Our Days in the UK

Lest you think all my years of studying history were in vain, yes, I realize this title is a historical reference to the wrong country. It just had a nice ring to it. Justin turned 9 shortly after we got our new house. The poor guy was sick on his birthday, so we waited a few days to have cake so he could fully enjoy it. Baking here is still a bit of an adventure as I learn how to convert cups into grams and liters, and Fahrenheit to Celsius. Also, ovens here have, like, fourteen settings, some of which involve fans and switching heat sources from top to bottom. There is a learning curve! And all of my recipes are somewhere midway across the Atlantic. Well, hopefully at this point they are closer to almost-all-the-way across the Atlantic, but the point is they aren't here, so I had to sort of extemporize. Fortunately, I didn't ruin either his birthday muffins (thanks to my friend S for sending me his favorite recipe!!) or his birthday cake. Please excuse the vacuum cleaner in

At least as we drove our thousand-plus miles (see previous post...) we had some pretty scenery. We tried to take a bunch of pictures from the car, but it's hard to do when driving. Especially when driving at the breakneck speeds the British seem to find appropriate for winding country roads. I'm pretty sure two of our wheels lost contact with the road on a few of the turns. But that's a different story for another day. All the hedgerows also make it hard. As soon as you see a good view, you get out the camera and by the time you are ready to take a picture, the small gap in the hedgerow that facilitated the view is closed and you get a picture of sticks (I imagine in the summer it would be a slightly prettier picture of leaves, but right now it's sticks). Anyway, despite the difficulties, we did manage a few pretty pictures:     Do you see that hedgerow looming in the front trying to get in the way? Just behind it is a beautiful rainbow and a lovely old churc

We have pretty much mastered driving on the wrong side of the road, mostly because we spent sooo much time in the car during our house and car hunting days. The kids were once again troopers through it all, but when I looked on Justin’s iPad I found about three dozen photos that looked approximately like this: And then there were our lunch breaks, which looked like this: Yes, that is Nutella (not my sugar and dairy-free homemade version!) The kids were actually thrilled to eat sandwiches spread with my finger rather than having to go to another restaurant. For the record, we ended up putting more than a thousand miles on our rental car! We were all very glad to get a house!

We ate at so many restaurants during the ten days we were house hunting and homeless. The kids are so sick of eating out that they insist I cook everything at home even though we don't have our kitchen stuff from Boston yet. But while we were eating at restaurants, we discovered that Rebecca loves fish and chips! Justin likes it okay, but Rebecca ordered it at almost every restaurant during those first days. This is Rebecca with a piece of cod as big as her head. She didn't eat the whole thing, but she did make quite a dent in it... Here's a picture of Justin at one of the many hotel breakfasts we came to know and love (tolerate): The kids have both been so good about trying new things and keeping an open mind. I have been so amazed and impressed by their flexibility and willingness to go with the flow. (They are both very eager to be settled and have a more normal routine, but they were so patient with us when Eric and I were constantly distracted by the mounta

I'm going back through all our old pictures to document the past few weeks, but I need to take a pause in this regularly scheduled programming to show you this: We woke up to snow this morning. It's still coming down, and we have about two inches now. Unlike Boston, this area is not equipped for snow, so everything will shut down until it melts. It's supposed to turn to rain around ten, so it should melt soon. And maybe turn into an icy mess. But right now, it's really really pretty! As a side note, our village is pretty high (for the Cotswolds). The nearby town of Stow-on-the-Wold is the highest point in the Cotswolds at 800 feet. And as a side-side note, outside that town, the last battle of the Civil War (the English one, that is) took place in 1646 when the Parliamentarians defeated the last Royalist army. We're lower than that, as our village of Naunton is in a little valley, but not much lower. So we get snow more than most areas here. We've only li

After a few relaxing and rejuvenating days in DC, the kids and I flew to London to join Eric, who had gone ahead to get a hotel and rental car so he could pick us up. We flew in on New Years' Eve. And then spent the next two weeks living in hotels while we looked for a house and car. We found both! But in the meanwhile, life looked like this: Nine bags, four people, one hotel room. Actually, a few of the nights we had two rooms, but you get the idea. After about ten days, Justin got sick (again), this time with a cough and cold. We finally found a house and moved in just in time for Rebecca to get sick. The poor kids. If ever there were evidence that stress, exhaustion, and diet contribute to our immunity, the fact that they've both been sick twice in as many weeks is it!  They're both (almost) recovered, and we're as moved in as we can be given we have none of our stuff (which arrives in three weeks, fingers crossed.) House pictures coming soon!

We're going back in time to December 28, the day I flew out of Boston with the kids to visit my mom in DC. I'm going to skip over the movers coming, because that involved three out of four of us getting the stomach flu (I was the lucky one who evaded it). Becca was better by the time the movers came, but Eric was moaning in the back room and Justin was moaning on the couch. Needless to say, I'd rather not remember the details. Unfortunately, things didn't improve on the 28th when we were scheduled to leave. The cab came as scheduled, and I grabbed our nine bags and two kids and two bags of trash plus one giant plastic bin of trash to throw out before we left. As you can imagine, I don't have fourteen hands, so I took several loads back and forth to the elevator. That went okay until one of the bags of trash split open all over the elevator. At 4 am. And we had a plane to catch. And no extra trash bags, because, you know, we were moving across the Atlantic. When

We arrived in Heathrow last night and after an interminable walk along what seemed like three miles of moving walkways (here they call them conveyors) we finally reached customs. The line wasn't too long, but it still took about 45 minutes to get to the front, and then another twenty minutes or so to process our visas and biometric information. In the future it will be quicker, but since this was our first time in as residents they had to match our fingerprints, etc. The kids made it through the long plane ride and the long customs line like troopers. Some kids who no doubt had endured longer travel, less sleep, and more lines, entered full meltdown stage in the customs line. One boy about Becca's age took a huge stuffed dolphin and hit his dad furiously again and again screaming, "Die!" Another boy (from a different family) sprawled on the floor in a full-blown, fist-pounding tantrum. The kids looked on with wide eyes. The parents for the most part ignored them, pr