365 days - I did it!!

It seems like yesterday that I started this 365 day photo blog.  I got the idea from Stella, and the intention was to develop my photographic skills, but in reality, it became very difficult to focus on the quality of the photo, mainly because I lead a very boring life - and especially in the winter, I go to work in the dark and come home in the dark, and photo taking opportunities are very limited.

However - EVERY SINGLE DAY I took some kind of photo - often just snapshots, and occasionally they were thoughtful photo's.  That said, I have found a hidden advantage, this is probably the first time in many years that I have actually kept some kind of journal every day for the whole year.  I am going to get it printed into a book and it will remind me of some of the odds and ends in the year that I otherwise would have forgotten!

I travelled back to Calgary from England today, and decided to go to the movies with Alyson - we saw the latest Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law.   Great movie - at least the part that I stayed awake for - and here is the unusual snapshot for the last day of the year...I wonder if anyone else noticed that there were a couple of aliens hanging out at the cinema?

Then I went back to the hotel and saw the new year in - it was nothing short of a miracle that I stayed awake the whole time!

So - to 2012, I know this will be a wonderful year for me - tomorrow I will start by writing my goals for the year.  I learned a habit from Dee a few years ago, I write one goal (or activity) for each year of my life....it gets harder every year....so now I have to come up with FIFTY ONE things!!  I'll blog the list tomorrow :)

It's over

Well, it's been a good run
We've had good times and bad times
I have always held you close
But we have sure had our ups and downs
It seems we spend a LOT of time together when I'm in town
But we can't carry on like this,
You change so much every time I see you that it's like a new adventure every time
It's true - I will miss you, but there are others now to take your place
and it really is time to move on; and maybe this is not forever, but the break will do me good
And it will sure be good for my wallet

Oh Marks and Spencer's, I will miss you - but I will always carry a part of you with me :)

Au revoir - until next time

On a brighter note - I met Dee for lunch today - it's always good to catch up with Dee, I miss our more frequent chats - there is just so much to catch up on when we only see each other once a year.  Why is it that all my friends never change and I am steadily aging?

And yet another delightful tradition

We have got into the habit over the past few years of meeting Pat and Martin for dinner at the Vienna restaurant in Farnham - we missed last year because of the snow, but it was lovely to see them again this year - Christmas just wouldn't be the same without our little get-together.

....am I allowed to have a favourite cousin?!

...and I ate too much...again :)

All roads lead to Rome

I've often wondered about the history of the ancient milestones in the neighbourhood - I think I've referred to them as Roman milestones, but when you look at them, they are clearly not Roman.  So I went to the internet to see what I could find.

My research was inconclusive - or rather, I ran out of energy before finding the right answer.  Needless to say, based on my not-so-extensive research I would guess that the London to Portsmouth milestones date back to before the mid 1600's when the road was used to enable to quick escape from London of the baby son of King James II;  unfortunately, Portsmouth wasn't a safe-haven for long, but nobody bothered to go back and clear the road of milestones.  That said, they are likely to have pre-dated that to the time that the Royal Navy set up home in Portsmouth in the late 15th century...so, my best guess is that the road, and therefore the milestones have been in existence for a very long time

....and now you know why I never became a history teacher

England has nice hospitals

Emma had to have surgery just over a week ago, and she found that her wound was oozing a bit, so she came back in to get it checked out.  She decided to stay in overnight, so Dad and I popped by to drop some things off for her.   It's actually a jolly nice place; and looks a bit more like a hotel than a hospital.  It probably helps that they were super-quiet, most people had gone home for Christmas...I'm sure the National Health hospitals aren't quite as nice, but that is arguably inconsequential!

The eating has to stop

Today was another day of too much food - I will really need to focus on my diet when I get home; I'm guessing I'll need to lose about 30lbs in the next month or so - HCG here I come!

Boxing Day dinner is one of my favourites - I just love bubble and squeak with cold ham and turkey - delicious!

We just visited as a family for the rest of the day, and one of our activities was the blood pressure competition - I can see this becoming a new tradition!  We should have prizes.  We decided that the winner should be the person closest to 120/85 - it was a close thing between Josh and Georgia (at close to 120 over something)   I was 99 over 63, so I would have been a winner if we were going for the lowest!!

Happy Christmas

It was a lovely Christmas day, I really enjoy Christmas being on a Sunday - we had quite a short Christmas day service, we just had the Sacrament followed by a violin piece by Francesca Fotheringham, and then Verity, myself and Gerry sang a rendition of "Oh Holy Night" - one of my favourite Christmas songs, then Bishop Fotheringham said a few words and we all went our separate ways for family Christmases

Dad, Emma and I went over to Tim and Kerry's to join in their Christmas Day festivities - Dad and I have been going there for a few years now, but Emma joined this year since she got divorced.  Paul and the kids were over at the Frances for Christmas dinner.  I feel quite at home at Tim and Kerry's for Christmas, even though I was married for the last few Christmases, nothing really changed this year even though I'm separated - it is always delightful to hang out with family!

There is an English tradition of pouring Brandy on the Christmas pudding and set it on fire...they asked me if I planned to eat any before they smothered it with Brandy;  I have never liked Christmas pudding with or without Brandy!!  Here it is being lit (held by Audrey...Kerry's mum)

I love the family get-togethers!

Emma started a tradition a few years ago of having the family over on Christmas Eve for a big dinner.  They really go to town on these dinners, with multiple options for main courses and of course multiple options for desserts.

Mum and Dad always used to go out on Christmas Eve to celebrate the anniversary of their first date (in 1949),  and since mum died, we've been doing this family get-together;   It was a full house tonight with Emma and the kids, plus Paul, Fo, Barbara and Brian, Tony and Zoe, Tim, Kerry, Sam and George - and me and Dad of course.

Georgia was up at 7.15 this morning preparing most of the main courses - then Paul came over this afternoon to do all the veggies and odds and ends, and I made the traditional sache torte and meat/filo dishes...Emma was very limited with what she could do because of the surgery - but with kids like Georgia, she was in good hands!

Paul was also a bit of a star by wombling around and cleaning everything up throughout the evening - couldn't have done it without him.

Lauren did her fair share of work by putting together a fruit salad.

All in all, a delightful evening!

18 years old

When did that happen?  It just seems like yesterday that Josh was a tubby little toddler, and now he is a 6'4" skinny 18 year old.

I took Lauren shopping this morning, we stocked up on all the food for the family Christmas eve get -together at Emma's.  It was actually quite fun and not too too busy.

Then we went to the local pub for lunch with Josh for his 18th birthday - pubs are actually quite nice now that there is no smoking inside; the food is always good, and 18 is the legal drinking age in England, so Josh had his first legal drink in public.

He was then planning to go out with friends drinking this evening.  I must admit that I really don't get why kids in England go out just to get drunk, I don't think they even always enjoy the drinking, it's purely a social thing, and yet so anti-social at the same time.  Weird.

PANTO!!!

One of my favourite family traditions is taking the kids to the panto every year.  Dad has bought tickets in a box every year since Sam was 5 - he is now 22 and Lauren is 12; and still all the kids go.  Dad doesn't come anymore, so it's usually me and Emma and/or Paul and the 5 kids.  This year Emma couldn't go because she is recuperating from surgery and so Lauren brought her friend Lucy.  It's awesome that the kids still all enjoy it, and we always buy them their choice of kiddie toys - so much fun!!

We often go on Josh's birthday, but as he's turning 18 tomorrow, he decided he wanted to spend his birthday out partying with friends instead of shouting "he's behind you" at the panto!  They always mention Josh's birthday from the stage; which I think he secretly enjoys!

Another day in another office

I actually like that Nexen only has a few sites, I feel at home in each of them.  I like coming to England, obviously because of family, but also because I enjoy the office here - they are a great bunch of people, and I enjoy working with them.  I park at the shopping mall across the street from the office, and I thoroughly enjoy wandering through on my way to the car every evening!

Long long day

This is the first time that I went straight to work from the airport when I landed at Heathrow.  I rented a VW Passat.  It has this cool functionality where it turns the engine off every time you hit the brakes, unfortunately I didn't know that.  I didn't really hit the brakes until I was pulling into the parking lot at the shopping centre by the office.  Just imagine how busy the shopping centre parking is a few days before Christmas in the middle of the day - and suddenly the engine cuts out on my car; I had NO CLUE what was going on, and I had NO IDEA that all I needed to do was take my foot off the brake.  So I sat there for a full 10 minutes, reading the manual, trying to work it out.  I can't even remember how I got it going again, but eventually it did - there were a few frustrated drivers behind me tho!  What an adventure!

After work I finally got home to Dad's house - the Christmas decorations were already up - with the exception of the chocolate tree decorations which he left for the kids so that they could eat one for each one they put on the tree :)

The mountains are still here

...and they look as beautiful as ever.  I have been looking for a new house, and strangely enough having a mountain view is higher on the list than it was before....how could anyone tire of this view?

I caught the flight to London this evening - looking forward to a couple of weeks with family :)

I so want to be back in Royal Oak Ward!

I love this ward,  I went to choir again after Church (even though I can't sing with them next week!) - another stellar turnout - over 40 people, and it sounds very nice.  It's more than that though, it's just lovely to be among friends - I'm not sure I realized how much I like everyone in the ward until I moved away; and now I'm just looking forward to being back when I finish the Dallas thing.

This is Linda conducting the rabble of a choir - and doing a very good job of it!!

I'm blogging before the end of the day, but Kathryn is on her way over, so it will be lovely to visit this evening, even if it's just for a little while.  I am heading to London tomorrow, and looking forward to being "home", but can't quite get my head around everything I still need to get done before Christmas!!

What do friends talk about?

I met Alyson for a visit today, we met at Trystan's hockey game at 2.15, (which he won, convincingly); and then went out for a late lunch, then back to the hockey, and then on to Starbucks, I finally parted ways at about 9ish - so that's about 7 hours of chatting - it was a lovely afternoon/evening and I'm not even sure what we talked about that whole time...I can remember snippets of chatting about our youth, our husbands, the kids, work - just about everything - we need to do that more often, but where do you find a spare 7 hours?

This is a photo of Trystan in the first game of the day...I didn't go to the second game, I (unusually) have a cold and just needed to get home and go to bed :(

Royal Oak Ward Christmas Party

We had the ward Christmas Party today - it was HUGE; don't know how many people, but we seemed to fill the Stake Centre!

So many photo's to choose from, but when i include cute kids in costume - it breaks it down to a more manageable selection!

                                                                                                                                         

Missed my fight

I was intending to go back to Calgary tonight after the meetings with Catherin.... I drove to the airport in the rush hour, and knew almost as soon as I got in the car that I would miss the flight - so 3 hours later I found myself in my apartment, with another flight or two booked tomorrow.

While I was at the airport, I noticed a crowd of people in the arrivals area, and a handful of heavily armed police.  The US have announced that they will be pulling out of Iraq, and so the troops have started heading home.  This crowd were from a charity and were at the airport to give the boys a good welcome home..it was actually quite heartwarming!

The townhall today went super-well; another hurdle navigated without issue!

I can dream can't I?

It's not really worth getting a Christmas tree in my apartment, I leave for Canada tomorrow, then England next week, and I won't be back until January.  So every time I see a tree I like to imagine it in my little apartment; which would be lovely, but not feasible.

This is one of the tree's at the Westin Hotel in Plano.  I went over there for drinks with my bosses boss, Catherine to prep her for the townhall meeting tomorrow - it was a nice evening, but I was too late home again!

Goodbye to the great white north

I headed back to Dallas today after half a day of work in Calgary.  It was chilly and snowy in Calgary, they'd better sort that out before I come back at the end of the week!  This is a view of a snowy Calgary as I left...

How long will this take?

I wondered if the basement would move along quicker while I was gone, but apparently not!  In fact, I'm pretty sure the tools and cable hasn't even moved in the last few weeks!

Will this basement EVER be finished?!

TEMPLE UPDATE!!

It's great to be back in Calgary for a few days;  and today was a full and exciting day!  I could hardly wait to see how the temple was coming along - and it didn't disappoint; the stonework looks amazing, I can't believe I used to think it was too grey!  Look at it now, and this is on a very grey and snowy day!  Most of the stonework is completed, surely the Moroni will be soon, but I don't think it will be December!

I went to Church this morning and it was so lovely to see my girls - so I snuck into their class and hung out with them for a while - delightful

And finally, we did a Messiah from scratch tonight, it sounded great, I hope we do that again every Christmas, it was so much fun to do, and an added benefit to not have lots of rehearsals!

Temple # 21

I went to the Houston Temple today - it is a beautiful building, but it's only just bigger than the HUGE houses in the neighbourhood; it sure is in a swanky place!

I had the camera settings on manual by accident, and I had it set to black and white - I actually prefer this photo to the colour ones - lovely

Busy Friday

...and actually a fun busy Friday!  I went to my first ever Topping Out party (or is it a Topping Off party?) It is a celebration for contractors when a building reached the top floor.  It's hard to believe that we had the groundbreaking in June and the Topping Out in December - that is pretty good.  Anyway, the tradition is for a BBQ for the workers (and in our case the new tenants as well;) and they typically put a tree on the top - if you look close enough you'll see it !

...and then this is a few folks in what will be Peter's office (but this is 12th floor, our offices will be 14th. Nonetheless, nice view - shame about the windows

Only 17 more sleeps

I don't tend to have a lot of Christmas odds and ends around the house, but I saw this mat on Black Friday and fell in love with it...I put it outside my door on the first day, but I was so concerned that someone would steal it that I decided to keep it inside....but just look at him, doesn't he make you want to smile :)

The whole world in my hands

I've always wanted one of this tabletop globes, so I can't think of a better time to invest in one - now that I happen to have space on the coffee table.  I'm almost looking forward to buying a new place in Calgary so that I have some space for all my new stuff :)

Breaking the rules

It was chilly today (it even snowed in Dallas overnight!), and I wanted to feel all warm and cosy when I got home, so I lit the big candles.....however, this is against the rules for my apartment building, it would be very embarrassing to get evicted over the warm cosy feeling :)

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

Both.  I was just leaving the hotel this morning and couldn't help but notice the birds all lined up on the line watching the morning traffic, fascinating....why do they do that?

This evening I caught the private jet back to Dallas, it was a smaller plane, I'm looking forward to getting the shuttle from Calgary next week, we have booked a bigger plane which actually has room to work (or sleep!)  It was very cool watching the landing from this angle - it was a bit windy and I have to admit it was a little unnerving watching the plane waver around before straightening out just before touching down.

I think I won't become a pilot

They do everything BIG in Texas

Including rain.  I thought England had the corner on rain, but Dallas put in a good effort today.  I'm not really sure whether it actually rained more than a good rain day in England, but it certainly gathered in the roads a lot more...that could just be because the drains don't get as much practice here.

This is the car park at my apartment - nice.

Only in America

I have already found a few things that I will miss about living in the States; and I added another one to the list today - it was raining, and I didn't fancy getting out of the car to pick up the dry cleaning....which was totally OK, because they have a DRIVE THROUGH DRY CLEANING place - unbelievable!!  So you drive through, give the bag of dirty cleaning to the girl and then they just deliver any clean stuff to the back seat of the car...this is a photo of the girl delivering to the car in front!   Only in America...and I am totally taking in the culture

This evening was the Richardson Stake Carol Festival - I sang with the Stake Choir....it went quite well, but it's not quite the same as the choirs in Calgary

Not great photo's today....I'll do better tomorrow :)

Ouch

It was the first office Christmas Party tonight - As mentioned I bought the dress, shoes and earrings last night, and the dress and earrings were perfect.....the shoes were gorgeous, but pretty painful after about an hour - the pain was worth it, I was about 6 feet tall in these stilts

I felt elegant for about 5 minutes - I wonder if I'll ever wear them again!!

So many choices

Another long day at the office, and the Company Christmas party is almost upon us....I got out of the office just after 7.30 and I had to race over to Nordstrom to get a new outfit for the office party.  I over achieved - I got a dress, some earrings and some very high shoes.

This is the changing room at Nordstroms - it's HUGE!!!  These are the dresses I was choosing from - maybe tomorrow I'll post a photo with me in my new frock!

It feels like home

On the way home from work I stopped off at WalMart to pick up a few things....there are some companies that have such strong brands that it doesn't matter what country or city you are in, it's just as though you are in your local store.

Look familiar?

Contemporary accessories

One thing I like about having my own apartment is that I can decorate it and accessorize it according to my tastes, I don't have to check with anyone.   That said,  I still feel a little insecure about choosing all this stuff without even checking with Alyson my style guru!

Hopefully my contemporary stick display will meet with her approval :)

Another city, another sunset

I don't know what it is about the Texas sunsets, but I am loving them - practically every night they are just beautiful.  I will spend every Monday in Houston, and my Houston office has a lovely view of the sunset...here it is from my Houston digs...

Lots of singing

One common thing for me when I move to a new area is joining the ward and Stake choirs, and I must admit to being surprised with both.  The ward choir is small, but absolutely incredible.  The choir director is a bloke that is clearly very talented and he can make this small choir sound awesome.   We hardly worked on notes, it was mostly dynamics...and he has an incredible talent for making simple music sound good.  Apparently he has perfect pitch.

Consequently, I expected the same quality at the Stake Choir.  We practiced this evening in preparation for a Christmas concert next Saturday - and it felt like a first rehearsal; we were learning notes, hardly any time for dynamics, the mini orchestra seemed to struggle with some of the pieces.  I hope no-one ever actually looks at this blog, I sure don't want to offend anyone!  But you know what was impressive....Mr perfect pitch was in the choir and a few other very talented musicians, and none of them interfered with what the choir director was doing.  That takes a fair bit of humility.

Is it OK to have favourites?

I actually got quite a bit accomplished today - I love days like that.  I went to the temple this morning, and that is always a good way to start the day.  It's so nice to have the temple so close...I can hardly wait until the Calgary one is finished!  But I must say, if it's OK to have favourite temples, Dallas doesn't make the top ten - it's oddly plain on the outside, the inside is beautiful though...and I'm sure the outside would look a lot nicer if it was sunny!  That said, the grey brick is actually grey marble - quite beautiful close up.

This afternoon, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles - I actually went to the gym at the apartment building. It's a really nice gym, I need to make that a habit!

More like home

So much to blog about today! I was up until about 3am last night, and then got back at it at 8am this morning.  Most of last nights stuff was small kitchen appliances, KitchenAid, Food Processor, Rice Cooker etc etc....This morning I focused on getting accessories to make the apartment look more homely....and now I LOVE my little apartment, it is so cute.  The only thing left to do is to decide on some photo's to get printed on canvas and put on the wall.

Before nick nacks:-

After nick nacks

Also - today I discovered "Whole Foods" which is a REALLY nice supermarket, the stuff is super fresh, super nice.  It looks way more expensive than other places, but I think it will be so worth it - my new favourite grocery store :)

Then I had another walk around the Galleria shopping mall; still heaving with people, but they had an ice skating display with a couple of really famous ice skaters that I've never heard of....but they drew cheering crowds 5 deep on 4 floors!

And finally - having done my grocery shopping, I cooked my first meal tonight...I invited Margaret and the Sisters over for dinner, it was jolly nice!

I found WalMart!

...it took me 3 weeks, but at last I found it.  I did all the grocery shopping and now the apartment is more livable!  Notice the amount of diet rootbeer, I had to be sure I stocked up just in case we go into a world shortage!

I stayed up tonight until gone midnight to shop at Macy's for Black Friday...this is the crowd that was gathering outside just before they opened....the place was heaving with people all night apparently (although I gave up by 2.30 am!

Almost American

It was the last day before the LONG Thanksgiving Day Weekend,  people started heading out of the office at lunch time...unfortunately one of my clients (Kevin) booked meetings with me on video conference right up until 6.30pm, and darn it if he wasn't late and then tried to push it out until tomorrow, but I insisted on meeting, that said, I still have to go into the office tomorrow for my annual review with Quinn...so I guess I'm not really American yet, otherwise I would probably push back on this stuff

The sunrise was amazing this morning - this is the view from my desk, you can see the fog and the lovely sunrise, but unfortunately there was too much condensation on the window to make for a good photo.

I stopped at Costco on the way home from work and at last I now have some groceries in my apartment...however, I still don't have any condiments or vegetables - so I still don't have enough to make a meal, and still nothing for breakfast in the morning!  Tomorrow, I will find the WalMart and the Tom Thumb!  Can't wait to use the slow cooker (which cost me $30!!)