The life and times of Miss Emma

Posted by: Sal

Hi everyone! We have had a couple of recent additions to our US family. The first is Grace, who has been with us for nearly 3 weeks now and has just about finished her work at the Duke Asthma and Allergy research centre. She now knows more about your airways than you ever wanted anyone to know. Those of you who know Gracie know that she's quite the cutie, but our second addition might just be the cutest newcomer to grace our household yet: an 8 week old puppy that Nic found stray in east Carolina. Nic seems to have wanted to call a dog Emma for several years, and since this lady wandered in from "down east" its only appropriate that she should be "Miss Emma" to most folks (and "ratbag", "sweetie", "bloody dog", "gorgeous", etc. to those of us in the privileged position of house training her).

The point of this blog post is really just this: to show you how darned cute she is. Enjoy!

How cute is this dog? Nic seems pretty darn happy she's wandered into our lives. She's working on her "tough" face, but the facade falls down when she sleeps.

Its cold here now, so Emma likes to sit inside Nic's jumper. Gracie manages her very well (left hand photo). And check out the little head resting on Laura's feet (right hand photo).

Thanksgiving and other fun stuff

I had an All-American Thanksgiving this year which, yes, means an “as much as you can physically eat and then dessert” Thanksgiving. My stomach might have been complaining, but my tastebuds weren’t. Yumbo.

Cold ham, hot turkey, sweet potato salad, pomegranite salad, stuffing, mashed spuds, broccoli gratin, pumpkin pie, cranberry pie, chocolate pound cake... yum

It wasn’t really all All-American, as I was staying in the mountains with two lovely Australian girls, Pia and Sylvia, at the gorgeous home of Lisa and Tom and Case and Will – a great American family who worked for Save the Children for years and years and have lived in more countries of the world than most of us will visit.

Poor Will and Case were regularly relegated to the boot of the car in order to ship the Aussie invaders around

Nic, alas, was confined to Durham, so we indulged in a weekend of girly pleasures, poring over the beautiful shops in Asheville, eating delicious food and generally having a lovely time. It was definitely nice to spend some time with established American families and able to enjoy the view from a particularly gorgeous house looking over the valley that Asheville is in.

Pretty pretty view!

Me and Sylvia having a fun holiday.

So, I haven’t been working quite so hard lately… but its been pretty nice!

XOXO

Sal