Life is Good

Ahhhh . . . . I am sitting in a beautifully appointed drawing room at The Elms, which is a Queen Anne mansion in the heart of rural England overlooking the Teme Valley. We are surrounded by period antiques, original art work, formal English gardens mixed with playgrounds for the children, and we are quite enjoying our time here as the lord and lady of this family-friendly manor hotel. Our children are playing happily in the supervised creche' (nursery in Londonese), and it has afforded us a few hours to ourselves. Life is good!

And to top all of that off, we also have an internet connection. Life is really good!

Since I have been off-line for awhile now, maybe I should take this chance to catch you up on what's going on with the Nelson family . . .

We are thrilled to finally be settled into our little terraced home in what I thought was Chelsea. I have since been corrected and have learned that we live in the area of town called the Bromptons. It is comprised of just a few streets in Chelsea between Kings Road and Old Brompton Road. We just love the area and each time we turn a corner, we discover a new shop or a new restaurant that we can't wait to try.

We have unpacked all of the boxes and have almost all of the things that were shipped over from the states. It took the movers 3 days to unload and unpack our things. There were several pieces of furniture that were too large to squeeze through our front door. They called in a special crew of 8 men to remove the windows from their frames so that they could bring the furniture in that way. This proved successful for everything but the box springs for our bed. So would you believe that we are still sleeping on the floor? Apparently here they only sell box springs that are flexible and come in 2 pieces to avoid logistical problems such as this. Ours will be delivered next week!

The movers had quite a time with the large furniture, but their frustration diminished once the television and armoire that holds it were in the house and installed. They got everything hooked up and when they turned on the TV, the men literally stopped in their tracks. I think they were quite surprised by such a large screen. I'm a little afraid we now have a target on our home!

Once the unpacking was done, G's mom and dad came in town for a visit. We have enjoyed a fabulous week with them, and little G has been quite the tour guide showing them around the city. They have taken in museums, the theatre, Hyde Park, Covent Garden . . . you name it, they've done it. I'll post photos from the last few weeks soon. I ended up without the cord to download photos this weekend. Uggghh!

Our internet connection is still 2 weeks away from installation, so I'll be off-line again once we're back in the city. I'm hoping to pack the boys up and get to McDonalds a couple of times in the coming weeks to post updates as they have free wireless.

We're just happy to report that we are no longer homeless, we are gaining back a few of the many pounds that we lost during our vagabond days, and that life is resuming a bit of normalcy!