Just a little something...

It's a cold, rainy day in London but we managed to take a pretty long walk through the Heath and end up at our new favorite Sunday Roast spot - a pub called The Stag. The one nice thing about the rain is that it clears out the Heath and we had it almost completely to ourselves. And the yummy roast was a perfect reward, as was eating it in the cozy, warm pub. Plus, The Stag is one of the only places around that serves non-alcoholic beer (yay for me!)...

Here's a picture of the roast chicken for two... just something small :)

Happy Day After Thanksgiving!

Forgot to write a holiday themed post yesterday, so thought I would check in on Black Friday and wish everyone a happy day after Thanksgiving. I hope you all ate WAY too much, got to spend time with friends and/or family, took a nap on the couch in a turkey-induced coma, watched football, and had Christmas music on in the background at some point during the day.

We shared Thanksgiving dinner with about 25 other Americans at our friend's apartment in Hampstead. There was a TON of food, including a bacon-wrapped turkey, and lots of giving thanks. I made two sweet potato casseroles (Aunt Barb's recipe), which were a big hit and totally gone about halfway through the feast. Thanksgiving isn't quite the same when you have to work on Thursday and Friday, but it was still nice to take a little time out to celebrate.

Next up, Christmas!

Misc Pics

A couple of the bump... it's getting pretty big as you can tell





The reindeer they brought in (from the North Pole?) for the Hampstead Christmas Fair



The Fairy Store on Flask Walk had a snow machine running, which is a little hard to see in this pic but was delighting all the kids who walked by

36 weeks

For lack of anything more interesting to blog about, I thought I'd give a quick preggers update. I'm officially 36 weeks as of today, which (if the babe were to come on time) would mean that I have four weeks to go. Hard to believe that I'm in the home stretch, but I'm still 100% convinced he's going to be dramatically late (like 2 or 3 weeks), so trying not to get too antsy. I'm also kind of enjoying these last few weeks of freedom and don't want them to go by too quickly.

We've also been doing our birth classes (through the NCT or National Childcare Trust) for the past week. After 6 hours on Sunday, 2 hours on Monday evening and 2 hours on Wednesday evening, we've only got one more class to go. It's been all talk about labor and birth, so somewhat helpful, although I'm much more interested in what the heck to do once the baby actually arrives! I guess that will be covered on Monday... Lots of the information they give is focused on how to deal with the NHS and educating women on what their rights are. It sounds like the doctors and midwives have their own agendas (like getting you out of there as quickly as possible with the least amount of effort) and it's really important for you to know what your real options are so you don't get pushed into something that you don't want. All in all, it's made me even happier than before that we're able to go through a private doctor/hospital.

We head back to the doc on Tuesday and start weekly appointments from there on out. Stroller (pram) and crib (cot) are being delivered next week. I guess this is really happening!

Fall in the Heath

A few pictures from our wanderings through the Heath this weekend

Check it out!

Very excited that I figured out how to do this... just added a little widget to the blog (it's over there on the left side of the page) that keeps track of the books I've read and what I thought of them. It's from a site called GoodReads, where you can create a virtual bookshelf, see what you're friends are reading, and get suggestions on other books you might like. Now, whenever Ric and I add new books to our GoodReads accounts, they'll show up on our "bookshelves" here on the blog.

London baby shower

Baby showers aren't very common in the UK (I think they're very typically American) but my friend Sayula very kindly offered to host one for me to celebrate the imminent arrival of Baby Bremer with my London friends. We had a lovely afternoon filled with tea, cakes, scones, and cupcakes. And lots of baby talk :)

Yummy homemade goodies



Lexa Remmes who just had a little baby boy four weeks ago!



London friends





Opening presents