Christmas with the Elders

After our Christmas Carol Service, we had a few hours before the AP Elders came over for dinner and to spend the day with us and skype with their families. It was a lot of fun having them come over. It was fun getting to use what little Spanish I remember with the Trassierra family. Good to know I can somewhat hold my own saying "Merry Christmas" and "You're Welcome" in Spanish. :) Our kids sure like Elders Trassierra, Summers, and Kruse.

Checking out their stockings.

 Lucy loved Elder Summers today, she would snuggle right up to him whilst he was reading her loads of stories.

Wearing our Christmas Cracker crowns. Christmas crackers are always a lot of fun!

Elder Summers, from Idaho, brought instant Idaho snow for us to play with. It worked so well, it snowed this week.

So much fun. Once they left we waited for a bit for the other Elders to come (McKay and Kooijman) but they ended up not being able to come. We'll have them over again in a few days. 

And amazingly, Lexie fell asleep during scriptures and stayed asleep on the floor with all these kids playing with the train set loudly. She was really worn out from getting up so early this morning.

It was a fun, busy, enjoyable Christmas day!

Christmas Card

Andrew made a Christmas card for the Elders. He sure likes them and can't wait to be a missionary.

Cinderella Pantomime

There's nothing like a field trip to the Panto to make you feel like it's Christmas in England. Today I got to help out with the kids' classes. This year we saw Cinderella. It was good, not as good as last years, but it was still fun. The audience participation is hilarious at the panto. All of the "Oh yes I can" "Oh no you can't" and cheers and boos. It's quite humorous. But my ears were also okay with it being over.

Andrew wanted to sit over by his class, so he was across the balcony from us.

Definitely a fun day. Can't wait until next years.

A BIG Mess

So, I got a new calling a few weeks ago. The old RS President is busy with planning a wedding and so today was our first time that we could really "talk" about some of the sisters I didn't know. We were on the phone for a good hour. But I only left the girls really unattended for about 5 minutes whilst they were "brushing their teeth" (well, Lucy was really, Eliza was reading and then I asked her to go find Lucy since I couldn't see her). This is what I found.

Lucy completely drenched, and I mean soaking wet. That tub is dripping water. There is water all over the floor onto the carpet. It's literally everywhere.

But she's clean!

I ran down to grab a few more towels and heard a weird dripping sound. I thought they'd just made a mess on the table also. When I brought all of the towels down to be washed I noticed the dripping sound was still going. I looked up and water was dripping though the electrical in the ceiling. Not fun.

So, yeah, we had a huge mess to clean up. Had to pull out all the lights and let things air out (hopefully). Who knew that water would go through the ceiling like that. Not I. But I do now.

50 States Song

Last week Andrew came home singing some of the 50 States saying he was trying to learn them at school. A day or two later he had them all down. I love to hear him sing it (and he does ALL the time, sometimes I don't think he even realizes he is).

Humorous

Heavenly Father still has a good sense of humor. I finished my morning prayer hoping for peace about a house and everything here. I grabbed the scriptures and couldn't remember where I was and thought no biggie, lots of people just open the scriptures and their answer is right there. I opened them and the first verse I saw I read..."And the Lord said unto Alma: Haste thee and get thou and this people out of this land." Yep, His sense of humor is alive and well.

Yogurt!

Andrew will survive here. There is much yogurt...and it's cheaper (and yummier) than it is at home. So that is a huge plus! A 4 pack that you buy at Walmart in the States would run us $1.38 ish...here that same 4 pack is 33 pence so it's 3 packs for 1 pound which is like 1.67ish...amazingly cheaper on the yogurt. Most everything else, especially meat and cheese, it more expensive. But eggs, bread, and baked beans are all pretty cheap!

Exploring

After the practice, the Mudgetts took us around the city. We talked with as many of the letting agencies that we could to see what houses they have available that we haven't seen online or to see if there were any coming up soon. Most were closed as it was Saturday afternoon, but we tried our best. It's different here house hunting from the States in that you can't just have one realtor who works with you and you see whatever homes you want. Here you have to contact each different letting agencies that puts that house up for let and set up an appointment with them individually. So, it's quite a bit more time consuming and not the easiest to do without a phone. But Kim and Drew hooked us up there. We bought a SIM card and are using one of their phones so we can at least call agents and try to set things up.
They took the kids over to Crepes and Cream to get something to eat while we talked with a few agents and then we met them there. It was delicious! I got a chicken, avocado, chipotle chili, and rocket one. So good! The kids all got ice cream and more ice cream. :)

Then we walked around and explored the city a bit. It's really quaint and lovely. Excited to get to see some more places!

Our first Family Picture in England!

While everyone in Colorado was having lots of rain, we had a gloriously sunny day in Harrogate!

Car Shopping

So we're looking for a new car. Unfortunately (for Rick) this one is a little outside of our price range and isn't quite the family car we're looking for.

First Walk in England

We made it to England yesterday! It was a very cloudy and rainy. This morning we headed over to the Harrogate church building for the Primary Program practice for the program tomorrow. It was a beautiful walk across the Stray to the church. Our temporary housing is only about a mile from church so it will be a nice easy walk for us until we get a car. Rick will be able to take the bus to work, so that will also be nice. The girls don't seem overly excited, however we did have a lovely walk. Got a bit lost on the round about trying to figure out which way was really Wetherby Road, but the Bishop, Bishop McKeown, saw us walking and hollered out the window asking us if we were the Lee family and sure enough we are, so he pointed us in the right direction, bless him.
After meeting some wonderful families, being invited over for dinner tomorrow after church, we headed out to explore the city with Drew and Kim Mudgett and try to find out about cell phones, housing, talking to relators, and getting a bite to eat. Next post will have more about this.
Needless to say, Harrogate is such a beautiful place and we are sleep deprived, but happy to be here after the LONG trip here!

Our Temporary Housing

Here are some pictures of our home for the next 6ish weeks while we look for a house. House hunting is giving us a headache already! The process is very different than in the States. Hopefully we can figure out something soon. But in the meantime, we do love this place. The owners live in Dubai and we are the first people to live in it, so here's hoping we don't destroy it! It's a great little townhouse just off of York Place which is right across the street from the Stray in Harrogate and just a few minutes walk into the city center. It's really a very nice and convenient place to be for us! HR found us a great place!

Here it is! It's been a beautifully sunny day today! 

They are doing construction on the unit next to us so no neighbors there but some in the units next to that. We have these 2 drives to play in as we are in an alley and a gated drive so not much traffic. So the kids can play outside without any worries.

Our dining room:

 

Kitchen

 Master Bedroom

 Bedroom

 Stairwell/foyer, it's not a very huge place, but big enough.

 Stairs up to the 2nd floor bedroom

 Master Bath

House bath

Outside patio kids like playing in and climbing on the walls

 Living room

Kitchen, storage room is the right door and powder room to the left.

Powder room

And there is another room that is an office/Lucy's room. She was sleeping so I didn't get a picture of that room. Everyone has a bed and some space-it's good.
The washer/dryer is in the kitchen in the cupboard under the microwave. It's going to take a few hours to get a load done I understand. We'll see how that works out.
The management company left us some yummy pies and bread/cakes as a welcome gift. It was really nice of them and the kids are really excited to try them.

We Made It

After flight delays at Dulles which turned our 2 hour layover into 5, we made it to Manchester only 3 hours late. More than 22 hours of traveling, good times!

Joseph really liked being on an airplane. The girls slept really well.
Gratefully the driver who was picking us up didn't leave us. He was very patient and waited. We were quite the show carrying all of our suitcases and tired children off the plane to his big Mercedes Van. He wasn't sure we were all going to fit. Amazingly, we did. And off we headed from Manchester to drive to Harrogate. It was beautiful, green, foggy and then pretty rainy. He pointed out the highest point in England (for a highway I think) as we went over the summit. I kept trying to figure out how we are driving on the left side of the road and that it worked. It was just so foreign to me that everyone seemed to know how to do it. :) I know it won't be that weird in a bit, but looking and sitting there going the wrong way, it's the strangest feeling. It was really odd for Rick sitting in the front left seat and not driving.
It was a bit of a trick trying to find our temporary housing. I got nervous being on a busy street and not sure where we were supposed to be living, let alone how I was going to ever navigate myself around this place. He pulled over and gratefully the manager was out on the street and found him so we could pull in finally then our sponsor, Beau Neal, was also there and we got unloaded, settled up with the taxi and quickly got everyone changed so we could head out with Beau to Base and try to get settled in here. Beau goes to our church and he has 5 little girls with another coming any day. Can't wait to meet some of these girls for Lexie to make friends with!
Beau took us up to RAF Menwith Hill AFB where Rick will be working for the next 3 years. It was a crazy drive, no clue how I'll ever find it again, but crazier, they had no orders for him and weren't expecting him at the front so Beau just signed us on as visitors and then Rick went over to try and sort things out. That was easily fixed. But I was just ready to cry when the officer asked, "Are you sure they are expecting you to work here and you are supposed to be here today?" We were very tired! We tried to get some IDs for us but we need our SSCards, not just the #, so we'll have to wait on those now. It was all very disorganized and frustrating. But, we did get to go to the Commissary and get some groceries for the weekend. That was very nice and the kids liked picking out whatever they wanted (that rarely happens). Then we got a few other things taken care of and Beau took us back to our place and we started unpacking and trying to settle in yet keeping everyone awake as long as we could so we could start adjusting to the time change.

Drew Mudgett brought over a lovely taco soup that Kim made for us for dinner. It was heavenly and so appreciated! We ate it up! Then it was off to bed! And the kids fell asleep so quickly!

Cheerio! We really did it, we really moved to England!