Whirlwind

It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks.  We are getting settled all around.  The house was signed for on Friday and hopefully, if the bank does it's thing on time, we get the keys on Monday.  I can't wait to get them and get out of this hotel.  This little apartment has been perfect but there is only so long that you can stay in a tiny, fairly public place! 

 

Blogger is still not letting me upload photos and I have no idea why, but I am in the process now of checking out just making a website that I can do the same thing but not connected to these guys.  I am still in the investigation stage but it comes down to about $10 a year and the whole reason for doing this was to put photos up so I don't forget stuff and the best of the photos are up there.  Anyway, I have no experience in that so it will take a bit of investigation and of course, the time to do that!  I will be sure to post a link if it happens!

 

I am hoping to get it done soon because this new puppy and kitten should be really cute!

Real Ninja Training

I have just got back from Tai Kwon Do.  Levi is finally becoming the ninja he has wanted to be.  I am finding that we are 'living' at the YMCA.  Levi has After School Care there, I work out there and he now has Tai Kwon Do there as well.  It has been fabulous.  Roseburg has a great Y, because the Ford Foundation has put a lot of money into it as a way of giving back to the community.  We will be spending some time yet there I think.

 

Next week, I start work and it will all get fairly regimented, but at the moment there is some freedom.  The house inspection went really well on Monday and there are only cosmetic and little things that need to be done.  Hopefully we can get it all done and we can move in when planned.  We have picked out a puppy and she will be ready to be picked up in early December.  Things are starting to fall into place and I am thinking that in a few months it will feel all very normal and all very settled. 

 

Levi is hanging out for Halloween.  I still have thoughts about Frankie at this time of year.  This was his favorite holiday and he pushed himself beyond all endurance to go out on his last one.  He loved the prep and he loved the night.  I am seeing that reflected in Levi and it is a joy to watch.  There is no real Halloween in Australia, so this will be Levi's first real, night.  He has been very involved in the planning.  He has been very involved in all of it.  He talks about the planning and the night.  I only hope that with the huge buildup in his mind, that the night lives up to his expectations.

 

The US gets set to vote in the next few weeks, and it shows on the TV.  There are a thousand advertisements about Proposition this and Proposal that but as I have already voted (Oregon votes by mail), it is all lost on me. 

House

Levi is loving school and it makes me really happy to drop him off.  He has another week while I am still off work and we are going to practice After School Care starting Wednesday.  After School Care here they get to go swimming Mon, Wed and Friday, so he will have a bunch of time playing in the pool.  If he really loves that, I can get swimming lessons on Tuesday and Thursday, so he swims everyday.  We are now staying in a small one bedroom apartment in one of the hotels.  We only have to stay here for a little while, because we now have a house that is waiting for us!  It is a great house!  I am hoping to be in here in about three weeks but it will depend on inspections and things.  The house has a great view and fantastic gardens.  The best part is it is walking distance to his school and fully fenced, so Ash the puppy isn't too far off now, and that will signal more than anything that we have settled in.

 

We had a weekend in Medford and went to a pumpkin patch.  Levi was in heaven and loved it all!  He picked out a pumpkin and he led us through the corn maze.  He played on the haystack forever.  That was just a start.  Then we went home and carved the pumpkins and made Ninjabread cookies.  Levi's smile just never stopped and he absorbed every minute of it.  He is already thriving.

 

 

Changing!

Sorry I have been so pathetic and haven't even cracked open the computer to write on here.  It still won't let me upload anything and I think that soon I am just going to dump blogger and find another option.  I love having the ability to write some things down, that will stay fresh for me and Levi as he gets older and I forget things, but I also really love the whole photo aspect of it, so it's worth it to find something that works.  These are all bold words for someone who hasn't even managed to crack the laptop open in the last two weeks!

 

In the last eight days, we have changed continents and hemispheres.  We have changed seasons (drastically) and time zones.  I bought a new phone, that I am still mystified as to it's full functioning.  The first time a friend called, I tried everything I could think of to answer the damn thing and failed, resorting instead to calling her back immediately afterwards to confess my inability to function in the technological age!  I have since discovered you have to take the green circle and sweep it across to the red circle or it won't answer.  No amount of poking at the the green circle will work, and you can take it from me, no amount of swearing at the phone while watching it ring works either!  At least the phone has coverage, which is a step up from my phone in Australia, that needed to be answered either up at the goose yard or out the back on the cubby.

 

I bought a new car.  OK, new to me.  It is a 2007 Honda Pilot and has a;ready been great.  I went into it all just needing AWD. cruise control and enough power to tow small things and came out of it with heated leather seats, a navigation system and a moonroof.  The thing that sold it to Levi was the charger for the back seat, so that when he was playing on the iPad back there, it wouldn't run out of battery.  I liked that it has separate heating/cooling controls for the back seat.  It all sounds fancy and would be a lot more impressive if the navigation system didn't keep trying to send me to Florida and the weather necessitated heated seats.  Still it will do what I need it to and will travel the Roseburg-Medford trip easily.

 

Yesterday, Robert and Ken came up to Roseurg to check out a house, that I subsequently put an offer in for that afternoon.  It is within a five minute walk from school, so close enough, Levi can walk home and get things he has forgotten during the day.  It is fenced enough for a dog without any work and is an easy house to just move straight into.  I went to the bank today and got confirmation this afternoon that I was preapproved, so all we are really waiting on now is to see if the offer is accepted.  In the meantime, Levi and I are staying in a hotel for the five days and will travel back to Medford after school Friday.  Hopefully I can find us somewhere to settle, because the transition has been hard on us all, but most of all on Levi.

 

Today was his first day at his new school and I got some great photos of him standing in front all proud.  He made it until lunch and then I got called to get him because his 'heart was heating up from the inside'.  It is as good a description of nervous indigestion as I have heard.  I sat with him at lunch to see if I could get him to stay, but he was too tired and too overwhelmed.  I think likely he is still pretty lagged, as I know I am. 

 

It has been a frantic frenetic week.  I hope it settles soon!

Party Day

Today we had the goodbye brunch.  Actually more accurately, it was a goodbye breakfast that stretched through lunch to dinner.  It started at 8am and ended about 6pm!  An extravagance of well wishing!  I am going to start doing more on birthdays I think.  It seems a pity to wait until people are going away/getting married or being buried to tell them how much you appreciate them.  It is lovely to hear how much you will be missed.  I think that employee would be less likely to leave if they hear things like that more often too.  I saw people today that I haven't seen for years!  It is just fun to catch up like that.  Levi played with kids all day, they changed faces and ages but he had people all day as well.  He had fun running and playing and jumping on the trampoline. 

 

At one point he started to fade and as there was a lull in the kid numbers, I told him to just go downstairs and have a bit of quiet time.  He grateful and went and played with his Legos for a bit.  There isn't much left down there for him anymore, as most of the toys have been either sorted or shipped, but there are enough to keep him happy.  I am glad that he had a chance to rest because soon after there was another group of kids to play with and it meant he happily had a second wind.

 

I had a great day and one of my friends had organized for all my friends to write in a book that I can take with me and read on darker lonelier days! 

Packing

It continues to be pretty wild around here.  The company that is relocating some of our stuff is coming tomorrow afternoon and so my time has been, goodbye parties, packing and collapsing onto the couch.  As Blogger still won't let me load photos, I haven't bothered to come and update much.  There has been way too much other stuff going on!  I am just too tired tonight to pack more and not quite tired enough to go to bed early.  I think that sometimes there is so much to do it all blurs into one big thing.  I hope that I can get it all organized for transport tomorrow but frankly, don't really care if I don't!  Much of what I am taking is for sentimental reasons alone and I can always pick it up on subsequent visits back here. 

 

I had Mim here helping the other day.  Her job, and Levi's was to go through the toys and decide what was going and what he had either grown out of or lost the pieces to and put them in piles.  I looked over at one point to one huge pile and a modest little pile beside it.  I laughed because I assumed that the big pile was the 'take to USA pile' but instead it was the give/throw away pile.  Levi again amazed by his maturity, deciding that he could live without many of the toys.  His decisions were made easier by the fact that we are taking all the Lego and all the Playmobil, so he didn't need to sort that.  The best thing about all of that is when he complains that he can't find something and goes to get mad at me, I can remind him who in fact made all those decisions!

 

There is only nine days before we are going off on the big adventure.  Today was the last day that we would ever be at Samford State school and I had mixed feelings leaving it behind.  It has been a pretty good school but I am excited that Levi will have the chance to try something new.  He has some good friends behind it's gates but he will keep in touch with most of them!  The teachers from Vacation Care were definitely sad to see him go!

Beach Day

Today we went to King's beach Caloundra.  It was just a gorgeous day and I took lots of really fun photos that now won't upload to Blogger no matter what I do to it.  I think soon I am going to switch to something else so I can load photos and do what I want.  I can't complain about the price because it's free, but still it is months now and getting pretty annoying. 

 

We went to the beach because I'm so tired of packing and other things and I just wanted a day off.  I wanted a day to just play in the sun and and spend some time with friends.  Levi had a blast and was just supremely happy all day.  He laughed a bunch.  He ran around and swam in the ocean.  He was just happy and carefree and unstressed for a day and as close as was possible, so was I.  The day and the weather was perfect!  I am feeling refreshed and recharged and because of it, I might just last the next two weeks and not say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing.