Oh how I missed the Internet...

Hi All! Well after a whirlwind of a month we are living in our new home & officially have Internet access!!! PRAISE!!! This is definitely a new & wonderful experience. Atleast 10 times a day I wish I could call someone & just tell you all about it. We do have a home phone number now that you all will be able to call with a calling card & I can call you back for free once our overseas calling plan gets going (your guess as to when that will happen is as good as mine). We have not tried Skype with our new connection yet so hopefully it will work...keep your fingers crossed because I miss you all so much! The house was definitely more than we bargained for as far as getting it "Peebles Ready". I guess I should tel you the good points first... it is huge & twice the size of our old house, beautiful garden, lots of history, high ceilings, beautiful windows & so much more. Charley's room is like a little dollhouse & SHE LOVES IT because she tells me everyday!!! Colins rooms is much bigger sthan his old room as well as ours! We did have to switch up the rooms at the last minute but everyone ended up with the perfect room. We also turned the parlor into our dining room ITS WONDERFUL!!! So the bar room is now Daniels man room with his big tv, playstation, Alabama stuff, comfy chairs etc. Now for the other side of the move: The homeowners didnt clean before they moved out...AT ALL (No Exaggeration) nor did they take all of their things with them. So we spent about a week just unpacking our boxes & filling them back up again with the things they left, it was out of control & a little discouraging at times. I wanted so bad to just run to Heidi's house & hear her words of encouragement about it eventually being finished & well worth all of the work when we finish ( I just told myself that & pretended I had Heidi with me). So we have cleaned & cleaned & cleaned & are almost finished. When I say cleaning I dont mean windows & dusting I am talking climbing up ladders to the 20 ft ceilings to clean up cobwebs as big as I am that have obviously been there all 100+ years the house has been in existence!!! We still have to unpack our clothes & put them in the drawers. The biggest task ahead is painting almost the whole house. They have painted a thousand differnet colors on each wall & in some rooms painted over wallpaper. So if anyone plans to visit soon get ready to pitch in because we can definitley use the help! Our bathroom is hot pink right now & our room is peach so those are first on the list. Also the owners replaced the carpet in our bedroom during the week before we moved in which all sounds great but they put in BRIGHT TEAL carpet!!! SO we are working with it :)! We are also eventually going to try & pull up the yucky, wobbly vinyl floors in the kitchen & refinish the original hardwood floors underneath. It will look so much better when we get something done to the floors & paint the kitchen! We also have a full wine cellar/creepy basement that Daniel took on as his pet project. It use to be a secret tunnel directly to the pub here in Kentford when Lilly Langtry lived here. He swept it out & tried to de-spider the area & now all of our Christmas things & all of the landlords things they left behind are down there. We have only one wall of closets in the house & they are in Colin's room so storage was a bit of an issue until Daniel fixed up the cellar. There is a huge walk-in safe down there & a few kegs left over from the hotel bar. Another cool fact is that when we call places the caller ID from our house shows up as The Langtry Hotel :) Not sure if it will work from across the world but if you ever miss a call from there its us :)! We have 5 fireplaces in the house that have been cleaned out & are ready for our first fire tonight...a very chilly day today. We have been blessed with amazing weather since we arrived so we have been able to let the kids run free in our awesome garden!!! They absolutely LOVE it!!! They also have their own playroom which is a nice change from all the toys being everywhere in our Biloxi home. We will have pictures again soon but our camera charger broke so we havent been able to take any new ones in a couple of weeks. The other night we took Charley & Colin to the family night out for September at the base & the theme was "Princess & Pirate Party"...so much fun except Charley has worn her princess dresses everyday since her NaNa got them for her for Christmas & they are completely torn apart from head to toe so she didnt have one that was party-worthy. After we got home from the party she brought me the phone & said "Mom I need to call NaNa & tell her to bring me new princess dresses at Christmas, she has some at her house. It will be so great!". Needless to say since they are her favorite things in the world we will make sure she has new ones in a few months even if they have to come from the states :). Still the party was so much fun for them both & Charley is really excited about this month because she will get to wear her Fairy Halloween costume. She wants to wear it everyday but after seeing what happened to all 6 princess dresses I wont let her wear it around the house until after Halloween. I do not believe anyone will recognize Colin except for his curly locks he has grown up so much & is finally talking a little more (when Charley lets him). He loves playing outside & mowing the grass with his lawnmower. He also takes his garden tools & digs up my flowers EVERYDAY no matter how many spankings he gets, I guess it must be worth it! Both of the kids are officially off the paceys (YEA!!!) & no more milk at bedtime (this had to be done since we are 15-20 min from the commissary & no 24 hour places in our village. Not to mention that in the UK since the frigs are so small they only sell half gallons of milk so we were having to buy 4 at a time & they didnt fit!) There are a few things that we are missing from the states like my favorite potatoe chips, Yuki's teriyaki sauce, Olive Garden, the dollar not being worth 50 cents, my Soap Operas (for those of you who keep up with it, the UK is so far behind on Y&R that Brittany just disfigured her face, Katherine has no clue Jill is her daughter, Christine & Danny are still on the show & together, Paul & Lauren are still hooking up, Sharon is still likeable, the only things that is the same is Victor & Jack still hate each other & everything else is just as it was in the states in 1995!!! WOW I will never catch up after 3 years of this!!!) Actually, since we didnt have internet this past weekend Daniel knocked on all of our neighbors doors until he found a wireless connection so we could watch the Bama/GA game. The only trick was we had to sit in the doorway of someones stables/garage OUTSIDE at 1AM to get to see it, if we took the computer inside the doorway or closed the door we lost connection. It was freezing but neither of us noticed since it was SO WORTH IT!!! We hooked up the monitor to listen to the kids & sat outside until well past 3:30AM here :) This week thankfully we should have our own internet if not its back outside for us! The England Bama fans represented well in the middle of the night...ROLL TIDE #2!!! Daniel has long since started work & LOVES his job & being Flight Commander! He is working long hours again & loving it. So much has changed with this move but his wonderful work ethic is still the same, I just dont have my Heidi next door while both of our husbands work late! You couldnt have convinced me while moving to Biloxi 4 years ago that I would leave with such amazing, close friends as Heidi & Jessica so hopefully this will be the same! To sum this all up even with all of the differences, England is wonderful & so are the Peebles! Again if anyone would like to come visit we are dying to show someone around!!!