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.
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