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!
(me trying to take arty shots!)
Esther getting the glazed-over nap-time look
And trying to balance 'her' sticks on the beam - 