Snow again

So it snowed a lot last week.  It began on the Tuesday morning.  The boys were already declared off school, yet Seb was still in.  I kept him off though, it was coming down pretty hard.  It eventually stopped about 4 pm.  We had a good covering in the garden, though it wasn't sticking to the road.  Paul was home by then, and despite a good snow ball fight, there was still plenty to make a snow man.

Wednesday they declared a state of emergency, with a civil notice put out, warning those in South Carolina not to travel unless absolutely necessary. It did continue snowing through most of Wednesday and Thursday, and everyone was off school and work.  It was entertaining seeing the traffic reports on local news as there was just no traffic on the roads.  Due to the ice risk over night on the Thursday, Paul's work was delayed on the Friday, and the kids were off again.  Luckily the temperature began to climb and melted a lot of the snow on Friday. 

The earth moved on Valentines Day..... There was an earthquake in Edgefield, SC, measuring 4.1 on the Richter scale.  We didn't feel it, or the after shocks.....

After being cooped up for 4 days, we had to get the boys out at the weekend.  We headed in to Greenvillefor some lunch.  We choose Carolina Ale House, as it is usually ok.  But the place has been going down hill.  The hostess didn't acknowledge us when we asked for a table, just started gathering menus,  all we need is a 'yeah sure' (a bug bear of Paul's, it has happened a lot recently....).  The food was mundane, service ok, but not great.  Don't think we will be back for a while.  At least we got to go for a nice walk around Falls Park afterwards.... The kids were fairly well behaved....

Yesterday was Presidents' Day, and Oliver and Isaac were supposed to be off. Sebs school is actually daycare, so it takes a major holiday (like Christmas or thanksgiving) for him to be off.  Friday night I received an email from Oliver school, saying they had decided to start making up the snow days by using Presidents' Day, and the half day before Good Friday would now be a full day.  Hurrah for common sense!  We dropped Oliver at school and headed to Sebs school.  As soon as we got out of the car, he started whimpering....he whimpered all the way to his classroom, where I said good bye.....then whimpered for the next 3 hours!  Bless. His teachers are doing a really good job.  I get a report each day, with photos and generic spiel as to what the class have been up to in the day.  It is very nice.

While Seb was in school, it was mummy and Isaac time, so we got some donuts

And headed home.  All Isaac wanted to do was play computer.  So I let him, but we did watch some of Finding Nemo together before going to get Seb.  Yesterday afternoon was spent at Anna's house, with Rachel, raiding her DVD collection.  Thank you ladies for a lovely afternoon.  Oliver came home from school with his valentines goodies.  I swear he was the only child in his class who did not give candy/stickers/tattoos stuck to his card.  His valentines is very commercialized.  They are certainly breeding the next generation of Hallmark shoppers.  They will be the people who feel the need to spend a stupid amount of money they don't have on gifts.  At least Isaac's school requests no gifts/candy.... His party is Thursday…..

All 3 headed out the door to school today, hurrah!  The older 2 were all dropped off fine.  Sebastian waited till he got to the door of his classroom to burst into tears.  but he went in, and went off with the teacher and played.  When I came to pick him up, the rest of his class were lining up in pairs to go to the gym, and he was sitting there ever so nicely on the floor.  He was very happy to see me.  His teacher said he had a much better day.  He used the computer and did some art. Everyday I get a generic report of what his class have been up to, but it is personalized with photos of what Sebastian has done.  

I think he is going to settle really well.  Isaac had a bit of a bumpy day, but I think we may be in for a bumpy time over the next few weeks with him anyway, given what is happening tomorrow….

So tomorrow is Oliver's operation.  Bless his teacher, he came out today laden down with books and worksheets of things he will miss in the next 1-2 weeks.  He has already started some of it.  I think I will go through it with him tomorrow and work out some sort of a timetable… He has to be at the hospital for 10.45am.  This is a little later than we had hoped, but what can you do?  He will be in surgery at least 2 hours, probably more.  Then at least an hour in recovery room.  I am expecting him to be home around 4, and he will probably be going straight to bed.  I have found a good site for anyone interested in what Oliver is going through tomorrow….

Will post photos tomorrow…..

Snow catch up

Oh dear, it's been a while since I posted, so this will probably be epic.  I apologise now.....

So it snowed last week.  Isaac's school finished lunchtime on the Tuesday, and everyone was off on the Wednesday.  When I say it snowed, we had about an inch tops.  The authorities did their best to deal with the roads, we even saw lorries out salting when we went out for dinner on Tuesday night.  

Isaac's school were also off on the Thursday, though Oliver was back in.  It was cold, -13 celcius at night. Yesterday, the thermometer hit 21 degrees.......

Seb has had his tetanus jab.  After getting back in touch with the doctors, they decided to give him the 3 in 1 last Monday.  Bless, he gets so excited going to the doctors.  Not sure he will anymore.  I had to hold him down, and she managed to jab him right on the muscle.  Poor mite, it obviously hurt as he was struggling to walk on it.  He was also a cantankerous little sod for a few days after too.

Isaac is off school on his winter break this week.  We went to play at McDonalds yesterday morning, and this morning we checked out Creating Artists for Tomorrow (CAT) art studios.  You may remember I bought a Living Social deal for this waaaayyyyyy back in august.  The boys had good fun making a mess.

After Oliver's CT scan last week, we had a follow up appointment with Dr Alexnder at the ENT department this morning.  Not good.  Basically Oliver has cholesteatoma in his right ear.  This is where skin cells have managed to get into his ear canal behind his ear drum.  Once there, they have started multiplying, and basically having a party in his ear.  Because of the drum there is no where for the dead cells to go, so they have built up and kept multiplying.  The doc showed me the CT scan.  On his left ear, there is lovely air (black on the image) where the bones of his middle ear can still work.  All you could see on the right ear was grey where the skin has built up.  It has overtaken his bones, hence his loss of hearing, and also worked its way into the honeycomb bones around his ear.

Left unchecked, these skin cells will keep multiplying.  They could continue to destroy the bones, and even work their way to the blood brain barrier, which would put him at a very high risk of meningitis and permenant damage.  It could also destroy some of his facial nerve.

Oliver will be having an operation in 2 weeks time.  They will make an incision behind his ear, and work their way in to his ear canal to cut out the excess skin cells.  Hopefully, they will get it all first time round.  There is a 20% chance they won't.  There is also a small chance he may lose some of his taste cells (it would only be noticeable to a wine conasiour apparently), and a chance he may lose some action of his facial nerve.  Again, only slim.

He will then have a follow up appointment 10 days later.  In 6 months time they will operate again.  Depending on what they find when they open his ear, they will either be scraping more cholesteatoma out, or will be doing reconstructive work on his bones in the middle ear, with the hope of making his hearing back to how it was. 

This is scary stuff.  I am glad they have caught it when they have, even if it does mean an operation.  I keep wondering what would have happened if we were on the UK.  Would we have been to ENT yet?  Probably not.  I am pretty rubbish at taking my kids to the doctors, unless they are on deaths door.  Would we have had a CT scan?  This problem can be diagnosed with out one, but would we even have been offered it?  Who knows?  Hopefully we will never have to find out.

And he is having his adenoids out at the same time….

An essay (sorry)

Hey

This week has felt like another long hard week.  I don't know if it is the early starts (back to 6.15 wake up now Oliver is back at school), but it has felt very hard.  Don't get me wrong, we are still loving it!

Last weekend was Labor Day weekend.  This is a holiday that is celebrated in the states for the achievements of workers.  There was a festival held in Simpsonville over the weekend, the Upstate Harvest Moon Festival .  We toddled along to this on Monday, as everyone was off school and work.  It was quite good.  There was animals, a car show and lots of stands/stalls.  There was also a kids zone, $5 to enter for kids.  Clever parents, we had no cash, so did not indulge our delightful children.  It was very HOT, so we had an ice cream, and left quick sharp.

'Hump daaayyyyyy'

We have met up with a lot of friends this week, this entailed 2 trips to McDonalds (only ice cream and drinks were consumed, and round a friends house.  It is nice for the kids to be able to socialize.  I must also thank all my lovely friends here for helping me out and listening to me vent this week, it has felt good to talk.

Thursday afternoon I had a meeting with the directress and teachers from Seb's school, to see why they do not think he is ready.  It turns out they think he has problems going up and down steps, he nearly fell when holding one of their hands.  I explained that he is better going up and down on his own, even if he does tend to climb them rather than walk them.  They are concerned about his lack of language and are worried he would get frustrated about not being able to express himself.  They want his first school experience to be a positive one.  I can kinda see their point.  They also picked up on the fact he struggled to make eye contact when they were doing 'work' with him.  It was the second time he had met the teachers!  It takes time for relationships to build.... I came away feeling a bit 'meh' about the whole thing.  I still think they were over subscribed, and he was one of the easiest to turn down.  After speaking with another mum from the school, there appears to be one rule for one, and a different for another.  I want Seb to go there though.  I dont want to be driving to 3 different schools in a morning.  It is very frustrating for me, but I think Seb will love it when he gets there. I explained to them all the different things we are doing at home, and the directresses eyes lit up.  They know I am doing my best to try and prepare him, and I think this impressed them.  They will reassess him in December, so hopefully they will deem him ready, whereas I know he is nearly there now.

Then Friday morning Seb had his well child check.  He was a lucky child and did not have to have any injections.  This is because when him and I were registering, i forgot to bring our notes from the UK.  I have to drop them in next week, then they will contact me to arrange what is necessary.  The doctor was, again, awesome.  We talked about his lack of speech.  She thinks it is an expressive delay, as he makes a lot of noises.  When she was checking him over, she checked the bit under his tongue (lingual frenulum, involved in tongue tie), and thought it is still a bit thick, which could be impeding him.  She did say however that third children, particularly boys, can be slow to potty train and talk, which is what I knew already.  Sebastian was most uncooperative during his physical, god knows what he will be like when he has his jabs.  He is average in weight, and small in height, a bit like Oliver.  I explained to her what Sebs school had said about him not being ready for school.  Funnily enough, her kid goes to a Montessori school in Greenville, so she knows the drill.  She agrees with me in that, although he may not have a speech issue, for admissions sake, she recommends speech therapy.  That way they can see if it is something physical or if it is just the fact he can't get a word in edge ways most of the time.  They will contact me and let me know when the appointment will be.  I love the boys doctor, she is very common sense and down to earth.  If anyone local is looking for a good general practitioner, let me know.  I don't know if it is because these have been well child checks, but each appointment for the boys has taken at least 50 minutes.  Seb will have a 3 year check in January, as well as some jabs coming up soon (I know he will need at least 2)

Now the other 2 chimps.  They only had school Tuesday-Friday due to Labor Day.  Isaac did one day of lunch and learn.  He is been fine at school, even enjoying it, though he is very tired.  The 3 afternoons I have had him home, the TV has not gone on at all, until we have got Oliver.  We have done all sorts. he played with playdoh with the animals, using the green as land, and the pink as mountains.

He wanted some blue playdoh, so Seb and I made that for him on Friday morning.

He then experimented with baking soda and vinegar colored with food coloring.  He absolutely loved this.  He loved the fizzing, the bubbles and the colors.  I so need to do the mentos and diet coke with him, he will love it.

Oliver has had his usual 3 baseball practices this week, though one of these was a practice game against his coach from last season, coach Kyle.  It is interesting to compare the 2 different coaching styles, neither is good or bad, they are just different.  Oliver's team is the Rockies, after the Colorado Rockies. Games begin the week after next, we need to get olives some grey baseball trousers.  I presume tops and hats will be ordered pretty soon.  We all went to watch the practice game on Friday night.  Oliver's team are pretty good, though Oliver just prances around the pitchers mound most of the time.  He is a good batter though, and managed to hit a pretty big one on one occasion, and got ran put 2 other times.  Think he is being noted for his batting ability, which is good, as he plays no attention to the game.  He finds the fielding boring, but we shall be working on that over the weekend.

Wow this was not supposed to be such an essay, well done if you have managed to read this far.....think I need to blog when things come into my head, rather than waiting for the weekend.

Long week

What a week.... To start with, paul was away Monday to Friday.  That made things hard.  Oliver's baseball season began this week.  He had 3 practices, all of them at 7.15pm, for an hour.  So I had to take all 3 chimps to Heritage Park.  This obviously resulted in 3 very late nights for all the boys, and mummy.  His team seems good, they are a mix of second and third graders.  As with last season, there are a couple of kids who are really good, but some don't have a very good attitude.....

Oliver also went back to school this week.  He had half days on Monday and Tuesday, when Isaac was in lunch and learn.  Then back to full days for the rest of the week, when Isaac was on half days.  It has been nice to have Isaac to myself in the afternoon while Seb sleeps (normally....)

Both Oliver and Isaac have had their well child check ups at the doctors in the last 10 days. They need a South Carolina immunization record so they can go to school. These involved full physicals with their new doctor.  i must say, she is awesome.  only problem with going to the doctors is it takes about an hour each time.   They both needed some jabs, 2 for Oliver, 1 for Isaac.  They both cried, it's difficult to say who cried the most...  Other than that, they are both fine.  Oliver is light, Isaac is more average.  Isaac's height has jumped about 3 percentiles in the last year.  I think he will be the biggest in both height and weight out of all the boys.  Seb has got his on Friday, should be interesting.....

Seb had his first session at Gymboree on Monday.  He cried for about a quarter of the time.  He eventually got used to the equipment, and was quite keen, but did not like it when they started doing singing and circle time.  He did however join in some of the 'kitchen helper' pretend play activities the ladies did.  I have signed him up for a month.  He will get used to it, it will do him good to listen to other adults, and I think he will come round to the singing and activities.  I have been getting him to sing along to songs on the radio in the car to help his vocalization. His favorites are 'blurred lines' (it's so cute, I sing the words, them he tries to copy, it is awesome.....) and 'heaven'.  He is best with songs that have sounds rather than words.  After we dropped Isaac at school on Monday, having already taken Oliver, Seb was so chatty.  He is getting there, I know it is just a matter of time before we can't shut him up either.  

As Paul had been away, we have been keeping busy.  We went to the pool after school on Monday and Tuesday.  

Out for dinner with Liene and her chimps on Tuesday night.  Gotta love Carolina Ale Houses kids eat for 99 cents.  It was an interesting dinner, all the kids ate, and were well behaved.  Think it is something we will be doing again.  Wednesday morning we had to go and get Oliver a helmet for baseball.  Oh the joys of being a second grader, they now need helmets.  I thought it would break   the bank, but it wasn't too bad.  We had some time to kill, so stopped in at Barnes and Noble to look at the books, and Seb played with the Thomas trains.  

I will mention now, Liene is in a poll for best Southern Mom blog on Circle of Moms.  She is an awesome writer, and has won many accolades already.  Please take the time to read her blog and vote.  I know she will appreciate it.  You can currently find it under the pending tab.

This is the link http://www.circleofmoms.com/top25/Top-25-Southern-Moms-2013 

As for our home activities this week..... Seb has played with playdoh and lego at the same time, painted with cars, 

finger painted, brown bear matching game.  He helped me make cakes.  This was rather humorous.  I gave him some choc chips to eat while I did the tricky bits.  He proceeded in putting  these into the cake cases, instead of eating them.  So they are chocolate heavy cakes.  No complaints so far.  We met up with some friends at the park, and at the zoo.  He was very good on both occasions.  I have rarely used his bat wing reins.  Such an improvement.   He has also done the toothpick games on numerous occasions.  When we were tidying up the paints, he got the magnetic letters out, and started putting them into the roll of kitchen paper. 

 I ran with this (and another idea I saw on Pinterest), and cut a hole in the plastic lid of a coffee tin.  Seb then put all the magnetic letters into this instead.  This is a favorite activity.  He seems to love putting things into slots.  I have tried to get him to help sort the letters into colors first, but every time I do it, he messes it up!!!  Never mind, these things will come.  

Isaac has done painting with lego and cars this week.  He loved it.  This then led on to him cleaning everything after.  Then he decided he wanted to clean all his hero factory bits.  

This took a good chunk of time.  I have been offering Isaac computer time in the afternoon before Oliver comes home, and he has refused most of the time.  Both him and Oliver are having such a good time playing together with the Hero Factory, or watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I so remember this from being a kid....,).  They have such a beautiful relationship.  They are a right team.  But such hard work.  They answer to each other before answering to mummy or daddy.  Isaac wanted to get the Playmobil out on Friday  afternoon.  

I agreed, but thought we would go the whole hog and get it all out.  Needless to say, he played with it for about an hour before he started asking when Oliver was coming home.  It was packed away before bedtime (but at least I got the opportunity to sort it all out, and store it better, so sad......) 

Paul has finished the cat box.  It is cool, heavy, but cool.  Plus the cat uses it.  Makes the litter tray very inconspicuous, even if it does look like Snoopys home.  

His next task: a small bookcase for the reading corner.

As I say a busy week.  Hoping next week won't be so chaotic, but I doubt it........

Whirlwind

Life has been like a whirlwind since we came home from Florida.  I have been throwing myself into my uni work.  I am making progress, just am very unsure of the content.  Only time (and an exam) will test to see if I know it.

It has been nice to be home though.  We have managed to catch up with a few friends.  Sebastian's teachers came to see him last monday.  It went well, other than him throwing the wooden blocks they brought with them around (eekkk).  I got a phone call from his school that afternoon to ask if I could bring him in the next day, as they are unsure how he will cope with a small classroom and other students.  We trundled down to school, and one of the admissions staff walked him down to his classroom.  We watched from the office.  Of course, Seb was more interested in going to Isaacs classroom, or the park, but his teachers managed to entice him in.  He was there for 45 minutes!!! Luckily Oliver and Isaac were provided with some coloring to keep them happy.  When his visit was over, his teachers said the admin lady would call and let me know how the meeting they were going to have had gone.  I am still waiting.....

My dad arrived last wednesday.  He had left it quite late to buy his tickets, so ended up having to fly into one New York airport, then from the other one to Charlotte.  Because of this his flight was due to get in to Charlotte at 22.50.  It landed early, but they were kept on the plane for 20 minutes, then more time spent waiting for his baggage.  I eventually picked him up at 23.50.  We didn't get home till 1.30am.  We were both very tired.  It is nice to have him here though.  We had a relaxing day on thursday and Friday.  We headed into Greenville for Main Street Friday and some dinner, and bumped into Tracey, an English friend, who also had people with her visiting from Blighty.  

Saturday we headed to Costco for our mammoth bi-monthly shop, then to Cheddars for some lunch.  This was lovely.  Dad and I then headed to the mall in the afternoon, so we could do a bit of shopping. Typically  I could not find anything I wanted.  We drove home via Bi-Lo.  Whilst putting my bag on my shoulder, I managed to rip the top off my mole, which I only noticed when we were done shopping.  I managed to get myself a doctors appointment for this morning, only had to wait an hour in the surgery to be seen by an actual doctor!  She removed the mole, thank goodness, as it has always been a bit of a problematic one, sticking up and rather unsightly.  She has to send it of for tests, but does not expect anything to be up with it, she says no news is good news, so hopefully I won't hear from her.

Yesterday we took dad up to Caesars Head for a look out over Greenville.  I had forgotten how beautiful it is up there, this is only the second time we had been up there.  It was covered in clouds, making it difficult to see, but lovely and cool, and so picturesque.  From there we travelled to Jones Gap.  Oliver had been there on a school trip, so we thought we would go for a little look around.  Again, it is very beautiful, and the walk from the car park to the actual park is a mini hike in itself, particularly for small tired boys.  We saw some amazing butterflies, but decided not to do any of the hikes.  Save that for when the boys are bigger and it is not so buggy up there.  We came back, had a BBQ, then went to the pool.

Paul is away for part of this week, so we are planning on a few day trips, just the zoo etc and maybe breakfast one morning, plus Paris Mountain State Park.  The lake should be open for swimming, which would be good to try out.  

Just a quickie....

Going to try and make this a quick one....

We are all good.  We have been pottering around, sorting stuff and seeing friends, and having time as a family.

IT was the Super Bowl last night.  That was fun to watch.  I really enjoyed Beyonce's half time show, plus the adverts.  This is such a commercialized society, but at least they know it, and are even prepared to rib themselves about it.   Got quite drunk though, sore head this morning.

We ordered bedroom furniture in preparation for our first visitors arriving in about 5 weeks time.  Tony, Paul's brother first, then my mum a week later.  I cant wait to see my mum, I get goose bumps just thinking about it!!!!  Ikea furniture is arriving wednesday,  it worked out sooooo much cheaper to get it there than anywhere else.  The way they do their beds is funny (to me, its probably like this back home, but I haven't bought a bed in about 10 years, till we got here).  You but the frame, the base and the mattress all separately, which means it costs you a nice  chunk to kit out a room.

The boys are all good.  Had to take Oliver to the doctor this afternoon,  I made the appointment over a week ago, thats almost as bad as Westcourt.....  His ear infection is back, so drops for him.  This has been ongoing since June.  Will see how he goes with this.  It doesn't affect him as such, just every few days his ear will leak a delightful substance.....Isaac is currently on his winter break from school, so he is off this week.  Today has been quite nice, just hoping it continues.  He is funny, he insists on having computer time, and like Oliver he is loving playing Forza on the xbox.  But after 45-60 minutes, he has had enough, Oliver would play all day if you let him.  He seems to have good control when it comes to video games, shame the same cannot be said for TV.  He would watch Spongebob and Ninjago all day if he could.  Sebastian is great.  I gave him a slight hair cut this week, just a few centimeters from a few places, he has lost his lock at the back.  You would not know it to look at him, but I think he looks more grown up.  He is chatting away to himself.  Certain thing s he can say quite well.  Other things he is not there with yet, but it will come and no doubt by the time he is 3 we wont be able to shut him up.

We had Terminex round today.  They are the pest control people.  Thought we better, after Paul spotted a mouse one morning, then proceeded to catch it!  Lucy just isn't pulling her weight..... admittedly she has caught a few outside, just don't think she expected to have any on 'her' turf.

Its my birthday tomorrow, and I am off to Greenville Zoo with a friend.  Then drive through on the school run for dinner.  Boys early to bed, Paul is away, so I have complete control of the TV, computer and beer supplies!!!!

Wednesday, hoping to go into Oliver's school to have lunch with him, depending on ikea delivery, then meeting a friend or two at the park.

Thursday we are off to the mountains.  I so cant wait.  We have a cabin in the middle of no where, with what looks like stunning views, a pool table, foosball table and a hot tub.  The boys can have a splash!!! We can drink loads of booze, and celebrate my birthday properly.  Looking forward to a weekend of relaxing, exploring and generally having fun.  Prepare yourselves for the millions of photos about to be posted on here and Facebook.....

Thoughts a month in

This is not going to be a normal blog, Paul is going to help.  I will do a catch up one in a few days time.  This is going to be a post on what we have noticed so far.....

Travel - EVERYONE has a car, you need a car, but there are some sorry excuses for cars on the road.....  Loads of people use mobiles while driving, but there is a big advertising push to try and stop this.  You can turn right on red lights at most junctions.  We are yet to take our South Carolina driving tests, we still have 2 months in which we can drive on our UK driving licences.  Some of the roads are a state.  Overtaking on the inside is allowed.  The interstates when they are busy are BUSY.  General driving standards are very poor, lots of running reds, you have to look when you come out of a junction on green.  Big rigs, are BIG.

T.V - too many adverts, same with the radio.  I have found a few good tv channels, abc, NBC.  There are only 4 kids tv channels with our provider (Charter).  No Cbeebies, although some programmes are available on Nickalodeon and Disney.  Lots of on demand programmes and films, so the boys can watch many of their favourites often.  They have Lego cartoons, which the boys love.  They are being influenced by adverts though......  Different networks have different political agendas.  Watching football in the morning is different, we get at least one Premier League game on a Saturday.  Haven't found the cooking channels yet, but haven't really looked.  In the adverts, they would rather show the bad points of their competitors than show their own products.  It is best to watch on playback, so you can skip the adverts.

Food - we are eating out at least once a week, was more frequent to begin, but have reigned it in.  Paul regularly eats out for lunch.  Cooking is interesting, trying to find ingredients that were everyday back home are very hard to find.  We have found a few places that sell products from home, so we have Yorkshire tea and Bisto gravy.  Everything tasted so sweet, because they add sugar to pretty much everything.  I must get more baking utensils, so I can start making cookies and cakes again.  I wouldn't mind a bread maker, as their loaves are much smaller. Loving the coffee machine though.....but missing squash.  We have found a beer, Pabst Blue Ribbon, which is fairly nice.  Imported beer is expensive, as you can imagine.

Weather - so far so good!!!  Just starting to get cold, having a cold snap at the moment, temperatures are meant to improve next week.  Previously it had been in the low 20's in the day still.  Not much rain, but when it comes down it really rains....

Shopping - probably deserves a post of its own!!!!  After the mammoth task of stocking our house, we are done with most of the big things, mainly thanks to ikea.  Most rooms are sorted, we are just picking up bits and pieces when we see them.  Food shopping is interesting, I have tried Walmart, Publix and Bi-Lo so far.  Bi-Lo is very local, and probably a bit like Sainsburys.  Publix is a more upmarket version of Tesco, and Walmart is Asda.  Only really do Walmart if I need extras, not just food.  Going to try and do big shops at Publix, it seems a tiny bit cheaper the Bi-Lo.  The boys like Bi-Lo as it has the car trolleys, so they are always well behaved when we go shopping there.  The mall is interesting, some of the shops are quite expensive, but some are very good.  I need to go there with just me and Seb, so I can take it all in a bit better.  I have a trip there planned for next week, spotted some good Christmas presents on JCPenneys at the weekend.  Best Buy is a big electrical store, we have spent far too much money in there.  Toys r us is just like at home.  World Market is fab, if a little pricey.  They sell lots of home ware and 'world' food.  K-Mart is ok, a bit like a department store, as is Target. Costco is a big wholesale merchant. We have paid for membership, they have many bargains, especially on toys. Am going tomorrow to stock up on many different things

Medical - having a bit of a hate/hate relationship with this.  They love to keep you waiting.  The receptionists at our doctors are just as useless as at Westcourtt.  The boys are registered, and their immunisation records have already gone to school.  When I registered they did my blood sugars, and they were high, so I need to see the endocrinologist, and have a physical and lots of tests done.  This is going to take at least an hour.  Luckily the doctor is available till 8pm, so that is my fun in a few weeks time.  I am preparing myself for a lecture.

General - everyone has massive drinks cups with them, most drink refills are free. Our road seems really nice, even if no one knows where it is. Wearer loving our house, but there is still lots of reverb, the boys are sending is deaf.... I am up and out of the house within an hour, not loving the getting up at 6.30am. Loving my car and its sat-nav, and the rice of fuel.....cat is happy, Kees getting shut in kitchen cupboards. Skype is great, though the time difference is not. Loving the tumble dryer....enjoying meeting lots of people from lots of different back grounds.

As time goes on, we will have more of these, so we will try and do an observations post every couple of months.

Hope all is ok with everyone reading x