New(er) Car for Daddy

After 1 month of driving his 500 Pound, 1998 Ford Escort, Sean decided to upgrade his vehicle....to something "safer" and "more fun to drive."  He was so excited to find this 2007 BMW 320D "estate" car (AKA station wagon).  It's a bright cherry red, which Mia and Alexa really love.  Alexa always said that she wanted our car in England to be red!  It's also a Diesel fueled car.  Many cars in the UK are Diesels since the gas prices are so high (it's around $8.50 per gallon right now). 

Happy driving Sean!

The Comforts of Home

Yesderday our second shipment came, the one that was shipped by sea.  Some 60 boxes or so were delivered and many unpacked from the boxes, though that doesn't mean that things were put away.  I spent most of my day putting kitchen items into cupboards.  One of my favorite things to see was the box with all the jams my Mom made for us. It's really nice to have all of our things with us now, though I must admit that we packed too much. I've realized this after living for 2 and a half weeks without all these things. Oh well, it was hard to know what we'd need here. 

I'm excited to have all of my craft things again.  Though it's going to be quite a job organizing them here.  The room that I'm currently planning on using for my crafting is about a quarter of the size of my old craft room at home.  Oh, I was so spoiled.  We'll see how it goes.

I know that many of you parents in Burnt Hills are starting school this week. We hope that everything goes smoothly and all the kids transition smoothly into their routines.  We'll be thinking of you!

A Car for Mummy

By the way, my name is going to change in England...I'm no longer Mom, I'm Mum. I haven't noticed it yet with the kids, but I know it's coming. On the same day that the kids started school, we got our new car. This car is a change of plans from the Toyota Verso that I showed you earlier in the Blog. When we went to sign up to rent the Verso, we got a bad vibe from the Toyota people. They just didn't seem to be too interested in our business. It was a subtle feeling, but since then I've had it confirmed by some other Americans.

So we started investigating Fords. And we actually ended up with a really awesome car. I must tell you that cars here do not look the same as at home. The Fords that we had to choose from have different names and different appearances from the Fords at home. And that's true of most other car companies. It's kind of weird, but I guess each company has to cater the styles and preferences of each individual culture. So we ended up with the Ford Grand C-Max Titanium, the Titanium part means it's got all the bells and whistles! Can you hear me squeeling with excitement? OK, this car has more high tech features than I can comprehend. The big feature that sold us on it is that it has sliding doors. It's the only Ford that does, none of the Toyotas did, and it's really rare in the UK to have sliding doors. Since parking spots are so tight here though, it's a very nice feature...especially with young children opening the doors.

I've been doing better with the driving.  Every day I get more comfortable both driving a standard and navigating the roads.  I'm not sure I'll ever understand the logic of some of the road signs though.   For those of you who come to visit, you'll see what I mean. 

Home Away from Home

I'm excited to say that we are now moved into our house! We arrived yesterday morning and our air shipment did as well. We have most of our clothes, many of the kids' toys and some of my kitchen stuff. We'll be eating off of paper plates until our sea shipment arrives, but it's worth it to have a real home. I can't even put into words how great it felt yesterday to have a full house to live in again.  It was so exciting, I can't wait to show this house to those of you who will visit.  I'm ready...who's going to be the first to come for tea? I'll do my best to look for travel deals and pass those along.


The kids start school tomorrow, so I have lots to do today to get ready....we still have uniform stuff to get.  It's my first time with uniforms so it's an adjustment for me.  But at least I don't have to buy other school supplies on top of expensive uniforms.

I gotta run, but here's a few photos of the house...

Avery in heis new room.  They're all pretty feminine rooms, this is the least femine and one of the bigger rooms as well.

 The girls had lot's of fun decorating their room yesterday.  Stuffed animals completely cover the windowsill.

 Here's the kitchen.  I love the side table...the plan right now is for the side table to be our "office" so I can use the office as my craft room.

Here's the living room with a new TV that Sean requested.  The furniture is really comfy.

Our Apartment

I never did show you all where we are living right now.  This is Birchover apartments. The most interesting room is the kitchen.  You may look at this kitchen and say, "wow, look at all those cupboards."  But no, everything on the left side of the kitchen is an appliance.  From left to to right is our freezer, refrigerator, and washer/"dryer".  I'll explain later why I put the dryer in quotations.  Anyway, it's a rather functional kitchen, only lacking in a dishwasher.  But since we don't have many dishes, that's not a big deal. 

The dining/living room is attached to the kitchen.  Here, Avery and Mia are working on their first email letters to friends in the States. 

Our living room is shown below, 2 love seats and a coffee table, TV, etc.  It works fine for us.  You'll notice the clothes drying on a rack in the background.  That's because the dryer part of the Washer/Dryer doesn't work.  And apparently, that's no mistake.  Dryers in England are condensing dryers, there's no hot air and minimal heat applied during the "drying" process...mainly spinning.  So I could run the dryer for 2 full hours and my clothes come out wetter than they would be at home with my high efficiency washer.  So all of our clothes are hung to dry...and we are learning to wear our clothes many more times than normal before washing.  I'm told that the dryer in the rental house does work better, but it's still nothing like dryers in the states.  I guess it must have something to do with homes not being wired with the power capacity that American dryers consume.

We have 2 bedrooms, this one below is ours.  The kids share a bedroom that is the same size, with a cot on the end of the bed for Avery.  We couldn't get the kids to go to sleep on time when they were all in the same room together, so for now, one child sleeps in our bed until when we go to bed and then we move him/her into the kids room.  Both rooms have what they call an "en suite" which means attached bathroom.

So that's where we are living until next Tuesday.  We just got word yesterday that it looks like our air shipment will be delivered to our rental house on 8/30 so that's moving day for us.  I am very excited to be living in a house again!

Being Brave

Today is our first completely rainy day here.  Being in a strange city, by myself with 3 kids, it's really scary for me to venture out.  Walking to the park, I can handle.  Even driving to the grocery store I've managed, so long as I have the GPS.  But I have yet to drive into downtown Derby, even with Sean.  I forgot to mention that when we picked up the rental car last week they had given our reserved automatic car to someone else so ours is a manual transmission.  Yay!  Fortunately, I drove a standard vehicle about 9 years ago for a few years when Avery was born.  So I'm not totally new to it...but I'm now driving on the left side of the road, with the steering wheel on the right side of the car with the shifter on my left...in a city with absolutely ridiculous road signs.  So far it seems like you hardly ever find a road that is marked with its name...only a sign that tells you which towns are in the direction that the road goes...FUN!

So you see, it would be easy for me to just stay home today.  Cuddle up in the apartment, watch a movie, read some books, let the kids play and eventually go stir crazy.  But then I discovered that this is the last day that the SMURFS movie is playing in the cinema at the mall downtown.  I've been promising the kids that I'd take them to see the movie before school starts.  I was excited to see that the cinema was showing the movie at 10am this morning, so we scrambled to get out of the house by 9:15.  Armed with my GPS, we ventured into downtown Derby which is only a couple miles away.  Unfortunately the GPS doesn't tell you how to get into the parking garage (they call it a Car Park here), so I actually had to use my brain to find it.  We eventually did, and then found our way into the mall...making a special effort to not forget where we were parked.

We found the mall and made it to our seats in the cinema with 5 minutes to spare.  The theater was really nice and we really enjoyed the movie.  We got out a little later than I expected because there was about 25 minutes of TV commercials and previews before the movie even started.  So we needed to get home for lunch, and Alexa was on the verge of a tantrum because she wanted to eat in the mall.  Thankfully, I was able to keep her calm enough to pay for the parking (which has to be done in the mall), and make it back to the car.  We did a few loops around Derby city due to me taking wrong turns, but eventually we did make it back home to the apartment.  Ahhhh....now I can relax.

The whole trip was a bit stressful for me, but I knew I needed to do it.  I'm never going to be comfortable here unless I force myself to be uncomfortable for a while.

Breakfast with a Diva

Yesterday morning I got up and made some eggs for Alexa and myself.  Mia had Alexa in her "salon" before breakfast so I got to have breakfast with a diva this morning.  As Alexa would say...she was so "fashion." 

After getting groceries in the morning (I found sliced cheese by the way!) , we headed over to the park again for some fun.  The nice think about weather here, is that when it says it's going to be a rainy day, that usually means that it may rain or sprinkle for a short period of time and then the rest of the day is fine.  So though the hourly forcast showed an icon for rain every hour, we only had a few sprinkles when we went to the grocery store in the morning and then the afternoon was quite nice.  We even had some really warm sun at times. 

This time at the park, the kids tried the little cars and motorcycle go carts.  These are little electric cars that the kids are allowed to drive by themselves around a track.  They had a great time.

A Day in Markeaton Park

The first day that we arrived, we discovered Markeaton Park right across the street from our apartment.  It's probably the biggest park I've ever been in: huge open fields, a wading pool with sprinklers, bouncy bounces, carnival rides (this month), snack bars, a cafe, hiking trails, and I'm sure we haven't seen it all.  The cab driver from the airport told us it's "massive."  So on Sunday after church we decided to spend the afternoon there.  Alexa had been talking about swimmiing in the wading pool for the previous 2 days, so that was our first stop.  The water was a bit cold, but she and Avery had a great time playing.  It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon...probably in the upper 70s.

From there we went to the bouncy-bounces, which is what Mia really wanted to do.  The kids enjoy a nice long time bouncing around.

And then we went over to the playground area where they had one of those spider web rope jungle gyms.  Avery quickly made a friend and discovered that one thing that boys have in common between the US and the UK is Pokemon.  Apparently they spent the whole time talking about this game that I think I may never really understand.

It was a wonderful afternoon.  We will likely be spending lots of time at this park during our time here in Birchover Apartments.

Day 2

Today we relaxed in the morning, let the kids sleep in, and then later went out to run some errands.  Our first stop was Best Buy where we were pleasantly surprised that they had free facepainting there today.  The girls were thrilled, but Avery was happier just playing games on the Demo Iphones instead.  From there we went to a couple other stores and then got a few more groceries.

The grocery store is still an interesting place for me.  We usually find something there that is quite comical.  Today it was cheese.  We went to the deli counter to order lunchmeat, just like in the States, though in the UK it's sold in grams instead of pounds.  A good conversion estimate is 400g per pound I guess.  So we ordered our lunchmeat sliced thinly, and then went down to the other end of the counter to get some cheese.  Sean ordered the amount we wanted and the woman behind the counter took a square block of mild cheddar cheese and cut it in half.  He then asked her to slice it for us and she looked at us like we had 3 heads and said," we don't slice cheese."  Interesting.  We didn't have time to look around to see if there is any prepackaged sliced cheese, but I'll have to check that out next time.  For now we'll have to just cut our own cheese!  OK, I'm laughing way to hard at that last sentence!

We finished our day at our friends' house, Ed and Marcia's, where we enjoyed a nice spaguetti dinner and some comforting conversation with some fellow Americans. 

Safe Arrival

I just want to let everyone know that we arrived safely this morning.  The flight went smoothly and on-time.  We're all adjusting to the time difference in our own way.  Hopefully we'll get a good night sleep and feel better tomorrow.  It's a little bit stressful right now as we figure out our transportation and get food and supplies that we need while taking care of sleepy, cranky, and hungry kids.  Please pray that we will get everything under control tomorrow.