As you all know by now, we are expecting the arrival of our first born due June 9th 2012. We are very excited and have enjoyed getting our sneak peeks of our little one at 13 and 21 weeks. As you can see, the baby is looking more like a baby now, and I personally think I can see a little bit of Tim in the profile. The exciting news that we found out last Friday is that we are going to be proud parents of a beautiful baby boy. We had been wanting to find out since I got pregnant, so it was very exciting when the moment finally arrived. we were actually both surprised because we both had a hunch it was a girl. It was a very nice surprise! Since the news, it has been fun imagining what he will be like. We have started thinking more seriously about names, but we are not telling any of our favorites. Any suggestions are very welcome, but the name will certainly be a surprise until Baby Webb makes his appearance. The joke around the house now is that I will have a house full of me and sweet boys! We always call the cats, the sweet boys, and of course there is Tim, so I will certainly be one outnumbered female. We are looking forward to spending time with our little boy, and I hear that Uncle Phil has already ordered a Barnet Football Club one piece for his nephew. I think he is hoping that they will have another instant Barnet fan! Of course, as a protective mother, I will make sure that our boy is a bit bigger before he starts attending games and make sure he is wrapped up warm against the windy football weather. Needless to say, Tim is looking forward to some family soccer coaching in the future.
Hello, I have been meaning to post a picture of our house with its nice paint job. I think you'll notice a big improvement if you look back to previous photos of when we bought the place. It now has a very nice fresh new look and certainly stands out on our street! When we first got it painted, we actually were surprised at just how bright it came out, but as we have gotten many (surprisingly) compliments from other people on the choice of color. We have come to appreciate how it brightens up the whole street. We can also now say, "We live in the blue house on Woodfields" as it's the only one and you certainly can't miss it! As you can see the weather is getting brighter, and hopefully will continue to do so, as it has been another long dreary winter as usual. We just changed the clocks last night, so we are now really moving into the springtime. Hope you like the house, and feel free to comment or come and stay with us if you are headed to the UK.
This is a program that is on in the fall which explores all around England in terms of the natural happenings of the season with discussions about animals etc. There are a lot of viewers who write in about different things they are seeing and with questions they would like answered. These guys try to advise people about what to plant and what to harvest etc. They also have a program like this in the spring called....Spring Watch of course! Today I went for a walk with the local history society doing a "field study" which felt a bit like an autumn watch in Stansted. We walked all around the village and looked at the sites of Stansted which have history attached to them as well as natural interests. We saw the sites of old bridges, where old town shops used to be and houses etc. before the railroad came to Stansted. We also saw a badgers latrine (very interesting) which taught us about the varied diet of the badgers as well as their cleanliness evidenced by the fact that their toilet was pretty far away from their home and they appear to always go in the same spot. We walked for a while, but pretty slowly considering I was the only participant under age 50! I also have a cold so I was sniffling all the way and was really running out of tissues by the time we finished. Anyway, I ended up at my mum-in-law's for a "lemsip" which is a drinkable medicine for colds orignially with lemon flavor, but mine was black currant. We had a very civilized tea and a chat and then I walked home feeling very villagey. Now I am back at home trying to get the jokes in an old program called Dad's Army which Tim likes but I don't really understand. I am coughing a lot so I will stop writing now and make another cuppa.
Yes, it has been a very long time since I last posted. Apologies for my lack of updates. For those of you who are dying to know what is going on in the world of webb, here it is...We bought a house! Here is is, our little character cottage we bought. It is in Stansted, where we are a five minute walk from the in-laws and a 2 minute walk from the train to London. For those of you who may be thinking of planning to visit us, we still have to fix up the spare room, but there are more pictures to follow of all of our hard work! We managed to get the house just before our trip back home in August, and we also managed to paint it and do the floors. That meant that we had to move all of our stuff in after we came back and before Tim went back to work at his new job. Yes, that's right he is a "proper" teacher now, but that is another story. Anyway more house DIY pictures to follow.
Since I just started my new job yesterday, Tim and I are very excited to start looking for a place of our own. It will be great to get to set up house in our own space, and now that I am working it will be easier to get going with that plan. It just so happens that David Lee Estate Agency is in Stansted and Lee (of David Lee) lives 2 doors down so we have talked to him about finding us a place. Above are some pictures of houses in Stansted and Bishop's Stortford which is typical of the houses that are around here. The one with the cream and brick house is a few houses together which is typical as well and these houses are called character cottages. That means that they have quaint features and are much older. The new houses are like the one on the left which are much more modern but thoroughly boring looking inside and out. So I think we are going for a character cottage (which will be small but hopefully we can make it work). All the houses are smaller here anyway so it's a non issue and at lease we will get to be on our own!
Just a quick note to say that Tim got baptized on Easter Sunday at our church. He has been a Christian since childhood but never took this brave step. He was a little nervous talking in front of the church but did a great job and even got dunked in twice because he didn't go all the way under the first time! It was a good day. His parents and his brother came and all of our friends were there supporting Tim. I am very proud of him!
I read this in 2 days because I borrowed it from a friend and I had enough spare time to do so. It was a good, logical and well organized discussion of some of the key arguments against God with practical explanations of evidence for the existence of God. It also covered why and how the God of Christianity is the only true God without being preachy or trite. A good read for initial research into Christian apologetics. Next, I will get into more detail with writings by C.S. Lewis and Ravi Zacharias who are both brilliant and can get into a different intellectual realm when it comes to these tough discussions. But, this one is definitely easy to digest without leaving out important details which is why it is so good. Check it out!
Dan Brown again! I read his other books, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons in that order and finally got around to this one. I have to say that his books are good for a page turner and a quick and easy read. That is good because they are a bit like an action adventure movie with more action than character development or other literary aspects. There are a lot exciting plot twists which you come to expect with his writing and start to predict after getting to know his style. Apparently there is one other book by him that I could read, Digital Fortress, but by now I may be able to completely predict the entire book's worth of plot twists so I am not sure it will be worth it. So I will probably wait a while before I go after that one once I finish my reading list (which is pretty long). Anyway this one is about a scientific discovery that comes at a critical time during a presidential election, and the details of the discovery could have a dramatic effect on the election as well as the world of science in general. So if you like science, you might actually see all the holes in his scientific events and descriptions and therefore may not be all that gripped by it, but if you can just enjoy it however far-fetched it may be, it is an exciting ride.
I have just finished reading a book by Jennifer Rees Larcombe who is an famous English Christian speaker and writer. She came from a Christian family heavily involved in ministry and quite famous in the UK. Her story is about a lot of things in her life. This is a book she wrote much after many of her other ones about God healing her and other spiritual topics. This one is very personal though. She admits a lot about herself and her difficulties and what is really going on under the surface of a life like hers. She has certainly been through a lot, but the great thing about the book isn't that she dealt with everything amazingly well and God just brought her through it and made everything work out (cause a lot didn't) but that she told how she learned things from simple occurrences in her life and how she processed through them going through all kinds of phases and learning to accept different things along the way. I can't really describe it well, but it is very interesting and encouraging for anyone living a Christian life.
Have I mentioned before that British people eat a lot of potatoes. Well, they certainly do. In fact I think it counts as a vegetable in a meal with just meat and potato. They eat them with every meal: breakfast potatoes, baked potatoes for lunch, boiled potatoes, French fried potatoes with fried fish. The problem with that is that although it is a vegetable, it is a really a starch and does not contain the nutrition that many other vegetables do such as greens and other healthy essentials. So, needless to say I am a bit sick of potatoes and I also feel that someone needs to let these Brits know that they need to eat "real" vegetables and more importantly raw ones! If you go into a restaurant and order a meal it may come with a salad garnish even if it says it comes with salad, but it will be a leaf of lettuce with a slice of cucumber and tomato with no dressing. In terms of hot veggies, they are usually just boiled with little to no seasoning on them. No wonder no one wants to eat salad and vegetables! So, here's my advice to solve the potato issue: Get into fresh vegetables and learn how to make a nice salad dressing with the basics- olive oil and vinegar and herbs. Also learn how to bake, steam or saute veggies with olive oil or other healthy oil and season them with fresh or dried herbs and spices. Don't be afraid of a little flavor! It might actually make things taste better!
Well, with a title like that, you know it's gonna be a major chick flick, I mean book. Wait a minute...yes this book cover is a picture from the movie. The problem with this book is that it is probably much better as a movie and much cheezier as a book. See, with a chick flick you can take a little bit more cheez, but not with a book. You want some meat, some tapestry threads weaving in an out, some character development, some interesting twists. Not the case with this book, in fact, I am still wondering how the book got to be so long with so many pointless pages. Shouldn't someone have edited it and at least said, cut the crap, develop the characters?! Well, I guess the author, Cecilia Ahern did not learn what we did in High School which was summed up in a couple of famous quotes: "Brevity is the soul of wit."-William Shakespeare and another one which paraphrased sounds like: "The art of good writing is never using two words when one will suffice."-No Clue who said it other than my history teacher. 
So This month has marked the half-year that we have been living in England. Woohoo! Well, not exactly. Most of you who have been reading know that things have NOT gone amazingly smoothly all the time we have been here. For one thing, I haven't even started working yet and we are barely earning any money. That has been tough. As I remember what we were thinking when we decided to move here, I think it is much more than we bargained for and then some. We are still hoping to move out of the in-laws house as soon as Tim gets a job lined up. We are hoping that will be beginning of the summer. We might live here in Stansted or we might move to Bishop's Stortford where our church is and where it is a bit more busy. This picture here is pretty much the down town of Stansted which is where the train station is. There are maybe 2 traffic lights in the village, but not even any roundabouts either. It's more of a , -get to the intersection see who's coming and go- kind of thing with driving in Stansted. Oh yeah and this building is the King's Arms, a pub, one of 3 that I know of in Stansted. Bet you like the little mini castle tower effect! So anyway we are looking forward to getting a place of our own with or without a castle tower (just kidding), but we are looking for a small house with character. This is mainly because it's either that or a small house without character! It should be fun!
Posts
All Comments
