We have finally moved to our apartment. This is much better than the hotel.
We have more room and are all in the same area. Brooke and Caleb were in a separate room across the hall at the hotel. They were perfect, but this was quite a stress on me. Once they were asleep it was hard to check on them. The floors creaked and the door was loud!!
We have a refrigerator and full kitchen. It isn't large. The fridge is more like a dorm room fridge, but at least we can store milk and a few things. I can also cook now which is so good. We have food allergies in this family and have poisoned ourselves more than once with Gluten. They tend to put bread crumbs in all of their sausages and hamburgers or meatball type things here.
Getting groceries does pose a bit of a problem. You see I have a family of five and we eat a lot. However, you can't fit much in a dorm room size fridge. You also can't buy much at the store. You have to carry everything home in small bags and the check out is not geared towards large purchases. Basically this means a trip to the store every day to get something. Not the most fun when you have three kids.
Laundry is a nightmare. We have the tiniest little washer/dryer combination in the kitchen. First, it holds next to nothing. Second, it uses some condensation method of getting rid of the water and drying them which is ineffective at best and sucks greatly at worst. The cycle takes 2 1/2 hours and you have to do most (even painfully small loads) twice. Did I mention that I have a family of 5!!! We also make a lot of dirty clothes. Once I finally get caught up, I will try to just wash every day what we have worn the previous day. It has taken me three days so far and I am not caught up though. This is even with hanging up most shirts to dry.
Internet is much better hear too! I can finally connect my phone to the internet and I can upload pictures to the blog. This makes me feel so much more at home!
The apartment is still close to the tube station and has a bus stop right across the street. We are walking a minimum of 2 miles everyday though. (Hoping that I lose those last few pounds with all this walking.) One day we all walked closer to 8 miles. I was proud of my little people. They didn't really complain and kept up! They were just having so much fun.
We have taken the last few days in the apartment to just get settled, get some rest and get caught up. We weren't really able to rest in the hotel. We had to leave every morning in order for house keeping to take care of their business. There was such little room that we didn't like being there for long either. Everyone got a bit of cabin fever if we spent too long there. We will get back to our travels tomorrow.
We also did a bit of pen and paper school this morning. One of our co-op starts this week back home, so we are trying make sure that we keep up with at least the bare minimum of lessons. The apartment has a living room area that made this easy. We have been doing so much learning without pen and paper that it was a bit of shock to get back to a desk. It only took a couple hours to get done what we needed to do though and then we were off to the park and of course the grocery store.
I have mentioned a couple of times that I have a family of five. I am becoming increasingly aware that 5 is number that people are not really prepared for. Everything is set up for a family of 4. From eating situations to beds in a hotel or apartment. Even the canoe ride at Kew gardens was set up for 4 people, not five. This becomes quite difficult when we are all together and trying to do activities. Clare and I get left out to do our own thing or we end up waiting a bit longer.
Well that is my disjointed ramble to give you an idea of what life here is like for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment