Settling In

Okay, so I haven't posted in a while. Sorry! First I was traveling and then I was settling in. It kind of feels like I'm living with an Aunt who has young kids. Mostly cause since school hasn't started yet I've mostly just been hanging out with the kids and helping out with basic chores which I would be doing while with family. Once I start driving the younger boy to kindergarden and really helping clean house then it'll probably feel different but at this point I still feel kind of like a guest. Since it's been so long since I posted anything I'll go through everything I've missed chronologically.

So first Tuesday the 23rd. Oh gosh I can't even remember what I did Tuesday anymore. Oh wait! Now I remember! We went to Saltaire where we checked out the Salt Mill. By we I mean my Uncle, the female cousin I've spent most of that week with and her next oldest brother whose just 10 months younger than I am. I've got some pictures that I'll add to this post later but I don't have my camera on me right now. We finished up earlyish and then headed back to my uncles place. We sat around for a bit then walked my cousins back to their moms place. After that I spent most of the evening trying to repack everything so that my suitcases wouldn't be over weight.

The next morning Wednesday the 24th I took the 7:28am train to London Kings Cross. Now the entertaining part here is that we only really woke up at 7 so it was rush rush rush and we had to run with my suitcases which I can tell you is really hard! Especially since there were stairs! Once on the train I didn't really have anything to do til I got to London. No transfers or anything which was nice. Of course I got to London Kings Cross around 11 and it didn't take me super long to transfer to Heathrow so I was at the airport around 12 with my bags all checked in and everything but they don't tell you what gate to go to till like 40 minutes before the flight leaves so once it's on the boards you have to rush to your gate and get on the plane almost right away which was annoying since I was just sitting around for so long but I managed. The flight got a bit delayed in the air though because the weather over Frankfurt was bad, but it was the kind of bad where there's heavy raining for like 20 minutes or so where you can't land. All in all my flight was delayed maybe an hour at most but I didn't really notice cause I was pretty much asleep then. I was picked up at the airport by the family. We drove first to the new house that they're moving to and then to the house they live in now. Luckily the house they're moving to was on the way.

Thursday the 25th we went to a close by lake with a bunch of kids. There were the 2 from my family, 2 neighbors, and 2 kids of the moms best friend. So the mom of my family, the old au pair whose going to be living there and going to school in Wurzburg and me are in charge of 6 kids. The good thing is that the 2 kids from my family are the youngest. The 2 neighbor kids are something like 7 and 10 with the 2 kids of the best friend being about the same ages, 7 and 11. The best part about bringing all of the other kids though is that the two older ones will watch the youngest for us so we don't have to always keep an eye on him. Since he's 3 he needs someone to watch him at all times, especially at a lake!

Friday the 26th we hung around the house most of the day with the younger one. The older one was playing with a friend. Sometime in the afternoon though the mom needed to head over to the new house to make sure everything was going okay and to meet up with a potential boarder. What I didn't realize before is that their new house is attached to a huge stable so we're going to be living right by where the mom works running the stable. The potential boarder is a horse by the way. Oh! And there's a small guest suite so it is possible to have people actually come and visit me and stay for a few days!

Saturday the 27th me and the other au pair went on a drink run. Now this doesn't sound all that exciting but considering that we were getting the drinks for 2 stables (the mom is moving her work from the old stable to the new one by her house). We ended up buying 23 cases of drinks! Thats a lot of drinks! We had to put the seats down in the back of the mini van (I know some of you are laughing at me right now!). We could fit 4 across and 3 deep and 2 high. Of course the guy who helped us load them wouldn't wait for us to tell him where to put them so when we got to the first stable we had to search for what drinks we wanted to pull out to leave there. I almost died then too! My shoe twisted sideways on me while I was carrying one of the cases into the barn and I started to fall forwards, one step, two steps, three steps. And then the other au pair managed to catch my arm so I didn't crash fully on the edge of the case. I still got a nasty bruise on my right leg though. But no drinks were broken which was awesome! After we got to the new stable we made some of the workers there put the drinks away. We went back home for lunch then in the afternoon we headed to a place called Kinderland in Wurzburg. We stopped for ice cream on the way and oh how I've missed gelato! Anyway, Kinderland is basically an indoor playground but they have some cool stuff like bounce houses, giant trampolines, little motorized cars, and a small rock wall. We stayed there for like 3 hours then went home.

Sunday the 28th we went to Playmobile Land! Mom, Dad, I have a whole new appreciation for how hard it must have been to take me and my brothers anywhere! It was actually pretty cool, since the park was geared towards little kids there wasn't a single roller coaster in the park, instead it was all things that kids could climb on or slide down or whatever. The good news about having 2 kids and 2 adults is that we could split up so one of us was following one of the kids at all times which was good because they could enter in one spot and come out in like 10 different areas. The bad news was that I still don't have a cell phone which means that we couldn't split up completely so we were still waiting on each other and having to find each other the old fashioned way. All in all, an exhausting day!

Monday the 29th the younger one was supposed to go in to his new kindergarden to have a play date or sorts with the other kids while his mom hung out with him. Because of this I just had the older kid at home and he spent the whole time just playing with the younger of the neighbor kids. Nothing exciting really happened at all though.

Tuesday the 30th we hung out at home most of the day but we did go out for gelato and then for a walk through a vineyard. Oh how I love gelato! The best part though is that not only was it good gelato but cheap too! 50 cents a scoop! I was sooooo tempted to get some massive portion but since I was with the kids who got 1 scoop each I decided to limit myself to 3 scoops. Mmmm hazelnut!

Wednesday the 31st I had off. Woot! I basically spent the whole day lazing about on the computer and doing things I'd meant to do earlier but hadn't gotten around to. I worked some on my post but it's kind of a long one so I didn't quite finish it.

Thursday the 1st. Well the days not over yet but so far I've slept in and finished my blog post. I'll try to post more often again since it's starting to calm down now. The little one has his first day of kindergarden today so he won't be around in the mornings now and even though I've still got the older one around for a while it's not a bad since he doesn't have his brother to fight with. Is that free time I see coming my way?

Love you all lots!
Anna