Monday, November 12, 2007

Have we found a place to live?

Hey everyone (or...all three or four of you who read this blog),

Anne and the children arrived safely in the UK last Thursday evening. I was able to meet them at the airport and we took a cab back in to the city, where I had just checked in to a corporate apartment earlier that evening. We'll be staying there for about a month while we find a place to live and hopefully will have our stuff arrive in time for us to avoid having to pay for extra time or sleep on the floor!

We wasted no time in looking for a place and spent all day Friday out with an estate agent (British for "realtor") who took us to something like 15 different properties in one day. Luckily, we were able to find someone from church willing to watch the children even though they had only briefly met us back when we were here in August.

We think we found a few properties we liked, including one that we put an offer on today (Monday). It will likely be a few days before we hear back, so until then, we're going to keep looking.

We'll post pictures of the house once we have some firm idea whether or not we'll get the house so everyone can see. We actually saw the house twice, once with our estate agent and once again the next day with only the listing agent. We took the children back by the house to get their thoughts - they really liked it, and as luck would have it, there is another family from the ward who live right across the street, so they invited us over for lunch after we had seen the house. They have four children and are also from the States, so that would be fun to live that close to another family in the ward.

Isabelle and Chase were asked to participate in the Primary program yesterday. Chase backed out at the last minute, but he did stand and sing all the songs from his seat with us. Isabelle not only agreed to sit on the stand and help with the singing, but she was also given a part to read, which she did very well, especially considering she had never seen that particular part before.

Chase did something funny last night. I had some work to do and Anne was taking a nap to catch up on some jet lag and to try to get over the cold she's been fighting off for several days. While she was sleeping, I set the children up to call Deedee and Grandpa. While on the phone, they spoke to their Uncle Mark and Chase explained that he had a "cough due to a cold." Apparently, Mark was confused by this, and he asked Chase "What's a cough due to a cold?" whereupon Chase turned to me and asked "Daddy, what's a cough do to a cold?" When I told him I wasn't sure what he was talking about, he then told Mark "He doesn't know what a cough does to a cold...)

Anyway, funny story and thought it worth writing down...

3 comments:

Bek said...

Cute kids...

Yay on the house front. Wouldn't that be great to have a family across the stree that is from the ward.... yippe..

Where is the house? What ward?

Can't wait to hear how it all goes.

Tablogger said...

The house is in Chiswick, near the Stamford Brook stop on the District Line. It is in the Hyde Park Ward, which is where I have been going to church on the weekends that I've been in London since February.

Anne went to Clapham today and looked at some more places. I had spent some time looking around there and found it very charming. It is not in the Hyde Park Ward, but I went to church there one week and enjoyed it as well, so I think we could be happy in either place.

Hopefully we find out soon about our offer...

Bek said...

Cool. I know both areas. The HP ward is great b/c it is so big and there are some REALLY great members there. The wards in the other parts of London are cool too, just different. Smaller and more diverse. Both good.

Plus, how great is it to get off at the South Ken stop, march past the VandA and go into the HP chapel... seriously. That was our mission office too.. many memories...

Crossing our fingers for your good news...