Rudders at Home

In case you haven’t been following the moblog, here’s some shocking news for you: Paul and I have moved to the US. Texas, to be precise. Yes, we’ve done it. I’ve become a repat, and Paul is now the resident expat.

Now, after a fairly long hiatus, I have decided to return to blogging. I dropped it when the move became too much, and after that I just felt I didn’t have much to blog about – even when one of my biggest life changes was happening.  I  photographed it all and added what I wanted to the moblog. I didn’t really feel I needed to add the text to it. Or in fact, share all the photographs. You would think a move home would be the best thing in the world, what with how much I missed it, but it hasn’t always  turned out  like that. 

It’s taken me a long time to make peace with the move and everything that’s gone along with it, but here I am, so I guess I better start making the most of it. Texas is almost as much a foreign land to this Pennsylvania girl as it is to the Scot I married, and we’re hoping to explore as much of this great land as we possibly can.

So, welcome back, baby! It’s good to be home!

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Sometimes I love being miles and miles away from home. It means I get fabulous care packages and very often they’re are filled with everything I ask for. Around Christmas, I received a package from home with some home made table mats in them. So, this time, I got a table runner to match. 🙂 Have a look:

My mother made this, just for me. Aren’t I a lucky girl? And it fits on my coffee table perfectly. I now just have to make sure I don’t spill anything on it! Thanks Mom!

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Welcome British Summer Time! We change our clocks today, moving ahead an hour. I don’t mind losing a bit of time, so long as I get to see more sights like the one below.

And the weather here does seem to be breaking.  It’s definitely not summer time, but it is certainly starting to be more like spring here. The sun is shining a bit more, and the entire mood is starting feel lighter. I’m loving it. 🙂

Next the bluebells will be out in full force.

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Remember these? Well, they’re now fully finished socks. I finished these up some time ago, before the snow came, so I had a nice warm pair to wear then. But I thought I should share the finished product with you all, so here you go!

These started out really well, with the color pattern matching up pretty well. Until the heel/ankle, that is. Plus there was some variation in the striping that all accounts for the big black toe. I used just a basic vanilla sock pattern here. I’m now working on another pair, which I’m doing two at a time, on two circular needles, which is working out just fine. 🙂 I’m quite enjoying the whole sock thing!

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But here’s where I fill you all in on where we went for Paul’s birthday!

Brighton! You would think that in the years we’ve been here in London, we would have spent some time in Brighton by now. But no, we’d only been once before, and that was just a quick drop by on our way someplace else. So, we thought that since we wanted to go somewhere, and conserve holiday time, that Brighton seemed like an ideal spot. And overall it proved to be a wonderful place to spend a weekend.

We left work on Friday night, caught the train and arrived around 8:00 or so. It was pretty dark and frigid cold when we got there. We had no idea what to expect the next morning. We were pleasantly surprised when we opened the blinds to this:

Yep, this is the West Pier that burned down a few years ago. If we looked left, we saw the pier in the picture above. All in all, not a bad view.

We started the day with a brisk walk down to the lively Brighton Pier, and spent about 20p playing the penny drop slots. The majority of the rides at the end of the pier were closed due to high winds, (I wasn’t too crazy about the look of them, either) so we turned around and headed back in to town. We then spent the rest of the day wandering around the city, doing some shopping in the Lanes, where we bought a clock for our living room, and then finished the evening off in a pretty nice pub. Not a bad way to spend the day.

Of course, it was all made the better because it started off with Paul’s breakfast in bed…

Doesn’t he look happy?

Not as happy as he was when his robots showed up in the mail!! Sadly, there is no photographic evidence of that. Anyway, I think it was a pretty successful birthday for him this year!

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