Another update

Girls waiting at the train station for their first glimpse of Chicago city!

We've been in holiday mood for the last couple of weeks as Albert has still been home and so the blog posts haven't been regular! I've got so much to share with you all but that is going to take a few hours for me to put together :) so I thought instead of you waiting until I've cleaned my house, baked, cooked, ironed, read aloud at least 10 books (ha, ha), finished my library books ;) I would give you a bullet point summary. For most of the points I'll have a blog post to come now that we are settling into a routine!

• Car - We've bought one. More in another post. 
• Library - We have managed library cards for all of us and even managed to win an 'egg drop' contest. 
• Kate's birthday money - we've been shopping and its RED
• Chicago CBD - We've made the trip (by train) to the CBD, AWESOME. Will definitely be several blog posts, so much to see and do! Part 1 and Part 2
• Utilities - All of those are changed over and connected, phew! that took some time! (Very grateful to advice from past students for coming over a couple of weeks early to get all those nitty gritty things organised as things over here take time!) Having no credit history is an expensive exercise!
• House - is very nice will give you a photo tour soon, or if you can't wait skype us and we'll show you :). Most important points, it's got aircon and a dishwasher, what more do I need?
• Squirrels! We've seen a few around, very cute :)
• Our first American birthday - GRACE!
• Vice President - We SAW the motorcade, very impressive!
• Thunder storms - We have been through at least 3 so far, the last one occurred on Saturday night which left us without power for about 4ish hours. Had sandwiches for dinner ;). Mental note, buy matches so that I can still light the stove and also invest in a torch! (cellphones are Ok but not a good substitute for a torch!)
• Playgrounds - Been to quite a few now, having a car makes this easy :). Again the weather has been so hot that even playing outside is not possible during the heat of the day. 
• Baking - Done my first USA baking out of a packet, ha ha, who's the AWESOME baker! (Disclaimer: the packet was donated as part of the grocery basket)
• Seminary Students - We have already had a few dinners with and are getting to know the students and their families. 
• Greek Studies - Albert started on Tuesday last week and has been VERY busy since learning Greek. He is doing very well in his mini tests every day. On Thursday this week he has a 'midterm' exam with the final the week after. I'll get him to write about this :)
• Lawn mowing - deserves a post all by it's self, you'll see once I post the pictures. (as part of our lease, they get a lawn mowing company to mow the lawn!)
• Neighbours - We have lovely neighbours and the girls love playing with their granddaughter! 
• Sonlight curriculum - We've pretty much decided to go with this, for several reasons, it's very comprehensive and very academic! The down side is that it is not cheap :( but VERY cheap compared to the private Christian school here.