Monday, December 24, 2007

Christmas Eve



It is Christmas Eve and the little ones are all snug in their beds. There is banana bread baking in the oven. Stanta is putting their packages under the tree. There are cookies and milk for Stanta and carrots for the reindeer. We also sprinkled some magic dust in the yard to guide the reindeer to our new house.

Today we walked to our Town Center where most of the shopping is, for the first time. It is about a 10 minute walk. We did some shopping and had lunch.

Christmas day we are going to celebrate an English Christmas at some folks from Stans office. He also plays guitar and has asked Stan to bring his. It should be lot of fun.

Hope you all have a wonderful day.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Christmas Tree Farm



We are finally getting our Christmas tree on December 22.

We went to a Christmas Tree farm to get a live tree. The farm was about 20 minutes away. It was a new area for us. We went through some of the neatest little towns.
Afterwards we stopped for lunch at a cute pub that we had noticed on the way. It was fun to get away from the unpacking for a bit.



Part of the reason we went to this farm was that they had lights too so we did not have to make another stop for those. It was a nice little shop with these animated animals including Santa.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Anna and Lauren Visit with Santa


Today we got a chance to visit with Santa. The girls were so happy to see him.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Furniture Arrives!




The MG and other things that were on the truck with the MG arrived on Monday.

Wednesday the other truck arrived. You can see from the picture it is a full truck. This was the same truck that was loaded at our house in Carrollton. It was so nice not having our stuff go to storage.

It was cold day but sunny. It took them all day to unload the truck.







Some of our furniture, like the dinning room table, we had crated. Here they are unpacking them.

We were not able to get some of the furniture up the stairs but most of it worked.

The house has lot of storage but still not has much as our Texas house. Also kitchen cabinets are not as deep. Our everyday dishes barely fit.
More of of the pans fit in oven then what I thought. It is a very narrow oven.




Anna and Lauren helped some but of course had to play some too.













On the second day, they came back to assemble some of the items that were taken apart and to take the paper off items that had been wrapped. They took away the paper and boxes we had unwrapped. They will come back to get anything else we have.

I joined a couple of email groups for buying and selling and giving away things for free. To the free group, I posted about the boxes and family moving to US came to pick up what they could.



We are still staying in the hotel this weekend till we can get beds set up and things a bit more organized. Stan has to go to Italy tomorrow - Friday - and will return late Saturday. We will probably be moving over to house on Sunday.

We have had major trouble getting a phone set up at the house. They are supposed to come on Monday so hopefully it will work this time. We will not have internet access till Tuesday! Also no television setup yet. It may be another week for that.

We are going to try and get a Christmas tree set up. Stan will be in town after next week and then may take some days off. He is also busy getting ready for January and Februay travel. He will be traveling most of those months.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Anna and Lauren Attend School in their Uniforms




Anna and Lauren attended their new school - Abbots Hill Girls school - in their uniforms. It seems like a very good school. They looked so grown up in their uniforms. I did not get any pictures of the school but here is link to website which has some pictures.
http://www.abbotshill.herts.sch.uk/

Schools here are about a year ahead of US schools. Annas age level has been writing in cursive as has Laurens. I am not sure they even do printing. Annas level is also doing multiplication. The school suggested they go back a level so they could build a strong foundation. We understood and thought it was best too.

They just attended for couple of days but will start after the Holidays on January 7th.

Monday, December 10, 2007

MG Arrives!

It is always an exciting day when the MG arrives. It all went off without any problems.


















Stan was there to assist.














Lauren was too!















The MG in its new home. It is also fun that there is an MG dealership not far from us. We did not realize they were still being made.