Our soon to be new home...

 I think anyone that checks my blog now knows that we are moving to England (in exactly one week from today!!).  Brian and I were able to go in January for a week for our pre-trip.  It was actually really fun.  The kids stayed in Michigan with my mom (thanks again for coming for the week mom!) and the help of my good friends and didn't miss us a bit!  While we were there we were able to find a house, set up a bank account, and have a play day in London.  We spent three days looking at houses and I'll spare you the details but let me just say we heard the Hallelujah Chorus when we walked into this one!  It was so much better than everything else we looked at and it was definitely an answer to our prayers. 

 Houses in England (in our price range anyway:)) are much smaller than here and they have limited storage space since they don't have basements.  We were lucky enough to find one with a two car garage (although not an automatic garage door) and we will be able to fit all our "extra" stuff inside it.  This is great because we thought we were going to have to pay for a storage unit back in Michigan, but now we can have everything with us.  Our relocation specialist mentioned that most people don't park in their garages but do use them for storage.  She says that the cars have gotten bigger but the garages haven't.  So a lot of people can't fit their cars in them anyway.  Interesting, I thought. 

 Here is our street sign.   I have no idea how people driving manage to SEE the street signs, they are low to the ground and not at the corners.  Driving there should be pretty interesting!

 The pictures are a little out of order, but here is the inside of our kitchen looking into the dining room.  I'm excited to have a double oven, but do thinks it's in an odd place.  And below is Mary, she was our relocation person.  She is standing on the other side of the kitchen.

Another view of the front.

This is the front foyer, with stairs going immediately up on your right and a half bath on your left.  The french doors go into the living room, Brian is looking into the doorway leading to the kitchen/dining/laundry area and behind him is the formal dining room which we will use as our office/library. 

Kitchen.  To the left is laundry room and to the right is the dining area.

Another interesting fact about the homes we looked at.  This was the ONLY one with a laundry room.  And the only one with a dryer inside the house.  The rest of them had the washing machine in the kitchen and the dryer... in the garage!!!  Can you imagine it?  Crazy.  The small things I have taken for granted in my life!

Dining room.  I am so happy that I like all the colors of the house. 

This is the living/family room.  Brian was happy there was plenty of room for his big TV (if we can make it work there) and all his speakers!

Here is a view looking out into our backyard (or our "garden" as the English call it)

Ahhhh, the master bedroom.  Also very exciting that this is a King size bed that the previous owners had in it and it clearly fits.  We only have a Queen so there should be no problem with size.  In one of the houses we had to call Rachael and have her measure our furniture to see if it would even fit in the room!!  And I love the little nook off to the side as well.  I'm hoping my treadmill will go there somewhere. 

There is also a master bath, awesome.  And my favorite part is the HEATED TOWEL RACKS!!  Why don't we have these here??  I think this is a fabulous invention.  Well, maybe we do have them here and I just haven't been in to Bed, Bath, and Beyond lately!

Here is the back of our house.  I just think it's so cute!!

And then the street we live on.  The house sits on the corner actually.  By the way, do you notice how narrow the streets are?!    That's a two lane road you are looking at!