Impervise

Today was another situation thay came across my path where I needed to Impervise.  Here are a few I have done before. Open a can with a rock and keys, take a can and use as hammer for a nail to hang up a clock, cover my shoes with plastic bags to wade in the water and today...... used a coffee pot to make rice.
Moving into a house is not an easy adjustment when your lack of items are limited.  I had to make rice for dinner but didn't have a pan and lid to achieve this. Hmmm qhat to do. If you ask my husband he will probably tell you I dontet silly things like this to get in my way. Looking around my kitchen I remembered I had a new coffee pot. All I really needed was hot water. So I heated up the amount of water I needed and when it got hot I dumped in the right amount of rice.
A little stirring and poof perfect rice.
I am always a little proud of myself when my experiments turn out well.

Are my eyes open?

Yup, I think I see the screen through blurry vision. Coffee in hand and my brain is slowly coming to life. On a side note my two older kids have been fighting on who can make me coffee in the morning. I am not complaining! Works for me and its like a little blessing each morning when I sit down and get handed a cup of coffee. Some times to strong, some times to much creamer. But all in all a blessing.
We have been pretty busy around here so much that I actually havent even thought about blogging. Which in turn means that when I do sit down to blog I cant even remember all that went by. What a blur!
So I am going to try to remember what I have done and share it with you.

First off England is just gorgeous! I can not be more happy with the beauty of the place! Feels of bright yellow and greens to the point that I feel like someone had to have just colored them with oil paints! Amazing! I've hear two things one is that they can make mustard with these plants and the second was canola oil. I don't really care what they are for they are just pretty to looks at. Besides the fields look at those clouds! They are beautiful as well, like a painting!

We officially own a British car! Its really cute I think but its funny as well because it looks like a mini van that got washed and shrunk in the dryer. When we park next to a regular size van ours looks like its shadow. I will have to take a picture for you so you can really see the size difference. We actually all fit, but thats it! Nothing else can go in the "people getter", as I have heard it called. Which is funny because our last car Mike called a grocery getter.. lol 

We should probably give it a name? Our Black Kia vans name is Chanel.

So far we have loved everything about this little Van except the lack of cargo but our kia should be here soon.

We have tried to make as many meal in as we can, to avoid the coast of eating out. I mean we do have seven people even on the dollar menu thats about $14 bucks to feel the family so think about an average meal. But we did try one that was right outside of Mildenhall called Mickeys.

It was actually pretty good. They were low on there shipment and keep asking for forgiveness to us over and over again because they were out of like half of what they had on the menu but I thought out of all the food we have had here, theirs was the best. I had a grilled ham and cheese with some of the best onion rings I've ever had! YUM! Bummer they aren't into the ranch dip here like Americans are because that probably was all my meal actually needed! I might have to get a mini bottle and carry it around with us ;)

Its Official! I am totally obsessed with the phone booths around here so much that I went out and got us coasters that I found in one of the shops on Lakenheath. I even got a key chain phone booth for my keys. Next search is on for a cell phone cover! 

Yesterday was BEAUTIFUL! The Weather was nice for maybe two days after we got here and then nothing but wind and rain the next 10 days! That might not be the exact number of rainy days but it was a lot. So when I woke up to the Sun shinning, which was the normal start of the day, my thoughts were that by the time my coffee was done and the kids were ready to be entertained the rain and clouds would be back. By 9am it was still shinning and we decided to hit the park. The weather was perfect. Warm enough to be outside and get some vitamin D and yet cool enough that a little sweater would do just fine. At one point my legs even got hot from being in the sun. I never thought I would be so excited about the sun ha ha.

 Shyanne enjoying the outside air without having to wear her snow jacket! lol sad but true.

Allyson running around like a crazy person. I am still nervous to have her playing at this park (If you remember the teeth story)

House hunting has been one of our top priorities here! I mean we have to be her four years so we might as well have a house ;)

After getting the news that we were not going to be getting the house that my heart desired I had to move on. The sad thing was that the list we had was not that great. I mean one house that Mike was on board with getting pretty much put me into tears! If you know me thats a big deal. I am blaming it on lack of sleep and to much stress.  Anyways the house was ok and had a great yard "garden" in front and in back. But the rooms were all very small and I found very strange things like a toilet in a closet. All our furniture would have not fit in it at all either. I felt really depressed because the houses with the bedrooms we needed were very few and far in between. So when we came upon the one I just told you about I felt like we had to jump on it other wise we wouldnt have a house. But lucky for me we had a showing of two more that were not in the area I desired but at least had potential. So we held off of putting the deposit down on the above house and went to look.

The first one had a great yard space and was on a quiet little private road with four other houses and I could see our kids playing in the drive way area with no fear of getting ran over by crazy drivers. Unfortunately the Realtor and Mike had a mis-communication and we actually never got to see the inside. We figure it was a blessing thought because it looked like it needed a lot of things fixed before we would be able to move into it. We headed off to the other one. The moment I saw it I fell in LOVE with it! I think it is adorable! 

Here it is our soon to be home! My next worry was just what is inside because I was worried that it might have some strange things that wouldnt work for us. A sigh of relief when I realized that the only strange thing as a sink in of of the bedrooms, who knows why? Which will probably be perfect for us anyways because we will be using this room as our office/craft/home school room and the sink will be perfect for cleaning up craft stuff that might be messy. 

Its a 5 bedroom 2.5 bathroom living room, dinning room, utility room, 2 car garage. YIPPEE

So I am not going to lie I still would have loved to have the first house we looked at. But this house is still wonderful. Its a little out dated but for the most part its going to be perfect!

 This is the living room (ha ha Amariahs hat is peaking into the photo) The door there goes into the dinning room. Its bigger then the picture makes it seem and I am probably not all the way backed against the wall either.

 This is the dinning room, double doors there lead to the living room and there's a door right behind me that leads to the kitchen. There is also a hallway that goes around the dinning room which leads to the half bath and Anika and Allysons room and Entry way so you do not have to go through the dinning room to get to the living room if you do not want to.

This is the back yard, Its a picture from the kitchen window so its bigger. They said a gardener was going to come cut the grass. Thats good because we dont have a mower yet. Its got a nice little area like a half moon that has brick down for chairs or a table maybe? Also a side garden where Mike and the kids are already planning for Chickens! YES CHICKENS oh my that will be an adventure all in its self.

I will post more pictures when we actually move in. We are waiting on the base to make sure the house is safe to live in. Once they finish with that inspection will get the keys as long as they dont find any problems. Our belongings from the states haven't even make it here yet :( so we will also have temp furniture from the base for awhile. I dont know how long, hopefully not much. 

We are more then ready to be in our new place and get the garden started, the chickens (I guess) lol and have Levi and Amariah feel settled. They dont understand all the moving like the older kids do.

We are also excited to just start our lives and not feel like visitors.

We are lucky enough to have meet some really nice people and everyone we meet out in town seem so friendly and love that were Americans. My kids have been getting after me because they say a few words I say sound like I have a British Accent, I told them this might happen lol I am tend to pick up on accents right away and I dont even mean to. So will see what our friends and family think when they come to visit. 

I am also happy to report that I am now allowed to drive in the UK thanks to the fact that I passed my drivers test. Well back to my coffee, enjoy my kids. And live a wonderful life here in the UK.

Cheers!

House Hunting Day 2

Yesterday we managed to see a house that we just fell in love with! The house had everything on our list. To tell you the truth if I knew that we were going to live here longer then four years I would have bought it! We didnt want to just jump on it with out seeing any other houses though so we scheduled two other house viewing for today.

When we went house hunting today we felt like the house we saw yesterday just got better and better! Everything we saw today just seemed scary....like steep steps that we could see our small children tripping and falling down. EKK. Then the second house was a church conversion and although it had large space it was so far away from where we really wanted to be. The roads were single lane and we did not feel good about the drive to and from the base as it is, let alone days in the winter with rain and snow in the dark.

So we called to confirm with the realitor that we FOR SURE wanted the house that we saw yesterday. We found out that the landlord has several people interested in the house and basically is allowing people to come see the house all week and then make a decision Monday who gets the house. I wanted to scream, cry, throw a fit, and all else related to a toddler not getting their way. I mean we still have a chance to get the house but I feel so discouraged. I hate when I am competing against other people and yet I cant even do anything about it to make it happen. I have to rely fully on God to do this for us. Which is hard, because trusting that we get what we want over what we need is hard. I do believe God will provide a good place for us but this house is really what we want! So if your a prayer, pray for us to get this place, PLEASE!!!!!!

I did get a chance to enjoy some pretty scenery along the way though.  Apparently I love phone booths so enjoy some of the ones I managed to take from the car as we drove by ;)

We Survived the first 36 hrs!

You would think that with all we have going on that it might be hard to deal let alone survive these last few days. I do believe God was watching over us for sure! We did alright with the first day mostly because we were on auto. Day 2 was a little more difficult because everyone was living on low energy and barely able to keep our eyes open. There's this little park right on the other side of the building next to us. We decided to take the kids over there to get them moving and the energy flowing. All was going well tell a little boy showed up. Allyson started talking to him and keep running over to me saying things like, "mom he is 10!". Then she would run back. I didnt think much of it because Allyson is really out going. Next thing I knew I saw her jump right off the top of the playground equipment! It felt like time went to slow motion. Their was nothing to be done. Her feet touched the ground, knees buckled and she folded in half, so much that her chin smacked into the ground! OH MY LORD I thought Please dont let her be broken!!!! Mike ran to her and I was sitting there in shock! Allyson let out a scream. After a minute or two my heart went back down into my chest from my throat. She seemed ok. Nothing broken. I noticed some blood from her mouth so I had her open and saw a piece of chipped tooth. Eeekkk not good but thankfully nothing looked to bad. I just looked at her in disbelief. "What in the world were you thinking? Why did you jump off the playground?". Allyson replyed, "that boy told me to do it, he said he had jumped off it before". UGH why oh why would she have listened to him. What he did was not ok but then again Allyson was the one who decided to jump. My frustration was high but my thankfulness that nothing horrible happened from this situation. She had some trouble eating the rest of the day but other then that she seems to be better. Her pain is only slight when she eats. We have already contacted the dentist to see when we can come in to have her checked out. This happened all with in the first 42 hrs so I was sure that we were in for something horrible if this was the start of our new life here in England.
But on a better note:
The day was actually really beautiful. We took some silly pictures of the kids, I mean Mike ha ha.

Allyson Pre-chipped tooth

See that playground with the red slide? Yeah she climbed to the top of that and jumped off!

Nice sunny day

mike is enjoying the playground

I think that SB kicked in

what a goof ball

Today went well we got groceries, a new slow cooker which I am already planning meals for. We ate pizza that was under cooked because the oven wanted to burn the edges before the middle was done, so thats going to be a new issue to figure out. I meet a lady staying next to us in the lodge that has 4 home schoolers and is here house hunting before they make the final move this summer, so yay for meeting new people. Everyone else weve meet seems really nice and I am having moments where I am really looking forward to living her along with the moments of still wanting to run home.

Tomorrow is another day.....will see if we survive. I am sure with coffee in hand all will be well.

Um.....?

This must be from lack of sleep!

UK here we are!

So we made it, Alive and in once....well 7 pieces (people). It was just like I imagined, overwhelming and raining lol.
I'll start from the beginning of our trip. Hope I can remember it all through the lack of sleep. I am really scared of flying so my Friday morning really started out at 2am because I could not sleep due to anxiety and nerves. Knowing that the day was going to be long already sure didnt help the fact that due to my own issues it started even earlier then I really needed or wanted it too. Once everyone else woke up and joined me we had eggs, bacon and toast thanks to my mother in law for making us a special good-bye breakfast. We did another walk through of the house to make sure we got everything in our suitcases, I still can believe we did! We ended up with 14 pieces of actual luggage and 3 car seats and a stroller! I have no idea how we managed to get it all where it needed to end up. Especially scene we got dropped off at the wrong terminal and then ended up in the wrong terminal at London. God must have been in the works for helping us for sure. We ended up having help from people all over the airports. One man at LAX just walked up to us and asked to help us. He carried the luggage that I could while holding a baby and helped mike destress over the issue. We got dropped off at noon and were just going to get set up and go eat. When we ended up being in the wrong terminal for over an hour our plans got cut short. Our tickets were booked through American Airlines, but when we finally got to the counter they said we had to go to British Airways. Ugh so frustrating. So we got help from one of the catty luggage people and headed over to the next Terminal. Once we got through all that it was about 1:30pm. We figured that they would have food places after the security line (bad move on our part) so we went through the security first. We were happy to find out that with a baby and our large family we basically got to cut through the line all the way to the front. Guess they dont want us in line as much as we did not want to be in line. We got to our gate and mike went in search of food. When he finally got back he gave us our $10 sandwiches ekk. Not even subway quality. More like home made by teenagers quality. But we werent complaining we were all just tired and wanted to get this trip over and out of the way.
I had a little melt down right before entering the gate but Mike said for how scared I was I did a really good job, Yay me lol. I do admit as soon as I was allowed I had a Jack n' coke. It really did help my mood ;)
As far as the actual plane ride went, well that was probably as good as it could have been. We had NO children melt downs praise God. Amariah was the star of the plane everyone wanted to touch her, talk to her, ask us a billion questions. This cute little English women behind us just thought she was the most adorable thing ever. Everyone was so nice and impressed with the children's behavior! AMAZING.
I am always so proud of my kids when people start telling us how great they are. I think they are great all the time, but its nice to think other people think so as well. Once we got off the plane which was 10.5 hours long the kids which probably got 3 hours of sleep max and us grown ups which were working on mere minutes of sleep. Got the joy of trying to walk through the London air port which happens to be very confusing, different, and BIG. We probably got a good 3 miles of walking done not including what we had done back in the states. Our frustration grew when we found out we were in the wrong terminal for pick up for the bus that was supposed to drive us to the base and in fact thought we were going to have to be picked up another way. Thankfully a guy going in the same direction as we were let us know that we were still able to make the bus and the air port person did not know what they were talking about.
The 3 hour bus ride ended up being the best part of the whole trip. It was a tour bus with really comfortable seats and I slept the whole ride back. Which felt so good. I was a little bummed out because I wanted to sight see as much as I could. But apparently that was not what my body wanted because the one or two times I even opened my eyes I couldnt stay awake and my brain was not even registering what I was seeing ha ha pretty funny.
We got to TLF (temporary living facility) It was around 3pm. Realized that we had no food so we made a trip to the commissary for enough food to make it tell Monday and headed back to TLF. We were so thankful to see that we are basically smack in the middle of the BX and the Commissary and can walk to both in just a few minutes. Being carless this is so helpful and a blessing.
We fell asleep quickly which was no surprise. The 1am wake up party we had with Amariah and Levi in full morning mode woke everyone else up. It wasnt bad but boring due to the fact we didnt really have anything to entertain ourselves with. We feel back asleep around 5am and Mike had to wake us all up at 10am. It was really hard getting ourselves out of bed (2am our usual time) but we managed to get it done.

Allyson waiting to board the plane. 

Levi looking out the window at our plane

there it is! Our British Airline Plane

Levi awaiting the plane ride, He was so excited

This is Levi in London Airport. He was so tired. I was wishing I was young enough to be pushed around ;)

Anika in London, can you see how tired we are? lol

I said, "hey were in London, smile" this is what I got. Shy throw her thumb in the photo

At least one kid was excited (Shy)

This is Allysons leave me alone smile ha ha

Were on the bus! our last part to the trip

Right after this shot we ALL passed out. I should have had a pic of that. It was pretty funny