New House Part 2

OK I now have photos of the rest of the house.

Lexie's Room - Yes I know its Blue and shes a girl but oh well as if I care - its quite a pretty colour. Main Bedroom - A bit on the small side.

Office

Family Room

- really needs a makeover, maybe one day

downstairs bathroom

Guest Bedroom - not set up yet as you can see, just an empty room at the moment.

And the utility room - unfinished.

And thats the whole house now well except the garage, which at the moment is a store place for empty boxes and left over packing material.

New House

Well we've finally moved into our very own house. woo hoo,. And even better, its finally starting to look like home. We've pretty much got the top level of the house unpacked, just got to sort out how to fit all our clothes into the tiny little wardrobe in our bedroom - and the top level will be done. The bottom level however still looks like a bomb went off, boxes and junk everywhere, so that's what I get to do this week. As you saw in the last post, Andy managed to wrangle a trip to Atlanta the week after we moved in and managed to miss the majority of the packing - I'm sure he secretly organises it that way, that's the third time now that hes left just when we're in the middle of moving, though really I can't complain too much, at least this way I know where everything is put, if Andy tried to help Id' never be able to find anything. Tee hee! Lexie however we definitely a big help......not.....heres a quick video of her helping me unpack the kitchen. And now here are a quick tour of the place... We'll start down the road at the pond. As you can see Autumn has really set in over here and its absolutely beautiful. And this is our road. Taken standing in our front yard And the front of the house. Don't worry we have an Aussie flag which we're going to put up as well. Looking in the front door. Its a split level so you go up five stairs to the main part of the house or down stairs to the guest room and family room. Standing at the top of the stairs looking into the main living room. The view out the living room window Looking from the living room into the dining room Through the dining room The sun room off the dining room...As you can see this is being used as Lexie's play room. From the play room out onto the deck And looking out over the back yard From the dining room into the kitchen The Kitchen leads back out into the hall down the hallway. The first door on the right is the bathroom and that's all the piccies I have at the moment (do I hear a few sighs of relief - sorry to bore you all but I just thought I'd share), the rest of a house was a mess so I refused to take photos of it, I'll post photos of those rooms later when I've got the rooms cleaned up, but to give you the layout of the place, the first door on the left is the study, and the second door in the right is Lexie's room and our room is the doorway at the end of the hall. Downstairs is a guest bedroom and the family room along with a second toilet and the laundry/utility room and finally the garage. And now what other news. Well its getting closer to Halloween over here and the decorations are all up around town. We stopped into our local farm yesterday and bought ourselves a couple of pumpkins. We've carved one of them and I reckon he looks pretty cool. Not a lot else happening. We've been on lots of spending sprees trying to get everything we need for the house, went out a bought a rake and a broom to try and clear the leaves off the driveway and lawn. but well, this is what it looked like 1 day after we raked... yes there is a driveway under there. Lexie had fun playing in all the leaves - right up the point where she got savaged by mozzies, she now has mozzie bites all over her head, poor girl. On other Lexie news she now has five teeth, another one has come through on the bottom, and shes also learnt how to clap, I've got a great video of here clapping along to "If your happy and you know it" but it needs some editing before I can add it. But anyway I think that's enough for one post, I'll add more later. Mel I know you asked for a video of Lexie crawling I'll try and get one tomorrow.

Training, weather and the South.

Hi everyone, it's Andy here, I finally have some time to write a blog, so here goes....The past weeks have been another interesting week in New England. We got our first taste of what is to come with Winter. The evenings are starting to get brisk, and the mornings are definitely chilly (6 deg C). So far I haven't had to scrape ice off the car. I've been running training courses over the past few weeks and am dog-tired. I started with a 3-week long course for 72 students (in conjunction with 5 other moderators) , and I never actually realised how much that can take out of you. I started at 7am (no change there from work in Oz) but instead of finishing at 4pm, I often didn't get home until 8 or 9pm. This was a bit of a bummer when I didn't get to see Lexie for 24 hours. Still it's was so much fun, playing with fire pumps, and teaching people (don't worry Mum I don't want to do a degree in teaching). A little while ago Jen went to see a movie with some friends. While she was in the film, the parked car was side-swiped by some feral. Of course they didn't leave a note - why own up to causing damage to someone else's property? Result? The trim along the driver's side of the car was ripped away from the body, and some nice deep gouges ran along the rear door, across the wheel well and the tyre itself (sorry I can't bring myself to use the US spelling "tire"). Being a company car it was all good, and repairs were simple to organise, and a rental car was provided in the interim. It's now October 9th and I am in Georgia. In a little town called Rome, which is located about 1.5 hours north-west of Atlanta. I'm running another course, this time for only 25 students. It's been another draining week. There is so much to organise and keeping track of things in your head can be difficult at time especially when you are pulled in 9 different directions. I fly back on Friday night and plan to spend the weekend doing diddly squat. It's also hard being away from Lexie, especially as she's growing up so fast. Yesterday it poured with rain (over 2.5 inches). It's a good thing as they are in drought down here - not as bad as back in Australia but bad nonetheless. The Southern accent is really cool and the people down here are so friendly. And I've developed a taste for "grits" - you can look it up. Anyway now that the Aussie dollar has crashed, I feel fortunate that we got the money out of Australia. I have even watched it slide in the last few days. Bad news! But on the bright side you are all paying lower rates on your mortgages. What do you mean the banks don't pass the rate on?? Next you'll be telling me the banks like to increase rates above and beyond what the Reserve Bank dictates! What a load of baloney! :-) Ok I'm off to lunch. I'll update things when I get back home. Have fun y'all!