So, after a few fun days in Fairfield we left Josh and Jenni's house for Los Angeles. We stayed at Embassy Suites hotel that night and then took off the next morning for the port. The military ships one car to England for free, so we had them ship our Highlander. Jake didn't want to"hang out at the airport all day" after dropping the car off, so we took our time leaving the hotel in the morning. We have different travel philosophies. I'd rather sit around for a while so I don't have to rush to get places. He'd rather plan things out so he's not sitting around at any one place. Both philosophies have potential to be good, but this time mine would have been better. whaha. Our flight didn't leave until after noon. Jake had the impression that you just sort of drop your vehicle off at the port and then leave for the airport in a matter of minutes. Guess someone fed him some wrong information. We were there for quite a while, and by the time we finished the car paperwork and got into the cab, we realized that it was going to be pretty tight making our flight. We got to the airport a little less then two hours before our scheduled departure and thought we might actually be okay. The curbside check-in guys told us we had to check in inside since we were going overseas with one way tickets. He directed us to a check-in line inside and we thought we were good to go. After 20 minutes of waiting in line though, another employee told us we were in the wrong place and needed to get in the next line over. Ugh! So, we headed to the back of the other line with 2 grumpy kids and the world's largest collection of luggage. We sat in that line for over an hour. It moved even slower then Walmart cashier lines, and by the time we were at the front and able to check our luggage, it was too late. We had pretty much missed our flight. Blah! So, they booked us for a flight that took off later that afternoon. Fun times hanging out at the airport with two little crazies. These two were being exceptionally naughty. Good thing they are cute
or we may have left them in LA. Here they are chilling on the luggage scale. That's Ella's naughty face :)
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!
A cab driver was waiting for us when we got to London and took us to RAF Lakenheath. He was so awesome. He answered lots of our questions on the way to the base and was super helpful and nice. We later learned that being a cab driver in London is a big deal. People have to study for a long time to get the job and memorize loads of maps, etc. Kind of cool. The base is about an hour and a half from London Heathrow, and we checked into temporary housing when we got here. The first few days were kind of foggy and surreal. The kids and I were so tired and out of it. Luke and Ella slept until noon the first few days and wanted to be up super late. I think it was a good week before they were feeling like themselves again and on somewhat of a schedule. We've been freezing because for some reason our room's thermostat is stuck really low. It's a Popsicle box in here! Kind of funny because Jake's room in TLF in Vegas was really cold. It's rained a few days since we've been here, but not as much as I thought it would. Most rainy days have at least started out sunny. Glad I brought jackets for all of us... I almost didn't because they took up so much room in our luggage and we had to lug them around Vegas and Mesa in the 100+ degree weather for a month before getting here. It's been in the 50s-60s.
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!! :)
