London

I'm a terrible blogger, but here are a few pictures from our trip to London at the beginning of the month.

London

In other news, we're getting excited about school starting. Kindergarten starts on the 8th of Sept, and I'm taking leave for the day so I can drop him off and pick him up. The rest of the time he'll ride the bus from the youth center to school. They don't have regualr yellow school buses here, they have the luxury tour style busses, I'm kinda jealous. He'll be going to school just 5 min down the road from the house, but it'll be a 20 min ride from Lakenheath. I think I've finally bought everything on the school supply list, and we went shopping yesterday for new pants in Bury St Edmunds (one of the close cities). The only pants on base are the $20 Levi's, and at the rate he goes through them, I can't afford to keep buying there. We did find some good ones for cheaper though.

We went to a water park Friday. It was 7 hours of driving for 4 hours of playing, but Aiden said it was worth it. It only took 2.5 hours to get there, but my GPS (who has a lot of not nice names) decided to bring me home the "shorter" route, meaning on the crazy back roads and through the center of every major city between here and there, instead of on the highway, and 4.5 hours later I wanted to kill her. I must look like a crazy person when I'm driving and talking to the stupid thing...she'll say "take the third exit from the round-about in 1 mile" (imagine it British) and I'll yell back for her to shut up.

that's it for now...Rachel

So I've finally tracked down Aiden's stuff, it's sitting in a warehouse in Las Vegas still. The stupid movers never shipped it. They're saying it'll be here by the end of September now. Blah for moving!

Notta Lotta Going on

Nothing much to report from here. I've been getting things situated at the house, and it's finally starting to feel like home. The 3rd bedroom is a catch all, it's got all the office and craft stuff, plus the elliptical, a large stack of boxes, and the wardrobe that wouldn't fit in my room. Speaking of, the wardrobes they brought are crap-tastic, the wood is crappy, they are big and bulky and one smells like it lived in a bar before here, but they hang stuff. I've got one in each bedroom, and they are all full of my clothes. Aiden's clothes are still in suitcases, until his dresser gets here, and my uniforms all hang in his room for now. I've been looking around at ones to buy, and once I actually start getting paid the rent from the AF (it'll be a nice back-payment) I'm going to buy some decent ones downtown.
I bought a little pine cabinet a while back for the entry way, and I've been trying to get it painted. I bought white spray paint, and I'm kinda white-washing it. If I ever get it all the way painted (never fails, it'll be sunny and nice and the minute I get it all out of the garage to paint, it starts raining) I'm going to distress it some. I think it'll turn out nice, if I ever finish it.
I'm thinking of hitting up an auction next weekend, I need some new bookcases, my cheap Target ones have about had it, and I don't want to unpack the books until I find something.

When I first started working, the days felt like years long, I was sitting in a room all day staring at books and numbers and trying to learn. Now that I've moved on to position training, and I'm actually doing something, the days fly by. Talking with London is almost like talking with the Koreans, everything has to be said slow and in a specific order, or nothing gets accomplished. After my 2nd day talking with them, I figured that out, and now I'm able to get things done a little quicker.

I'm thinking about getting a Jeep. At first I was going to order a new one through the BX, a Liberty, but the more I thought about it, the worse the idea got. I'm used to driving a UK car here, so changing sides of the car would just cause more confusion. Plus, I'm more likely to mess up a car here than anywhere else, so new isn't practical, I'll wait till it's time to leave and get one before going back to the states (if I decide to go back). So I was looking up used ones online last night, just to get an idea of what's available and what kind of cash to expect to spend. *FYI, a US Liberty is called a Cherokee here* Anyway, today driving home from errands on base, I saw an old school Cherokee with a for sale sign, so I wrote down the number. It's a 95, with 130K miles, and she only wants 900 pounds (about $1400). I'm going to call USAA and find out what insurance would be on it, and I'm going to drive it tomorrow. She said the only thing "wrong" is that she doesn't know if the 4 wheel drive works, she's never tried. If I do decide to get it, I'll keep the car most likely. The car gets good mileage, and that way I'll have a back-up when one breaks, which is the norm for me.

Oh, the new Harry Potter movie comes out this week...I'm so freaking excited, everytime the preview comes on in the breakroom at work, I make everyone be quiet! I've decided not to take Aiden, at least not until I see it first, it's supposed to be darker than the others, plus, I don't want to have to chance someone having to go potty in the middle and missing something.

That's all folks...oh, and my email works...so if you're bored, send me a line or two...

Happy 4th of July

We started the morning out driving 45 min away to a town called Wisbech, to a bedding store. I got some curtains finally, and few other things for the house. There was a McDonalds right next door, so we ate lunch, it's better than the states, but Korea still wins my vote for McDonalds. We also stopped in a shoe store to get Aiden some water shoes for water play at the CDC. After a very quick run in the Tesco, we drove home. My buddy Les called me at some point and left a message about going to the base carnival. Once we got home and talked to them, we met up at Feltwell. It was crazy busy with rides and games..it was just like the county fair. Aiden started on the trampoline thing that has the bungie cords and jumped for a few. Then we went through the haunted house (he was scared the whole time) and then we went on the gravitron thing. Well I decided it would be fun for us all to go on that, (myself and Aiden, Les and his g/f Erica, and their 2 hungover, yet still drinking friends). That probably wasn't the best idea, not only was Aiden scared to death, but I felt like I might be sick too, I'm definately getting too old for some of it. Aiden did a couple a kid rides, we got cotton candy and ice cream and walked around a bit. I was trying to avoid him seeing the bouncy house area, but he finally did. They had 5 or so bouncies set up, and an infaltable rock climbing wall, he did them. Around 5pm we decided to leave and go to Erica's house in New Market to BBQ, and avoid the mass crowds that were still showing up. We got down there, cooked and ate, then walked across the street the the Heath to let the dogs run. It's a huge (miles at least) grass field with a couple of courses they use to train the race horses. New Market is super famous for it's race horses, and the town revolves around them. We let the dogs and Aiden run for a bit, the went back to the house and hung out until it was about dark. I wanted to time it so we could see the fireworks on our way home, but as always we didn't get out of there in enough time, there's always next year though.
We had a good day, Aiden had a lot of fun.

It's been HOT!

I'm guessing we brought the desert heat with us. Other than the first week we were here when it was mostly cloudy, it's been beautiful. The past week and a half has been the hottest the UK has seen in almost 3 years. It's been in the upper 80's and hit the low 90's a few times. People are going crazy trying to find fans and portable a/c units, since they aren't built into houses here. The BX has ordered extra shipments of fans, and they're gone within hours. The buildings on base are hot too, since they don't have a/c. Our building is a nice and cool 60 degrees, and we've had people hanging around who wouldn't normally visit, we're guessing they come by to cool off. I bought one tower fan for the bedroom, because Aiden gets hot when he sleeps, and since it's light so late into the evening, I can't leave the windows open very far. We're in the small group of people who like the heat. Plus they've been having water play at the CDC on Thursdays, and Aiden doesn't give me a hard time about going those days. He's still adjusting to the CDC, it's getting a little easier, but we still have days where he cries when I leave. Then again, he cried the other day when I got there 30 min early and he didn't want to leave before he got to play outside.

We're going to go to the base party thing on Sat. It seems odd to celebrate our independence from a country while living in that country, but apparently the brits don't mind our fireworks, they come too! They have a big carnival type thing on the base closest to my house (it's a 5 min drive) with rides and food and such, and they open it to everyone. I've been told that there are as many brits as americans, which just seems wierd, but they'll take any excuse to drink that they can.
Speaking of drinking, I haven't tried any of the local brews yet, but I plan to. They have all sorts of ciders and ales, and we've been warned that they are much more potent than american brews. We're heading to a town about 45 min from here tomorrow afternoon (to a curtain store, I'm really tired of the cardboard, and there isn't any where closer to buy decent curtains) and I'm going to stop in the big Tesco (aka super walmart) to grab a few things. I may pick up some cider as well.

We did finally get some fish and chips. There is a place 5 doors down from the house, and I heard it was the best around, so we walked down last weekend. I have nothing to compare it to (Long John Silvers doesn't count) but it was really good. We got a piece of cod (the size of my arm) and some scallops (Aiden loves shrimp, fried scallops was the closest they had) and the largest order of chips (more like potato wedges than fries) that I'd ever seen. We ate all the fish quick, but we couldn't have finished the chips if we ate them for days. Aiden loved all of it, and ate more than I did. They also have fried chicken, burgers, and an assortment of british food, like steak and ale pie. I had the pie at the pub we went to on our new-comers tour, and it isn't bad either. I'm sure we'll be walking down to try something new this weekend, with unpacking and the heat, I haven't had much motivation to cook.

Unpacking

Since we left the hotel I've been attempting to unpack, while working and getting every thing straight. It's been a lot of work for sure. I finally got the internet turned on today (everything is slow to get done here.) The cable people should be here in the morning, and we have one TMO delivery Friday, it's either my stuff from Korea or Aiden's stuff, I'm not sure, but I do know they have lost the other shipment. Hopefully it'll get found sometime soon. Work is rough, there's a lot to learn and not enough brain cells to learn it.
That's all we've been up to, I'm hoping to take a trip this weekend or the next, just to get a break from the constant cycle I'm in.

Moving in.

The movers brought the first of the three shipments today. It's like christmas, I have all my furniture back! It's all over the place, nothing is situated, just in the right rooms. There are boxes everywhere, I'm hoping the un-pack fairies will show up there tonight (we're staying in the hotel one last night) and get it all put away for me. I was lucky, nothing major is broken, and there are only a few things missing so far, like the huge carpet, it wasn't in the shipment. After I unpack everything I'll file a claim and get paid replacement cost for anything missing/broken. I have to borrow a jigsaw to cut my box spring. It's about 3 inches too big to get it up and around the stairs (it's a pretty common dilema here). The guys showed me what I need to do to it, and I should be able to get it up there with no problems tomorrow. Aiden was super helpful, he carried in everything that he could, and wasn't in the way too much. I'm hoping he'll be as helpful with the unpacking. He was really excited that there were boxes with his toys in them, and when the trampoline box came out of the truck he wanted me to set it up right then.

The sneezing has got to stop. I've been loading up on Sudafed 3+ times a day. I don't know if it's a sinus infection now, or just the allergies...but either way I'm glad I have a doc appointment on Tuesday, cause I can't handle it anymore.

Oh, we won't have net/phone access for a while. I'm not sure how long, but hopefully we'll have something by the end of next week. I called and turned on the phone (just don't have a phone to plug in). There is a waiting period before we can get broadband, I'm not sure how long and I haven't had time to call them back yet, I'll try tomorrow.
That's it for now, it's about time for bed and we have another long day tomorrow.