Halloween Party!

Yesterday afternoon Mick and I hopped on the train to a little village called Aylesham. It's an eerily quiet little place with not much to do, as was made evident by the three young boys walking around with planks of wood, angrily slapping the grass. Hmm!
The reason for our trip was to spend the night at our friends' house. Rachael and Josh have a cute little house that was decorated very carefully for a good night. Even the giraffe statues by the fireplace had costumes, and the Audrey Hepburn portrait had vampire fangs. So with a great atmosphere and even better company, we consumed beer and sangria and had a cheerful night.
In case you're wondering what Mr. White and I went as, well, we played it safe and stuck to an American classic- cow folk.
It's looking beautifully autumny in Kent. As we left Mick's dad's house yesterday I couldn't help but be mesmerised by the dance of leaves falling from branches in a spray of feathery flames. It's beautiful, and the air has that thick, earthy and smoky scent that I've always associated with this time of year. To me, autumn is one last brilliant show of what mother nature is capable of before the cold and stillness of winter. One last display of gorgeous color and the power of secrets we humans can only begin to understand.
I am infatuated with it.

A very yellow tree in King's Hill

Yee-haw :)

An Altar for Autumn

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

To-morrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!

For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost--
For the grapes' sake along the wall.

 

-Robert Frost, October

 I think in this poem, Frost is wishing for autumn to slow down, to hold off winter for just a little bit longer, to let summer's fruits stay ripe and plump and not fade and shrivel away. He's asking the trees to not let the leaves fall quite so quickly, just a few throughout the day. But to me, "slow! slow!" means "hang on autumn, there's no rush. Stick around for a while and let us enjoy your beauty for more than just a month or two. Keep those jewels dancing from branch to ground all year round!" I won't miss summer, I just want to soak up the orange and crimson.

""Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.""

- Stanley Horowitz

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

- Albert Camus

"Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile."

- William Cullen Bryant

*these images are not mine. My dear friend Google image search helped me find them.

Truckin' Along...

Hello, all!

Not much to report around here. Mick and I are still house-sitting for his dad. During the day I help with the phones for the business and pretty much take it easy. This is due to what I’m pretty sure is a pinched nerve. I was having really random and harsh stabbing pains in my shoulder due to certain movements. This would then send a tingly, pins and needles type feeling down my right arm and into my fingers. Yesterday the stabbing pain was gone and I was left with a constant muscular ache from always having my shoulder tensed. And a few pins and needles. Today I’m feeling pretty much back to normal- whew! I think sleeping with a hot water bottle two nights in a row helped a bit! And thank goodness, because sleeping on my back was getting old.


Something about being in this village makes my creativity go all aflutter. I’ve been writing, cooking, and taking pictures. I think it’s just because everything is so picturesque.

The weather has been rainy, and every day the trees seem more yellow/orange/red than the day before. I can tell it’s trying to get colder, but the sun isn’t quite ready to go away for the winter. One day it’s in the high 50s, the next, in the mid 60s. One day the sky is blue, the next, grey. I guess that’s what autumn is, though- the gradual change and earth’s time to be a bit fickle about just how it wants to be.

Funny moment of the week-
Mick and I had finished dinner last night and were watching some television. We heard this really weird rubbing/scratching sound coming from downstairs. We'd heard it a couple times throughout the day but it never lasted long enough to figure out what it was. We went downstairs after it had stopped. You should know right now that I married the biggest scaredy cat of all time, though I'm only slightly better. Anyway, we got to the front door and it started again. We looked at each other in half amusement, half terror. I thought I heard a cat meow but we weren't sure. I figured it was probably the cat scratching at the door but it didn't seem to be the right sound. We decided I should text my father-in-law.

Me: Does Sox ever scratch at the front door?
Him: Yes, sometimes when he wants in or out.
Me: Are you sure it's not an axe murderer?
Him: Could be, but he tends to smash through the door.

I've been giggling about that all day.
And yes, we opened the door and Sox came struttin' in.

 I guess I’ll leave you with some pictures, as always!

Wrotham Church. It's old. And Mick used to sing there when he was wee. In the choir. Haha.

Fall colors at the park.

My father-in-law has this tree in his garden that's completely bursting with apples. The branches are really heavy and the weight of the apples is bending them down towards the ground. I've been instructed to use as many of the apples as possible, so we've been feasting on homemade, homegrown cinnamon apples. Yum!

My favorite Halloween movie of all time ever ever ever. And popcorn made on the stove with nothing but kernels, olive oil and a pan. This is new to me, and I'm so excited that I made it all by myself. Silly, I know. But every time I do it I feel like Tom Hanks in Castaway when he finally makes fire and puffs his chest out proudly and cries, "Look what I have created! I have made fire! I!!!! (gesticulating madly) Have made fire!!!" It's the little things, you know?

This is Sox, my FIL's (way easier) cat. He's pure evil. But he's cute because he sleeps funny, with all his feet piled on top of each other. I'm not even really sure how it's physically possible, but he does.

Weekend recap

Packing, moving, a date with the husband for no real reason and a quiet night to myself with Sex and the City 2. Just a bit of what we've been up to around here. And some photos.

It's weird how different a house looks when it's nearly empty. And so echo-y, too!

A night on my own- my husband and his step-dad made another trip back to Bognor for one last load of things on Saturday. Mick and I are house/business/cat sitting for his dad this week, so I had the house to myself and enjoyed a bubble bath of mammoth proportions.

Dinner at a historic inn down the road in this darling little village. Good food, good wine, good times <3

Fresh autumn apples from my father-in-law's garden. I'm thinking some baked cinnamon apples are in order with dinner tonight :)

Still here!

It's been a very busy week! Mick and I were gone most of yesterday. We had to take the train to a little town called Romsey all the way in Hampshire so that I could get my biometrics done. Biometrics are digital photos and fingerprints for the UK Border Agency. Now my application is complete and all there is to do is wait to hear back from UKBA!
In other news, we are moving this weekend. We will still be living with my in-laws but we will be moving to another larger family house in Kent.

That's about all for now! I'll just leave you with a photo of mick in front of a tiny door of a tiny house in Romsey yesterday. It was a very cute little town and everything seemed so tiny!

A Morning Out & Exciting News!

It is officially cold in England, if you want my humble desert-rat opinion! Where I spent the majority of my life (Yuma, Arizona) there are very few days in the year, even in winter, when it stays below maybe 60F. But this is England. The evenings have steadily been in the high 40sF for the past few nights, which isn't all that cold. Except for when it's windy and you have thinned out blood from living in serious heat for 14 and a half years! I won't lie, I'm enjoying it, but my hands are really cold as I type this.

Mick and I went to a town called Worthing this morning on the train. It's about 30 minutes from Bognor. We had to go here because Mick took his written driving test today. He was a bit nervous about it (who likes tests, really?) I assured him he'd do fine, and I think he knew that, too. But still. We're a worry-wart couple. I wasn't allowed into the office where the test took place, so I sat in the stairwell to wait for him, perched on a very hard step. After about 10 minutes, my bum started to feel a bit worse for the wear so I searched google maps on my phone for somewhere to get a hot drink and sit on a comfy couch. Maps told me there was a place just around the corner, maybe 50 yards from where I was sitting. I sent Mick a text (he wouldn't get it until after the test, because he'd had to turn off his phone and store it in a locker before he was able to sit the exam) telling him where I was.

I rounded the corner and crossed the street and found a very cute little coffee shop called Fancy Coffee. I immediately liked the place as I reached for the doorknob. An Italian looking man smiled at me from behind the counter and offered me a menu. I accepted the menu and decided that a hot chocolate sounded absolutely fabulous. I chose the comfy red leather couch in front of the window and watched people walk past the shop while I waited for my drink. I noticed a little old lady walk past with some very metallic purple eyeshadow. I had to smile.
The man brought my hot chocolate. It was almost too pretty to drink !

...almost. 

After only a few minutes, Mick called to find out where I was. He crossed the street to join me. He passed! I'm sure a lot of you are thinking "what's the big deal, the guy's 25 and driving tests are easy." Yes, they are... in America. In England, driving is actually a really difficult process to go through. Not to mention expensive. This is the first time he's ever taken the written test, but that's because he never really needed to before, with friends and public transportation. He did really well and showed me the sheet with his scores on it. Now he just needs to book the actual driving test, which I'm sure he'll also smoke! He celebrated with some caramel shortbread.

How great is that funky cutlery?!

We enjoyed our treats and went out to brave the cold so we could walk back to the train station. It's too bad we don't really ever have any reason to go to Worthing. I really liked Fancy Coffee and would love to make it a regular haunt of mine.

Fancy Coffee.

On another note, our family has some very exciting news... my sister and her horse Big Tyme just competed in the Pan American dressage games in Guadalajara Mexico. It was a huge deal, a massive honor to even make the USA team. This weekend, my parents, brother and his wife, and my brother in law all made the trip to Mexico to watch my sister ride. Mick and I really wanted to go, but understandably, it was just a bit too far for us. As it turns out, the USA Dressage team won the Gold Medal! My sister also won 3rd place for individual medals. I don't think the competition is quite over yet, but I'm so very proud of you, big sister! It must be such a reward for you to work at something so hard for most of your life and then to get such an amazing reward. I've watched you work for this since I was just a little girl, and I couldn't be happier for you. You truly are an inspiration! I wish we could have been there, but I can't wait for you to get home so we can talk on Skype and you can tell me all about it!
Read about dressage here (most people don't know what the heck it is!)
And read about the Pan American USA team (and my big sister!) here.


I think it's time to take a nice hot shower to warm me up!

The hair band and the rings

On the morning of June 23rd, 2010, I was a bundle of nerves. I woke up in my best friend of 22 years' spare bedroom near Los Angeles. Tabatha was going to take me to the airport that day so that I could fly to England to meet the man (unbeknownst at the time) who would be my husband. We rushed around the house, kind of re-packing my suitcases. I was trying to do my hair and makeup in a way that would last 16 hours of travel (hah). As we talked about all the what-ifs and hopes and dreams, Tabatha said she wanted to give me something for good luck, but she didn't know what. After rummaging through he jewellery box, she pulled out a purple and teal hair band. "I just feel like I should give you something to keep with you through this." It went on my left wrist and stayed there through the whole month I was in England. I wore it for a while after I got back to America, but it started to stretch out and went into my makeup bag to live for a while. I've switched makeup bags a few times but never lost it. Seeing it now and then, peeking out from underneath a tube of mascara makes me happy. The other day I noticed it again and glanced at my left wrist, where it used to live. Traveling further down my arm and onto my had led my eyes to my wedding and engagement rings. I had to smile and felt a nice little warm feeling in my heart. I took the hair band out of my makeup bag and put it back on my left wrist. The past, present and future.
It's a good reminder of a few things: a good friend's love, the power of hope, and the love we all search for. And the love I found.