Home Sweet Home

After more than 2 weeks of no internet we finally have the house hooked up!
It was amazing to see how much of an impact no internet had on my daily life at first, it really threw me for a loop. Even something as simple as trying to decide what to make for dinner became complicated when I had no recipes at my fingertips.

I love the house we are living in now. It's older than any of the places we've lived in over here. It has squeaky floor boards, heavy wooden doors and only one room ever becomes truly warm.

I had to laugh at myself the other day.... I had been sitting reading in the living room (the one room that becomes warm) and walked through the kitchen to the downstairs bathroom. I shrieked when I sat on the loo, the toilet seat was freezing!! What made me laugh is that rather than fret about the coldness, I started grinning and thinking how it reminded me of back home in Ireland, where you can be sure that during the winter months your bum will get a cold kiss when ever you visit the loo. And, just like back home in Ireland, if you want to warm yourself up in the house you make yourself a good cup of tea and head to the living room! I have drank more tea since we moved into this house than I have in the past year, it's great!!! I'm making  myself a cup right now! One huge difference is that there is no AGA in the kitchen, so the kitchen doesn't get that lovely warm glow.

In 2 weeks Matt and I will be heading to Omaha for Christmas. We will spend a couple of days getting some stuff in order and then we will go pick Joshua up from Kansas. I haven't seen him since the summer, so I bet he's going to look older already :)
We are going to bring in the New Year in Omaha. We have decided that we are going to try and sell most of our remaining furniture in Omaha rather than bring it all the way here. We don't know where we are going to be or what we are going to be doing after the lease runs out here and so we want to live a little more light weight. There are some things that I am not willing to sell: the tables we got from my Papa and my dining room set, but the rest of the furniture is really rather superfluous at the moment.



We had our first snow on Wednesday. It only snowed for the morning and didn't accumulate much, but it was fun all the same. It was nice to sit at the window in the kitchen and look out at the birds fussing around in the hedges. I am no birdwatcher, but could see that we have several species out there, some with lovely bright blues and reds. Here's a picture of our backyard at the moment...

I am beginning to get used to the area in which we live. The street names are becoming familiar and I am developing a mental grid of the city. We live in a safe enough area, there are several blocks of nice housing on either side of us and so I feel completely safe walking the dogs by myself. However, I am disappointed to see that the homes here are not decorated at the frequency of homes in Omaha for Christmas. I loved walking the dogs around the neighbourhood in Omaha at this time of year, there was a lot to look at (for a change ;)

I have got a job! I will be teaching Anatomy and Physiology at Cuyahoga Community College in January. I am very much looking forward to it, I love teaching and I love the subject matter. What makes it even cooler is that I shall learn something too, as the labs are geared towards medical imaging students and so they will have to interpret various forms of imaging.

Well I think that is all my news for the moment. Now I'm going to go plan the menu for over the weekend :)