I don't want to forget this house.

 15 Kingfisher Way was good to us! 

We moved in last October and stayed until a little over a week ago.   It's really in the perfect location.  Just a couple of minutes walk to the market and to the local grocery store, the community pool, the river, and great parks.  Mildenhall is a charming little village and we made lots of fun memories there.  So, I've got to get pictures of it down in the blog book. 

Last week we moved a whopping seven minutes away to be on base.  We were never planning on moving on base, but when we saw the house they offered us, we wanted to be here.  It just felt right.  Friends close by for the kids, convenience, and a washer and dryer in the house trumped the cute village atmosphere. 

We're loving our new place, but I don't want to forget the cute house we left.  It was a great experience living off base for 10 months.  I took this picture a couple of weeks before we moved.  I went outside to get a pic of the house and when the kids heard the front door open, they came looking for me.  A few seconds later Jake came stomping out totally unaware that I was trying to get a picture of the house... just mad because he found some marker on the carpet or something.  haha. Check out the fist.  I thought it was a funny moment to catch on the camera!  Good one of the house though, right? :) 

Here are all the rooms downstairs.  Cute and little.  Every room has a door on the outside and if they're all shut, you walk into the house and it's like a cave!  haha.  English homes are very segmented. 

I'm going to miss the double convection oven in the kitchen!  I had finally gotten used to cooking in Celsius and adjusting for the convection.  Not going to miss the tiny washing machine in the kitchen or the super shallow kitchen sink  Or the wonky light fixtures.  Other than the kitchen and living room, there's a tiny dining room and a little office space we used as a piano room.   Oh, and one glorious tiny coat closet graced the hallway.  Those are hard to come by in English homes.  Even houses like this that were built 10 years ago.

This was upstairs.  Our bedroom/master bath, Luke & Ella's room, our 'office', and an extra little bedroom.  I never got into decorating this house.  Couldn't gather enough motivation!  Glad I didn't go through the trouble since we ended up moving so soon.  

The kid's bedroom had one little closet in it, but that's it as far as closets went in this house upstairs.  The military gives you a wardrobe for each bedroom in the house that doesn't have a closet.  These are the beauties Jake and I had to keep our clothes in.  They  took up a third of our room.  It's crazy how roomy it feels now that we don't have wardrobes and can use closets.

The bathrooms in England have zero storage cabinets/drawers.  We just stored everything in baskets.  Our new place on base has so much bathroom storage we don't know what to do with it all!  This was the other bathroom upstairs.

Random bathroom note:  Bathrooms in England have no outlets in them.  It's illegal.  So, you have to do hair and get ready for the day in another room of the house.  Also, there's rarely a light switch in bathrooms off base.  You get to pull one of these cutie strings to turn on the light.  You can't see it really good in this picture, but there's a bathroom string for ya.

Living off base, whenever you need to plug in a hair dryer, toaster, iron, etc. you have to lug this 25 lb transformer to an outlet to do so.  Some items are dual voltage (like some computers and a few other electronics) and you only have to use a small adaptor for those.  One time I accidentally dropped a transformer on the floor of our room when I was going upstairs to do my hair.  It tore through the carpet AND crushed some of the wood underneath!  I was sooo grateful it didn't land on my foot.  Those things are beasts.  Totally would have crushed my bones!  Transformers, I'm not going to miss you guys.  On base we have both American and British outlets.  Awesomeness.  No more hauling these things up and down the stairs to do hair or to use the toaster!

Some Americans are bugged by the bathroom/kitchen water situation off base.  I've never cared that the hot and cold sides aren't mixed together when coming out of the tap.  Seems like a weenie thing to complain about to me.  I kind of like washing my face with cold!  Seems so old school that they still do this though instead of letting you have warm water out of the tap.  It's super hot on one side and freezing on the other.  The British way to wash hands is to plug the sink and fill it with the hot and cold so that you've got warm water.  The thought of washing my hands in a little hand bath grosses me out.  Especially in public restrooms/sinks.  I'd rather just use cold water.  Anyway, for memory's sake, here's one of the fun faucets in the house.  This one is from the tub.  You can see that the hot and cold don't come together!

  

I'm going to miss the trees in front of our house in Mildenhall!   I loved them.  One thing that drew me in to this house was that we didn't have anyone across the street from us. 

  

   

Now we've got the forest behind us and cookie cutter houses in front.  Fun people live across the st from us now though, so it's all good :)  We're liking it so far here.  Much easier to keep clean and organized, that's for sure! I'll post pictures of our new place one of these days.  All I've got left to do is hang pictures!

4th of July in the Mother Country

  Luke had school on the 4th, so after dropping him off in the morning Jake, Ella, and I went to Cambridge for the day.  We shopped around at the mall and the market, had a tasty lunch at the Real Pasty Co, and finished the afternoon with some Benets ice cream.

Ella made a monkey that she named Cinderella at Build A Bear. 

Such a fun place to take a 2 year old!  She loved it. 

That evening we went to RAF Feltwell to BBQ with some friends and watch fireworks.  The Red Arrows put on a pretty good air show earlier in the evening.  While we were driving up to the base, they were doing their thing so I took some pictures out the window. 

I was pleasantly surprised at how great the fireworks were on base!  The kids were big fans too.  It was a late night for them since it doesn't get dark enough for fireworks until after 10:00.  I love that about summers here.  Longest days ever it seems!  Poor Luke had to wake up early the next morning for school. 

  

Ella kept putting her arm around Luke, so I snuck behind for a picture.  Love these little people!

 
Good day. 

A few more things from June

There are lots of wildflowers around!  I love it.  They're everywhere.  El likes them too.  Here she was one day at the park melling them.  I wish they actually smelled good! She always wants  me to mell them too. 

This was the first day of the year that it actually felt kind of hot outside and we felt like wearing shorts.  Almost July.  It was pretty much just this day and then it cooled down again.  The weather likes to hang out in the 70s most days.  After living in Vegas and Texas for so long, it's a welcome change from the heat! 

Ella's hair had been in her face and covering her eyes, so June was a month I did something I thought I'd never do to her.  Cut some bangs!  Or "Fringe" as the English call them.  Just another random June tidbit to throw out there.  I think she looks pretty cute with them.  Her hair actually looks like it's 'done' when we don't pull it all up!

This next pic was a week or so before the bangs came.  She is very into pwincesses, and loves it when her little friends bring their pwincess dwesses over.

I turned 27!  It was a great low key day.  After Jake was finished with work, we picked up some calzones at 'The Best Little Pizza Place' and ate at the park.  Then I picked out like 4 flavors of ice cream and we went home to have some dessert!  26 treated me well!  It's been a crazy, busy, and fun year.  I'm excited to see what 27 brings.  These next pictures were taken with my phone on my bday.  The colors and lighting are kind of funky. 

    

Jake took these next pictures with his phone when we went out to eat one night.  Cuties.

I think that's all of the pictures I wanted on here.  June also surprised us with a call from base housing.  We put our names on the housing list last year when we moved in just to have the option later on if we wanted to take it.   And so, we're moving on base.  Next week.  More on that later :)

Luke's 5th Birthday!

So, it was a couple of weeks ago but I'm still playing catch up!  Since his special day was a school day, Luke wanted to wake up really early... early enough to eat a BIG breakfast and open presents before Jake left for work at 6:45. When Luke wakes up early, you know something exciting is going on.  He requested scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and waffles.  This boy loves breakfast.  He fills up in the morning and doesn't care to eat much lunch or dinner.  Funny kid.  Here he is with his favorite breakfast eats.  We had a StarWars theme going on this year. 

Jake turns into a little boy when it comes to toys for Luke.  Loves the Legos and Starwars and all.  I think he was just as excited as Luke was for present time.  They had both been looking at AT-AT walkers on the Internet for months together, so naturally the one Luke got for his birthday was put together by 6:30 that morning.  

Luke took StarWars cupcakes to share with his class at school.  This was the first batch I made.  I stayed up late the night before making them and thought we were ready for his birthday. 

I thought wrong though.  The cupcakes were hanging out in a cupcake carrier on the kitchen table on birthday morning and Ella apparently decided that she wanted some while I was getting ready for the day upstairs. (By the way, I bought the carrier with my birthday money, and it's the coolest thing ever!) I came down a few minutes before we needed to take Luke to school and found El in the living room like this.

The little stinker had helped herself to a few cupcakes and destroyed the rest.  So, I rushed Luke out the door to school before he noticed, and she and I got to work on making batch #2.  The second batch made it to the school that afternoon.  Phew.   Ok, so breakfast: check.  Presents: check.  Cupcakes:  check.  Next on Luke's list of things he wanted that day was to play with Hayden after school.  Hayden came along with me to get Luke from school at the end of the day and they were able to play for a couple of hours.  They're good little buddies. 

Luke's request for dinner that night was chicken tacos from Taco Bell.  Easy enough.  After eating dinner and putting new presents together, waking up so early that morning finally caught up to him.  He was too pooped to do any singing/candle blowing/birthday cake stuff, so we saved that part of celebrating for the following Sunday night.  I think he had a good day though.  Here he was blowing out his candles when we finally did cake and ice cream.   

  Last year I asked him what some of his favorite things were when he turned 4, and I think it will be fun to look back and see what his interests were at 5 too!  And at every year around his birthday.  Here's what he wrote when I asked him about his favorites today.  He is still quite creative with how he spells a lot of words.  Mostly the long ones, but he's getting pretty good with the writing thing!  haha.  He has become a great little reader too. 

On this page he put his favorite thing to play with, thing to do, friend, dessert, and food: (Hero Factory, Draw, Hayden, Brownie, Hamburger Helper)

On this one, his favorite movie, song, and drink.   (StarWars, Scripture Power, Milk)

Fav place, snack, color, and his favorite thing to do at school (London, Cheez-Its, Blue, Red, Go Outside)

Fav. Superhero, game, animal, and he wanted to put down his favorite plane (fighter jet), and something about Lego Starwars. (Batman, Monopoly, Lion, Fighter Jet, Lego Starwars

After he was done with these papers he gave them to me and then snatched them all back, Whoops!  Forgot to put my name on all of them!  Haha.  I guess school drills that into ya!  That's why he smashed his name into the top right corner of each page. If there wasn't enough room he'd put half of his name or whatever would fit.  :)
So, there's a little about Luke at 5.   I love this little boy so much.  It's been an amazing 5 years!  The best. I'm lucky to be his mom!

Another Stonehenge and Bath Excursion

Stonehenge in the rain!

Shortly after I took this picture of Ella, she hopped out of the stroller.  That's the last time we used that umbrella stroller because we left it there on accident!  We got a lot of good use out of that thing.  I hope someone is using it now and it isn't just sitting in a garbage dump somewhere!  Glad we didn't take a nice stroller or I'd have really been bugged.  Wasn't worth the gas money to go back and get it.

Bath in the springtime is beautiful.  It was fun in December, but walking around town is more enjoyable in the nice weather!  We stayed at an RAF housing facility that was pretty awesome.  You pay only ten pounds per night to sleep in a pimped out double wide trailer park!  Awesome deal when the hotels in the area go for hundreds of pounds per night!  Here's a picture looking down on Bath from higher ground on a bus tour.  Out of focus, but you get the idea.

Chilling in front of the pump room..

Rick hit the jackpot while there.  Found 200 POUNDS!..  just sitting by the ATM outside of the grocery store.  Jake and Rick reported it, gave the store contact info, but nobody claimed it.   Score.

We watched a fudge shop make fudge a couple of times...

And more of the city...

Cutie Cricket club...

The Circus...

River Avon

 

I think that's the end of our May travels.  It was a great month.  Thanks for visiting, Rick and Sherry! 

Now hopefully I can get some of June blogged before it's over!