How Time Flies

I know it's an old and frequently used cliche, "how time flies," but really, isn't it amazing how time flies??

This week has come with some time sensitive news for us regarding our life over here. First, we have been scheduled for an appointment next week to have our biometrics redone for our new visas since our current visas are due to expire in August. We moved here on an 18-24 month contract for Scott's job and now we are close to the 3 year mark....how quickly it has passed! I marvel at the strength and great experiences it has brought to us as individuals, to our marriage, and most importantly now to our family of 3. When I think about the difference time has made for us in these circumstances, I think about how nearly three years ago we kept thinking - "Won't it be great to get back to America to do x, y, z, etc. when we move home," and now, how we often say "We know we will move home, but we are surely going to miss x, y, z, about life in England when we have to move home. Let's hope it's not too soon, we still have a lot to do and see over here."

The time has gone by in a blink of an eye and I did not think when Scott accepted his assignment here that we would be one of those couples who signed up for a couple of years abroad and then enjoyed it so much that it turned into (?) number of years. It feels like just a few days ago that we were saying good bye to our families (and of course I was crying for having to leave!) and we were both filled with excitement and a lot of nerves about what was in store for us. And now, here we are, searching through the filing cabinet to find our original birth certificates, marriage certificate, and other appropriate paperwork so we can apply to stay here for a bit longer. Within the past three years, it is incredible to think of the world monuments we have seen in person, the trips we have taken, the different culture that we have now grown to embrace for so many reasons, and the reliance on one another that has cemented our marriage and family together.

The second time reminder came when our tenants living in our Chicago house informed us that they would not be renewing their lease this fall. Scott & I were giddy with dreams for our future when we bought that house. It's strange to think we only lived there for a year before we moved out and the plan for what we thought was going to be a life in downtown Chicago, became a life (temporarily) abroad. We have now had tenants who have lived in our house longer than we ever did and probably ever will. With the time that has passed is now the concern that we do not want to move back into that house when we return. Time has changed our needs and since we have been living in England we have lived just 5 minutes from Scott's office. In Chicago, we chose to live in the city and Scott commuted nearly an hour (more on most days) each way out to the suburbs to his office. Since we have lived so close to Scott's office here in England, the long hours he puts in at the office don't seem as long as they did in the US because he is home much quicker at the end of the day. The time he is able to spend with us as a family is important so we will live closer to his office when we move home.

And thirdly, my baby is growing SO quickly! How is she already 4 1/2 months old?

I have mentioned my mixed feelings about the year-long maternity leave here in England before, but right now, I am nothing but grateful for the time with Crosby. I am not sure how I would have ever been able to go back to work already. I feel fortunate to be able to spend this time with her and to enjoy the milestones of her first year as they happen. Yes, at some point we may decide to have another baby, but I keep thinking to myself I will never have this time back with my first child, just the two of us together. I am trying to relish the days and experiences we are having now. I keep thinking - I want to keep her this age forever, and then a few weeks later, I find myself more in love with her than I was before, and I think no, this age is even better, she is even more adorable now. How does this continue to happen? I am grateful for this time and hope I am soaking up as much of it as I possibly can, because time really does seem to fly....

Snap Happy Holiday Decor

As our Christmas gift to one another this year, Scott & I decided to invest in a nice camera this year. So this weekend we purchased our new digital SLR camera and spent most of Sunday reading the user manual and testing the camera out by taking photos of everything and anything around our house. I thought the Christmas decor photos might be the only ones worth sharing on here! Hope your home is decorated for the season as well! 

A few of our new Czech Santa nesting dolls lined up on our windowsill that we purchased last weekend while in Prague. 

Our stockings are hung by our chimney with care. 

Not quite more Christmas decor, but more projects I have been working on lately...Christmas bibs for some little ones. I like these two designs the most. 

Where did this come from???

I looked outside the living room window yesterday and saw a strange object in our yard....

Upon closer inspection, I saw a large MUSHROOM and stump growing....

This mushroom really looks THAT large in person too.....

Now I just wonder why on earth it is growing in the middle of our yard!

Spiders in the Car "wing" mirrors

I have expressed my discontent with the high number of spiders this country has to offer, mainly the ones I find living in my house. Today, I have seen 5 who are taking up residence in my home. Sigh. I killed the two in the kitchen (well Scott did on my behalf!) because it disgusts me to have spiders in the food preparation area. The others who are living in the corners of rooms will get to live for today....tomorrow may be a different story.

Beyond the spiders that seem to multiply in our house, I am now finding spiders living in the "wing" (side) mirrors of our cars. Maybe I wasn't as aware of this situation when we first moved here, but now it seems to be happening on every car I see in a parking lot. The spider seems to live inside the mirror area and then spins its web in between the mirror, car window and door frame. I will have to take a photo to post sometime soon. I already got angry with the spiders this morning and destroyed their webs with a stick when I pulled back home into the driveway. I know there are at least two of them in one of our cars because as I was driving today along the motorway, they BOTH crawled out onto their webs at nearly the same time. As I was looking to change lanes, I glanced in the side mirrors and saw big brown spiders crawling around out there!!! uggh. I just fear they will crawl inside my car (correction, I have already found webs inside the volvo on the passenger's side - GROSS!) - but I fear they will crawl inside while I am driving just to irritate me. 

I do not remember walking through a parking lot of cars in the US to find every other car wing mirror covered with a spider web....I am wondering is it just another UK phenomenon? I just googled the situation and was amused to find other people wonder about these spiders who reside inside their car mirrors as well.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=670157

There were quite a few other sites I found about this topic, but I will quit my ranting about it now and will hope that someday I'll be back in a land where I do not find spiders popping out every day at me. 

A Sight Not Seen Before

A sight I have yet to see in my marriage to Scott....

Him mowing the lawn!

We have never had a lawn to mow before this current house (the 6 foot patch of grass at our Chicago townhouse doesn't really count since we could cut it with scissors, if needed) so today when he announced that he was going to mow the lawn, I thought - Well, this is a first! Luckily it only took him about 15 minutes because the grass really isn't that long here yet. I think he just wanted to be outside and enjoy this beautiful spring day we are having in England! 

An IKEA Sunday

We spent the day reliving what it was like to move into our first apartments today and put together all of our furniture for it. We spent the majority of the day assembling the myriad of storage units and additional pieces of furniture we recently purchased from IKEA. 

Scott assembling our wardrobes in the back room.

Our entire house here in England is outfitted and furnished with IKEA furniture. The kitchen cabinets and even the medicine cabinets in our bathrooms are from the store. We cannot fault the landlords for providing such furniture. After all, if we had been in their shoes and had tenants who required a house to be furnished for rental; We would have done the same thing as they did, and went to IKEA to purchased all of the necessary fittings for a house.

While there is nothing wrong with IKEA furniture, we have chuckled about the fact that when Scott & I bought our townhouse in Chicago, I made sure we eliminated as much of our straight-out-of-college furniture as possible, and were investing and working towards acquiring nicer pieces of furniture that would last us for years to come. For the next few years, though, we are back to self-assembled kind of furniture for which IKEA has become famous. 

Although our landlords have provided us with a "furnished" house here, we still do not seem to have enough storage space. Actually, we have no storage space within the house. There is a not a SINGLE closet anywhere here. Since so many houses are so old here in England, it is a common problem people tend to have. Thus, they utilize wardrobes.

Today, we assembled an additional two wardrobes for our storage needs. One will house all of Scott's clothes, and the other will house our extra bathroom and bed linens, as well as a few of my barrels of fabric that I brought with me to this country. We also put together a desk, chair, and my new sewing and craft table. It was a long day of hammering ply board and aligning plastic shelves into the ply board cabinets, but we are pleased with the additional storage and working spaces that these new pieces of furniture will provide us. 

The IKEA furniture all put together. The two wardrobes for storage and a desk (with a few things still on it that will not fit in to the wardrobes!)

House Woes

We are having house woes here and we do not even own this place! Late this past weekend, Scott & I decided to move some furniture in one of the back bedrooms so that we could go to IKEA to buy more storage units for the extra bedrooms. As we started to move the wardrobe, a spot on the bottom of the backside of this piece of furniture caught my eye. Upon closer inspection, we realized the bottom half of this wardrobe was completely covered in mold and mildew! Gross. 

Scott then moved the small bed and frame in that bedroom, out of the way, and as he moved that, he discovered mold (mould as they say here) spots all over the underside of the bed mattress. We immediately took out the digital camera to snap photos of this mess to send to our agent and called her to make sure she would actually consider this situation an urgent one. (Mind you, nothing in this country is ever urgent so we knew this one would not be either). I have not posted the photos of the mould here in order to protect your eyes.

Monday morning, as my sister was showering, I was in the kitchen doing dishes and I happened to walk over to our mini fridge where the ceiling caught my eye. I looked up, and saw that there was water coming through our kitchen ceiling from the guest bathroom upstairs! 

So, today, the owners of our house came over to inspect the mould and water situations and they deemed them as problems. I am guessing in about another week, we should have action on these household issues....

The arrival of things....

The UK moving truck full of our boxes....

Our household goods from Chicago arrived last week, and although we do not have everything completely put away, I am so happy to have a kitchen full of my own things! It is glorious to have extra time so I have been baking/trying new recipes and have also been making nice dinners every night. We were both so tired of eating out after a full month on the road and in hotels, that it has been a treat to cook every night. 

We seem to be missing a few things that we thought had been in our shipment of goods, and also ended up with a few things we had directed to storage (such as an ice cream maker, random mirror, etc.) but overall, the house is starting to feel a bit more like our own since we have our "things" with us. 

 Our new kitchen (my "work" right now) in disarray with our items out after the packers unpacked the boxes.

The best arrival of all, was the one that I collected yesterday....my sister arrived via London to stay with us for almost the next month! It is quite a treat to have her here with us to visit for a while. 

Feels like Home (soon we hope!)

A few good things from our end...

1. The spiders are slowly becoming less prevalent throughout our house (outside the house is a different story). Living here for a few days and a few professional and thorough cleanings have helped the situation overall. We have, however, encountered a fleet of moths in our bathroom. I left the window open ajar the other night before going to sleep and when Scott came up to use the bathroom before bed, the room was swarming with moths! I have learned not to keep the windows open at night.

2. Our things from the states arrive tomorrow! We are both excited to add variety back into our wardrobes and are excited about simple things, such as a trash can for our bathroom (rather than the hanging plastic bag from the door handle). I am excited to have my kitchen intact and baking tools at hand so I can start baking and cooking with some of my free time. I will be glad to have our things here in order to make this place feel more like our own home.

3. I took my first 2 hour driving lesson today. I have been driving some, but it is a nerve-racking experience for both me, as the driver, and Scott, as the passenger. Mr. Singeh, my instructor, did say I was a good driver and should be fine to pass the British driving test and exam with a few more lessons and quite a bit more practice. It is strange to drive here because there are basically no stop signs. Our county has 3 in total. The round-about is preferred here.

4. I joined the local library this week. I have not been to a library to check out a book in years. I have been going there each day to read the paper and then also have checked out a number of books. I have been checking out cookbooks and travel books, so I can plan both my future meals and trips in my spare time.

And the not-so-great things from our end....

1. Our experience with customer service for a number of services for our new house. The phone company is coming to install our line for our phone tomorrow, but they (the same company) cannot turn on the phone, cable, or internet service in our house until the end of September! I am not sure why it takes over ONE month to execute such a request, but I do know that EVERYTHING in this country works and moves slower than I have ever experienced before. I had been warned about this level of service before we arrived here and I thought maybe things had improved since these people were last here. It has not.

2. The Laundry Situation. We have a washer and no dryer. Due to the great number of bugs outside in our back yard, I am not keen on hanging our clothes out there to dry. So, I have drying the clothes on a make-shift clothes line in our kitchen. And since our internet is not working at the house yet, I cannot download the photo of my "laundry room" to my computer in order to post here. As soon as I can post it, the photo will explain the situation best.

Arachnophobia blues

After our second night in our house (tangent: have we mentioned that in the history of uncomfortable beds, ours is likely the 3rd or 4th most uncomfortable? possibly a post on this later)...but anyway after waking up from our second night, I awoke today to a reality version of the b-movie, Arachnophobia.

I came home at lunch to find a bleary eyed Cassie, eyes red and damp from melting down over finding a spider in her towel after showering. Oh, and the millions and millions of spiders we have in our house. My superhero wife spent the morning vacuuming the windows and crown moulding, wiping out cracks and crags above, behind, in-between, and below most every object, doing her best to rid our humble establishment of the very living beings who ultimately protect our living environment from various critters, pin-head sized or otherwise. Only trouble is now, she says is that we have a spider population equivalent to the state of California (or Great Britain as they call it in Great Britain).

So upon coming home at lunch, Cassie explained her toils to me, breath interrupted, and in one motion, grabbed a paper towel, lunged across the room, and smashes her fist into the wall, all while screaming 'Victory!!!!!' She opened the rag to reveal her spoils......a spider the size of a grain of sand....and a fat one at that. Turns out that I married an expert mini-spider hunter....which of course I find very attractive.

Anyway, this evening while having dinner and settling in afterwords, we had multiple periods of increased heart-rate....quivering lips....complete paralysis....upon discovering another...and another.....and another....and another spider.....turns out that we really have a lot of spiders in this joint.

We went to the UK version of Walmart....to check out the local, economically-priced wares, namely spider cianide, tarantula toxin, arachnid anthrax....where there was a complete lack of pest control products. Coming from a country where we love our chemicals, We were truly surprised not to find any pest control products of any sort.....but we did buy some clothes pins, cling wrap, anti-bacterial wipes, and a toilet brush....which are great....but still are not creepy-crawly killers.

So now we are off to bed....where we are sure to encounter night-terrors of the eight legged kind. To those of you who know what I am talking about.....thank you for your prayers....goodnight.