Oh what a year!! Top 10 Reasons 2008 was GREAT!!

(Our Christmas Letter)

• Reason 10: A Little Snow - An entire extra week off from school just because of a little snow & ice = 3 weeks of Christmas vacation for the kids, instead of just 2!
• Reason 9: A New School - Maggie (3rd) and Lydia (K) both returned this fall to a new school, Free Orchards Elementary. Paige is attending Wonder-world pre-school. They are each doing wonderfully. Maggie is enjoying learning Geography, Lydia is focused on sight words and Paige’s teacher has asked if we could clone her because she is the perfect little pupil. We are so proud!!
• Reason 8: A New Job - After 4+ years in the same organization at Intel, Garrett was itching for something new and different. So, after a full year of exploring job opportunities and lots of talk about moving, in October, Garrett found a new role as a Product Marketing Engineer in the server motherboard division of Intel. He is really enjoying his new responsibilities and is happy to be learning and growing a lot even if it comes at the cost of being stretched outside of his comfort zone.
• Reason 7: Some Family Time - In October Mindy had the opportunity to get away and visit her sister Megan in North Carolina for a week. Megan had just had a new baby Girl, Cora and JoAnn was there visiting too, so it turned out to be a very fun, even if low key visit. Mindy really enjoyed the peace and quiet and bonding with her Mom and sister.
• Reason 6: 2 Funerals - OK, this is not one we’ve blogged a lot about and it may sound morbid, but #6 is the funerals for both of Garrett’s paternal grandparents. His Grandpa, Samuel Dewey passed away on April 24th and his Grandma, Laura Mae McKibben on Nov 26th. Due to failing health conditions, neither came as a surprise and so while we are extremely saddened at the loss we feel; both funerals provided an opportunity for Garrett’s family to come together, to share stories and special moments while consoling each other and saying their goodbyes.
• Reason 5: JoAnn - Mindy’s Mom came and stayed and with us for the whole month of April. She was a great help during an extremely hectic time in our lives…Garrett was on business in Asia, Maggie was celebrating a birthday, Grandpa McKibben’s funeral and a new baby all in the course of a week. We most certainly would not have made it without her. Thank-you JoAnn!
• Reason 4: Our Anniversary - It was 11 years ago (soon to be 12) on February 7th that Mindy and Garrett were married in the Salt Lake Temple. Young and in love, we had no idea what lay in store for us. But, just look at as now…we’ve come a long way…12 fabulous years together. To celebrate we got away for the weekend to downtown Portland. It was amazing! Made possible by great friends who watched the girls.
• Reason 3: A Baptism - On April 24, Maggie turned 8yrs old (going on 18) and chose to be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We of course are very proud of our little girl. It was a very special day. She was able to share it with her best friend Jessie Spencer.
• Reason 2: Haggis, Henry the 8th, Harry Coos and History - We were so fortunate to have had the opportunity to live in England this summer for 7 weeks (July 15-Aug 31), while Garrett was there for a work assignment. We visited numerous castles, learned a ton about the history of the English Monarchy; enjoyed several days in Scotland; and discovered some fantastic McKibben (McKebin) family history in Ireland.
• And the #1 Reason 2008 was Great: Bella Gwyn - that’s right Girl #4; we have 4 beautiful daughters. (Garrett continuously needs reassurance). And she turned out to be a birthday gift for Garrett, born on his birthday…April 30. Bella has brought such amazing joy to our home. We certainly have been blessed…in spite of some very early concerns with her health (not gaining weight, anemia, etc); she is now completely healthy and happy. Soon to be crawling.

We wish you all (our Family and Friends) a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2009. We pray for your continued happiness. May the Lord bless you and watch over you in these challenging times.
with all our love,
The McKibben Family
Garrett, Mindy, Maggie, Lydia, Paige & Bella

Updated: 11 Interesting things about our Trip

So, this will be my last entry about our trip--I promise!! I'm sure you are all sick of reading about the trip, but since this blog really is more for our family to remember our trip, I'm going to write down a few more things so that we can remember them! :)

1. Garrett's new lady. (She was such a lifesaver!) Before we left OR, Garrett thought it would come in handy to buy a GPS while we were over there. We used it for a bit here in OR and I thought it wasn't very handy because for one thing, it didn't even have our street on it's map and second of all, it would take us to places that we knew, in a different and longer way. So, I was skeptical. But, once we got over to England, she knew everything! So, my job as navigator was at an end. She was always calm in giving her directions and even when we would miss our turn/exit numerous times, she quickly came up with an alternative--without getting frustrated! She sure saved us from a lot of stress! We took her everywhere with us, even when we were walking around a city! She even talks with an English accent and we named her Emily.

2. Blue doors. I loved how colorful their front doors were over there. There were a lot of blue and red doors in England and we started taking pictures of them, towards the end of our trip. I was going to make a collage out of the pictures. They were so neat looking. In Ireland, they have all sorts of colors for their doors. There was blue, red, green, yellow, and purple. As we were driving down the street, Maggie said, "Wouldn't it be cool if someone had a pink door?" Sure enough about ten minutes later, we saw a pink door.

Here's just a few examples of the blue doors:

3. Some places over here in Britain and Ireland still have thatched roofs--like they did so long ago! We love the look of it! They must have something underneath the roof, so that rain doesn't drip into their houses all the time.


4. I knew England was known for it's little tiny roads, but 'Oh my gosh' are they tiny and narrow! We were really scared a few times driving down the road that we were going to hit the car going past us. On the left side of the road there is usually a bunch of plants and bushes or rock walls and then on the right side are the cars coming in the opposite direction. You either have to ride the wall or bushes or get hit by an oncoming car. There are even places in the road where it narrows down to one lane, especially if there's a small bridge coming up or a turn in the road. You really have to slow down and literally crawl and peek around the corner. One time we were going down one of these narrow country roads and came around a corner and there was this huge tractor thing coming right at us! It was truly scary!

5. To go with their tiny roads are their tiny cars. They are all so small. The biggest cars they have are about the size of my mini-van and they call them people movers. All their cars get great gas mileage--I guess because they use diesel fuel. I love all the mini coopers! Solviej--I thought of you every time I saw one! :)

6. Round-a-bouts. They are everywhere. I guess they are used because it is supposed to decrease congestion at intersections. Some of them get a little crazy and have 3 or 4 lanes going around this circle and you have to be in the correct lane depending which exit you take. There's one in Swindon, where Garrett worked, that is well-known and called "The Magical Round-a-bout". It has five smaller round-a-bouts inside one big one. Talk about confusing. Round-a-bouts are especially confusing for Americans because if you want to turn right, you have to go left into the round-a-bout to go right. They are helpful though if you missed your turn because you just drive up to the next round-a-bout and go all the way around and head back to where you missed your turn. I did get a chance to drive once or twice while I was there. It was pretty scary--and I only went through one or two little round-a-bouts. But just being on the wrong side of the car was weird, not to mention driving down the wrong side of the road. Even though I didn't drive much, I got used to riding on the wrong side. Just being in the car while Garrett drove, I'd try to help him to remember to stay on the left side if he forgot (which was just once or twice). But now that we're back here, I find myself thinking 'which side am I supposed to be on'? Garrett really got used to the driving over there. On the freeways, the right lane is the "over take" lane; which is the lane you are supposed to use to pass. Garrett swears that the right lane here in America is the fast lane. It took me a while to convince him that it's the left lane that is the fast lane.

7. Their shopping carts in the grocery stores are called 'trolleys'. And boy are they hard to control. I guess on ours the back wheels are locked so they don't turn every which direction. But on theirs, all the wheels are free rolling and you really have to work at keeping it going in the right direction.

8. I didn't know this before I went, but Great Britain and Ireland go by military time. It took me awhile, but I finally just memorized all the times, like: 21:00 was 9:00pm and 19:00 was 7:00 pm, etc instead of subtracting 12 every time I wanted to know the time.

9. I'm not sure if this is how it is all over England or just at the place we were, but we didn't have any screens on our windows. And of course they don't have air conditioning, so we'd keep the windows and doors open during the day to keep a breeze in. The bad thing was, was that this place was like Arachnaphobia. There were huge spiders all over, everywhere. Especially all over the outside of the house. So since we kept the windows open, we had spiders in the house all the time. They would especially come out at night, so I kept all the windows closed at night and the house would become really hot. Garrett didn't like me for that, so he went and bought some fans. But I really hate spiders and they were SO BIG! You can't blame me for closing the windows.

10. People smoke a lot more over there--it seems. Maybe I'm wrong, but it sure seemed like everyone was lighting up everywhere we went. It was nasty.

Here are some fun pictures of the girls that I thought you'd like to see.

Bella before we left for England

Wow--look how she grew over 6 weeks! (Right before we came home)

Paige wearing Lydia's cowgirl boots--hasn't she gotten big?

Sleeping Bella

The girls being silly with daddy's Scottish hair.

There is a little smile behind that binky.

Watching movies

The girls went out and had a picnic one day in the back yard.

Bella coming in for a smooch

This is what Bella is best known for!!
She's so cute when she sleeps!
Being silly with wax from some cheese.
The instigator of the silliness
A water bottle was one of Bella's favorite toys.

So, I thought of one more thing that I found interesting in England.

11. In our place, the washer and dryer were combined in one machine. Odd, huh? It was really small, too. I was only able to wash like 3 loads of laundry, if I was lucky because it took like 3-4 hours to wash and dry a load. So, I'd have to do at least one load a day. After being home now for awhile and doing laundry--I've realized how quick a wash cycle is and how short it takes to dry a load. I love it--especially that I can put more than 3 pairs of jeans in at once!!

Warwick Castle

Warwick Castle

The next day, we kind of got a late start because we didn't have anything planned and wasn't sure what we were doing. We had talked about doing either Warwick Castle or Blenheim Palace--a must see according to our guide book. But, we opted for Warwick Castle--and I have to say that we definitely made the best choice. This place was tons of fun. It was very touristy and almost like a theme park of sorts, but we all enjoyed it immensely. It closed at 6 and we got there around noon, so we didn't get to spend as much time as we would have liked. We still can't figure out why they close everything so darn early. Throughout the day at the castle, they have "shows" that they put on, whether it's sword fighting, jousting, a bird show... etc. So, when we got there they had two guys play acting and also educating about fighting back during medieval times. They talked about weapons and life back then. It was really entertaining. At the end, each guy was trying to convince us as to which weapon was better. One guy had a sword and the other had an axe. The first guy would say something about his sword and the second guy would reply back, "It's a big axe!" over and over. So when they started fighting, well... you can watch the video.

We got a kick out of that!

After that, we went into part of the castle that they had redone as it would've looked back in 1898. They had a tour of the place and they called the tour, "The Royal Weekend Party". This is a description of the tour:

"In 1898, Daisy, Countess of Warwick hosted a weekend party at which the principle guest was the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. Once inside the former private apartments, you'll step back to a time of the most lavish and extravagant parties at Warwick Castle. Meet the beautiful Daisy, Countess of Warwick and her friends preparing for their weekend party."

They had hired the people at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum to create characters to be displayed in here (and in other parts of the castle). They were so realistic looking! I was expecting one of them to jump out at me as I walked past! :)

After that, we walked through the great hall and state rooms and we saw Queen Elizabeth II; King Henry VIII and his six wives: Katharine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymore, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Katherine Parr. Maggie liked the horses in the great hall.

Queen Elizabeth II

Henry VIII

Six wives of Henry VIII

Maggie and her Knight in shining armor!

After the great hall, we went to watch a jousting tournament. It was really neat--they had two guys fighting on each team. The side of York and the other side was Lancaster--from the War of the Roses. King Henry VI was there to rule over the jousting tournament. It was fun to watch!

After the jousting tournament, we got some lunch and then waited on a grassy hill to watch the next show. This one was the launch of the trebuchet. For those of you who don't know what a trebuchet is, I got this description off of the Warwick Castle website:

"Siege machines were developed in the 13th century to attack the solid Castle walls. As the defences of Castles improved so did the weapons of attack and siege machines were developed to attack the solid Castle walls. The trebuchet was the largest and most formidable of the siege machines and was, in essence, a huge catapult.
The trebuchet was used to fire huge projectiles to breach the Castle walls. Large rocks and stones were the main ammunition but there is evidence of more unusual material. Manure and dead animals were also hurled by the machines into the besieged Castle to spread disease - pigs were the animal of choice as they were thought to be more aerodynamic!"
See the world's largest trebuchet at Warwick Castle – weighing in at 22 tonnes and standing 18 metres tall, this massive machine will fire twice daily between 17th March - 26th October 2008.

Trebuchet

Close up of Trebuchet and Warwick Castle in background.

Lydia took this picture of us waiting for the show to start.

I think they said that it took 30 minutes to load the trebuchet and get it ready. They lowered the arm to load it by having men walk in the circle (kind of like hamsters do) which wound up a rope and pulled the arm down. Then they had to secure it in place and then load it and then were ready to fire it. For our show, they loaded it with a large rock that was supposed to be on fire, but I think the fire went out as it was flying through the air. It was pretty cool. The guide also said that in order to transport these things they had to be taken apart into various pieces and then reassembled there--it required a lot of work! But, they were effective!

After the trebuchet show, it was close to 6, so as we were leaving the castle, Garrett stopped to shoot a bow and arrow. I guess he used to do this as a scout.



This is us at the end of the day! What a fun time!

Bath

The next day, we drove down to Bath. This was something that I was really looking forward to because of Jane Austen. In a lot of her novels, she mentions Bath in them and two of them were actually set in Bath--Persuasion and Northanger Abbey--which I have never read. Jane Austen actually lived in Bath for five years--although it wasn't a very happy time for her then. So, there's actually a Jane Austen centre there that we went to go see first--Garrett was thrilled about it! :) But, he went with me like the good husband that he is.


It was neat to see, but it mostly focused on her unhappy life there and I wished they would have talked more about her other novels and such. They did talk about a few places in Bath that were mentioned in Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. We didn't get to see those places, though. We never have enough time. They had the costumes set up from the new BBC movie, Miss Austen Regrets. Those were neat costumes.

If I didn't have my kids with me I would've gone upstairs and had tea in their tea rooms. The room was pretty small though and taking all of my kids in would've been a nightmare. It would've been so fun though. All of the menu items were named after characters or places in her novels. Such as: 'Tea with Mr. Darcy', 'Mrs. Bennet's lemon drizzle cake' or 'cousin Collin's crumpets'.

After that, we grabbed some lunch @ Subway and found a bench outside to eat on. They really don't have places to sit and eat here or else it's just a tiny little area--a place where we don't fit. Here's us eating on the busy high street.

As we were eating, there was a young guy set up on the street and he was drawing cariactures. After we ate, I went over to watch him and saw that he was really good. So, we had him draw the girls. Unfortuneately, Bella was sleeping so he couldn't draw her. But, it turned out really cute. Maggie doesn't look exactly like her, but he did a good job for the most part.

We then went to the Roman Baths which is what Bath is really known for. The city used to be called Aquae Sulis. Romans traveled so often there to "take a bath" that finally it became known simply as Bath. It was an interesting place that was really big. I just thought we'd walk in, see that bath and be done, but it was a huge museum with an audioguide tour. Some of it was interesting but the audioguide things were a bit long and boring. We overheard one of the "live" tour guides telling her group that sometime in the late 1600's, a woman discovered water leaking in her house, and when they dug around to find the source of the water, they discovered the Roman ruins of the bath and began excavating. They found this "bath" 18 feet below the dirt floors. Crazy. Today they have a nice spa there that's really expensive and a restaurant/cafe called "the Pump Room" where you can actually taste the water that flows from the spring. I've heard it doesn't taste very well.

There was this abbey right next to where the baths were found. (Behind Garrett)