Made in America

Our littlest munchkin, Naomi, may have British parents ... but being born in the USA, she is also American!!

As you can see below, she looks proud of it too. Now we'll have to brush up on American culture during our final year here, so that we can celebrate that side of Naomi's heritage as well!!

A couple of weeks ago, the first of her passports arrived (as she can have both British and American ones) ... it seemed to make it more official that she wasn't born in the same country as the rest of us!

Abigail has been looking forward to our next trip to London (which isn't until the end of October) for months. We told her we couldn't go until Naomi had her passport! Without a moments hesitation, when we opened the envelope and took the passport out, Abigail piped up 'Can we go to London now?!'

Abigail also felt it was important for her prized possession, Monkey, to have a passport too if he was to travel with us to London. So whilst Auntie Amy was here, we set her & Abigail to work ... and as you can see Monkey is also ready for international travel!!

Now we just have the daily inquiry from Abigail ... 'Are we going to London today?'!! We fly two months from tomorrow ... we have a feeling they're going to be a long two months! ;o)

Swapping Snow for Sunshine!

Mark's sister, Amy made her third visit out to see us in Ohio this month ... but whereas the last two visit's have been at Christmas time in the snow ... this trip she found us in the heat and humidity of an Ohio summer! It literally hit her as she walked out of the airport building to get to the car! While she was here Amy got to have more fun with Abigail (and us!!) ... but she got to have her first cuddles with Naomi too!

With Abigail, there were of course the required Tea Parties on the front porch ...

Silliness in the back garden and paddling pool (& the pool at Dresden!) ...

Crazy styling when playing dress-up together ... we think Mark should consider modelling the hat that these two decided was the perfect accessory to one of his work shirts!!

And the craziness continued when we let them out in public too!!

We took a few trips out together in the sunshine while Amy stayed with us ... a day in Columbus at COSI (www.cosi.org) an interactive kid friendly science museum! Followed by the yummiest sausages at Schmidts Sausage Haus (www.schmidthaus.com) ... there are few places to get 'real' sausages out here!!

Above three familiar faces by the echoing well at COSI which they were talking into ... and below, using a pulley system to lift Abigail up, up, up! There are so many different areas of the museum ... and so many buttons to press and levers to pull!!

We loved the sign below in the Gadget Zone part of COSI ... oh so true!! ;o)

We also took a few trips up to Amish country too, naturally Miller's Bakery (!), Hershbergers, The Polish Pottery Niche ... and Rolling Ridge Ranch ... riding the wagon and feeding the animals ... not sure who the animals were though judging by the photos below!!

Earlier in the summer, Abigail had been a bit reluctant to touch even the smallest, fluffiest animals and avoided everything apart from pony rides (no logic there at all!). As you can see she's slowly gaining confidence ...

Naomi also got her fix of Auntie Amy ... but more of the sensible cuddle type than the silliness ... although from the look on her face below, it won't be long!

The rest of the time she was happy to ride along with us and just take everything in either from her buggy or the sling ... that's the way to travel!

On one of Amy's last days here we took a photo of her and Mark together ... they share the same birthday in September but were born 3 years apart! Each year they have a 'birthday photo' as close to the day as possible ... so here is the 2011 offering!!

There was also of course the entertaining chocolate tasting evening (see previous blog post) ... where ironically the winning 'candy' bar didn't even contain any chocolate at all!!!

Passing the Taste Test!

Having been in the States now for almost 2 years we've often been asked by UK and US friends alike how the chocolate/candy bar selection compares. In the interest of celebrating cultural differences and for a fun way to spend yesterday evening while Mark's sister, Amy is visiting, we thought we would investigate further!!

Being true Brits and knowing that we couldn't be convinced otherwise we steered clear of any kind of chocolate bar that was just Hershey's (sorry to our American friends ... it was just never going to make it an enjoyable evening for us if they'd been included!!). However while standing at the cash register in Walmart yesterday morning we still managed to pick up quite a selection!

As you can see above, once Abigail was asleep, Mark was all ready to go!! We decided to score each bar according to 4 criteria; quality of the chocolate, texture, presentation and overall. All three of us rated each of these from 1-3; 1=yuck, 2=ok, 3=yum ... and then we worked out final calculations which gave each bar an overall score out of a maximum of 9 points!! (You can see we took this process very seriously!)

A small piece of each one was given to each 'judge' and where necessary Mark did the honours chopping them into bite-sized pieces! We also had an independent adjudicator, Naomi, to check the quality of what we were eating and that it was a fair test ;o) (She was independent given that she was unable to try any herself just yet!!)

Some of the bars had different variations ... for example we tried Snickers, Snickers Almond and Snickers Peanut Butter and others we tried as we hadn't hear of that flavour before, like the Coconut M and M's! There were lots that were completely new to us like the two Jenny is holding below ... a 'Thingamajig' and a 'Whatchamacallit'!

We definitely had some favourites and some we REALLY didn't like ... I think the faces below say it all!! ... along with the a few bits of leftover chocolate, that after one bite were just too much!!

There were chocolate bars that are supposedly the same ... Twix, Snickers and Kitkat which taste very different from one side of the pond to the other (It's all about the chocolate unfortunately!) ... and the US Milky Way tastes like a UK Mars and the UK Milky Way tastes like a US 3 Musketeers! It certainly was an interesting taste experience and after about an hour the final one had been tasted and the scores were in ...

We tried 17 in all and for those of you who know what we're talking about here they are, in reverse order (of course!!) ... the maximum score was 9 ...

• Coconut M and M's - 3.75
• Butterfinger - 4
• Snickers Almond - 4.25
• 3 Musketeer Truffle Crisp - 4.5
• Kitkat - 4.75
• Thingymajig - 4.75
• Twix - 5
• Almond Joy - 5.5
• Snickers - 5.5
• 3 Musketeers - 5.5
• Reeses Mini PB Cups - 5.75
• Turtles - 6
• Snickers Peanut Butter - 6.25
• Milky Way - 6.5
• Whatchamacallit - 6.75
• York - 8.25
• Payday - 8.33

The top two were clear winners over the rest of the selection ... in fact Jenny and Amy were later found fighting over the remaining bites of Payday, the winning bar!!

The remaining pile of wrappers and uneaten goodies tell the tale of a very amusing evening!! If you're living in a different country from 'home' and things like these are all new and a little strange ... we can recommend putting them through the taste test as a good evenings entertainment!!