house hunting and school!

We spent Monday with Bernadette, our relocation consultant, looking for a home.  She is a very vibrant, helpful, lovely lady.  She is originally from NY and lived in Friendswood, Tx for a number of years.  She's been in Melbourne with her family for the last 11 years and loves it here.  We looked at 12 homes on Monday.  The kids were troopers in and out of the car and into all of these homes, and they had alot of snacks and candy along the way!  Some of the homes were easy to cross off the list, and that narrowed it down to just a couple at the end of the day.  We looked at house #13 on Tuesday and went back to have a second look at 2 of them on Tuesday as well.  We made an offer on a home that is in a nice neighborhood and would be a great floorplan for us.  It has peacock blue carpet throughout, so we are working a deal with the landlord to try and get that replaced!  But we are hoping it will all work out in the end.  Once we hear if this house is "the one", I'll send some pictures and more of a description.

I took Claire and Will to their new school on Tuesday morning to meet the Lower School Principal.  We had a tour of the school - it is a beautiful campus and the Lower School is in one building.  The Early Learning Centre (ELC) where Will will go, is in the same building as Claire's class, so that works out really nicely.  There are 2 classes of each grade level from age 3 to Grade 4 in the one building.  We are very thrilled that this school had openings for both of them!  Many of the schools here are single sex schools - so the girls go to one campus and the boys to another.  That wouldn't be very easy for me, especially with a new baby on the way.  So we narrowed down the search to try and find a good co-ed school for both children.  This school is in Brighton, which is a bayside suburb of Melbourne, near the beach.  It is a wonderful town and it is also where we looked for homes.

A few funny things that happened along the way on our 2 days of house hunting with Bernadette....
*Claire made friends with Bernadette immediately - she asked her how many brothers and sisters she has, her son's birthdays, etc.
*The kids saw a Subway sign in Brighton and started cheering to eat lunch there.  Of course then Bernadette thought that we must frequent Subway alot in the US.  I told her I think we've eaten there all of 5 times in the kids' lives. :)  I think they enjoyed seeing something familiar to them.
*Claire asked the Principal about her teacher - what is her name? Mrs. Birch - What does she look like? She has straight blonde hair - How old is she? 28....Claire's response: "Oh, so she's younger!"  The principal asked me if we have any concerns or see any difficulties with Claire at school.  I answered no, and Claire said "well I got in trouble once at school and got an infraction - because I was talking."  The principal showed Claire her report card from grade school that was hanging on her bulletin board and it stated that Mrs. Jane was an excellent student, if she would just stop talking!
*When we were filling out the application form to rent a home, Bernadette was including the kids in answering the questions.  Bernadette said, "do you have any pets?"  Claire went into explaining that we had 2 frogs at home, Jack and Joy, but we gave them to a friend because we couldn't bring them to Australia with us.  So then Bernadette asked should we check the box "yes" or "no" for pets.  And Will's answer: "when we move into our new house, we are going to get a chicken."

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Bryan and I have both had driving courses (separately) with Peter, our instructor.  Trying to refresh ourselves on driving on the left side of the road and on the passenger side of the car.  Luckily it came back to us pretty quickly from our time in Malaysia.  The driving here is pretty easy - the commute from Brighton into Melbourne for Bryan will be about 25 minutes and will be on a 4 lane road, rather than a major highway. It is still called Highway 3, but it is not anything like I-45 that we have back in Houston.  Much calmer, lower speed limits, etc.  So hopefully that will be a good break for him after he's been commuting downtown the last couple of years.  We have the rental car (we've named her "Mitzy") for now, and Bryan is going to get the registration and insurance lined up today for our Toyota that we bought.  It is a Kluger, which is the same as a Highlander in the US.  We bought it from a family that just moved from Melbourne to Norway - Bryan is taking his position here at work, so that was great to find the car that way and line it up.  We are going to start off with the Toyota, and Bryan will drive the rental car until we figure out what 2nd car we want to purchase.  Bryan does hope to take the train to work some, as public transportation here is widely used and very available.  But we think we will still have a 2nd car for days when his schedule is not as predictable at work. 

We have enjoyed so far being downtown in the heart of Melbourne.  There is a very nice area right here on the river with shops, restaurants, and a large foodcourt.  It is right outside our door, so it has been handy to go over there for meals.  The prices here are definitely higher for eating out, we have discovered that.  So it will be nice once we get into a home and can start preparing our own meals a little more.  We did go to the grocery store (IGA, and there is also a Safeway here) to get a few staples for our apartment - fruit, bread, milk, cereal, snacks.

The kids have enjoyed the pool here with Bryan everyday and we have enjoyed walking around the river area too.  I am taking the kids to the Melbourne Aquarium today (Thursday), where there's a shark exhibit and penguins too.  Bryan will be busy signing us up for car insurance and car registration and getting cell phones set up.  The weather here has been cool - between 65 and 70 for the high.  We have really enjoyed the weather and cooler temperatures, but the locals would like it warmer because this is their summer.

I'm also going to update some pictures on

thepicketts.phanfare.com

Have a great day (or night back home!)
Chrissy :)