Rebekah's Insights

We have a new addition to our family! No, Baby Boy is still due to arrive late February/early March, but we have ANOTHER new boy!

On Friday, Bruno, our new yellow labrador puppy came home to live with us! :) We are delighted with him and are going through the "adjustment period" of working on house-training, crate-training, and adding his care and needs into our already full schedule!

"Cooking and cleaning can wait 'til tomorrow,
For babies grow up, we've learned to our sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs, dust go to sleep,
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep."

Author Unknown
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A couple of weeks ago we learned that it is a new little BOY whose arrival we await in late February/early March. Most importantly, we were told that development looked good on our scan at twenty weeks. Liam and Aine were like two little angels during the scan and were consequently allowed to stay for the duration. :) They are VERY excited about their new little brother. They spend a great deal of time talking to him, kissing and hugging him, and planning for what they will do with him after he arrives. I believe our new little boy's social schedule will be fully booked for some time. ;)

Our dear little Aine has quite a fever today, so many of my plans for the day will be "adjusted" to accommodate her needs. It is certainly the time of year for sickness, and with the Swine Flu concern, we are trying to get as much sleep and healthful foods as possible, along with our vitamin supplements.

At long last, we are making plans for a puppy, so researching this and locating appropriate candidates for us to visit has occupied much of our time lately. We are all looking forward to this other new addition to our family and are hoping to find the right one soon, to allow ample time for adjustment and house training prior to the birth of our second son in late Winter.

This is all for now--hope all are well!

In the interest of organization, cleanliness, and such, "Deep thoughts by Will" is moving from "Rebekah's Insights" to "Will's blog". Old content will stay on "Rebekah's Insights", cuz I can't figure out how to move them.

For all those at home, surfing the web and asking yourself, "When is Big Willie ever going to get going with this website?". Well, never fear, 'cuz I am back in action. The hard part was catching up with all of the pictures and working with some of the new software that I have. I should be able to keep up with things for a while.

One thing we changed was a little blog formating. You will notice that the right side bar is different. I realized that the old way was too cumbersome. If you would like to get an ID and blog with us, feel free! Just go on the right side under "Misc" and click on "register". As with most things on our site, nothing is automated. When you register, it will take a day to set up your account. Then leave us some encouraging comments:)

You can also notice that we have been leaving blogs pretty regularly for everyone to read.

Catch you in the funny papers.

Yes, it was my Birthday in September, like it comes every year. This year we are in a new location, thousands of miles from where we started. Back in the states, Bekah started having a "birthday dinner" for me. It was just another excuse for us to entertain friends and for me to dictate the menu, which is usually Italian with cannolies for dessert. This year turned out to be no different, even though we are barely into our new estate. The only difference is that we have made some new friends over here that shared in our birthday tradition. It was fun and yet the same as years past. People come over hungry, eat & enjoy the food, and then we all have some fun playing games. The fun lasted until late with much Wii fun being had by all.

The funny thing here is that I have yet to go to my office which I will be working in during my first week here. The first few days were primarily for in-processing paperwork and then we have been searching for a place to Let. Thursday morning I came down with a fever of 101 and was less useful than usual. My fever lasted until sometime late on Friday. So, I called my boss and told him that I wasn't coming in. I think he understands. If he doesn't, then it will take him more than 6 months to find a replacement:) I was able to bring down my fever with some Ibroprofin that we had and went out for a couple of hours on Thursday to look at more houses for Let/rent. We found a place that, in principle, we agreed to let from the owners. The contract was drawn up by our housing office on Friday and I will have the owners sign the lease on Monday. It is a great place with 5 bedrooms and four baths. It is a little too big for us (without a few more children), but it is in a great location and two of the bedrooms are on a third floor, which we can quarantine off for heating purposes. It gives us a great place for guest to come and stay. It will be like a little guest suite.

We have to pay some money out of pocket for the utilities, but it was designed toward Americans in mind. Uk homes remind me of the old farm houses back home, with small bedrooms (big enough for a bed and dresser) and New York City sized kitchens. The place where we are going to let has American sized rooms with a great sized kitchen. Bekah loved it when we went through and I didn't see any problem with paying a little more, since the house will be essentially free. She will be there all day and will make life better while in this country if she loves her home:)

The place is in a converted barn. Around here, a lot of farmers change their barns, which are solid stone buildings (I think the walls are about two feet thick), into living quarters for people. They primarily rent out to Americans, since there are so many wanting to rent places and design the features with that in mind. The only downside to the converted barn is that there are a bunch of units in a little farming area. In ours, there are about 6 units. The great thing is that there are not any more housing around for quite a ways. The rest is a beautiful reservoir (I would call it a lake) and pastures with mostly sheep. I will try to put up some photographs when we are in, which should be the week of July 23rd.

The Schermers have landed in the UK. Our trip was quite fun:) Our check luggage was lost, the kids didn't sleep most of the night, and we are both sore from lugging around all of our bags. I would have to say that the whole experience was positive. Nothing went terribly wrong (we had some clothes in our carry on bags and toys for the kids). We made it safely and did not lose any of the family members. We also learned a few things about taking kids on international flights. Taking their share of carry on luggage was a little mistake, because it was hard for two of us to carry two kids and 4+ carry on bags. Luckily the flight attendants were nice and some passengers helped us out:)

Our sponsor here in the UK was very nice and showed us a lot of places. Being sleep deprived, I don't remember where many things are. I do know that we found a fish 'n chips place. Erik was right when he told me they were great! The fish 'n chips are about a block away.

So far, all of the people in the UK are nicer than your normal Baltimoron.

We are going through and tossing everything that we have been pack-ratting for years. I realize that we have movers coming to box up and ship out our goods, but this is still a lot of work. Thanx to Sheila (Bekah's mom), we are able to work on things while she watches the children. I just wish we would have culled the amount of stuff years ago. Atleast moving allows you to pair down the junk hidden in the attic:)

Hopefully we will now be streamlined in order move more around the world:) I am thinking that Hawaii might be a nice next hop. I would just have to learn how to surf.

You can add on your own blog page to our site, if you would like and you are a family member. Feel free to update us and other family and friends with things. You can register as a user by using the "register" link down the page on the right hand side. It may be a little tricky to find. Email webmaster@schermerties.com if you are having problems.

Yes, I have the rough edits of the website up and running. Its not bad for my second attempt. It is easier now then a few years ago. The price of "helper" software has come down. Saves my gruelling hours of writing HTML code by hand. Let me know how I can make the site better. I still have a lot of things that I want to add and edit (like permissions to webpages, user accounts for other things, etc). I will make more changes in September, once we are settled into our new place over in the UK.

Thanx for stopping by. We will try to blog once in a while in order to keep your up on our lives, even though we are in a different time zone.