Home is where you rest your rump

We took a bunch of photos of our house when we looked at it during our house-hunting trip (those are here).   We've been in the house since the end of January.  That's enough time to furnish it with a combination of purchased items (I firmly believe IKEA should be giving Rolls-Royce a discount for the amount of business its secondees provide) and things we shipped from the US.  It's also enough time to get photos of the various rooms when they are both furnished and (mostly) clean.  To the girls' credit, they've taken cleaning their rooms much more seriously since we moved here.  There's a certain desk area in one room that struggles to maintain orderliness.

Here's the front view of the house.  We're in a semi-detached house, so we share the building with the house on the right.  It turns out that four-bedroom houses for long-term rentals are unusual in Derby.  Most landlords renting four-bedroom houses want a short-term rental (circa 6 months) while they get ready to sell.  It's relatively rare that someone will own a four-bedroom house as a business proposition (unlike three-bedroom houses or smaller).  It is even more rare for a house of this size to be available in Melbourne, which is where we live.  We are thankful that this house opened up for long-term rental under a good landlord.

There's just barely enough space between the fence and the house to poke the nose of the Golf into.  This lets us park the Golf completely in the driveway instead of on the street.

Here's the front living room (called LR1 by the girls) on the ground floor.  This is the primary room Kristine and I hang out in downstairs.  The corner is the office / computer-that-doubles-DVD-player-if-the-disc-format-is-okay area.  It also gets the dulcimer.  This is an unexpected perk.  The dulcimer lived in the basement of our home in the US for the last couple years (basically once Clare got mobile).  That meant playing it took a lot of intentionality.  I've enjoyed playing more regularly since we moved here.  That wouldn't have happened if the dulcimer lived in its originally envisioned location (the second floor guest room).

The tradeoff with playing the dulcimer is that the mandolin and recorder don't get played as much.  It doesn't help that my friends at the Upland Session are in Indianapolis.  Most of the sessions in Derbyshire are on the north side of the city, which is a good 45 minute hike.  I've tried doing some solo sessions in LR1, but it's not as much fun.

The IKEA table on top of the larger IKEA table has been a godsend for my aching back.  I have a similar table on my desk at work.  It's been the source of quite a bit of discussion in the office recently.  Short of it is that the program chief engineer conducted a risk assessment after Easter that allowed me to keep using the IKEA table while the system runs its course for me to get an adjustable height desk. This overruled the risk assessment from one of his direct reports who said the desk was a safety risk, which overruled a risk assessment from the Health and Safety rep for my specific area in the office, who said that it was acceptable while I waited for an adjustable one.

Here's the other side of LR1.  Fun story about the piano.  I put up a flyer in the break room asking if anyone had a piano they wanted to sell or loan me so that my Jedi daughter could keep playing during our secondment.  A couple days later I get a tap on the shoulder.  "Are you the American looking for a piano?"  "I am."  "Our piano hasn't been played since our son left home.  You can have it for 100 GBP if you move it."

Here's the photo of Elise in a shawl Kristine knit her, playing our piano in the US (also given to me by a colleague).  

Just for the record, there is more activity in LR1 beyond music.  Kristine reads and knits.  It's where we sit and chat with guests if the girls are in bed.  The space between the chairs and the left wall sometimes becomes a fort and site of make-believe for the girls.  This room also sometimes doubles as the Karate practice area.

Here's the second living room (LR2).  It's actually set up with built-in cabinet and shelves to be a dining room.  We decided that young children plus carpet equals bad idea for dining room.  So this room is really their area downstairs.  

The cubicles store LEGO bricks, art supplies, and occasionally other things.

Obligatory close-up of the LEGO bricks on a rare occasion when they're assembled instead of scattered across the floor of LR2, or else tidily put away in their containers.

The couch is Elise's preferred place to curl up with a book.

This room sees quite a bit of activity from the girls.

And sometimes not just the girls.

Here's the dining room.  Key features are the floor that doesn't have carpet, and it being in an atrium.  The great part about the atrium is we get tons of natural light.  The not-so-great part about the atrium is there's not much protection from the cold.  Because the same open space that lets light in on sunny days lets heat out on cold days.  Of which there have been many.

Here's the kitchen.  The dishwasher is to the left of the sink, but has a veneer to make it look like a cabinet.  That's pretty common in the houses over here.  Unlike the US, where the dishwasher gets a surface of honor.  It has an American size refrigerator that we're very grateful for, an electric oven that we're also grateful for because it's not gas, and a gas hob (stove) that we're getting used to.

The open floor space in the kitchen lets us set up a drying rack.  Said rack is regularly used to hang laundry that needs to air dry.  It's not infrequently used to hang wet cycling gear from my commute home.

Laundry room with washer and dryer (alas, the dryer is condensing).

Here's the back garden.  The garage to the left stores bikes and camping gear.

The garden has some lovely plants (like these tulips).  We hope they survive our being residents in the house.

The view of our house from the back garden.

Moving upstairs to the first floor ...

Master bedroom.

Main toilet (alas, the floor is carpeted).

The hallway has a closet that was converted into a shower.  This is very handy because it frees up the main toilet.  It also highlights a perplexing paradox.  For as obsessive about standardiz(s)ation as Brits are supposed to be (at least to hear the office stereotypes), they manage to come up with a shower design that accommodates a wide range of variability in height?  For as obsessive about individuality as Americans are supposed to be, they have to require that anyone who takes a shower pretend to fit into a 6 inch height range between 5'6" and 6'?

Moving upstairs again to the second floor ...

We originally thought this area at the top of the stairs would be a craft area for the girls.  They use it sometimes, but tend to prefer LR2.

Here's the guest bedroom.

with skylight.

An unexpected perk of living outside the city, and on the top of the hill above the village, is we get some pretty views of the surrounding countryside from the skylight.  We also get great views of the stars at night.  Maybe someday I'll try to capture them on camera.  Maybe.

Long Weekend: Easter in Swindon (also Avebury and Bowood Estates)

The Easter weekend was right in the middle of a two-week break from school for Elise and Charis.  I had Good Friday through the Tuesday after Easter off work.  It was a good chance to get out of town.  Enter an invitation from John, Carol, and Marti Oldfield to come visit them in Swindon.  Carol is my grandmother's brother's daughter.  Our families have crossed paths going back to my childhood in Kenya, a visit to Bath with Kristine in 1999 shortly before getting engaged in Paris, and a trip to the UK shortly before Elise was born in 2005.  They graciously opened their home to us for the Easter weekend.

We made the trip to Swindon from Melbourne early on the afternoon of Good Friday.  The GPS kept us off the motorways, which we thought was a good thing.  That was until we were on a two-lane country road and behind a slow-moving tractor for several miles.  Begin choice words at our GPS.  Then we hit traffic going into Moreton-in-Marsh, which is a popular holiday town in the Cotswolds (of course having one road going into it that is also two-lane).  Increase choice words at our GPS.  Then we hit traffic going into Stow-on-the-Wold.  Increase (again) the choice words at our GPS.  Naturally we did not fault ourselves for not doing any research beforehand on the route to take.  And naturally we did not defend our GPS on the grounds that other routes would also be busy on a holiday weekend.  We just told Miranda (our GPS) that after her poor performance on the Center Parcs trip followed by poor performance on this trip, she doesn't get our blind faith anymore.  Perhaps she never should have.  Truthfully, the delays didn't add a ton of time.  It was supposed to be a 2.5 hour drive, and we made it in ~3.25 hours.  All things considered, that's not bad.  Clare didn't sympathize.  She fell apart shortly after we got through the Cotswolds, with about 30 min to go.  Note to self: 3 yr old's car trip tolerance is not much over 2.5 hrs.  If driving longer than that, strongly consider making a stop.

The area around Swindon is famous for the limestone shapes carved into the landscape.  The farm near the Oldfields' has a horse carved into the hill.  It's evidently around 200 years old.  This is pretty impressive considering the limestone has to be cleaned up every year.  We took a walk up to the farm Friday afternoon.  It was a good way for all of us to unwind after the drive.  Unfortunately we couldn't get a good photo of the horse with the camera.  Maybe next time.  

Notice Elise's uncharacteristic absence from the walk?  It has to do with the lovely back garden at the Oldfields' house.  As we enjoyed tea and biscuits on the back porch, John gave me a warning.  The flagstones lining the pond are unstable.  Don't walk on them, because they could give way and plunge you into the pond.  Elise, being an independent 8 yr old, gave me a reproachful look when I passed on John's warning and proceeded to go down to the garden with her sisters.  Some time later we looked down to see a tottering Elise on one of the previously mentioned unstable flagstones.  She tottered forward and made a mighty leap.  The mighty leap didn't clear the pond.  No permanent harm was done, but she did get a banged up knee.  So she stayed home with Carol while we took our walk.

John and Marti took us to Avebury on Saturday.  Kristine and I went there with them during our visit in 2005.  The item of interest on that trip was the standing stones, which is evidently the largest collection in the UK.  This time the stones got a photo to prove that we walked past them.  They didn't get any further attention.  

The item of interest this time Avebury Manor, for two reasons.  The manor has been set up so that each room is decorated to show what it would have looked like at different periods in the history of the house.  This means there is interesting information to learn as you tour the house.  The rooms are also set up with furnishings that can be touched, handled, and in any other way manipulated.  This means that it provides great tactile engagement for young children (who might or might not have tried to avoid having their picture taken in front of the house).

We spent most of our time in the kitchen, which was decorated to the time the Titanic sailed (they had a commemorative newspaper, which I didn't photograph).

The woman in the kitchen was a very good sport with the girls.  She let Clare spend quite a bit of time stirring the flour bowl.  To Clare's credit, she did leave the flour in the bowl when she was done.  Most of it anyway.

At one point the woman looked at me after hearing us talking, and said "Do I detect a touch of Transatlantic in your accents?"

Me (smiling): Just a touch, but not if you listen to my oldest daughter (pointing to Elise).

I had a friend who tried to teach me Transatlantic.  I learned two words.

<<pause for a deep breath>>

Glitter

<<pause for another deep breath>>

Mascara

How did I do?

Me (smiling): your Transatlantic is better than my English.

That whole thing about tactile learning?  Elaborately decorated dining room with hand-painted wallpaper wasn't of much interest.

The bedroom that Queen Anne stayed in, including a poster bed? Now that was fun. 

As was the adjacent room where Queen Anne would have received guests and otherwise spent her time.  There was an embroidery stand where present-day guests could embroider names or other designs on a cloth that stayed there for others to add to.  Kristine embroidered our initials (SKECC) while the older two girls watched.  Clared busied herself among the other needles and spools of thread.  Fortunately, they (the needles and thread) survived her curiosity, and her fingers didn't receive any pricks.

We did spend some time on the manor grounds.  The girls turned this into an opportunity to play hide-and-seek from the camera.  Which was great for the adults.  We stood in one place and talked.  The girls ran around while I occasionally pointed the camera at them to make sure they kept running.

Much of our time in the Oldfields' house involved games of different types.  John introduced Elise and Charis to Monopoly with British property cards.

We also played Dutch Blitz and Phase 10.  Somewhere along the line Elise and Charis decided that Phase 10 is more fun when they team up and play against Daddy.  Kristine denies all responsibility for the gloating and trash-talking that they're learning when they finish a hand ahead of me.  She claims that behavior was learned from watching their father.  I claim innocence.

Somewhere between getting our piano in Melbourne tuned and playable, and visiting the Oldfields in Swindon, Elise (and Charis under her tutelage) decided it would be fun to work on memorizing the piano songs she is learning.  I'm excited to watch this part of their musical development.

Marti's brother Alex and his wife drove down from London for Easter dinner.  We all (barely) fit around the Oldfields' table.  Elise put the time she was not hiking with us Friday to good use by making name tags for everyone.

On Monday John and Marti took the girls and I to Bowood House and Gardens.  The house has been the stately home of the Lansdowne family for several centuries.  One of the Landsowne ancestors, the 2nd Earl, was Prime Minister from 1782 to 1783.  He also negotiated peace with the United States after the War of Independence.  Joseph Priestly discovered oxygen there on 1 August 1774.  With such an impressive history, naturally we visited the important areas in the estate.

Like the Tractor Ted area.

And the adventure playground.  Clare, because she is Clare, paid no attention to the fact that everyone else on the rope ladder was a couple years older than her.  She climbed on and clambered up after her sisters.

The platform in the background?  That's the toddler slide that Clare turned up her nose at. 

The girls really enjoyed being up so high.  I mostly enjoyed watching them have so much fun being up that high.  Mostly.

Clare, again because she is Clare, insisted on going down the tallest slide in the playground.  She had an excited cheering section watching her. 

We did eventually leave the playground and spend some time exploring the grounds of the estate.  This picture of the running girls is becoming a familiar one. 

We found a couple swans who hopefully approached the girls, looking for bread.  They were disappointed. 

 I think the girls' favorite area of the grounds was right around this little stream.

There was a little cave they climbed into.

And came out of relatively soon when they discovered there was just barely enough room for the three of them. 

Clare, who had been playing hard for a couple hours by now, got tired and needed some encouragement to keep walking.  She picked a beautiful place to do it. 

This is the closest we got to the Bowood house.  If you look closely, you can see it in the background.

The last stop at Bowood was a paddock on the edge of the parking lot, where we greeted the Shetland ponies.  Clare and Charis were a little apprehensive at first.  Marti did a good job helping them make friends with the ponies.  Like the swans, the ponies were disappointed at the humans who didn't give them any treats.

We finished our weekend with a birthday tea ring to celebrate Charis turning 6.