28June2008: Day34: Upnor Castle

The owner of the house is in town from Australia and he came over for quite some time this morning to show Chris different things about the house, mow the “garden” and bring us our new flat screen TV – YEAH! Then he had to call his brother-in-law who works for Sky TV to come and get it working so that we had channels. They have “free” TV over here. There’s like 50 plus channels for free. Unfortunately, some of them play the same things repeatedly on various channels. But I can finally watch some Wimbledon matches now since I won’t be able to in person unfortunately. (Someone’s husband I know should look into getting US Open Tickets since his beloved wife wasn’t able to make it to Wimbledon like she wanted).

It was nice to meet the owner, and he was very nice and he’s having a new washer/dryer combo installed next week, (its one machine). Also, another King size bed, which is more like a queen or big double, is to be delivered. He gave us some areas that Makenna and I can walk to that are close by and gave us directions to the train station, also within walking distance.

In the afternoon, we took off to Upnor Castle. It was only about 15 minutes away. This castle was built in the 16th century and was built to protect warships that anchored in the River Medway. The castle doesn’t meet normal castle standards as it was built for a military naval purpose. I know at some point there was a fire and they had to rebuild some of it and you can see the difference from the stone to the brick in the pictures.

Another wedding was taking place so we had to wait a bit to get into the main area and then I felt like we were intruding on someone’s special day by walking around like tourists, but we weren’t the only ones. Again, not a “grand” castle per se but it has history.

On the way home, we noticed a park that seemed to have a lot of kids playing and also a lot of playground equipment. So we stopped at it. Unfortunately, most of the equipment seemed to be geared towards older kids – like over 3- but Makenna still enjoyed it and was quite upset when we had to go. It also had a kiddy pool and a bigger pool. There were plenty of people and kids in the kiddy pool but the bigger pool was closed. We didn’t even mention the pool to Makenna for fear of a massive meltdown.

27June2008: Day33: We Need a Dog

Makenna and I walked to a camping store today to buy a “rucksack” or backpack. We figured that every time we go on a weekend excursion that all the bags that we’re carrying – three – plus the stroller is just too much. So we hope to consolidate down to two, maybe one. We hope to try it out tomorrow.

Other than that, we just went to the park as usual and Makenna decided to not wait for mommy before she went down the slide – and paid the price by going down in a somersault fashion. She was okay physically but was not too happy with what happened to say the least. But after calming her down, I was able to get her to try again. She tried playing with a few little boys that were there but they wouldn’t have anything to do with her. So she just moved on to play without them. There was also this guy that had a few kids around him as he had this contraption that would throw a ball pretty far for his dog to fetch. So I took Makenna over to watch and she just loved this dog. She laughed and laughed watching him run, and tried running after him a couple of times. But then she realized he was coming back each time so she just waited. Then the dog would hide his ball and himself under her stroller to get a rest. It just reinforced the fact that at some point, we need to get a dog.

Then she took a very long nap (almost 3 hours). I let her sleep this long as she has a bit of a runny nose. Then we waited for daddy to come home and after dinner went grocery shopping – again. It’s like a twice a week occurrence. I finally found something that resembles pudding mix but decided against buying at this time as Chris really wants me to make apple pies for the Fourth of July. He’s inviting some friends over from work and wants to show them apple pie. Although, we then saw one on the shelf already made, so that’s a back up plan.

One last thing about Makenna, that other mothers will appreciate, is that she’s at that stage where she keeps repeating one word questions. But instead of “why” at this point, it’s “hot?” or “on?” So if we have a book or a piece of clothing, at the moment it’s “hot?” I then have to reinforce that books aren’t hot. I swear I don’t watch much of Paris Hilton.

26June2008: Day 32: Teri Drove – Yet again

That’s the big news for the day. I wanted to be able to take Makenna to the play group that we’ve been attending but it would be about a half-hour drive one way for the girl to come pick us up so I decided I’d either have to drive there (or take a train which would’ve been harder) or just not go. So Makenna and I piled into the car to get Chris to work (I had him drive there), then said a prayer and drove home. It wasn’t bad at all! I also pulled into the driveway without and incident this time and when it was time to go, left without a problem. We got to the playgroup in one piece. That was the furthest I’ve driven. It was quite an accomplishment.

On the way home, I only had one car beep at me and I think it was because I was at a round-about that I stopped at (which I’m supposed to do), but I guess in this instance there was this lane where you could keep going without stopping, at least, that’s what I inferred. Then later, I had to go back and get Chris from work. So now hopefully I’ll be more likely to take the car at least once a week. I didn’t even drive on the wrong side of the road, like someone else in the house I know.

I was able to get out and get some sun too, while Makenna was taking a nap. I took out a magazine and the radio to listen to Wimbledon coverage, as we still currently don’t have internet or cable. I thought it would be very hard to just sit back and listen to coverage without watching but it hasn’t been too bad. I could just close my eyes and wish I was there. Plus I’ve been surprised how it hasn’t been too hard to keep Makenna entertained without a tv. But again, we have the portable DVD player so we usually watch Baby Einstein a couple times a day and flip between different movies that keep her entertained for about a half-hour or so before she wants different one in. Plus we try to get out to the park down the street and/or walks to other places.

25June2008: Day 31: Panic Alarm

Today Makenna and I went for a walk again but the other way down the main street to see what was around. Not much really. There are some stores but nothing really too interesting. One thing I’ve noticed since we’ve been over here is that a lot of the Chinese restaurants don’t open until 5pm and they only do “take away”. I guess they realize that being open all day isn’t beneficial for them. We’ve only found one place that has a buffet and I’m not really too impressed with it as it doesn’t have our “usual” type of Chinese food (General Tso’s, Sesame Chicken, etc.) and has more stuff like seaweed and Indian food.

Oh well, as you can tell, not too much more interesting happened today. Chris did find the “panic” alarm in the house and was deafened by the discovery. I found the vacuum cleaner and boy does that thing have suction! The rest of the day was entertaining Makenna and putting away some more stuff from yesterday’s shipment.

24June2008:Day 30: Shipment Day

When we were driving last night, I happened to notice a gym facility that we drove past, so today I decided to walk down their with Makenna to check it out. It was only about a 25 minute walk one way (which is what it was into Downtown Maidstone), so it wasn’t too bad. In fact, it was better than a walk to Maidstone as there’s less hills. The gym is really nice, swimming pool, lots of different types of classes to take, free internet, a “juice bar” and sauna, and spa. Plus it does have a “nursery & crèche” (I have no idea what the difference is). The only problem is that even though it’s in the gym, you still have to pay for it separate from the gym. So I’d still pay my gym membership then additional monies each time I went and took Makenna. Chris is going to check into if his work gets a discount. I figure 1 hour of my work out will be walking there and back! Oh, and they do have a couple of swimming time for kids and parents so I can take Makenna in the pool twice a week – which she’d absolutely love.

When we get back from the walk, we continued walking right down to the park as it’s only a block away. She was so excited. I forgot her ball though that I bought this past weekend and she was trying to take another boys ball and some other girl’s bike. So we didn’t stay more than 20 minutes.

Then we had to get home and start waiting for our shipment. It finally showed shortly after 4pm and then it was like Christmas—opening boxes and unwrapping stuff to see what it was. We got most of it taken care of (except my clothes are still in boxes) but Makenna was so excited to see her toys. She went through practically every book I had shipped and looked at them one by one. We we’re glad to see the basics – toothpaste, deodorant, and our beloved A1 sauce. It’s funny how lack of some comfort items makes you a bit anxious.

23June2008: Day29: Moving Day

We are now moved into our new house. It only took Chris a couple of trips to get everything over here we brought. Now to get Customs to send us the stuff we shipped from back home. We were able to get all our stuff put away and moved some things around. Such as dishes from a low cupboard to a high cupboard – need I say more? We also moved a dresser into the room that Makenna is going to stay in and moved out a hanging wardrobe closet. We may end up moving some other things as we see fit.

When we first got here, there was a gentleman from the real estate agency taking inventory of what was in the house and the condition of the house. He had to go through quite a lot of drawers even (like in the kitchen) and list all of the various items in them.

The other thing was that the heat was on in quite a few of the rooms which made it extremely warm. Chris couldn’t find how to shut a few of these off as some are individually controlled and others are connected someplace else. Also, there’s a security system we can’t quite figure out. So we’re waiting for the police to show any moment.

The hard thing is no tv or internet but it’ll probably be good for Makenna and I for a bit. I’m sure there will be a lot of Baby Einstein watching on the portable DVD.

Later, we went driving to the closest grocery store and I decided that I needed to try driving back. I did pretty well, even though Chris thought I had a couple of close scares of hitting things (I told him now he knows how it feels to be sitting on that side). But I did end up hitting something—the house with the left side mirror, as I tried pulling into the driveway. DOH! (as Makenna and Homer Simpson would say). So it may be a while before he lets me use the car again?!

1Jul2008: Day TBD - As promised Internet is back

All, Teri is going to load up our Blogs for when we were offline for the past week. We are in our new house and now have internet. Tomorrow the blog should be up to date. We have our Binghamton local home number up and running again, so call if you know it. If you call after 5pm EST you will likely get the voice mail...