Moving

Sorry that it has been so long since my last post.  To say that we have been busy would be an understatement.  Moving is one of my least favorite things to do.  I thought this would be a piece of cake since we don't even really have anything to move.  All we had to bring to our new apartment in Mosman (suburb of Sydney on the Lower North Shore) were the bags from the airport and a few items we bought beforehand (linens, dishes, and a few other things).  Plus, I have gotten to go shopping to buy a whole bunch of new things.  It sounds like the easiest move ever, right?  But, there are a few other factors in play: 2 crazy children who have not had structure in their lives for over a month and have spent WAY too much time together; stores that like to close by 6:00 pm; no family members around to help with some of the "little" things; I'm still not driving because I'm a chicken so I have to take the bus when Sean is at work and then you can only buy what you can carry while wrangling the 2 before mentioned crazy children.  

The beauty of moving

Mosman is circled in yellow.  Sean is working in North Sydney (less than 5 km away).

I should not complain.  Everything is falling into place.  We love the apartment and the area of the city we have chosen to live.  I have met a very nice neighbor that is also an American expat that is showing me the ropes.  She even invited me to her book club of American expats!  She has teenage daughters that the kids already love. Carter is currently getting enrolled in school and should be able to start Friday (the 27th).  Carter has even met a future classmate through our new neighbor.  Luckily, he and his new classmate got along great and Carter is excited to have a new friend.  We have a bed to sleep in, a TV with cable to watch, and food in the fridge.  I think Sean officially felt at home when he was able to get live Royals baseball through Apple TV on Sunday.  This isn't too bad for only living in Mosman less than a week.  The rest will fall into place.

I do think this move to Mosman has been the most stressful part of this journey for me.  The entire time we have been in Sydney so far, all I could think about was finding our "home" and getting settled.  But, then when the time came, I got very nervous.  We were anonymous travelers in a large city while we were living in our temporary apartment.  No one knew us and we could do as we wanted as though on vacation.  When we moved to Mosman, it became time to begin the process of reconstructing our lives.  Now comes the time that I have to create my Australian support network.  It is not as easy for adults to make new friends as it is for kids.  But, I know it is going to be crucial for me, especially since I will not be going out of the house to work.  I know it is all going to be fine though.  I'm actually off to a better start than I thought I would be.  

A rainbow we caught going over "The Spit" bridge

I will talk a little about this process of getting Carter into school.  Now that we are getting settled in our apartment, this is going to be my next big challenge.  I had to go to the local school with our relocation agent on Monday and fill out a bunch of forms and hand over passports, visas, lease agreements, etc., etc.  Filling out the forms takes longer than it normally would when I don't even know my own phone number and I have to consciously think about it every time I write the date.  (Aussies write day/month/year instead of month/day/year.)  Then, I have to make sure we have the money to pay the very large fee to go to public school here for the year.  Then, I have to go to the uniform shop at the school to pick out all the essentials for Carter's school uniform.  When I had completed all that at the school, I had to bring a form home and have Sean sign it so that I could overnight it today to the Australian government education department.  

Now, I have to start thinking about everything else for Carter to go to school here.  We went to the mall today and bought all black New Balance tennis shoes and a lunchbox.  Australian schools do not really do a hot lunch sitting in a cafeteria.  There is a canteen where kids can buy a cold lunch or hot finger foods for about $5-6 and then they sit outdoors to eat, or in their classroom if the weather does not allow them to sit outside.  Most people pack their kids' lunches.  Packed lunches have always been a hard thing between Carter and I as we rarely agree on what he should eat.  This could be interesting.....

It also seems like the school puts quite a bit of emphasis on sports.  Carter has even been put into a "house group" for sporting activities.  The entire school is split into 4 different house groups.  In fact, when we figured out he could start on Friday, the lady made a comment that it was just going to be a sporting day anyway.  I'm not quite sure what this is all going to mean to my creative boy that has not taken much interest in competitive sports to this point.  This could also be very interesting.....

One last note about the school.  I promise this is a public school.  They have 30 minutes of scripture on Thursday mornings.  You get to pick what you want your child to attend.  They offer Catholic, Anglican, Baha'i, Jewish, and ethics.  And if you do not want your child to attend any of these, they are in a supervised in a non-scripture group.  Yes, this could be very, very interesting.....

There haven't been very many funny moments over the past week.  We did have one occurrence that we did not think was funny at the time, but I see more humor in it after the fact.  The beginning of the story was actually last Tuesday night (April 17th).  Sean and I were running through Ikea trying to pick out all of our furniture before it closed so that it could be shipped to our apartment the next day.  It was kind of a stressful situation.  Sean had sweat rolling down his face afterwards, but we got it accomplished.  Well, fast forward to Saturday night.  It was our first night in the apartment.  Sean had been building our furniture from Ikea all day (since it comes in flat boxes).  He got around to making our bed at 9:00 that night.  When he finally got it all made, he went to put the wooden slats in the bottom.  They fell through the frame.  We had picked up wooden slats for a single bed, not a queen size bed.  We were so tired, we put the mattress on the floor in the living room and slept there.  We made a return trip to Ikea the next day and fixed the problem.  We love our bed now!!!

Sean putting together the bed before we knew we couldn't sleep in it that night.

The completed bed!

Picture of Aubrey in her favorite outfit.  Yep, pink goggles, Chiefs shirt, and Spiderman socks.  No girly girl here!