Red White and Blue!

OK, OK I know its been a long time since the last post, but I promise to keep this page more up to date now. Its been a bit tough the last few weeks. Why? Well we moved house and access to the internet has been a bit sporadic in the new place. FM Global paid for accomodation for us, for a period of 40 days. This comprised the 30 days that we were due plus the original 10 days that are for househunting, that we didn't take advantage of. It would have been nice at the time and would have allowed us to make a decision on Turramurra much sooner. Once our time was up...."Oi! You lot! Scarper! Right sharp like!" So we did. Since we didn't have a place of our own to move into yet we went looking for some more temporary accomodation and found this unfurnished 2-bedroom unit, located in the town of Plainville, MA. Our unit is on the top floor of three, and there are 12 units in our block. Our building is one of 10 buildings in a large complex, but you wouldn't know it. There is heaps of space for Lexie to run around in, there is a pool and a fitness centre too. We're living in it for 3 months, as this was the shortest time we could get and we are hoping to be in our own place by the time this lease expires.

Howwever, being unfurnished, we had to rent some basic furniture - yes it's comfortable, but it's not ours! However it will definitely do us for the short term. So we've rented the basic stuff, gone out and used our allowance for electronic goods to purchase the necessary items such as TV, microwave etc. But the main problem was the lack of internet. We got an internet connection with the TV cable package, and we could have accessed it through Andy's work computer but it would have been so difficult and restrictive that we've had to wait till we got our own computer in order to get back on-line. In the mean time Jen's had some intermittant access to the internet through the "business center" (2 computers and a printer in a room above the rental office) in the complex but with Lexie crawling around its been a bit hard. So now for the big catch up! 4th July was spent in Providence. Red, white and blue bunting, and Old Glory everywhere. Best thing about 4th July is the fireworks. Visions of Catherine wheels, bottle rockets, sparkly fountains and more crossed our minds many times in the lead up to the 4th July Holiday. This was going to be so much fun - Andy hadn't lit a firework since Queen's Birthday weekend 1980! But there was a hitch! Even though one of the things that you have on the 4th July is fireworks - there are 4 states in the USA which ban fireworks completely. Massachusetts and Rhode Island are two of them! What a bummer! You can go to see a fireworks show, but you can't let off your own. Of course there is nothing to say that you can't go across the border into Connecticut, New Hampshire or Vermont to buy fireworks and then sneak them back into Rhode Island, but you have to run the gauntlet at the state border. The Massachusetts and Rhode Island police patrol all the major roads and run random car checks to find and confiscate fireworks. It's like being in prison. The City of Providence normally has a fireworks celebration on Capitol Hill - but not this year. Due to the construction of several new high rise buildings around the launch site, the City cancelled the display siting safety reasons. The decision was communicated to the public on the 3rd July - however the city reached the decision on the 2nd May!! Native Rhode Islanders were very annoyed.

Well in the days after July 4th Jen finally managed to get some good photos of Providence so here they are.

Looking up the river towards Providence.

Looking out over Waterplace Park

Looking along the canal

Our building. Avalon at Centre Place

We moved out of Providence on the 8th July and into Plainville. Plainville reminds us of Dural. There are market stalls selling veggies all around. There's not a great deal to do around here without a car, but in our explorations Lexie and Jen found the World War 1 Memorial park in the next town of North Attleborough which has a minature zoo with horses and donkeys and llamas and ducks etc. Lexie and Jen had a lot of fun patting the animals and Lexie even managed to feed a carrot or two to one of the horses. She thought that was amazing. Well onto Lexie.

She's really coming along in leaps and bounds. She's gone from scooting on her bottom to full-on crawling now. She still loves cruising around the furniture and pulls herself up on just about anything these days but still no steps without holding onto something thankfully, she's hard enough to keep track of whens she's just crawling. Jen doesn't think she's' ready for Lexie to walk just yet!

Lexie now has a total of four teeth, the two on the bottom have been joined by two on the top and she's got a nice chomp on her these days. (Can I just say OUCH!!! - Jen) Still no hair though, just like her Daddy. She's still not sleeping well. This week we're trying something different just lying down with her to try asnd get her to sleep so far so good but we'll see in a weeks time whether this goes out the window too. She seems to have a couple of really good sleeping days then she'll spend the next two weeks screaming anytime your even think the word bed! We had a bit of a scare last week when she had a fever for three days straight. That really wasn't fun, especially as it was the week that Andy was down in Rome Georgia for work so Jen was all by herself. Jen got a bit stressed about it all and Andy felt completyely helpless when he got these upset phone calls and couldn't do a thing about it. And unfortunately we haven't set up doctors or anything yet so Jen spent two days calling around trying to get her into see and doctor. Unfortunately the doctor that the health insurance people recommended turned out to be a specialist who wouldn't see anyone without full medical records (which of course we don't have). It was really quite a trying experience. Andy let them have it with an abusive (well..politely rude anyway) phone call after what they told Jen. What rubbish! No wonder Jen was upset! Jen had her first outing without Lexie the other day. The girls from Andy's work were plainng a dinner and movie and invited Jen to come along (Andy pushed Jen to go to help her get over the whole doctor charade the previous week, not that she needed much in the way of persuasion) so Lexie was left with her Daddy and Mum went out for a nice Chinese meal. That was quite fun. Lexie and Jen also went and did a Gymboree class on Tuesday to try and meet some of the locals. Nothing really chnages, Lexie's still a bully! She needs to learn that eye gouging is not a nice way to inroduce yourself to new people! Unless you're on the footy field that is. Daddy is thinking he has a front-row forward in the making!

We took a trip to Salem MA on Sunday, last weekend. Andy had already been there, but thought it might be good to take Jen and Lexie for the day. It was hot and humid, but we really enjoyed ourselves. We visited the Salem Witch Museum, walked down to the Maritime Festival that was running all that weekend, and had lunch at the Salem Beerworks. Great food and they even had a Watermelon Ale. Yum! We followed the historical walk around town, that took us past all the sites, but did we take photos? NO! We forgot to pack the camera! Aarrggh! Jen bought a really nice scrying crystal at one of the "witch supply stores". Will she use it as a scrying crystal? Oh goodness, no. She just liked the look of the stone. Actually even Andy thinks it's cool! OK enough for now. We'll be in more contact now with the new PC. It's a beast with liquid cooling and some serious processing power. Unfortunately it's set up on a coffee table in the corner of the lounge room and barricaded aroound with cardboard boxes to prevent little hands from getting close. Andy can't wait until he has ihis desks back and can use the computer to it's full potential. We'll be getting the webcam up and running soon so should be able to speak to people in the next few days. Tomorrow is back to house hunting with the sale of the flat in Sydney now complete. Time to fins a new place! Bring it on!