Bits and Pieces

The rain is falling this morning, and I turned on the heat a little bit for the first time.  I'm not sure if anyone else in town has their heat on, but I just thought, you know what, why sit here feeling chilled? We had our first fire in the new house last night before bed.  It's not really cold enough to have your heat on full time, but it is 50 degrees.  

The night of Ella's birthday we decided we really needed to get to work on this moving thing.  So I painted for 3 or 4 days straight, and we had help last Monday moving all the big pieces of furniture. Since we cleared out our beds we started sleeping in the new house the night before school started, surrounded by chaos.

The rest of last week was KJ and I packing up all the bits and pieces and carrying it over in small loads.  I walked so many miles last week.  We had such a good time spending every day together, though.  Thank you for praying for us, because it was not as stressful as it could have been.  It was pretty easy, just lots of steps and stiff legs in the morning from so many trips up and down stairs carrying boxes.

In the midst of all the moving, the kids started back to school, and Ella started back at ballet.  She was very surprised and happy to go back and receive awards for the exams she took in the summer.  Her teacher also awarded her the special progress trophy of the year for coming in without having dance lessons before and doing so well.  She was quite thrilled, and I was thrilled for her.

We started back to our little home school yesterday, which was good but a lot of work, so we still sit surrounded by boxes, but my priority today has to be reading highway code and taking practice driving theory tests, because I have my test tomorrow morning.  It would be a very good thing for me to pass, because after passing, I'll still have to schedule my practical exam, and they stay pretty full so that won't be until November sometime, which will bring me to one year of driving in the UK with my American license, and that's all you get before having to pass their tests. 

I'm feeling 16 all over again, which is not what I expected at 33.  I'm actually quite enjoying reading the highway code, though, because there really are so many signs and road markings here that I don't know about, so this is a good thing.  It will make me a better and safer driver.  I've made a lot of progress in the past 10 months.  I only walk to the passenger side looking for the steering wheel 30-40% of the time now.