Hello Everyone,

Thank you for your emails and messages!

We are very excited about Australia winning the Ashes!

We are now in the USA following a few days in Lima, Peru. We stayed in a seaside part of Lima known as Miraflores. It was nice to be back at sea level again and to see the ocean. It is very strange that we were in the Southern Hemisphere last week, experiencing summer and longer days, and now we find ourselves in freezing conditions with ice on the floor and icicles hanging off everything, but It is nice to feel part of Christmas :-)

We were in Washington DC until yesterday. There was snow on the ground for most of the time that we were there and it was anywhere from 0 to 4 degrees during the day. There were squirrels everywhere :-) We saw the White House, Lincoln Memorial,several war memorials, Capitol building, Arlington Cemetery, Air and Space museum, museum of natural history, American history museum and the archives. The archives is home to the original constitution, the bill of rights, declaration of independence and a copy of the magna carta from the 1200s! The American History museum has all sorts of memorabilia including Dorothy's Red shoes from the Wizard of Oz, Harry Potters Hogwarts cloak, the original flag that inspired their national anthem and various belongings of the Presidents' and First Ladies.

Strangely enough, everything is very 'American' and looks just 'like the movies.' Cable TV is monumental. There are great movies on all of the time and their ads are hilarious. The food is great too. We have had honourary visits to WalMart, Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks.

We are now in Boston and it is very nice but it is freezing! There is snow everywhere and only the roads and main side walks are clear and the rivers and lakes have a frozen top layer. We plan to do a walking tour of the FreedomTrail and Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox before we head to NYC.

Missing you all at Christmas xx