Moving to Annapolis

The boxes arrive - hurray

















Our Apartment - the bottom floor, the 6 windows on the right.





















Hannah's precious things from home arrive





















Jacqui unicycling outside the apartment (one footed)

















Enjoying the local maryland crabs - you whack the crabs with a wooden mallet before you eat them.
















Our new Car - we've called her Suzanne (she's a Toyota Sienna), and the sat nav we've named Michael (after our neighbour in Canberra), as he is so enthusiastic (and we chose an Australian accent).

This is how great the US TV is at the moment (Big Bang Theory starts this week). We got the jigsaw puzzle at the Louvre.

MOVING TO ANNAPOLIS

We have been pretty quiet on the blog and emails since we arrived in the US. This is because we’ve been doing all those boring time consuming things like getting a lease for our apartment, opening bank accounts, getting the phone put on (and most importantly the internet), buying furniture (mainly from a Goodwill store – we’ve found some amazing bargains, including a lazy-boy recliner for $15), getting beds (hurray, no more sleeping on the floor), as well as buying a car.

We really like where we are living – it is in a community of 10 apartment blocks in a landscaped area (complete with BBQ and gazebo). We have half of the bottom floor for our apartment (3 bedrooms). Just outside our front door is the children’s playground for the community (and basketball hoop). Many of the families have young children who play there, so the parents hang out a fair bit on our front door step. Even though Hannah and Jacqui aren’t playing with the young children on the playground, Nikki and Steve have been going out and sitting with the neighbors, who are all very friendly. Most of the children are much younger than Jacqui and Hannah (there are two other teenagers in the community) and so the girls are very popular for babysitting (especially when Navy are playing a home football game).

The weekend after we arrived we had a wonderful time with our friends Jerry & Phil at their holiday house about 1.5hours from Annapolis – the house is nestled in amongst the trees, and is just next to a river (although I think it is called a creek). We were all pretty exhausted the weekend we went there, but it was so nice to relax, be with old friends and to sleep in real beds (we were still sleeping on the floor at that stage).

One highlight of the past week was our boxes arriving (4 boxes and a bag of unicycles). We packed them at the end of June, so were keen to rediscover what we packed. It was great to have some more clothes (the same 5 shirts for 3 months can get a bit old), be able to put the unicycles together & go for a ride, and fire up the laptops. There were some precious things in the boxes that we all brought to remind us of home, and after 3 months on the road, it was great to be able to put them on or set them up here.

Hannah and Jacqui have gone off to the Not Back To School Camp in Vermont for unschoolers/homeschoolers, and hopefully are having a great time (no news is good news). On the way up to Vermont Nikki had an appointment with one of the world’s leading Lyme Disease Dr’s (Richard Horowitz) and her initial consultation took 6.5 hours!!! Thankfully he doesn’t bill by the hour. He is hopeful that he can help her improve. He is very concerned that Nikki had active Lyme Disease when she was pregnant with the girls, so Hannah and Jacqui have an appointment with him at the end of October. Hannah had already started the testing, as she has been very sick for some time, but now Jacqui will get tested too.