Greetings! We have been very busy these past few months and have loads to share with you! We have been to the castle at Skipton, to the city of York, and all around Manchester. We have also still just been adjusting to life in a new place, and even though we speak the same language, it can be frustrating (especially on phone calls) to understand and be understood. The slang and idioms here are different, but we try to watch local TV and talk to people while we’re out, so we pick up what we can.

We have also since celebrated Abbie’s 12th birthday! She requested a unicorn cake, of course, which her sweet friends in Alabama will appreciate (hi Sydney and Sarabeth!) She has also been cooking all kinds of delicious things in her food tech class, including these fruitcake muffins.

Eli has been doing a lot of Lego building, and he made this cool Lego volcano for his school volcano project. He also got a Robin Hood costume complete with sword, shield, and bow from our trip to Skipton. He likes to get all dressed up and pretend he is Link from the Zelda games, and he also wore it to school for World Book Day.

The first big trip we took out of Manchester was to the historic market town of Skipton. Skipton is about 50 miles north of Manchester, about 2 and a half hours by bus, and the scenery was really beautiful.

The castle at Skipton was built originally in 1090 as a motte and bailey castle, then rebuilt and fortified with stone around 1200. There is a yew tree still standing in the courtyard that was planted in 1659. It is an amazingly preserved medieval castle, and well worth a visit.

We then sat down in the Castle Tea Room for the most touristy tasty treat – a pasty, mushy peas, spice cake, and tea and crumpets.

Our other big trip out of Manchester was to the city of York. York is about 70 miles northeast of Manchester, and this time we took the train, so the trip was only about an hour and a half. We only spent one day in York but we can’t wait to go back. There is a lot to see and do there, and one day was definitely not enough!

York is a really lovely city. Walls like those extending from the gatehouse still surround much of the city. The city was founded in 71 AD by the Romans, and there are still some standing Roman remains, plus a collection of Roman artifacts that we saw in the Yorkshire Museum. I didn’t take any pictures inside the museum, but outside in the York Museum Gardens there are the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey, built in 1088 and destroyed in the 16th century after Henry VIII banned monasteries in England.

Abbie’s favorite place in York was by far York Minster. The present building was completed in 1472, but churches have stood on the site since 627 AD. There are many sculptures, artworks, and stained glass windows to enjoy. Abbie and I followed a guided tour and learned a lot of interesting details about the building and its history.

After York Minster, Abbie and I decided to have a posh ladies tea at Bettys Tea Room. We had a cream tea, which is scones with jam and clotted cream (and tea, of course!)

Aside from our two big trips out, we have also been exploring more of Manchester, both into the city and further out. I enjoy going into the city some days to enjoy a coffee and do some people watching. The weather has been really nice for a few days, and people have been out enjoying it.

We went on Friday for a long walk, 3.5 miles, from Stretford Meadows into Ashton Upon Mersey. It was a beautiful day and there were lots of people out on bikes or walking their dogs.

Thanks for following our adventures, we hope you are all doing well! ❤

We have had a very busy month of January! Among our important tasks were things like opening a bank account, enrolling the kids in school, getting bus passes, and getting cell phones that allow us to call the US. I have also been getting things we need to make the house a little more cozy.

With all the rain (and a little snow!) we’ve had, we decided it would be best to take our shoes and coats off at the door. And so we have added the coat and shoe rack! I love having it there as we can put all the coats, hats, gloves, bags, and shoes in one place. The kids have gotten into the habit already and it leads to much less mess laying around on couches and tables.

Another issue we were having was with the cats trying desperately to get into the upstairs bathroom so they could sit on the carpet under the radiator. The problem is that the door closes on its own, and the cats end up stuck in there – not only are they unhappy about it, but they also tear up all the toilet paper (aka bog roll or loo roll 😁). My first solution was to get them kitty beds to put under the radiators in other rooms, and that was ok, but they were not as impressed as I’d hoped. I looked into other cat bed options and discovered the solution to our problem: the kitty radiator hammock! They seriously love these things.

Our biggest accomplishment this month was getting the kids enrolled in school. They are both very happy with their new schools, new uniforms, and have both already made some new friends. They have both said, though, that the one thing they don’t like is missing their friends from Alabama. And Abbie thinks her lunch period is too long (???).

Eli says his school is a lot of fun, that “they do a lot fewer worksheets,” and his math book has “more interesting questions.” He is not at the school that we thought he would go to, so Eli and I take the bus together every day. He is usually quiet on the way to school, but when I pick him up in the afternoon, he doesn’t stop talking the whole way home. He has some new classes, including French, Spanish, playing the fife, and swimming.

Abbie also really likes her new school. She has a lot of new classes, including food technology, information technology, drama, French, and Spanish. She says that her PE class is a lot more fun as they have gym equipment and allow the kids to listen to music while they work out for the hour. She has also really enjoyed her music class and has already had classes in playing the bass guitar and drums.

The class schedules here are different than we were used to in Alabama. Abbie’s school starts at 8:30 and ends at 2:45. Eli’s school starts at 9 and ends at 3:15. I appreciate the extra time in the morning, and the slightly later wake up alarm. At Mountain Gap, Abbie had a set schedule of 8 periods that were the same each day. At her new school, she has 5 blocks per day, and each day of the week is a different schedule of classes. She also rides her bike to and from school, a little less than a mile each way, and I am really proud of her for being able to do that on her own in a whole new place.

Before we moved, they had both said they weren’t very excited about having to wear uniforms to school, but they both now say they like it. They look very sharp each morning, and it definitely takes less time to get dressed when you know exactly what you have to wear.

We had a big surprise when we woke up this morning, and it was snow! There was a lot of snow (for us, at least), up to 3-4 inches in spots, and the roads were a slippery slidey slushy mess.

Abbie’s school closed, but Eli’s did not. While we waited for his bus, he and Abbie made a snowman to guard the bus stop.

After school, they played together in the backyard, chasing each other around throwing snowballs

I am really glad that we have now settled into a new normal routine. The kids are really happy, I’m much less stressed, and Randall is thoroughly enjoying working with robots at his new job. Every day has its little challenges as we manage with public transportation and walking, things that get “lost in translation,” and not always finding the foods we are craving – Abbie is pining for alfredo sauce. But every day also kind of feels like an adventure, where we can’t just go on autopilot yet, but have to think about what we’re doing and make plans.

One last funny thing – the cats are always making us laugh and surprising us with the new goofy thing they are doing, and today was no different. When we came home after school and opened the door, there was a pile of yarn at the bottom of the stairs.

The yarn stretched all the way to the top of the stairs, where we saw sitting like a little queen, Miss Korra herself. And she was not ashamed!

She had taken yarn from Abbie’s room and batted it all the way down there!

Anyway, I hope you are all doing well. And, even though we lost (if that’s even adequate to describe what we did), Roll Tide

The past two weeks have been about finding our way around, learning to use the bus, and exploring our neighborhood. We have been to two parks, a museum, three libraries, many different grocery stores, Legoland, Sea Life Manchester, and eaten lots of delicious food.

We enjoyed a quiet, Lego-filled Christmas, though we missed very much the traditional Christmas fun with our families.

We also spent part of Christmas day at the park. There are two parks very close to our house. One is small and shares space with a primary school, but the other is pretty big and has two playgrounds plus lots of trees.

We have visited three libraries so far – the Stretford Library and the Urmston Library, which are both part of our local Trafford library system, and the Central Library in Manchester. The kids have both read several books already and can’t wait to go back this week for more.

Another day was spent walking around the city centre and vising the Manchester Museum, home of Stan the T. rex and a real mummy!

They also have a display of meteorites, some of which you can touch.

Most of the Bee in the City bees have left their display locations (they were auctioned to raise over £1 million for We ♥ MCR), but there were still a few left to find (much to Eli’s delight!)

Another day was spent visiting LegoLand and Sea Life Manchester. We saw the Lego Ninjago Master of the 4th Dimension movie at LegoLand; it had water and smoke and 3D glasses – definitely a big hit! Eli had a good time driving a big Lego car, and they got to build Lego cars to race.

Sea Life Manchester has sharks, jellyfish, turtles, rays, eels, seahorses, and a giant Japanese Spider Crab. There was also a rockpool where the kids could touch starfish and shrimp.

Of course, throughout all of this, we have been learning to use the bus system. We spent some time eating junk food on the upper deck of a bus, just riding around the local area and seeing what we could see. It’s actually a really fun way to spend an afternoon!

And lastly, I will leave you with a picture of the most delicious thing I’ve eaten here so far: a chicken and ham pie with mash and peas!

Happy New Year! Hope you are well ♥

We have done a lot of staying in this week. Abbie had a stomach bug that kept her up all of Monday night and into Tuesday, which meant staying in for a couple of days taking care of our girl. Eli was a sweet brother, bringing her things and giving her snuggles. They have both been so good, with limited squabbling and lots of happy playing. Randall reports a good first week at work. He went to the company Christmas party last Saturday at Etihad Stadium, home of the Manchester City Football Club, and he has worked this week starting on Tuesday. He enjoys being able to walk just a little more than a mile to work, and is looking forward to getting to a bike shop soon for a new bike. He loves his work and his new colleagues.

Our limited outings this week have been to the local library, the local pub, and a trip back to the Trafford Centre to get phones and Legos. We also had our internet connected yesterday, and got set up with the local council for our council tax. That might not seem that exciting until you discover that you need that piece of paper for some important things – enrolling kids in school and setting up a bank account, for example. And after being here for one week, we have discovered many unexpected little things that are different from home.

Our most important stop this week was to this cozy spot, the Stretford Library. As a family of voracious readers, finding a nice nearby library was high on our list of priorities. The clerks there were very kind and helpful in getting us library cards and welcoming us.

The library is a half mile from our house, right across the street from Aldi and the Stretford Mall. We all found something to read, and we’re excited to go back this weekend and take a better look around. The kids were excited to see that the self check systems were just like the ones they are used to at our favorite library, the Bailey Cove branch in Huntsville. (That library has the best staff around! ❤️)

Our next stop after the library was to the local pub, The Melville, conveniently located just a third of a mile from our house. We arrived around 5 pm to have dinner, and it was really lovely. There were couples and groups of friends and families, and everyone was happy and friendly. I have to say, it’s funny to us that people here have to ask us to repeat ourselves due to our accent!

I had a cheese and onion pie with delicious mashed potatoes and baked beans, and I hope to have it again soon. So yummy! The kids were tickled to get glass bottles of Coke, and happily sat reading their library books. It was warm and inviting, and anyone who comes to visit us will definitely be having dinner there at least once!

So many little things here take some getting used to. There are four different trash cans to sort things into for pickup – rubbish, mixed recyclables, paper recyclables, and food waste – and different cans are picked up on different weeks.

Many of the light switches are outside the door of the room, leading to my dear children giggling while turning the lights out on whoever is in the bathroom. All of the outlets have an on/off switch for each plug. This has led to several instances of “why won’t this work?!” before remembering to flip the switch.

I had heard that the tea bags here are considerably stronger than the ones we have in the US, and that has turned out to be quite accurate. In Alabama, I was perfectly happy to drink my tea black. Here, it is too strong to drink black, even with half the steeping time, and tastes much better with a little cream and sugar. Randall, who likes to grind his own whole bean coffee, would like me to add that most coffee here is instant coffee, and he is not a fan. In my opinion, the tea here is awesome and makes up for the lack of good coffee.

My little Eli really loves his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but it’s difficult to find smooth peanut butter. There is one brand of smooth at Aldi, and it doesn’t taste quite right to him, enough so that he prefers the crunchy peanut butter. Also, if you tell people here you want jelly, they think you mean jello. Eli now delights in asking me to make him a peanut butter and jam sandwich. He is always proud of himself when he remembers the British way of saying a thing, and grins while he says it! Abbie is missing the abundance of pickles we enjoyed in Alabama. At Aldi, they have pickled gherkins. And that’s it. Fortunately, we will be able to get dill spears with our grocery delivery from Asda. That’s right, for £5 a month, you can have unlimited grocery deliveries to your house! I love that.

And then there’s the weather. Rain. Rain, rain, rain. And if it’s not rainy, then cloudy and maybe also windy. But I already knew about that, and came prepared with appropriate outerwear. What I didn’t really understand was the decrease in daylight hours in winter. My dear friend Ash has told me about this very thing in her native Alaska, how the sun came up later and went down earlier, and how that affects one’s mood. While less extreme here than in Alaska, it is still noticeable. Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Huntsville today will have about 10 hours of daylight, while Manchester will have only about 7.5 hours of (rainy) daylight. It will skew the other way in the summer, of course, but for now it’s just weird to wake up at 7:30 and not see sunlight.

Another thing we had to learn about was the radiator! There is no central cooling or heating in this house. Instead, we have windows that open, and many radiators. There is at least one radiator in each room, sometimes two. We have two radiators in the living room, plus a funny electric heater made to look like a fireplace.

All that said, we haven’t yet encountered anything we can’t live with, even though we are missing our people. I hope you are all preparing to enjoy a beautiful holiday with your loved ones! Thanks for reading!

We made it! 16 hours, 2 flights, and a great big taxi later, we have arrived at our sweet little house.

Our journey began with my amazing mom, who had generously lent us her truck for our last few days at home. She traveled with us in that truck to take us to the airport in Nashville. The first stop was to drop off our two beloved kitties, Korra and Katara, at pet transit. They were (and still are) very offended by their travel arrangements, as they believe themselves to be lap kitties and not common crate dwellers.

Our first flight was from Nashville to London. We had a ridiculous time trying to shuffle things around in our bags to stay under the weight limit, including a near disaster when the zipper broke on one of the the (admittedly over packed) suitcases. Randall is quite resourceful, though, and had us ready to go in no time. Most of that flight was in the dark, but the sun was up when we came down through the clouds approaching London. Unfortunately, due to the 6 hour time difference between Alabama and England (it was 3 am in Alabama!), the kids were too sleepy and grumpy to notice.

We had a long layover in London, where we went through immigration and had our entry visas stamped. Once we pick up our BRP (Biometric Residence Permit) cards, we will be able to travel in and out of the country as legal residents for the next three years.

After that was done, we really needed to eat. While checking out the different restaurants around the terminal, we were stopped in our tracks by an unexpected and truly magical sight: The Harry Potter Store! I can’t express how much it felt like we had just stepped into a Diagon Alley shop; the kids were awestruck and ran from display to display. Still, we were all hungry and grumpy. We had breakfast at Wetherspoon – amazing fresh squeezed orange juice, fluffy scrambled eggs, toast, and tea.

Next up was our short flight from London to Manchester. The kids were able to see so much more from the plane, although Abbie promptly fell asleep. Eli loved seeing all the green fields and tiny cars and houses, and couldn’t believe that you can just fly through clouds when they look so fluffy and squishy!

Once we had arrived in Manchester with our three giant (like seriously really big) suitcases and one small suitcase, plus all of our backpacks and carry-ons, we had to figure out how to get it all to our house. We walked way out of our way to go to what I thought would be the taxi pickup area, only to find that it was way back where we started, about 10 feet the other way. That was 75% my fault, and 25% Randall’s fault for listening to my directions – he really should have known better. So we found a big taxi that could fit all of our bags and people, and headed on to our house.

When we pulled up, the first thing I noticed was the strand of pretty snowflake lights hanging inside the entryway.  It was such a sweet little surprise and helped to ease my grouchiness a bit. The kids immediately ran around the side and into the garden, then checked out what they have dubbed “the kitty room,” a glassed in conservatory facing the garden. The landlady and estate agent came to let us into the house and finalize our paperwork, and the kids ran through the house squealing at everything they found. My sweet Eli ran up the stairs and declared, “I love this house, it has stairs just like Granny’s!” House pictures will come with the next post.

Two of Randall’s friends and colleagues, Ernie and his son Cameron, dropped by with some much-needed necessities: tea, milk, sugar, bread, butter, fruit cake, and some yummy chocolates. We are so happy to already know a few people here, especially ones as kind and thoughtful as Ernie and his family.

For dinner, we took the kids to the Trafford Centre, a huge mall just a couple of miles away from our house. It is also the home of the Legoland Discovery Centre and Sea Life Manchester, both of which are of great interest to Abbie and Eli. We did go visit the Legoland shop, but didn’t have time to do all the other fun stuff they have there – an adventure for another day. We ate dinner at Giraffe World Kitchen. Randall and I had the very delicious Malay chicken curry.

Our last great adventure for the day was to find pillows, bed linens, kitty supplies, and other basics, then also find a way to get home with all of it. Thank goodness for Uber! Convincing the kids to go to bed after such a long day was not too difficult, even given the time difference.  Before I went to bed, I noticed the lovely effect of the snowflake lights through the stained glass above the door.

This morning we were all a bunch of bums who slept until almost noon. Our little kitties were delivered safely to us not long after that. They were both hiding under the beds in their crates, and while Korra came out to explore and check on her people, Katara stayed back in the corner of her crate. It took her a little while to decide to venture out, but she has been finding sunny spots to sit in and warm laps to snuggle ever since.

Tomorrow is the day for getting Important Stuff done. This means getting our BRP cards, setting up a local bank account, getting cell phones and internet service, and (I hope) exploring the immediate area. There are two parks and a pub each within a quarter mile, an Aldi half a mile away, and lots of little shops to check out.

Thanks for reading about our big adventure so far!