What a great group of people we have met. We had a get together at our house last weekend and invited a few families that we wanted to get to know better. We are very lucky to have them here with us. All but one family is from the Peoria area. They are wonderful!
The guys decided to give the wii a try. I think they enjoyed themselves.
Here are the children of the families. Bryce, Tyler and Kylie had a lot of fun having them over to play at our house.
Of course can't go throughout a day without a little tea time.

I have gotten together with a wonderful group of ladies to do a book club. We meet every other Wednesday. Looking forward to getting to know them better.
This is my friend Becky. She has been very helpful in giving plenty of pointers of what to bring here before we came. Thank you Becky! This is Hollie and her daughter Gwen. They were our first visitors at the house. Kylie really enjoys playing with Gwen. They have a son who Tyler enjoys playing with. They have given us a lot of support and help since we have been here and we appreciate all they do. This is Min. I met here through the school Bryce and Tyler go to. Bryce is in the same class as her son. They are from Asia and are another great family we have met here. We have been trying to talk them into visiting America, since they have never been.
Kylie decided to try some tea and guess what she loved it! She didn't want to put it down. I guess she gets that from her mom. The cup is as big as she is.

Kylie is wearing her first nightgown and she is very proud of it. She did not want to take it off the next day so I promised her that she could wear it again the next night and she finally agreed. She wants to be such a big girl!

We finally have gone through a ton of boxes and feel more settled in. Here are some pictures of the house and looking at them I noticed I forgot a few ( Kylie's room for one). I will get those up later. I have been a little busy the last couple of days because Kylie is not feeling well. We think she has the flu. She is doing a lot of resting and hopefully that will make her feel better. Everyone else (knock on wood) seems to be doing fine. Steve thinks he is going to purchase his car possibly tonight. He needs to go see it first! We'll keep you updated. Enjoy the pictures!

Here is our kitchen. It is a good size but miss all the cabinets we had at our last house. Had to store some kitchen items because I brought to many and also some of my pans would not fit into the smaller oven. I went out and bought a couple baking pans that now do fit!

This is a nice sitting area in the backyard. Above the table and chairs are a vine of grapes. They are just now starting to turn purple. We took a taste of one, not bad but still a little bitter.

Here is the toy room. They kids are enjoying all their toys again. Although we are very thankful that we left some toys behind because as you can see we have filled up the room with the toys we brought.

Here are the kids on their new playset. They are very happy with it. CAT hired a handyman to put it together and the poor guy did all by himself in three days. Of course I made him a cup of tea everday he was here cause thats what we do in England!


Here is our living room. We have a great TV, but still have no cable. They say everything should be fixed this week. Steve can't wait because he is missing all those great Bears games.

Here is the back of the house. We have a nice fenced in area and luckily the patio was big enough for us to put all of our furniture on.


Here is the boy's bedroom. They love the bunkbeds! We still need to decorate the room in all their sports stuff.

This is our bedroom. Through the door is our walkin closet and then our bathroom.

Ok...we are finally up and running with the internet! Here are some pictures that we wanted to share and we have more that will be coming. This will give you an idea of what we have been up to the past week. Boxes and boxes! They never seem to go away, although we are getting much closer and will have pictures of our house on the inside very soon. Bryce and Tyler are doing great in school. They just started football (soccer) club on Mondays and Bryce is taking guitar lessons on Fridays. School here is very similiar to the states. Although if they need to take a restroom break, they need to properly ask if they can use the toilet. The kids thought that was funny. I am getting better acquainted with the grocery store and I have found that it is better to buy Scottish beef versus British beef. Taste so much better. We are thrilled because all we have eaten is fish and chicken. We are doing very well driving on the opposite side of the street and we are getting used to all these roundabouts.
Thanks for all of your e-mails and regular mail, please keep them coming!! Our Morton number is also up and running so feel free to give us a call although keep in mind the six hour time difference and we'll do the same. It is hard to believe that we have almost been here for a month. We sure miss all of you and think of you everyday!! Enjoy the pictures and we'll send more very soon.

Tyler's first day of school
Bryce's first day of school
They are dressed for success!
We are finally on our way to London. The boys are thrilled, but Kylie is ready to sleep! Luckily they all did a great job on the plane. Kylie slept most of the way and Bryce and Tyler decided not to sleep until the last two hours. They were too busy playing games and watching movies. They thought that was awesome!

This is the truck that brought our green sea container. The whole entire container was completely full from front to end. The truck was so big that they could not get into our driveway, so they had to park on the other side of the fence and carry everything around into the house. It took them until 7:00 that night just to unload. Then they came back the next day to put stuff together.

This is just a taste of what some of our boxes looked like...now

multiply this by 12 more different areas.
Anybody want to join us in unloading all these boxes?
Kylie talking on the phone and helping unload all the boxes.

Here is the car we bought. A volvo with all the extras even a navigation system built in...

which we desperately need.

Bryce, Tyler, and Kylie standing at our front door. We just arrived at the house!

Our first week

Well we have made it through the first week of living in the UK. Some things have been a struggle like making sure we say trousers for pants. Their pants means underwear to them, so you can only imagine what kinds of looks we have gotten. We have gotten into our house although we are not living their yet. We have been staying at the Marriot hotel until we get our beds which should be Thursday. Can't wait to sleep in my own bed since it has been over a month since we have.
I don't want to hear anyone complain about how bad the gas prices are...we filled up for the first time yesterday and paid 65 pounds (which is $130). Enjoy your $3-$4 a gallon fill ups.
We did attempt to do some grocery shopping and it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. The only bad thing is that they do not have the same brands as we do and some things were hard to figure out what they truly were. Can you believe they do not have baking soda (the arm and hammer kind that you stick in the fridge to get the odors out). I looked everywhere and not one person even knew what I was talking about.
The weather has been very nice. It has been in the 70's all week and so we luckily still get to wear shorts.
The kids are doing great! They start school tomorrow and are very excited. Hopefully it stays that way. The hotel has a wonderful pool and hot tub so we have been taking the kids their daily. We also just bought our first TV so when we are at the house the kids can play the Wii.
Tomorrow we get our sea shipment!!!!! Looking forward to seeing and using our stuff again. We won't get internet until this weekend, so hopefully we will get our Morton number up and running and I can start making some phone calls. Don't worry I'll keep in mind the 6 hour time difference. Hope all is doing well and we will try to get some new pictures up by next week. Miss all of you!!