A home at last :-)

Well we've done it; we've managed to move to a new country, find a house, move in, be reunited with all our stuff and can now relax and live the dream :-)

It's been a very busy couple of weeks but we're now mostly settled and organized. We finally got the keys for the house a week ago on Friday and spent the best part of an hour walking round saying "Wow, it's ours, we're finally in!", and deciding, yet again, where everything was going!!

Despite having no container, and therefore what we thought as not a lot to do, until the Monday we managed to spend most of the weekend doing house related stuff; several car loads of things were moved across, a trip to Home Depot ( think American B & Q) was 'needed', and the new Dyson needed to be tested out on all the new carpets that needed defluffing.

Monday morning finally arrived, with Andy and I up and awake earlier than we had been since arriving in the US. We had to be at the new house before 8 and wanted to take the last few things across with us so we didn't have to worry about coming back for a while. Ugh, early mornings do not suit any of us!

Impressively for us we arrived at the house before 7:45! Typically then the container didn't arrive until gone 9:00! Having been in a state of excited anticipation I was slightly thrown by the container, when it did arrive, as it wasn't the one we waved goodbye to in the UK. Where we had put it in storage everything had been moved into big wooden crates. Initially, I was rather sceptical as to whether we would find our stuff in there or not and then I saw a little green face that reassured me it was all OK. (Steph's turtle sandpit had only been partially wrapped :-). )

It's quite hard to describe the feelings that we went through that Monday. We were excited but at the same time relieved, along with certain feelings of satisfaction and contentment as our home was brought back to us. The 'magic men' were excellent. All boxes came through the garage where they were ticked off a list and either opened or taken straight to where we wanted them. It was quite strange watching our lives unfurling in front of us.

We've always been gatherers and knew we had a lot of stuff and I was kind of expecting the boxes to overwhelm this house, particularly the garage. It was a nice surprise to find that actually we had space to spare and room to move in.

By mid afternoon the men had done their work and we were left with a house full of boxes. A tough week followed as we worked hard to empty boxes and get everything put away or at least in the right room. The kitchen was the hardest job as there must have been at least 20 boxes. Each box took forever to empty as everything was so well wrapped and when we got to the end of each box it was slightly disappointing as the pile of booty was not very large. I remember one particular box had  only twelve glasses and a picture in it!

A week later and the house is now mostly sorted, we still have piles and Andy's playroom and garage still need sorting but the house is now completely livable in and I can actually sit down and relax without feeling there is a job that has to be done NOW.

Steph is loving being in the house, she's working on gaining at least one bruise a day as she explores the treehouse, climbs anything that looks climbable and falls down unfamiliar steps. She's really enjoying being reunited with her toys and is playing with them on a whole different level. A definite advantage in taking her toys away for 2 months means we can really see the change in how she uses them. The imaginative play is fascinating to watch, I have no idea where that imagination comes from! Our priority when unpacking was to try and get Steph's room sorted so she felt she had her space. She has her new bedding, which she loves and yesterday she and I spent ages putting transfers on her walls that matched the bedding, so it was Stephie's special room.

The baby's room is now finally ready. It was the one room I was hoping to get sorted fairly quickly and ended up being the last to be done. Unfortunately the set of drawers for that room got damaged in the move and now need a fairly big repair job, rendering them useless for a while. After a few days of pondering various solutions we have moved the drawers from the spare room up. The other factor holding up this room was the cot. When it was packed by the men it was a cot bed and they carefully took it apart and packed all the screws and bits together and labelled them. When we moved it from a cot to a cot bed we also carefully bagged up the screws etc for that bit and put them somewhere safe in the garage, which meant that when we tried to put the cot together they were in a box 'somewhere' and not where we needed them!  The other things we needed to put the cot together were some basic tools; also in a box somewhere in the garage!!

Having worked rather manically last week in a bid to get sorted the aim for this week is to bimble away at what is left to do but also have a fairly gentle week and give our bodies a little down time. Steph and I are therefore spending the mornings at parks or with people and then the afternoons alternating between playing, sorting and reading books.

Saturday is 'sort the basement / playroom day'. Hopefully then we shall have some computers up and running and we can locate all the bits not yet found. We're assuming their all in the boxes that we hid down there.......

Then, on Sunday I've told the baby it's allowed to come :-)

( However best laid plans and all that, due date is 29th so we may find that it doesn't follow my plan, we shall keep you posted)

Bump!

Many of you have been asking how bump is going and how I have been so I thought I would focus the start of this entry on bump.
We've now hit 38 weeks and it's all going very well. Much to my surprise, when I fisrt went to the doctors over here they were very happy with everything that had been done in the UK and didn't want to repeat any of the tests or do a scan! For the last couple of weeks I have been having weekly check ups with the doctors and they seem very happy with my progress. As far as we can see this pregnancy is going very similarly to the last one apart from a lack of swollen feet :)

We still have no idea whether it's a boy or girl but I think deep down Andy and I suspect it will be another girl. Steph is convinced she is having a little sister, if you ask her she will say 'having little sister'. We keep saying that it might be a brother but she just repeats 'having little sister'. I think we could all be setting ourselves up for a big shock!
The only time Steph has contemplated having a brother was in the shops last week when she saw something she wanted that was blue and she tried to convince us that her little brother would need it!
We were highly entertained on one of my visits to the doctors. I asked about recommended vitamins as my UK supply had run out. She said she'd give me a couple of samples to try - below is a picture of the couple she gave me!

When I got them home Andy was highly amused over the size of some of these pills! He then proceeded to measure it and compare it to a fruit pastel!

Now we find ourselves feeling fairly settled and unable to quite believe that we're going to completely turn our lives upside down again in the next three weeks. We had confirmation this week that we get the keys to the house on Friday :-). So next weekend shall be spent moving what we have here across and shopping for the various things we will need like a hoover and a lawn mower. It's obviously a sign of age but I'm really looking forward to having a decent hoover, the one in this house is driving me mad, particularly with it's miniscule cable! Bending down to keep plugging and unplugging it is not one of my favourite jobs at the moment, particularly as the American sockets are also winding me up. It takes forever to get the plug in the socket and then the smallest tug pulls it right out!

We've been gathering bits for Steph's room over the last few weeks as all her old stuff will now become the baby's. Therefore she has got 'new' furniture and bedding etc. The request for bedding was pink giraffes! (I did succeed!!) Yesterday I bought her a new pillow, which I then added to the pile of stuff at the bottom of my wardrobe. This morning it got removed from my wardrobe, by a certain someone, and put at the bottom of Steph's :)

Once we've moved all the stuff we have here over we then need to prepare ourselves for the arrival of the container on Monday. I can't wait to have it all and I know I will be desperate to sort and organise everything. However, I suspect I may be best staying out of the way on Monday until the men have done their job - otherwise I may just cause chaos and confusion. I am thoroughly looking forward to spending the rest of the week on a journey of rediscovery and playing house - hopefully munchkin will be so distracted by the rediscovery of her toys that I may get at least a small amount of time to do this.

And then at some point in the next 4 weeks we will add to the chaos as bump will materialize :-)

In the meantime we've been carrying on with the exploring of the local area. We managed another walk at the weekend, where Steph was intent on climbing every bit of rock she could find :)

At one point she was moving faster than Andy could keep up with her!
Stephie and I have also been playing crafting this week. She managed to keep clothes on for this so we had much less body art this week. I've been teaching her to use scissors and she has also discovered glue. So our crafting mainly consisted of her gluing everything she could find...........

The adventures continue

It's Sunday afternoon and I find myself ensconced on the sofas at the climbing wall while one highly energetic toddler runs around on the pretext of climbing with Daddy. I fear Daddy may be in need of some serious rest after this session.

After huge thought and discussion we stopped Steph going to nursery last week and decided she would stay at home with me full time. I, consequently have gone into teacher mode and now plan my week out with a variety of activities to keep both of us entertained,  I live in fear of being at a loose end with an energetic toddler on my hands, particularly as there isn't much space to just be in this house. Hopefully we can have 'just be' moments in the new house, particularly with a large garden to play in and a reunion with all the toys. We have had a great week with this week, we've cooked, painted, explored, played and generally enjoyed every (well nearly every) minute together. You may notice from the pictures that someone seems to be into body art at the moment! (The butter that was supposed to go into the chocolate cake was used as tummy moisturiser) Hopefully when the weather cools down and I can keep clothes on her we can move on from the body art phase........

Steph has also started swimming lessons this week. Some of you will know that we have been doing lessons in the UK with her for the last 18 months and I was quite worried that we wouldn't find anything equivalent over here. I knew when we were back in the UK how fortunate we were with our lessons. We had a brilliant swimming teacher who knew and understood her pupils and consequently really made progress with them, giving them super confidence in the water and some brilliant water skills. Anyway, we've had a bit of a search over here to find something that teachers swimming to littl'uns in the same style and for a reasonable price - swimming lessons are so expensive here! We think we may have found it which makes me very happy as it is something Steph absolutely loves doing. Fingers crossed that it does work out :)

We find our biggest challenge at the moment is wearing said toddler out as there are some days when she just seems to have an excess of energy. Probably something to do with the age she is...........We have explored as many parks over here as we can. I am very impressed, all the parks seem to have great climbing frames with a multitude of slides attached at all different levels. The only problem we seem to have with these is it's too hot to go to the park in the afternoon. Therefore I have made it my mission to discover some indoor energy burning activities over the last couple of weeks. We've now become annual members of 'Wow', the children's discovery museum we discovered a couple of weeks ago. I suspect that this membership may be well used over the next four weeks as my manoeuvrability becomes limited; this is somewhere she can burn energy while I sit! We've also found Grandrabbits Play centre. Grandrabbits is an amazing toy shop over here and attached they have a big playroom with all manor of toys and a few floor mats with some soft play toys on. I am, however, gutted to discover that there is no soft play over here - or if there is we haven't discovered it. Much as we didn't use it that often in the UK it was a fantastic resource for a day when energy burning was needed. The hunt continues..........

In other aspects of our lives not a lot has changed in the last week. Our exploring of the local area continues. We visited Golden last weekend. Another local town with a very pretty river running through it. We had a good wonder up the river and tried out Andy / Steph's new toy. We managed to find a double bike trailer on Craigslist, which can also be used as a huge stroller / wheelbarrow! We hope to be able to cycle a lot once bikes are here and bump is baby and have great plans that the trailer will be well used. In particular, I am hoping to use it for local day to day movement from house to park etc. The roads over here are much better set up for cyclists and I feel much more comfortable cycling with a trailer on the back, particularly as this is what most people do so cars are more used to it. Currently though someone seems to enjoy using it as a stroller and having the whole space to herself!

We  went for another walk this morning. Back up to Gross reservoir but this time we walked down to the edge of the water for a picnic and then had a short walk some of the way round. Very pretty! We spent most of lunch time enjoying the realisation that we could have a Sunday morning lie-in and still be having a picnic in the middle of no-where by lunchtime. This is the life :) *contented sigh*

We went to have another look around our new house on Friday, just to check we'd remembered room sizes etc. so all that virtual planning we've done does actually work. It's even better than I remembered it was. I can't wait to be in it and to have a garden for us to play in. 2 weeks to go. In the meantime a certain husbands virtual planning seems to involve most things going into his playroom, so far I seem to have lost my sofa and the television and there's now talk of a beer fridge going down there. Maybe I should only let a beer fridge down there if it's accompanied by the children!!

          

Although we've only been here for six weeks I'm amazed at the number of people we've got to know and how friendly and helpful everyone is. Steph and I have joined various groups that meet every week or so and are starting to make some real friends through this now. Andy's met various people through work and we're starting to merge and meet each others friends as we bump into people at various places. Everyone is so helpful, either with info of places to go, things that are happening or offers of help. Many people have offered help with the move, looking after Steph when we have no. 2 or just if we need someone to call for help. I feel very fortunate to have met so many lovely people in such a short space of time.