Because some things are just better off base... I'm a big fan of Sainsbury's.

We've probably saved money being closer to the commissary now than Sainsbury's, but I still go to Mildenhall to grab some of our favourite things.   Just about all produce is better off base.  Most of the fruit and veg at the commissary is past its' prime by the time it arrives at Lakenheath.  You can almost be guaranteed tasty strawberries if you buy them off base.  A lot of the time fruit and veggies are cheaper on the local economy too.    

Sainsbury's carries great bread.  They have a  really good bakery, but the Kingsmill brand that's everywhere in England is where it's at lately for us.  No crust!  Saves me a few seconds when packing lunches  in the mornings since I don't have to cut crust off sandwiches!  Luke and Ella are stinkers about crust.

I love Innocent smoothies.  Delicious!

They come in cute little kid pouches, too.   

 We love pan au chocolate.

And of course the candy.  I saw these on base the other day for Easter, but Cadburry Eggs are on the shelves year-round off base.  Tasty little buggers.  The Cadburry factory isn't too far from here.  One of these days I want to visit it.

 
Other Sainsbury's favourites are the  premade sandwiches, dinner for 2 kits (especially the Indian ones!) and their awesome cheese and yogurt selections.  Yum.

Dover Castle

Last Saturday we went with the Willeys and the Lakes to Dover Castle.  We've seen signs for it when going other places but had never stopped to check it out.  It's a little more than a two hour drive if I remember correctly.  Anyway, it's right on the edge of some of the famous white cliffs, and since it's on the coast, it was cold!!   If there weren't so many places in this country that I wanted to see before we move, I'd save travelling for March-early October.  Cool place though.  I'm glad we went.   Driving up to the castle...

The castle entrance...

One of the first things we did was climb to the top of the castle to get a good view.  Here's Jake and kiddos at the top.

And some pictures of the view from the top!  The English Channel...

Another part of the castle and the town..

More view from the castle top... See those towers way in the distance (top right) in the next picture?  On the way to the castle we drove by them and Ella yelled out, "Hey!  It's the Eiffel Tower!!"  haha.  Not quite.  I guess her memory of our trip to the real thing is a little foggy.   She cracks us up!

Dover is probably the most popular location to drive aboard a ferry to cross over to France if you go the ferry route.  You can see one taking off way out in the ocean...

Okay, one last view of the top of the castle.

Lots and lots of stairs and windy hallways...

The castle kitchen...

There's a little war museum there.  Luke liked the guns.

Knight training  was going on that day so all the kids got to train to be knights.  It was actually really informative.  I leaned a lot!  After going through 45 minutes of  "training" the kids got to hunt down the castle's dragon and the king gave them all chocolate and dubbed them knights afterwards.

This guy taught the kids about weapons.  His dog was pretty much the size of a horse.

Kill the dragon!

After finishing up at the castle we went down to the secret war tunnels there.  They were used for hundreds of years.. up through WW2.  No pictures were allowed inside.  Some of the stuff in there reminded me of being at the Churchill War Rooms in London.  We drove over to the park to see the cliffs once we finished with the tunnels and in the five minutes it took to drive over there both kids fell asleep and it started pouring really hard.  Guess we'll do the cliffs another day.

Valentines Day 2012 Highlights

*Luke's teacher sent home note cards the week before Valentine's Day to make Valentines for classmates.  No store bought Valentines allowed.  Luke had a great time decorating them and writing notes for his friends.  I wish I would have taken a picture of them before he took them to school!  They were cute.  He was supposed to put a "word present" on each person's Valentine and insisted that they all say something different.  By the end he was getting pretty creative.  He came up with some pretty nice compliments like "To Jack,  You are a fast runner.  From Luke."   It was fun reading the cards he got on Valentines Day.  He thought it was completely ridiculous that Isabelle put "To Luke, You are handsome."  haha.  How embarrassing :)

*Ella and I went to a little Valentines get together.  It's always fun eating lunch and chatting with friends.  The girls decorated sugar cookies and exchanged Valentines and treats with each other.

That's the only time I got the camera out on Valentines Day.

* Jake got me some of my favourite treats and a cute card.  Love that boy.  He and some other guys in the neighbourhood surprised some of us wives with a day at the Elveden Centerpark Spa. We went with the Lakes and Willeys.  This spa has a big pool sized hot tub to swim around in outside and then like 15 rooms with different types of treatments. My nose hasn't bothered me much during pregnancy so I was surprised  that I couldn't handle some of the rooms...  Lavender, Eucalyptus, etc.made me feel ill so I avoided some of them, but the areas that weren't pumped full of crazy aromas were relaxing and nice.  I almost threw away some of my old swimsuits earlier this year but I'm glad I didn't!... ended up being able to get my belly into one of my old tankinis.  Phew.  Not wanting to buy a maternity swim suit!  We had dinner at a French restaurant in the complex there afterward.  Good times.  Thanks for being my Valentine Jake!

Oh, and I'm not sure how our spell check ended up on British English, but I'm  kind of liking the way they spell things around here.  I think I'm going to leave it  :)

Fun Sunday

 Last year it snowed a little here, but not enough to play in.  It's usually really cold but just icy.  We were excited when we walked out of the BX and it was snowing pretty hard last Saturday night!  Sunday morning we woke up to a covered neighborhood.  Since this area isn't prepared to drive in snow, plow roads, etc. that meant no church!  The whole neighborhood was out playing in the snow.  We got together with a few other families in our ward that live here in the 'hood.   Ate lots of yummy soup, bread sticks, and hot chocolate at the Lake's house with the Listellos, Meldrums, and Willeys.  The adults played games inside while the kids did their thing.  By the end of the day every family here in Liberty Village had a snowman in their yard.  

Looking out our front door on Sunday morning...

And out the back door...

Our house.  I think it's the first time I've gotten around to taking a picture of it.  We like base housing so far.  It's nice when you don't even have to change your own light bulbs! 

Looking down the street...

Bundled up cuties...

Ella was Jake's helper.  I watched and Luke ran around with his buddies.

 Sad and frozen after the snowball fight.  Luke and Ella came in to thaw for a bit and we changed them into dry clothes to head back outside..

Almost done..

Mr. Snowman lasted for a couple of days and then his head fell off.  The neighbor kiddos made the pieces into angry birds.  haha.  I should take a picture of them now.

Luke and Hunter...

Tyler was super nice and would run the kids down the street on the sled.  

And more neighbor fun..

It's snowing again tonight.  I'm hoping we wake up to a lot and can stay home from school/work.  At least have a late start day!  Snow is a fun thing when it doesn't come around very often.

Two Princesses

  Found these girls upstairs getting ready for the ball the other day.  They were all dressed up and had done each others makeup with some eye shadow I had forgotten to put away.  Whoops.  Thinking about it still makes me chuckle. It was so hard not to laugh when I saw them!   Ella told Amelia, "I think I'm the prettiest because I have the most makeup"  haha.
So I don't forget...

Baby

Like everything else going on around here lately, I'm late at posting this news to the blog.  We're expecting another cutie around July 3.  :)
We went to Cambridge about a  week and a half ago to a little clinic called BabyBond.  It was fun!  They tell you the gender of baby and claim to be 99% accurate from 16 weeks on.  It's fun too, because you can bring your other kiddos along.  Luke and Ella thought it was pretty cool to see.  Originally, I thought  I wanted #3 to be a surprise.  I've got all I need for a summer baby boy or a girl.  Waiting until pregnancy was finished just seemed too long of a wait after a while though!  I'm too impatient to wait for surprises.

My guess was: Boy,  For some reason I've always thought our family would have more boys than girls, and every old wives tale told me I was having a boy.  
Jake's thoughts:  Girl,  Only admitted to thinking it would be a girl after we found out though... so I'm not sure his guess counts ;)
Luke thought baby would be a Boy.
Ella thought baby would be a Girl

 The ultrasonographer showed us pictures of what to look for in our ultrasound and Jake saw a "hamburger bun" right away.  haha.  The sonographer confirmed several more times for us that baby is indeed a girl!  Fun news.   For all except Luke that is.  He cried all the way home.  Poor kid wants a brother!  Here are the pictures from our Cambridge outing.  About half of the time you're in there they do 4Dscan.  I guess it's still easier to see if baby is a boy or a girl with the regular 2D scans.  

And since I'm posting ultrasound pics, here are some from my first visit to the Dr. last month at 14 wks.