The Posh Life

A friend of ours from church works for the town's very posh "Old Course Hotel" and was given free tickets to a Boxing Day black-tie Gala and invited us along. Not only did we get to spend the evening dressed to the nines with a fabulous dinner but we were also given an AWESOME deal to stay over-night in the hotel!!! It was seriously a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We checked into the hotel early on Tuesday and joined our friends for a cooking demonstration with the chefs from their 5-star restaurant. Jeff was in heaven. He had a great time decorating a Christmas cake with the pastry chef. We then returned to our hotel room to get dolled up for the evening's events. It began with champagne and some amazing canapes followed by an incredible dinner and dancing. By the end of the night the group was absolutely knackered (that means exhausted). :) The next morning we enjoyed a lovely breakfast with an incredible view of the Old Course and the West Sands. If you look closely, you can just make out the North Sea in the background. After breakfast our friend took us on a tour of the hotel including some of the executive suites and of course the incredible spa. Man could I get used to this kind of lifestyle!!! :)

Feliz Navidad

Merry Christmas, everyone!!! Boy, did we have yet another busy day today. We started off singing/playing at church at 10:30 this morning. We then rushed home to throw together some mashed potatoes and green bean casserole to take to our Christmas pot-luck dinner at 1pm. A bunch of the post-graduate divinity students and their families got together for a proper Christmas meal. Most of the students are American so we had some great traditional food...........I still can't believe how much food I put down today....it was awesome!!! In the picture, I'm the one in the red shirt in the back stuffing my face with green bean casserole. :) Oh and it was only this Christmas that Jeff and I first discovered the amazing goodness of pecan pie....how we ever made it 27 years without pecan pie is a serious mystery. :) Anyway, after the dinner we then went over to a friend's house for some Christmas cookies.....she's a professional baker and, I've got to say, the cookies were INCREDIBLE! Don't believe me? Take a look at the picture! :) It has been a great Christmas. We made sure that we kept ourselves busy so that we wouldn't have too much time to sit around and be sad about the fact that we weren't home with family and friends. You all are in our thoughts this holiday season! We want to wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of our hearts. :)

Christmas Eve

Oh the joys of Christmas. We just got home from the midnight carol service at one of the churches in town. This is the second Christmas Eve midnight carols we've experienced since moving to the UK and boy are they fun! Today we were at church bright and early and then came home to open presents since we won't get a chance tomorrow....we're busy, busy, busy! Then we went to our neighbor's house this afternoon for Christmas drinks followed by a trip to a friend's house for take-out and Christmasy festivities. Then we headed over to the church for the carol service. It's great knowing sooo many people here....it's just not possible for anyone to be left alone for Christmas in the this small town. :) Ok, it's off to bed....we've got to be at church at 10am to celebrate the morning of Christ's birth!

The make-up meal

Today we spent the whole day cooking an early Christmas dinner with our friends Dana and Reno and their friend, Dan, from Aberdeen. We had a great time hanging out in the kitchen all day. Jeff made a ham with a brown sugar and sangria glaze. It was soooooooooo good. Reno made a goose with a fruity aromatic filling. I never thought that I'd be one for eating goose, but I've got to say that it was pretty darn good. Of course we had other traditional items such as mashed potatos, yams, cranberry sauce, and stuffing. It soooo made up for my tragic Thanksgiving experience! :)

The official start of the St Andrews Christmas Adventures

Well, I'm officially on holiday (or vacation, as you may say) and boy does it feel great! Our shelf is now decorated with bunches and bunches of christmas cards from students and, even though I'm not a class teacher, I still got a couple gifts (both were candles, which I LOVE). We plan to keep ourselves pretty busy this holiday season with lots of get-togethers with other families staying in St Andrews this Christmas and our friends from London coming up to visit for Hogmanay (or New Year's as you may say). :) I'll keep you posted on our St Andrews Christmas adventures.

Singing Competitions Continued

So the two finalists have just performed the song that will be the winner's first single......and get this.......they sang "A Moment Like This!" Yeah, the same song that Kelly Clarkson won American Idol with! I have to admit that I was pretty irritated that they couldn't come up with a new song and that they actually thought someone else could live up to Kelly Clarkson's performance of that song.....I mean she is really popular over here and I'm sure that most people over here have heard Kelly sing that song.....it's even on a TV commercial over here. Anyway, after my initial dissapointment of the song choice, I listened to the first contestant butcher the song (it really wasn't written for a male singing voice). And then I thought...."You know, this could be interesting. Seeing as how Kelly Clarkson is my idol and all, I wonder how this girl will sound? Could she possibly be even better than Kelly?" And I've got to say....it was pretty darn awesome! She definitely made the song her own by putting in her own little vocal bits including a jaw-dropping high note. I don't know, man, I may have a new favorite!

Singing Competitions

I absolutely love singing competitions. It's soo exciting to watch people start out their singing careers, especially those who actually have talent. I mean look at Kelly Clarkson.....her name is known all over the world. Well, I'm sitting here watching X-Factor which is similar to American Idol (or Pop Idol, the original British show) but the singers are put into 3 categories: 16-24 year olds, over 25 year olds, and groups. All three categories compete against each other with each judge (one of the them being Simon Cowell, of course) representing a category. So it becomes a competition between judges as well. It's soo funny though because Simon is actually the most logical judge....I agree with him 9 times out of 10. Sharon Osborne is just too nice to everyone and Louis (some annoying Irish guy) is only focused on beating Simon. Well, it's now the final and Simon's category (the 16-24s) is going to win because both finalists are from that category. The clear winner is a girl which I know will become a famous name in the US as well as the UK. She is the next Kelly Clarkson....in fact her voice is very similar to Mariah Carey but she would never compare herself to someone that big (she's soo humble). She is truly amazing. I'm sure that the name Leona Lewis will hit your radio soon.

"Never eat singing food."

Tonight we headed over to our friend's house for a group viewing of The Muppet Christmas Carol. And the crazy thing... some people actually knew the words to all the songs! It's a sad, sad world we live in. :) Although I must say that there is something rather satisfying about Muppet humor. Oh the joys of singing puppets...

Christmas cheer

This Saturday we went down to Edinburgh with our friends Allison, Mariam, and Meg. And boy does Edinburgh know how to do Christmas! They had a proper German Christmas market which, I have to say, was pretty darn close to the Christmas markets we went to in Bonn and Cologne a couple years back. There were a variety of Christmas crafts as well as proper German food. Jeff of course got some German sausage while I went for the German cheesy noodles. (I couldn't even attempt to tell you their German name.) We also shared some apfel strudel. It was great because they also had a "Winter Wonderland" complete with ICE SKATING! Oh boy was I excited! This made for my third annual UK winter ice skating. I first ice skated three winters ago when I went on a trip with the kids I worked with. I decided that ice skating is officially my Christmasy thing that I have to do each year. There is just nothing better than getting all warm and cozy in a big coat complete with scarf and gloves and ice skating to Christmas music. It's got to be one of the greatest things ever! :)

Party on, dude

Well this has been quite the weekend. I came home from work Friday and went to the gym as usual. When I got back home our friends Allison, Catherine, and Casey were sitting in our living room chatting with Jeff about how we're all going out dancing. Of course Jeff wasn't too excited but I was all for it. After a good shower and touch up, us three beautiful ladies and two slightly uncomfortable men hit the town and actually found not one but two places in our small little town that has dancing. I never even knew these places existed. There also happened to be a huge Bindi that night. The university's Indian groups all put together this HUGE party with tons of dancing to Bollywood-type songs. The party was actually in the town aquarium which was really cool. Some of you have been to the aquarium, and just for some perspective, the place was packed. You could go hang out and dance round the sting ray and shark pool. It was soo cool! Well, Allison hit it off with a bouncer at one of the first places we went to so she and I ended up going back Saturday night for their Karaoke night while she did a bit of flirting. So after these two nights in a row of late night fun, I then got up early Sunday morning to sing for church. (On a side note, the worship was awesome this morning.) The craziest thing is that I'm not actually feeling that tired......and boy do I love my sleep.