Saturday, November 24, 2007

"Pelican Crossing"----and more



There are some interesting road crossing signs in England! I wish I had pictures of all of them.

1. "Zebra Crossing"-----This is a pedestrian crossing with black and white painted stripes across the road.

2. "Pelican Crossing"-----This one is the common name for "Pedestrian Light Controlled Crossing", which is a pedestrian crossing with a push button on a pole that controls the walk or don't walk signal (green man or red man).

3. "Toucan Crossing"-----This is for cyclists and pedestrians. There is a green cyclist symbol as well as a green man symbol for crossing.

4. "Pegasus Crossing"---This signal button is mounted higher on the posts for the convenience of horse riders. The red/green symbols are horses.

5."Puffin Crossing"---This is the common name for "Pedestrian User-Friendly Intelligent". There is a curbside detector that determines when the "walk" symbol is no longer needed.

6. "Migratory Toad Crossing" ---This one is only on specific roads during February to May.

7. "Elderly People Crossing"---The sign shows a bent-over elderly man and woman using canes.

Two of my favorite signs are "Slow Race Horses" (sort of like our "Slow Children at Play") and "Cat and Duck Crossing".

Friday, November 23, 2007

Christmas Decorations at Quedam Trading Estates


Thursday afternoon Ron dropped Julie, the girls, and me off at the Quedam Trading Estates (shopping center) as he was on his way to work. We looked around in lots of shops and stayed there until dark, which is early here! We wanted to see the Christmas lights before we rode home on the bus. Here are some pictures of the shopping area.








Agusta Westland, the name on the next decoration, is the place where Ron is working.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day started out exciting for Lauren, because she pulled a tooth. The only problem is that we don't know if the Tooth Fairy comes to England, and if she does, will she leave English money or American money? We will know the answer in the morning!
Ron was working 2nd shift today, so he had to leave for work about 1:15 p.m. We had our Thanksgiving meal at noon.
Here are some photos of our England Thanksgiving. The first one shows some of the food----candied carrots, turkey,and mashed potatoes. Not in the picture are the delicious rolls that Julie and the girls made (Jo Fay's roll recipe!). You can tell that it is not quite the usual quantity or variety of our traditional Thanksgiving!
The next picture shows Lauren doing the job that she likes best---keeping the ice emptied into a bowl so there is enough for us to use. Notice the size of our one ice tray!

Next is Katelyn showing our "cranberry sauce" (cranberry and apple "conserve" made by our preacher, Trevor) and our "fruit salad" (fruit cocktail).

Notice our dining table---the coffee table in the living room. It is twice as big as our kitchen table! The girls had made some decorations, but they did not fit on the table!

You might can tell that everyone was looking at the computer screen-----no, it wasn't the Dallas Cowboy game!

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Food from Home!


Here is a picture of the food that Julie brought to us from home. We sure had been missing these things-----it was like Christmas!

"Big Cook, Little Cook"

Lauren and Katelyn had a favorite T.V. show when they were here in England in July---"Big Cook, Little Cook", and they were anxious to watch it again this week. Today they finally got to watch it.
The show is about a big cook named Ben and a tiny cook named Small. They own a restaurant, and on every episode they prepare food from their cookbook for a nursery rhyme character or fairy tale character. Each time there is a missing ingredient, and Small has to ride off on his wooden cooking spoon to look for the missing ingredient, which is usually found on a farm. The show then tells how the food is grown, harvested, and processed.
Today's show told about the black and white spotted cow who jumped over the moon,
and the food Big Cook and Little Cook made was "Spotty Trifle" for the cow. It was made of sponge cake with jam between the layers. That was at the bottom of a trifle bowl, then fruit cocktail was poured over it, then jello (In England, jello is "jelly") on top of that, then a layer of sauce ( our pudding), then a final layer of whipped cream. On the very top were "chocolate buttons", which are chocolate candy pieces in the shape of little circles. The whipping cream was the missing ingredient today.

One interesting thing is that Little Cook's real name is Daniel Wright, my dad's name!
Here are photos of a Big Cook, Little Cook book, the girls lying on the couch watching the show, and photos of the show.








Here are our Big Cook and our Little Cook helping Julie make homemade rolls for tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner!

Monday, November 19, 2007

Wells Cathedral

Ron, Julie, the girls, and I went to the town of Wells on Sunday afternoon. Wells is an old town in southwest England. The name came from the 3 wells that are located within the town---one in the market place and two on the grounds of the Bishops' Palace and cathedral.
The cathedral in Wells is well-known. In fact, it is the site of one of the scenes in the new movie "Elizabeth".

There was a church on the site of the present cathedral in the 700's. A baptismal font is the oldest surviving part of that church. Foundations of a 900 a.d. cathedral still exist, but the oldest part of the cathedral that you can see today dates from the 1200's. The bishop responsible for construction in 1200 was one of the bishops at the signing of the Magna Carta.













There is a 1392 clock that still has its medieval face depicting the earth as the center of the universe. When the clock strikes the quarter hour, jousting knights move around the clock. You can't really see the knights in the following photo, but the information beside the clock says that the same knight has fallen off his horse for over 600 years!


For centuries Cathedral Swans have been trained to ring bells, using strings attached to the bells, to beg for food. There are currently two swans that ring for their lunch, but we did not see them. We only saw a "cathedral cat" named Louis!

When we were leaving Wells Cathedral, it was about 4:50 p.m., and it was dark already.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Bridport Harbor

Julie, Lauren, and Katelyn flew in this morning to spend the week with us here in England. We were really happy to see them!
West Bay and Bridport are about an hour away from Martock. It is a really neat beach area because of the interesting limestone cliff formations. Ron and I went one day last week, and then we went back there today to take Julie and the girls.

On the sign, notice that the city is "twinned" with another city, a city in France. It is like our sister cities, or an adopted cities.


These next pictures were taken last week before Julie and the girls got here.




The next pictures were from today. The girls were quite the rock climbers!







Of course, the girls had to hunt for rocks to bring home----I think they found at least 50 pounds of "special" rocks!




There was a large hill that Lauren, Katelyn, and Ron climbed.


In the next picture you can see Julie way down at the bottom of the hill.