Grandmas had given Luke some planes to keep him busy, so between his airplanes, the DS, and the TV in front of him, he was a pretty happy camper once on board. Ella stayed busy looking at books and toys and eating snacks. We stopped in Denver to change planes, and from there it was a straight shot to London. Both kids were great on the plane. Guess they got the grumps out of their system at the airports. Thanks to an overnight flight, they both slept most of the second leg. The flight attendants were all British, and there were a lot of British people on the plane, so it was a fun intro to our new spot. I love listening to everyone talk. Hopefully some of it will rub off on the kids while here!
Since we arrived we've mostly been driving around the areas close to the base. There are a few villages around that we've looked at for housing, and we decided this past Tuesday on a house in Mildenhall. It's about a 15 minute drive for Jake to work and is between RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall. The owner is willing to rip out bathroom carpet (yuck!!... a lot of houses we've looked at here have carpeted bathrooms) and install some sort of vinyl or tile, and he is replacing some of the carpet in other areas of the house as well. So, here's a picture I got with my phone of the house we'll be in for the next few years.
I don't love it, but I really like the location. And... it's got a yard for the kids to play in (after living in rockville for the last year, we are ready to play in grass!), closets, and a double garage. Closets are hard to come by here. Garages too. I had been worrying about what we were going to do with all the stuff they packed from our last garage. Not exactly things you want hanging out in the front room! There's a sidewalk across the street that leads down to the market, and a local grocery store just a few minutes walk away. Market is held every Friday. I hear it's best to buy produce at the market since base produce has been flown from the states to Germany... and then to England. Makes for some wilted veggies. We've been having fun trying new brands of food and new restaurants. There's a fish and chips joint on every other corner, quite a few Turkish restaurants, and we've had some pretty good Chinese. Shopping in the local economy is pretty pricey so we'll be doing most shopping on base. It's fun to buy European brands every now and then though! So far we love their Froop yogurt (It's German and tastes like dessert), the soda (no high fructose corn syrup over here so everything is made from straight cane sugar), and of course, all the new candy and treats.
I keep forgetting to bring the camera along when we're out and about, but here are some from an afternoon when I did have it with me! Unfortunately it was raining part of the time and these pics are from inside the car. This is downtown Mildenhall.
The English countryside is beautiful. Around the base is mostly farmland and pastures with horses or sheep. There are a lot of super cute old houses and churches. I was wanting to find a cute English house to live in, but there aren't really any available around here right now. There is a cute 2 bedroom up for grabs, but we'd be super squished. Maybe if we had come before the rest of the new military peeps a few months ago! Oh well. I've got my closets, which is a good thing :) More pictures taken while driving around in the car... excuse the crummy photo quality!
Jake doesn't mind driving on the left, so I let him drive most of the time. We both passed our driving tests and I've been doing a little more driving lately. Hopefully it doesn't feel so weird in another week or two! English roads are narrow, and instead of lights and four-way stops there are roundabouts everywhere. Takes some getting used to (for me anyway). Here's Jake driving our piece of hud rental car...
One day on our way back from Bury St. Edmonds (another neighboring village), we passed a sign for West Stow. So, we stopped to check it out. It's the location of the first Anglo Saxon village. They've built lots of houses in ways archaeologists guess the Anglo Saxons houses looked back then, and there's a museum with some cool old artifacts. We lucked out because they happened to be letting everyone in for free that weekend.
There was a pretty fun park at West Stow too.
We've stuck pretty close to the base house hunting over the last two weeks. Made a trip to the London temple last Saturday with the ward, but other then that have yet to do the touristy things. We feel like we've made some good friends so far and the ward and dental squadron have been really welcoming. Kind of funny actually... the ward is mostly people from the base. Not just people from the base, but pretty much all the medical and dental from the base. We have one of each specialist in the ward. For real. haha. There are some British families in the ward, but they are outnumbered by Americans. The primary is the biggest one in Europe right now. It's crazy. The kids outnumber the adults. I'm bracing myself for another nursery calling. There are over 20 nursery kids and Ella does not like staying by herself.
We registered Luke for school at the local primary school. It's just a couple of minutes from our house. We've heard great things about the village schools here, and most other Americans we know so far with 4 year olds put their kids in the British school system. He'll go from 8:45 in the morning until noon. They call this year of school reception.. it's similar to American kindergarten. Luke is super excited. He starts next week.
I'm excited to get out and see more stuff now that we've got the house thing figured out! I think tomorrow we are heading to the coast to check things out. We're scheduled to move into the house on Oct. 1st. I was going to post pictures from the London temple and Ella's 2nd birthday but that will have to wait. I'm tired of sitting here! :)
also, it's Todd's birthday today. happy 25 to my little bro!! :)
