Donaldson Crew Adventures

I took this video as I drove through the market town of Cowbridge on my way to work. It is very pretty when it snows like this but can be treacherous especially in the UK. One of the big reasons is that cars here are designed for fuel efficiency. They are light, low ground clearance, low profile tires with smooth treads meant for shedding rain etc. Unfortunately these attributes make cars very inefficient and challenging in snowy conditions.

Preston and I went for a walk with Red in the fields around the house today. He loves riding in the backpack!

As a Christmas gift from Lulu and Papa we went out to dinner and the theatre with the kids (without Preston). We went to a pantomime performance of 'Sleeping Beauty' at the Little Theatre in downtown Cardiff. It was a hilarious rendition of the Disney classic good for both children and parents. Everyone got dressed up and we went out for a fancy dinner before hand. A great night out!

It doesn't snow that often in wales and typically when it does the accumulation is minimal to none. However today is an exception. It started in the early morning hours and still going strong at noon. There is about 5 inches now. Schools are cancelled, business's are closed -snow day!

I came out to my car this morning to find some interesting patterns from Jack Frost (in addition to my doors being froze shut). The exterior light from the garage gave the patterns some interesting depth with the angle of the light. Some of these are taken on the roof and others are from the windshield.

Kelly caught this video of Abbie Dancing recently and she loves it so we decided to put her in ballet classes for the term to see how she likes it!  (In the video there is actually music playing but its really hard to hear)

While we have been having a great time over the holidays, the weather here has been dismall!  It has rained almost every day the kids have been off.  Today - the first day of 2013 is the first nice sunny day we have had, and you could tell because it felt like everyone was out.  We decided to head to Southerndown beach and it turned out we were not the only ones:).  Co-incidentally we also found out that there is a yearly tradition of running into the ocean on new years day at Southerndown.  It was very windy and cold even though the sun was out.  It made us cold just watching them from the cliffs above.

Trip over this morning to see Caerphilly Castle with Erin.  As you may be able to tell from the first photo, their was a cool wind blowing :)

A few photos from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at Churchfarm.  Kelly's family has a tradition of opening 'family gifts' on Christmas Eve so we follow that tradition and Christmas morning is for Santa (or Father Christmas as he is known here:).  Another tradition is 'Christmas Jammies' which you can see being worn in the photos.

There is an outdoor ice skating area set up in Cardiff over the holidays but due to rain we decided to go skating at the indoor rink - planet ice instead. This was Abbie's first time on skates! She did awesome!