Saturday 10 October 2009

Photos of our house

Last week I finally had a proper tidy up (I had some friends coming over) and it was so nice to sit down and not be surrounded by mess that I took photos :) I'm glad I did, as the clutter is creeping in again now!

This is our living room. We've actually got used to the clash of khaki, apple green and sage!


The kitchen, taken from the dining room. On the left at the end of the kitchen are patio doors, and on the right, the washer and dryer and shelving.

The dining room, taken from the living room. There's a little corridor to the left, which leads to the stairs and downstairs loo. Front door on the right, which comes straight into the living room.


Sid's prayer request board. Esther did the artwork, and Sid posts up things that he'd like her to pray for that day. I wanted her to be able to help daddy, and learn more about prayer, and this fits the bill.

Our baker's rack in the dining room. (This was $25 delivered to our door!)




One side of the kitchen. Note the can of Raid strategically placed on top of the fridge, so I can find it in the dark if necessary! (we've had about 1 cockroach per week wander in a bit lost, and this stuff is great at getting rid of them)


Esther's art wall. Every week she comes out of her class at church clutching armfuls of things she's made!


Upstairs is barred to photographers right now! But as soon as it's been beautified (or even just plain tidied) I'll take some pics.

Saturday 3 October 2009

Give thanks

I decided this week I want to devote more time to this blog. I enjoy writing about our life in Austin and whatever is on my mind! So I planned to do 3 entries per week, starting with today.

It's been a really busy and tiring day and with 20 minutes until bedtime, I just didn't feel like it. But one thing I really hate is being dictated to by my feelings, and whenever I realise that's what's going on, I try my hardest to stand firm against them! So despite the day I've had, I decided to write this, because life goes deeper than feelings.

Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name;
make known among the nations what he has done.
Sing to him, sing praise to him;
tell of all his wonderful acts.
Glory in his holy name;
let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.
Look to the Lord and his strength;
seek his face always.

(Psalm 105 v 1-4)

Wednesday 23 September 2009


The slightly scary intersection near us



Cowgirl Esther at the Pioneer Farm Museum










(me trying to take arty shots!)


Esther getting the glazed-over nap-time look
And trying to balance 'her' sticks on the beam -
this had to be done before she could sit on it apparently!

A whole month to catch up on...

I can't believe it's been so long since I wrote on here! Everything's going really well for us over here. Sid's into week 4 of his course. It's been huge amounts of work for him, and Monday to Thursday pretty much all he can do is work and sleep and eat. But he's really enjoying what he's learning, and being in class with some other very smart people.

We're settled into our house now. Still some bits of furniture and things we want to get, but we've got all the necessities. Esther and I are enjoying going bargain-hunting at garage sales on Saturdays.

We found a great church and we're getting to know people there. Sid went along for a men's breakfast at the weekend and had some good chats. It's nice to be able to walk into church and have more of a conversation than just 'hi, are you new here?'. I've joined some small groups - one on parenting and modeling a relationship with God for our kids (called Instructing a Child's Heart). I'm looking forward to learning more through this one. I also joined A Happy Healthy Heart, which is a combined workout and discussion about healthy eating, body image and the Bible. It was so much fun! We did a salsa warm-up and then a half hour workout. I haven't done any form of organised exercise since school, so I'm hoping this will get my fitness levels up! We're also (both!) going to do a 3 week course introducing us to the church's vision, history, etc. (this is the only course we get to do together because of Sid's schedule!)

I joined another group that meets alternate Mondays (with childcare included). It's called MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) and I'm counting the days till the next one! 2 hours of chatting with other mums, eating breakfast together, watching a video on being a mum (can't quite bring myself to type mom yet...), discussion together and doing a craft. I'm really excited about this one and looking forward to making some good friends through the year.

It probably sounds like I've spent most of my time joining groups! The first few weeks I was really focussed on getting the house to a live-able state, but realised that I really needed to make some friends, so I've gone all-out on that and feel a lot more sociable now! Esther's happy to be meeting people too.

Austin has a ton of stuff to do with kids, which we're really enjoying. We've been to Austin Children's Museum, a Pioneer Farm museum (photos to follow), Zilker Park Dinosaur Pit (where you can dig up fossils in the sand), storytime at a nice bookshop and we love going to the splash park every week on a Friday.

We've also spent an excessive amount of time at the driver's licence office trying to figure out what we need to do to drive legally. The first response was that we just can't drive while we're here because our visas are for less than a year! In the end, it was agreed that we can drive on our UK licences for up to a year, but our insurers demanded we get Texas licences, so we did a computer test and then went back to do the road test. Thankfully we both passed, but the whole process ate up more than 10 hours over 3 weeks, which is a huge amount when Sid's doing 90 hours of study per week... We're glad it's over! There are several things to get used to when driving here: 4-way stops instead of traffic lights, frontage roads, being allowed to turn right on a red light, and the roller-coaster junction between our 2 nearest major roads! It's fun though :)

Apologies to anyone who's emailed and not had a reply - there's a whole list of people I need to reply to. I'm planning to start working through them this week. Thought I'd just let you all know we're still alive over here!

Wednesday 26 August 2009

For Esther's best friend, Eden!













We all miss you lots, Eden, especially Esther xxx

Monday 24 August 2009

A quick catch-up

We've had a good week. We've been trying to make the most of Sid's last few days of freedom, as his course starts today. From today he will be studying from 6am to 12 noon at campus, then doing another 12 hours of study from home. So on Friday we went to Butler Park, which has fountains for kids to run around in. We also bumped into some other parents from Sid's course, which was great for me, as we're going for a formal dinner on Wednesday to meet everyone.


Butler Park

On Saturday we drove out west to Lake Travis. The lake was very low as there's been a drought here this summer, but the landscape around there is beautiful. We stopped at a barbeque place and gawped at all the huuuuge houses around there!



The Boat House Grill





Lake Travis


Yesterday we were invited over to a Scottish family's house after church. They have a gorgeous house, and a pool which Esther loved! It was nice to spend time with people, though it's strange to think that all our social time at the moment is spent with people we don't yet know very well. I can't just plop myself down on the sofa and chat like I would with friends back home. Ah well, it's not bad, it's just different. And I know we have to go through this stage to get into good friendships. At least having both lived abroad before we knew we'd feel this way before we got here. It helps to remember that it gets better as you go on.


Our other news is that on Thursday we bought a car :) It's lovely! It's a 15 year old BMW, and the guy selling it lives way out of Austin and even though he'd had 18 (!) calls from people interested in it, no-one had managed to get out there to look at it! Some had tried and got lost. So Sid asked if he could bring it over to our place as we couldn't get there on a bus, and he agreed. We both liked it and he even went with Sid to the town hall to do the paperwork, which normally Sid would have had to do on his own. So we're enjoying adapting to Texan driving. I keep jerking my left arm into the door looking for the gear stick, but no major injuries or incidents so far :)





Hoping these photos work okay!

Thursday 13 August 2009

Our first week

A week ago Sid, Esther and I stumbled off a plane after a 25 hour journey and arrived at our new home. It was after midnight Texan time (6am-ish UK time) and our house had no furniture whatsoever (bar a fridge/freezer, cooker and broken dishwasher). Sid had ordered airbeds to be delivered, but we hadn't thought about batteries for the pump... So we ended up sleeping on the floor anyway!

A week further on, we now have a dining table, chairs (you can't know how important they are until you have to do without them!!!), 1 (disassembled) bed, crockery, cutlery (again, very very hard to live without!), washing machine and tumble dryer (not quite plumbed in yet), a desk and a hoover. Oh, and a phone and a borrowed internet connection :) (with permission!)

Still to get on our list: a kettle, a car, a sofa, toddler bed, bowls, little tables and lamps and things.

Austin seems like a really nice place. It's hot (close to 40C most days) but that's fine if you're indoors with air conditioning on. Everyone seems to be very friendly (even the people at the social security office!), and lots of people have offered us help and given us their number (inc a taxi driver and a student who sold us an office chair). Sid did 3 days of driving a big pick-up truck while we picked up furniture, and adjusted really well to the roads here.

We signed the lease for our house just over 24 hours before moving in (Sid was up all night emailing the landlord, scanning things and sorting out payment). It's 1 and a half times the size of our house in Chester, which is great :) Esther's really enjoying the extra space, and seems quite content to just play with her doll or read a book, or help me cleaning out cupboards. I've been doing lots of cleaning and trying to unpack things.

Sid's course starts on 24th August with a week-long bootcamp, so we've got a week left to finish sorting ourselves out. When he starts, it will be 80-90 hour weeks until Christmas. I think our biggest need right now is for a car, because so many other things can't happen until we get that. We tried to get to a Church on Sunday, but at that point didn't have internet access and had printed a very vague map whilst in Chester that wasn't good enough to get us there. So hopefully this week we'll get along there.

Sorry these are very random jumbled thoughts! I did write a very long post for the blog earlier in the week, but it disappeared into the ether just as I was about to send it... Hoping this one makes it!

Tuesday 4 August 2009

I love coincidences! I'm always on the look out for them, and when I see one it makes me ponder. I believe that God has a plan for each of our lives, and if at each oportunity we accept his plan rather than our own, it leads to far better things than we could ever have gained through our own plans. So when I see a coincidence, I believe God has put it there as a kind of signpost to say, "look over here! come this way!"

We've been trying to find a house in Austin on and off for a few months, but people told us there's no point looking much earlier than a week before we arrive. So we started again on Monday last week and found a few places that seemed to fit our criteria:
- 3 bedrooms (2 plus a study)
- maximum $900/month
- within cycling distance of Sid's campus (6 miles)
- not in an area with car theft problems

One of Sid's coursemates had offered to look at places for us and give us a report, take photos, etc. So we tried to set up viewings with our top 3. But one of them wanted long term renters, one realtor was on holiday and the owner never got back to us, one sent us a long credit history form and again we never heard back. So we went back to the drawing board and found one on Craigslist which had just been dropped to $900 a few hours earlier. We sent the info over to Liz and she viewed it on Thursday.

And it goes beyond all of our criteria :) It's several hundred square feet bigger than any of the houses I've been looking at, it looks really lovely (which at some point in my searching I'd given up on finding!), it's in a quiet cul-de-sac, with a very proactive landlord AND it's only 2 miles to campus!

But the funniest thing was the first line of Liz's email: "First of all, the neighbor who showed me the house is actually from Zambia. What an odd coincidence!" Living in Chester, you don't just bump into Zambians every day! Generally the only Zambians we've met here have been related to us and staying in our house! So the landlord gave this neighbour's details as a reference and as Sid chatted with him it turns out that not only is he from Zambia, but actually from Chingola, the town Sid is from! (Which means he will quite likely know Sid's mum and dad!)

I love how this has worked out! We'll be signing papers today or tomorrow and hopefully moving straight in when we arrive on Thursday. It's funny how all the other houses we'd seen were dead-ends, and this one seems to have a flashing neon light over it!

Sunday 2 August 2009

Four days to go

Woohooo! Four days till lift-off, and all I can say is God is good!! We got our house decluttered 6 months ago when we were planning to sell it. It didn't sell, but we were saying yesterday how glad we are not to be decluttering now! Sid and I both have tendencies towards last-minuteness, and I can just picture how these last days would have been if we hadn't decluttered back in January!!

We found some friends to rent our house from us - who want it furnished, so we can basically just walk out leaving all our furniture here.

We've been looking for somewhere to live, and have found a 3 bedroom house, in our budget, 2 miles from campus. One of Sid's coursemates went to see it and it looks great. So we're just getting that finalised.

Oh, and money! Somehow we have the $50,000 needed for a year of study! And visas.

We've had endless lists of things to do over the last few months, and God's given us the energy and motivation to do everything.

So now it's just packing and tying up loose ends. Over the last 6 years we've travelled quite a bit together, certainly enough to know that leaving it to the last minute is not a pleasant experience for either of us! So we decided not to be stressed this time round. Wednesday lunch is our cut off point after which there will be no packing, no to do lists, no last minute anything. We will be spending Wednesday afternoon and evening enjoying our last hours in Chester! Hurray :)