The Riley Family

Tomorrow is the last real day of school.  They do have to go for an hour on Friday, but they will pretty much just get to class, get report cards, and head home.  Here comes summer!

Tom must be getting old, because I have actually kind of started reading again. Nothing too heavy, but I just read the three Hunger Games books like the rest of the reading American population. I really enjoyed them, and now am addicted to kindle books.

Since most of the houses we are looking at are around 1/2 mile from school, I have been taking the kids out the past few days to see how fast they can get from the house to our 1/2 mile mark.  Kate and Jack can do it quite quickly, I think the record was around 7 minutes.  Will just got his 2-wheel scooter last Thursday, so he isn't so fast.  I'm not sure if my double stroller will fit on the sidewalks, so we are looking into alternatives.  Since Will has school full-day, everyday, just like K & J, a 1/2 mile walk before and after might not be a great plan.   We will figure it out!

For some reason I thought that Paul would have a house all picked out last Friday, his first day of looking at properties.  Hah!  He ended up doing second showings on Tuesday, and seeing a few new places.  Wow, was that a hard weekend for Anjie sitting here at home not able to look at real estate! We made a choice and put a rental offer on the one we call Flask.  It was instantly rejected, blah, blah too many kids and pets, blah, blah. So, now we are in negotiations with the landlord for a house on Lyndhurst .  Paul has seen it twice.  It is a nice, 5 bedroom townhouse in Hampstead about 1/2 mile from school.  We hope to hear back tomorrow... not sure what our third choice will be if this one doesn't work out.

Tom has been doing a great job this week learning to use the potty!  He absolutely loves to wear undies, and is doing a very good job.  We are setting my phone alarm every however many minutes, and have it set to the crickets sound.  He loves to grab my phone, say crickets, and then say it is time to go to the potty.  Great job, Tom!

Kate got to play with her violin teacher, and the strings group she has, down at St Peter and Paul today. She got to sit up in the choir loft and watch the organist too. Kate sounded great!

Paul will be exploring all of Hampstead tomorrow with a relocation agent.  The goal is to view all the suitable properties that are currently available, perhaps do a second showing or two, and get a lease signed.  I have been previewing properties online, and I very happy with what is available. I like a lot of the units online, but I know houses can appear very different in person.   I can't wait to have a house picked so we can scour the floor plan to finalize furniture and what else to bring, like bikes, wagon, etc. ... We need to decide what will fit and what won't.

I am really not sure how I missed this, but I just realized that there is no hot lunch at the new school!  No hot lunch!  I knew about the lunch program at the other schools, but couldn't seem to remember about this one.  Would it have been a deal breaker?  I guess not, but wow, I am nervous. As you may know, K and J both buy hot lunch everyday.  Everyday! But I still have to pack a snack for them.  Now I will need to pack 3 lunches and 3 snacks.  I know, I know, not a huge deal, right?  But still a big change (not like the lunch is the biggest change here, I get it). So we went to Target yesterday and picked out a new Thermos for everyone.  And some nifty sandwich holders with ice packs built in.  And we have our lunch boxes... now just need to plan what to bring.  No peanuts allowed, sorry Will, aka Mr. 3 PB&Js a day.

Will 'graduated' from his 3 year old preschool program at Wheatland Salem yesterday.  Mrs. E gave them all diplomas and everything! She also have them all a disk of all the pictures she has taken this year, so that might be good if Will seems lonely in London.

Here are a bunch of other pictures from this weekend including more soccer, team pics, Traveling Teddy, Art Fest, and Slip & Slide!

Kate's team played a super hard game this weekend and ended up winning 5-3.  Poor Kate got super hot and couldn't breath... Paul quickly got her out of the game and cooled her down.  91 and sunny and running hard - not a good combination!

Jack had a picture in the Art Fest this weekend.  It was fun to see all of the exhibits.

Jack made me a super cool sign for Mother's Day!  I love it!!

Jack was on fire at his last game on Saturday.  5 goals!!  I think the team had 6 in all.  Way to go,  Jack!  Here are some pictures.

The kids have been accepted to a school in London, so we will be moving to Hampstead !  We had been going back and forth between city and country, and are excited about our opportunity to explore London.  Since it is a short amount of time, hopefully the kids won't miss green grass too much.  But the Heath is very close, as well as the Zoo . Paul will be looking at properties next week, and hopefully will be able to get a lease signed right away, so we have a destination to ship our things to on June 19 when the packers are here! We will be shipping things by both air and sea.  Air shipment takes about 2 weeks, sea closer to 6, but the Olympics very well may slow down ship/customs times.

This weekend Will is in charge of his classroom bear called Traveling Teddy.  Somehow this is Will's first turn even though next Wednesday is the last day of class.  Regardless, Will is thrilled to have Teddy, and we have a busy weekend including 2 soccer games, the Fine Arts Fest, an ice cream party, sand more.  Pics tomorrow!

Here are pictures from Will's Spring Music Program at school.   The tall boy in the white shirt is Will's friend Will M. who lives down the street. 

Here are some pictures from Kate's First Communion on April 28, 2012.

Despite the setback of Anjie having not originally signed the visa applications as Paul was taking them to FedEx, we have overcome! Paul and Will took the completed apps up to FedEx on Wednesday afternoon, and by Thursday at lunch time the applications had already flown to NYC, been processed by our courier, taken to the British Consulate, and approved!  Yippee!!  We should get our passports back today with our shiny new visas stamped inside.  That will allow us to live in London for the next 3 years, expiring 20/May 2015.

He's huge! He's up there!

Luckily it is light because it is huge!

Will is starting to learn how to ride a 2 wheeler!  We have been talking about it for a couple of weeks, and just took the first few laps.  Not a bad start!  Couple more days and he might have it.

When Mamie and Grandpa were here Will slept in his bed the whole time.  Ok, usually with the Ipad it sounds like.  When Paul and I first got home he was back in our bed.  But, after the first week, Will has been sleeping in his bed every night!  He has gotten a few toys along the way, and is doing a fantastic job!

We finished the next step in our process to get to the UK.  Kate, Jack and I had our pictures and fingerscans done today.  It was super fast and easy.  Next step is to submit our visa applications to the British Embassy in NY.  I am not exactly sure why we don't use the office in Chicago.

The 3 year old classes at WSCC had their music programs last week.  Will was fantastic singing along and doing all the actions.  Definitely a ham.  Pics soon.

Jack's kindergarten classes visited Blackberry Farm lat week. Here are some of pictures from his group.  When K was in KC, Jack and Will and I went to the farm when she was there.  We weren't chaperones, but did get to see the kids a little bit.  This year extra parents were told not to attend.  Although we might have been more distracting to J anyway.  Looks like he had a good time!

Tom likes corn on the cob 😃

So I always sign the kids up for email addresses when they are about 2 days old.  So far pretty much only Grandpa Mike uses them.  Ok, and the random person who I think lives in WA who thinks she has K's address.  But anyway, we applied for our UK visas today (painstaking) and we all needed an email address!  Thank goodness we had them and had them all set up to forward to Anjie. Next steps - 1. New passport pics this weekend.  2. Biometrics scans for P, A, K, J on Monday and Tuesday.  Those consist of pictures, fingerprints, etc.  W and T are off the hook as they are under 5.

We have respectfully declined spots at one of our Surrey schools.  That leaves us with one city school (that I am really hoping we will hear from next week) and one other school in Surrey.  Surprisingly, I think the commute times might be somewhat similar. 

The kids have been accepted to two schools so far.  They are both schools in Surrey.  We like both schools.  One is American and one is International, and they are both very good. We are still waiting to hear from our city school.  Yesterday was a Bank holiday, so nothing much was going on.  We are hoping to hear in the next couple of days (or at least give them a call and get an update.) 

We went out for a late afternoon snack on Sunday. It was 3pm but people were still coming in for breakfast!

Are you noticing a trend?

Some open green space!

It rains a lot, so we had lots of opportunities to grab coffee!

Paul and Tom at Koffmann's. This was dinner our first night in London.

Soccer tires them out! This was taken last Thursday.

Kate is about 10 lbs lighter with her new hair cut!

We are applying to three schools in London...  And right now the applications are about to be reviewed.  Two schools are out in Surrey, and one is in the city.  There are pros and cons to each... we will see where the kids get accepted.

Kate celebrated her First Communion this weekend!  It was great to spend time with lots of family who came in to celebrate with us.  Pictures soon.

Happy Birthday to Mamie!  Hope you have a great day.