Moving day!

After 26 days in temporary lodging we are moving into our house tomorrow. We got the keys today and moved a few things over. Tomorrow we get delivery of all of our household shipments. Somehow our so-called quick shipment also just arrived so it will come the same day as our full shipment of furniture and such.

The house is on the outskirts of Bury St. Edmunds. It has a population around 40,000 people and is one of the larger towns around this area of Suffolk county. We are about 25 minutes to RAF Lakenheath where Tory will work. Its a bit further out from the base than we originally planned, but there are very few rental properties available, and many that we did find would not have been available until the first week of September. Also taking into consideration the local schools, road conditions for rainy winter driving, and local amenities, we decided this was the best choice.

Bury has a large market town center with a market twice a week. It is the site of a historic abbey and cathedral with amazing gardens and grounds. It has lots of shops, restaurants, parks and activities for the kids. By comparison, one of the other villages we looked at was 20 minutes from the base and had a post office, butcher, mini mart and school. That is it. So, we decided to try the longer drive, with the hope that most of what I need I can find locally. Its about 15-20 minute walk into the town center and only 5-10 to some other stores in our area.

The kids' school is basically across the street from the house. It is maybe a three minute walk door to door. Emily will go to the nursery school (aka preschool) every day in the afternoons. It is a smaller school and is essentially made up of all local kids from Bury and few smaller villages in the area. We have Andrew's uniforms and book bag and assuming he can tie his shoe laces by September he is ready to go. Education is very important in England. The standards appear to be higher than US schools (at least AZ schools for sure). We met with the head teacher and Tory and I were both impressed with some of the project they were working on at the school. They are a "green school" and a "healthy living award" school so those are some areas they focus on. We asked about school supply lists and they looked at us like we had three heads. Apparently parents do not bring anything in to the school... no list of pencils, crayons, glue and paper. Nothing. And Emily gets free preschool, as do all children ages 3-4. Can't complain.

I'll post some pictures of the house once we get assembled. Its a four bedroom, detached house. It has an enclosed yard for Maggie and a very long and skinny garage that no car could possibly squeeze in to. It will hold the bikes and tools which makes Tory very happy. It has a separate laundry room, which makes me happy. Many houses we looked at had the washer in the kitchen and no drier, or a washer/drier combo unit. It faces a busier street which I am not thrilled about, but we are separated by a frontage road and its totally quiet inside the house so I think we can overlook that.

We removed the wallpaper from what will be Emily's bedroom. The room was a teal green with a kind of circus pattern on it with bears and clowns. Andrew said they were ballerina bears, but I am not convinced. Emily cried when we told her it would be her room. So after a trip to the local hardware store we were armed with wallpaper stripper and lavender paint.

Our Internet and phone access will be limited for a few weeks while we get set up with new services. Pictures are coming... as soon as I have a real Internet connection.

Besides the move, we are keeping busy with all the usual stuff -- Andrew is doing a soccer camp, we've been going to parks and playgrounds, renting movies and enjoying being outside in cooler weather.