. Of course we were a little late and didn't get the book of lyrics so I did a lot of "la la la la la"-ing. But it was great. Did the descant, too, even though I was really sick.

Really really sick. Like, Cubca and I were dead on Christmas. Hackhackcoughcoughleakyeyes blowyournosehackhackcoughcoughcough.

It was like that.

But despite it all, I still managed to get really great pictures with my holycrapsupercute cousins. Here we go:
<-------- Natasha! And yours truly!


Ummmmm "Aladdin" is making me laugh out loud. For sure.

Christmas Day?
Was woken upa t 7:00am by Alex who greeted me at my bed with a tiny stocking with little Xmas knick and knacks. Through my couchs and nose-blows I managed to thank him and get out of bed. Grabbed some much-needed instant coffee from the aunt's and uncle's new kitchen (soooo pretty) and headed upstairs for the stockings.

The stockings my cousins have are bigger than their own bodies. I kid you not. That was truly amazing.

Then downstairs to get changed and prepared for service at the Methodist Church. It was a very chill affair, complete with hymns I, disappointingly, had never heard or seen before, but we had a cool part where the pastor put a map of the world out on the floor, gave us all petites bougies (little candles) and told us to place them on an area of the world where we have people we're thinking about. Those candles were e'erywhere.

Then of course back to PECAN House (Phil, Elizabeth, Caroline, Alex, Natasha <-- the names of the Dormor clan) for more presents. It was so great to see everyone opening everything. Especially the kiddlewinks. I waited to open mine because I wanted to watch everyone go ahead and I wanted to save them till nearer the end. Cubca got me this really amazing book called "New Europe" by Michael Palin all about Southern Eastern Europe. Basically it shows all these countries post-Cold War and I want to go to alllllll of them but for now I can look at hte pretty pictures and read the captions. It's all good. For Xmas I also got kicka$$ DVDs to watch in my spare time (I mean, we know that I have a lot of that :) ) and a gift cert to Apple because we all know I'm addicted and then I opened my gift from my Mom and Dad.

I'm just going to take a moment right here to say this: Christmas was way hard without my Findley fam (yes, Lisa, I just said fam). First Christmas away from home. And not just "away from home." I mean, I'm like 6000 miles away from home. So that was hard. But hey, I did have my British family which was so so so good and in no way am I saying that it wasn't. It was just... different. And yeah, I was homesick on Xmas.

So I opened my present from my Mom and my Dad. When I felt hte package it felt like one of those jumbo bags of candy that you get from Hershey's/Cadbury's for Halloween. YouknowwhatI'msayin'? So I was like "sweet! Candy!" But then I opened it and the room got a little more quiet and I immediately teared up. What did I find? My stocking. My mom had brought my stocking over from the US when she and Dad went to England in the fall. And what was in the stocking? A bunch of stuff to remind me of home. Stuff about Mackinaw Island, U of M, MSU, EL, Lansing, a really cute Michigan t-shirt, etc. etc. etc. I tried really hard not to cry in front o' my cousins but I couldn't help it - it was just ovewhelmingly perfect. I couldn't call the Findleys, though, because It was only 7 am there time so I just sat there, teared up, fanned my hand in front of my face (you know how I do) and grinned my face off.

Then we ate Christmas dinner!
Turkey, parsnips, cranberry sauce, brussel sprouts (I think there were 130 sprouts?), carrots, roasted potatoes... a feast fo' sho.
Then we ate Christmas pudding!
Yeah, I had real Christmas pudding. We tried to set it on fire (you know, brandy + flame = flambe) but we just ended up soaking the cake in brandy and we couldn't get it to light. And what would Christmas pudding be without brandy cream? Yeah, had that too.

Whoa. Stuffed. In the stomach and in the head from the disastrous cold that continued to live inside my body. Emotionally drained. But really happy. Homesick, happy. It was a great Christmas.

We also did the most amazing whistling tune thing from teh crackers and I know that doesn't make too much sense here but I will try to get a video up on YouTube so stay tuned!

We took the traditional Christmas walk whose sole purpose is to walk off about 5 of the calories consumed during Christmas dinner. We then watched Finding Nemo. And we watched "Doctor No." British people: I do NOT understand your obsession with that show. But then again, maybe I didn't get the full effect of it because I was knitting next to Cubca the entire time and trying to keep my head from floating off my neck.

Christmas was really good. Auntie Boo, Uncle Phil, Caroline, Natasha, Alex, Cubca... it was amazing to be with them.

I'm sorry I didn't get more pictures.