When the annoying things become the norm....all I can do is laugh!

Is it really 2 weeks since I last wrote anything on here??!! I'd love to say we've been so busy unpacking that I haven't had time to come on here....but...we're having a nightmare with renting a house....so err no, we are still in an apartment and still don't know where we're moving to!!

The first house, we got gazumped on, they decided they really wanted to sell it to someone else (why they bothered to put it up for rent in the first place is beyond me), the second house we told the realtor we wanted only to be told 5 minutes later that it had gone the day before, now we're trying to get another one, but the owner doesn't trust us!!! We have signed the lease, offered the full asking price, have assured him we're here for a minimum of 2 years.....and still he doesn't believe us, so we're not quite sure what he wants, very very tempted to tell him where to stick it! If he's being this awkward now before even agreeing to let us live in his house what'll he be like if we're tenants, hmmmmm. However it is a lovely house, in a nice area, close to a pool and park. Have to see how many hoops he tries to make us jump through tomorrow but I have a feeling we will be house hunting again very soon!!

We also decided that it was about time we took our driving tests, so Chris and I spent Thursday night testing each other on the Texas driving code. We had a couple of sample tests so we knew the kind of things we needed to learn, however we spent more time trying to learn all the different fines than actually learning the rules of the road! Did you know that if you are caught drinking WHILST driving you get fined $500, if you are under 21 and caught driving whilst under the influence of alcohol you are fined $500, yet if you are a minor and caught in possession of alcohol but NOT driving the fine is $2000??!!! So basically what I learnt from all that revision is if you're under 21 and you've been drinking and you see police car coming towards you you're better off jumping in your car and pretending to drive off as you'll save yourself $1500!!

Anyway....I had to stand in a queue for over an hour, in 30 degree heat at 8am in the morning with Henry in a sling, only to get to the front of the queue and be faced with the most miserable grumpy and unhelpful woman I have ever come across who basically said I'm not eligible for a Texas license because I have a B2 visa and not an L1 visa like Chris, she couldn't and wouldn't tell me anymore! I went home, finally got through to customer services and managed to speak to someone who was a little more amenable to my quandry...as it turns out because I'm here on a long term tourist visa, I can drive on my UK license for a year rather than the 90 days limit which all the websites talk about international residents having to comply to. All I have to do in a years time is leave the country and re-enter and my 1 year starts again....so in effect there is an advantage to not yet being married....my visa is different, I can't get a Texas drivers license and therefore I don't have to learn to parallel park my bus in a parking space which doesn't exist anywhere in Houston, except the test centre!

Last weekend we went and watched the Art car parade in downtown Houston, it was good fun watching all these weird and wacky cars drive past, and quite surprisingly the girls loved it and really didn't want to leave.

This weekend has been extra long as Chris has Friday off work, so he took himself off down to the coast to learn how to kitesurf! To those who know him well, I can hear you all gasp in shock. He has spent years mocking 'T-baggers' as they are apparently referred to by windsurfers, but move somewhere hot, close to the sea but with no waves to attempt catapulting yourself off, and out of sheer desperation to get wet in the sea and do some exercise he has started learning to kitesurf.....and in his own words he described it as awesome! (Fortunately those who are unlikely to forgive him for temporarily turning his back on his fellow windsurfers are also unlikely to be reading this!) I spent the afternoon with the girls in the pool while Henry watched from his pushchair in the shade. Fearne managed to virtually swim all the way across the pool without her life vest which is a first, however I couldn't get her to repeat the swim when it came to showing daddy!

On Saturday we realised that we rather urgently needed to buy me a car as the lease one we have has to go back at the end of this week. Given the dodgy drivers and numerous lanes along the freeway we/Chris decided to go for the same as the lease car as its huge, but the new one comes with alot of bling! The new car is a black Chevrolet Tahoe with leather seats, built in Satnav, rear view camera, parking sensors and dvd player....we are already beginning to wonder how we will ever manage with a UK car again, we are definitely being spoilt with our cars here. Anyway, I get my new car on Tuesday so I will post some pictures of it then.

Yesterday we decided it was about time we ventured somewhere more interesting than the sprawling flat lands of Houston and its suburbs so we drove out to Austin, which is about 2 and a half hours west of here. We stopped for breakfast at the drive through called Sonic, which provided us with a very tasty, but completely unhealthy breakfast. Chris and I went for a what i can best describe as a bacon sandwich and the girls had french toast.....however the only way i can describe what the girls were eating was deep fried finger doughnuts, bleurgh.....needless to say they though they were delicious .

Austin is completely different to Houston, it felt like a small city with lots of character. The main street had lots of old buildings, and lots of interesting looking bars and restaurants. We had been planning on going on a 'duck tour' of the city which involves a bus which looks a bit like a boat. Fearne was very excited when she realised the bus floated on water too, however, unfortunately the tours were fully booked until 4pm so we decided to come back another time.

To save the day, and prevent the girls from going completely mad we took them to Barton Springs Pool. The pool is about 3 acres in size and is fed from underground springs and is on average 68 degrees all year round. The girls loved it, although clearly they have been spoilt by swimming pools because they were quite cold when they came out and just wanted to go home to the pool within the complex!

Today is Memorial day here so a bank holiday, woooo! I went to the gym this morning and took Martha with me to the creche. She thinks this is a treat, she absolutely loves it :-). Other than that, a rather quiet day here. Chris took the girls to the pool after lunch and Fearne did lots of swimming around the pool without her life vest, so hopefully by the time her 2 week intensive swimming lessons start in 3 weeks time, she won't be in the bottom class. She will have finally progressed onto being a swimmer rather than a pool walker!

I think thats about all we've been up to in the last few weeks. Oh, I almost forgot, I bought myself an ice-cream maker, and its been a success! So far I've made vanilla ice cream with butterscotch drops, and vanilla ice cream with crumbled oreo biscuits and M&M's, I'm venturing onto mango sorbet this week once the mangoes I have bought in preparation ripen up enough.

So, yes there has been a lot of frustration over the past 2 weeks, but at least we are learning to see the funny side of it all. Nothing surprises me anymore about this country, and therefore I suppose I'm not getting so irritated by it. Living here is very different to being on holiday here, but then again all my holidays in the US have been spent in Maine and New England with very close friends so I probably have a very quaint and picturesque image of the United States and getting used to Houston, and the 'Everything is bigger in Texas' slogan is taking a while to adjust to. But bit by bit if I can recreate everything I love about Maine down here (homemade ice cream to start with), then bit by bit I will begin to settle more. Obviously I can't bring the Zolper family to Houston, so we're going one better and are off to visit them in July instead.

It's finally coming together!

Since last week, when everything was going horribly wrong and we were both finding life here rather stressful, bit by bit our lives seem to be coming together.

Fearne has started at her new school and loves it, we've had very little, if any settling issues in the morning with her, today she just walked in without saying goodbye and that was that! I went to meet with the principle after dropping her off, just to make sure they all understand that Fearne has never been to school before.....but I'm not in the slightest bit worried about her or the school so thats great.

Martha will start in August too, she will be going for two mornings but staying for lunch and 'afternoon enrichment', which as far as I can tell is just playing, singing and sport....sounds lovely. The plan is that Chris will drop them both off at 8am, and I will pick them up at 2.30 when school finishes....so for 2 whole days, I only have a Henry to keep amused, but best of all I don't have to get 3 children ready and dressed and out the house at 7.30 in the morning!!!! Now if I could just convince Henry to have lie ins I might actually get them too :-)

We spent all of last Friday afternoon viewing houses to rent in the general area that we want to live, eventually deciding on the last house we visited. It came down to deciding whether we wanted more indoor or outdoor space, and given the heat and humidity we have opted for the bigger house but smaller garden, as its likely we will spend more time indoors than outdoors. There is an area pool and kids playground within walking distance, and surprisingly we really could walk there along the pavements. Houston has ALOT of random pavements that don't lead anywhere. The house is also within easy access of the main highway in towards Houston, so the drive to school and Chris' office shouldn't be to horrendous in the traffic. Hopefully we'll be moved in by the end of the week, we are all desperate for some space!

On Sunday we took the girls to a Splash Pad which is basically a child friendly fountain, to cool off in. Fearne and Martha loved it and there was also a park attached to it so it kept them both amused for quite a while. We stopped off for frozen yogurt on the way home as an extra treat, Chris and I had fresh fruit as a topping, Fearne and Martha had a combination of chocolate sprinkles and jelly snakes....I've come to the conclusion that being healthy here is near impossible, but thats a whole different post for another day! (or maybe a rant!)

So, in the space of 5 days we have found a house to rent within budget and in the exact area we wanted to be, got Fearne settled in a new school, and found some new places to take the children to have some fun. All in all I think thats pretty successful, and for the first time in 4 weeks I actually feel relatively calm. Off to the gym/swimming pool tomorrow morning while Fearne is at school and Martha and Henry are in the creche. A little bit of me time, yay, and because I miraculously need to shrink a dress size or two in the space of a week so i fit in all my pre-Henry clothes that have come via the ship!

Henry clearly exhausted by the weeks activities, he fell asleep midway through playtime!

Hopefully the next post will include pictures of the new house and all our belongings settled and unpacked in their new home. (Ok, the unpacking bit maybe unrealistic but I can try!)

xxxxx

I'd like to forget this week happened...and its only Wednesday!

First things first.....here is a picture of Chris's new wheels! After years of obsessing over buying a van for all his windsurfing stuff he has bought the next best thing!

The girls are so excited they wanted to stand in the back in their pj's before bed!

So, that was last week, and this week has been a shocker!

We went down to the beach on Sunday, which was really relaxing, Chris had fun learning to surf kayak and the girls spent the day playing in the sand. Weirdly it took them quite a few hours to learn that playing in sand was fun, obviously having grown up in Aberdeenshire and the beaches generally being cold they're really not used to actually having sand on their hands and feet! They finished the day off jumping in the waves and got thoroughly soaked.

Henry and I sat in the shade all day, under a UV gazebo, unfortunately Henry ended up quite badly burnt, I feel absolutely terrible, and completely irresponsible but I honestly thought he was properly protected. However after a quick trip to the doctor, and a list of moisturising creams from the doctor, it appears that there's going to be no long term damage. Fortunately he has been his usual happy self, with no side effects. As for me, I am mortified that it happened and it'll take a long time for me to get over it. Enough said, I never want a repeat of it.

So that was all going on on Monday morning, then I picked Fearne up from school at lunch time, only to discover that she had been kept in through her entire break time for not finishing her work quickly enough. To say I was furious, doesn't even come close to explaining my anger. I had to walk away from the school and call Chris as there was just no way i could remain composed and calm! Anyway after speaking to the school about it, it turns out to be a policy at the school to 'encourage' children to catch up! The school apologised, and agreed it should never have happened to Fearne, but in our eyes the damage has been done. No school should ever punish a child for being behind through no fault of their own, particularly not a 4 year old, who has never been to school before, had been at the school for 4 mornings, who has only just learnt the letters of the alphabet, has moved to a new country and is clearly having difficulty settling in. Anyway, to cut the whole thing short, on principle we have removed Fearne from the school and are placing her in the really lovely nurturing school we originally had a place for her at. Chris and I suddenly feel so relieved and are not worried about her settling in, in the slightest as it really is a lovely small school.

Chris is off to Alabama this afternoon, so tonight will be my first night on my own with 3 children to get to bed, eek! Its lovely and cloudy today so we're off to the park in a bit in the hope I exhaust them and they fall asleep very quickly tonight. If that doesn't work it'll be soft play again later too!

The only other news is all our belongings have been cleared by customs, so all we have to do now is find a house to move to. I've just sent the realtor a long list of all the properties we like in the right area, so i'm hoping this time next week we will at least know where we're moving to.

Thats all to tell so far this week, fingers crossed nothing else happens to us.

xxxxx

Starting school

So far we've had a hectic week, and I can't quite believe I'm managing to write another update already!

The girls went into school on Tuesday morning for an observation hour, Martha went into the class of 3-4 year olds, as her age group aren't actually at school yet. She had an absolute ball and was rather disappointed to be leaving after 2 hours. In that short space of time she already had the other little boys pushing her round in a toy car at break time!

Fearne was a little more hesitant, and to be honest couldn't wait to leave! On Wednesday she started properly and stayed all morning. I found taking her in rather distressing as she was sobbing and really not wanting to be left, however by the time I picked her up 3 and a half hours later, she had a beaming smile and the first thing she said was I loved school, yay, Chris and I are relieved to say the least.

As a special treat I took them both out for lunch to the Rainforest Cafe, where you eat your lunch, sitting in a jungle with quite realistic elephants flapping their ears, crocodiles rising out of steaming water and snakes hanging in the canopy above your head...not to mention the enormous fishtanks filled with tropical fish and the regular thunder and lighting storms!

So, this morning I was 80% sure I was going to have a repeat of yesterdays wailing, but much to my surprise, she gave me a hug and went in with the teacher quite happily, phew. Now I just have to get her happy enough to be dropped off and picked up through the school drive thru!!! Seriously I can drop her off and pick her up without getting out the car, I drive into the driveway, with a big number hanging in the front window, the teachers get her out and take her to her classroom, and the reverse is done when i pick her up, she just needs to remember what her number is!!! Now if only they had a coffee shop attached to the school and could hand me a large latte as I'm leaving....that would be perfect.

We've been to look at a house to possibly rent this morning, lovely house, very big, with an upstairs bridge between one side of the house and the other!, but Chris and I weren't very convinced on the general area, so we're hopefully going to view a few others in a different area next week. All our belongings should arrive in about 3 weeks time so it would be nice to be reunited with them as soon as possible.

Chris finally gets his 'wheels' tomorrow, so I'll be back with the much anticipated photo, haha!

We've nearly been here 3 weeks!..time flies...

Another busy week has gone by and yet I still don't feel like we've managed to achieve much in terms of settling into our new life here.

The school that we were initially told didn't have space for Fearne until next term, came back to us last week, to say that a child has in fact left and that Fearne can start as soon as all the paperwork etc is done. The first thing we had to do was take Fearne to an educational specialist, to assess her academic level!!! To be honest, we don't really care what level she is, we were more concerned that she would either refuse to go into the room with the lady, or refuse to speak and cooperate, luckily she did both and was very well behaved! Now, considering she hadn't started school in Scotland and we'd only just managed to teach her all the letters and their phonetic sounds, she was doing very well being able to spell simple 3 letter words like cat, dog, mat...but then the specialist asked her to spell giraffe and llama!!!! Anyway, she'll be fine, she's a smart cookie and I'm not worried, just made me laugh that anyone would ask a 4 year old to spell either of those words!

We've been and bought her, her uniform which she'll wear for the next 3 weeks, but when she goes back in August she changes to the Kindergarten uniform. By which point Martha will be starting and we'll need to get her new uniform too! Its funny here though because the girls have to wear modesty shorts under their dresses! I can't imagine that ever being something we'd see in the UK.....the choice was plaid (tartan) bloomers or plain navy shorts....we went for the shorts! I was tempted to get her to try the bloomers on for novelty value, but it would be sods law she decided she really liked them!! So tomorrow she and Martha are both going into their classes for an hour to be observed by the teachers, and then hopefully Fearne will start on Wednesday. She was excited about starting, and now I think she's getting a little anxious, but I'm hoping she'll settle quickly once she makes some friends.

I joined the YMCA nearby last week too, mainly because they have free childcare for all the kids. The childcare facilities are amazing, Martha absolutely loves going and just thinks its a playgroup, Fearne is a little more anxious about being left, and Henry...well he doesn't really care, but when he's a little bit bigger he will love it! So, on Saturday afternoon we put all 3 children into childcare for an hour and went to the gym, the peace and quiet was lovely!!! I also signed Fearne up for a two week intensive swimming lesson course in June and a ballet, tap and jazz dance class for June and August. She's very excited about the latter!

Yesterday, we spent the day with Jillian at her house, while Chris went Kayaking with Mark on a nearby lake. Chris managed to avoid falling in the lake which he was pleased mainly because the lake has fish swimming near the surface called alligator gar. I found a picture of one on the internet to show you how scary they look!

Visiting a house, just made us realise how much we need to find a house to rent, to give us some space inside but also a place for the girls to run around outside. I can't wait for all our stuff to arrive on the ship, I just want to feel more at home. So I think thats the next major hurdle. We're trying to decide whether want to live near to Fearne's school so i don't have to drive far in the morning, but will be about half an hour from the YMCA and the areas where most families live, or do we want to live further from the school but have more chance of making some good friends and having a great social life...decision decisions!

Chris has bought a new vehicle......I'll come back and post a picture tomorrow when he picks it up as he's very pleased with himself and rather excited in a school boy sort of way! But that also means that as of tomorrow I have a car and will have more freedom to get out during the day, yippee!!!!

I'll write another post in a few days with an update of how Fearne's first day at school went.