Coach Brad

Because we missed the deadlines to sign up for 4-year-old boys' soccer and football, we signed Ben up for T-ball. Baseball starts a bit later than the other sports and thus had a later deadline.

Ben is quite excited to get started with this. There is only one problem, or at least there was until this morning - no coach!

Because we had finally gotten a schedule of games, but nothing about practices, uniforms, or anything else, Brad contacted someone who appeard to be in charge of baseball and inquired about what was happening.

Brad is now the coach!

The first game is scheduled for this Saturday at 8:30 a.m., but I don't think we'll be playing. Hopefully we can get a practice scheduled for next week, and then have a game on the 26th.

T-ball sounds pretty simple to me* - pick up a bat, hit the ball off the tee, and run! Hopefully the boys will be ready for a game soon!

*I'm sure its really much more complicated, which is why I am NOT signing up to be assistant coach!

Let it rain!

Last Thursday, Susanna's soccer practice was canceled at the last minute because it looked like it was about to pour. And it did. And it has hardly stopped since!

So we missed soccer practice and her first soccer game (just as well considering no practice), and have mostly been playing inside, except for a few short breaks.

When I went to collect Ben from pre-school today I wore my trusty English rain coat. (Honestly it didn't even occur to me to bring an umbrella...) I wasn't outside more than 60 seconds total running between the car and building, and my coat was soaked through. That never happened in England.

According to the forecast, there is a chance of thunderstorms the next two days, and then its supposed to get nice again. Hopefully soccer practice and the game will go on as planned.

Its great! And the best part is, it can pour and pour and pour and I don't have to worry about my basement getting flooded!

Family photos

Before we left England, we had a friend (Ben's "girlfriend's" mummy) come over to take photos of us inside and outside our house. I think she took a few hundred photos, in various combinations of people. I have most of them on disks and I am trying to sort through them still.

Here are a few of the better ones...

Our house.

In the back garden.
They really do love each other!
More love.
This is one of my favorites.

Missing England

When we were getting ready to move to England for two years, one piece of advice that I heard (or read) several times was to start taking advantage of the great location right away, because you never know if you'll get sent back early.

Of course we figured that would never happen to us, that if anything, maybe we'd stay a bit longer. We knew two years would go fast, but it still seemed like plenty of time.

But it did happen to us. Just after we passed the one-year mark and started feeling a bit more settled, this opportunity came up, and we knew it would be foolish not to try. I agreed to it sort of thinking it wouldn't really work out. But it did. And here we are.

Now that the "vacation" is over and we are getting back into "normal" life, we've all been missing England, though perhaps in different ways.

I think Ben is handling things the best. He is quite social and ready to play with anyone who comes his way. When we ask him if he misses anything about England, we get responses like "apples" or "chips". He still talks about his friends there, but he also talks a lot about his new friends here.

Susanna, on the other hand, is visibly sad about the move. She says she likes school and comes home happy, but then ends up having a "moment" later in the afternoon. She wants to move back to England, which only makes sense, since that is where her best friends are. But as hard as it was pulling her away this summer, I know it would have been even harder to pull her away next spring.

Even Brad misses certain aspects of living in England (though he is happy to be working here again.) Apparently London traffic is nothing compared to Dallas traffic. He's driven into Dallas several times now (sometimes he takes the commuter train) and he just can't predict how things will go. This point was made clear the other night when Brad was rear-ended while sitting in traffic on the Expressway. In his brand new car.

And of course I am missing England too. I miss the cozy, small-town feel of the town we lived in. The convenience of having most of what we needed a short drive, if not a short walk, away. The short train ride to London. And of course the feeling of just being settled somewhere, even knowing I'd have to move eventually. I also felt like I had so much more to learn, see, do, and, of course, eat! Even after 16 months, I felt like I was still often learning new things about the culture and language.

It occurred to me the other night that we have lived in five different houses (not including temp places) in the past five years. No wonder I'm having a hard time convincing myself that I am here to stay for a while!

I feel fortunate in that one of my few American friends in England was relocated to the Dallas area a few months before we were, and she lives just a few miles away. So at least I have someone nearby who can relate.

And today we are having some nice England-style weather - rainy and a touch gloomy - I am enjoying that, too!

The weather

Today Susanna brought home a book she made at school. Its called "My Storm Book."

It has six pages, with a picture and a sentence.

The sentences are:

Here comes the clouds.

Here comes the thunder.

Here comes the rain.

Here comes the lightning.

Here comes the hail.

Here comes the sun.

So is this all we have to look forward to here in Texas? Sun, rain, lightning, HAIL, but no snow?

(Yes, I know I live way south now, but I've heard they do sometimes get snow!)

Fort Worth

I live in Texas now, but looking around, I could be anywhere. Its just big neighborhoods, strip malls, office buildings, etc, as far as the eye can see.

So I was a bit anxious to go out and do something touristy.

Yesterday we took a drive over to Fort Worth. Its just under an hour from our house. Fort Worth seems to be the place to go (rather than Dallas) if its Texas culture you seek.

We went to the Stockyards area where they still do cattle drives 362 days a year. There are also lots of shops, restaurants and museums in this area. We watched the cattle drive and then had fun checking out all the cowboy stuff in the shops. Ben was anxious to buy a whole new outfit... maybe next time.

Guilty until proven innocent

But by the time you're proven innocent, you'll probably be dead.

If you have eight legs. And you come to my house.

I have to admit I'm still just a *bit* freaked out by this whole spider thing. This exotic, Southern spider thing.

There have been no additional confirmed black widow sightings in or around my house. That is a good thing. But there are other spiders. Brown ones. They could be the common Southern house spider, or they could be the brown recluse. So I kill the brown ones, too.

I haven't examined any closely enough to identify them as one type of spider or another. (Not sure I'd be able to tell for sure anyway.) But apparently brown recluses are fairly common in homes, and if there is one, there are probably a lot. Supposedly they don't really go after people, but they will bite if, say, you roll on one while you are sleeping, or put on a garment that one is using for its home.

From all my on-line research (all with reliable sources, I'm sure) I've learned that only about 5% of black widow bites result in death, and that there have been no proven deaths from brown recluse bites. And it has occurred to me that if people were regularly dropping dead because of these spiders we'd probably hear lots more about them. But they still scare the crap out of me, whether I actually see any or not.

And so far, the only evidence that the pest control is working is a dozen or so dead crickets on my patio.