We moved into our home in Lakenheath Village on Thursday September 1st!!!! I absolutely love it. When you come in the front door there are stairs to go up, or a hall to the bathroom under the stairs and the kitchen straight ahead. If you turn right when you come in there is the living room and connected to that the dining room. To the left is an extra room for an office or storage. The kitchen is HUGE!!! I really feel spoiled in this house. Off the back of the kitchen is a huge glass room, or conservatory. It is like having a screened in porch with heaters so we can use it in the winter. The conservatory and dining room both have double glass doors to the back patio. We also have a shed in the back yard. The yard is even a good size. Also off the Kitchen is the laundry room. It even fits a washer, dryer and full size fridge.(the kitchen only has a mini fridge.) In the kitchen there is a double oven and dishwasher. Did I say I feel SPOILED?
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| Remi, Broden and Alissa playing in plastic from mattresses |
When you go upstairs there are 4 bedrooms. The master is to the right and has a big closet and alcove window area with big windows. There is a master bath, or ensuite off our room with a shower, toilet and sink. I love the showers here. It has a start stop button for turning on the water and you can control the temperature and water pressure on the same control. Also all the shower heads have adjustable heights and can be removed. Two of the other bedrooms are a little smaller, but still have big closets. The 4
th bedroom is pretty big, with a big closet. There is also another bathroom upstairs that has a big bathtub and a shower. And in the hall there is a water heater closet that also has lots of shelves for storage. Each bathroom has a little cabinet under the sink for some storage, but the water heater closet will hold everything else.
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| Alissa's costume, I think Remi made her into a bride |
It is definitely a British House, but I love it. I feel like it has what we need and some! We are still trying to decide where to put all our furniture, but it isn’t here yet, so we have time to decide.
Wednesday we got to pick up our van from the shipping company!!! It was so nice to have it back. We packed everything Wednesday night and loaded most of it in the van. Thursday morning Parker and I came to the house at 8:00am to be ready for the Military people to bring us our “stick” furniture.” It took me about 10 minutes to open the door. I could not figure out how to unlock it. I almost went next door to ask the neighbor how to unlock the door(the 2 houses next to us are exactly like ours with the same landlord). I finally got it though. Parker and I had fun exploring and dreaming(looking for stains, dings and other broken things) until Blake and the kids got here around 10:30. Then the movers got here about 11:00. They brought us a queen bed, 3 twin beds, a crib, couch, 2 end tables, 2 easy chairs, a dining table, 6 chairs, 4 dressers and a portable closet thing. The mattresses on the beds are plastic and the furniture is all a reddish color, but it works.
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| Broden's plastic crown from Remi |
One thing we were counting on is the “loan locker” where we got our loaner kitchen stuff to also give us bedding, but they stopped doing that the week before. Sooo, we scrambled for sheets. Luckily we have an amazing ward family/friends/sponsor who gathered sheets, blankets and towels for us. Most people when they move here do an early shipment that has sheets, towels and blankets that will come earlier that the rest of their stuff. Offutt told us we couldn’t do that, so we figured these things would be given to us when we got here. I don’t know what people do when they don’t have friends where they were going.
Blake went back to work after lunch and the kids and I put things away. The kids were SOOOO excited to be in our new home. That is an understatement for how they felt. They were running all over and having so much fun. They especially enjoyed pulling all the plastic off the beds. They played with the plastic for like 3 hours. First, in Remi and Alissa’s room, then Broden’s room, then in our room. Then they took all the plastic down to the conservatory and played in it for another hour.
Some people might think I am crazy for how much I love everything here I do feel very blessed to be here. I feel like so much of what we are doing is a new challenge. Different driving, different house, different appliances, different stores, different money, different schools, different locks and keys and the list goes on. It might sound like I am complaining, but I actually like challenges like this. Some other nice things about where we live are that we are just 4 houses from the school where Remi goes to school and hopefully Broden too soon. We are just 5 minutes from base, where Blake works.
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| Alissa as a bride |
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| Remi as a bride |
Some facts and figures for us to remember
! Blake gets paid in American dollars. The military pays for our house and a little extra to cover utilities. Our house is 1200 pounds a month, which is about 2,000 American dollars a month. We will pay 50 pounds a month for water, about 50 pounds for electricity and the oil that we use for heat is about 1 pound a liter and our tank Is about 500 liters. We don’t know how long that will last, but I have heard it is VERY expensive. Our cell phones are 60 pounds a month and our phone and internet are 50 pounds a month. Our car insurance went up 100 dollars a month to 180 and I don’t know yet what our garbage bill is. We do have to get a MOT, which is an automobile inspection every year and that is 50 pounds a car and then we have to pay taxes each year on each car. So I think our monthly expenses are going to be about 580 dollars a month. That doesn’t include the MOT, taxes, or oil. Not to mention the shopping is WAY more expensive here. Yes we can shop at the commissary, but they only have name brand foods. I am so used to shopping at Walmart, where I just get Great Value everything. Our food bill is going to go WAY up. We could shop off base, but unless the food is half as much in pounds it isn’t worth it because the exchange rate. So we will be learning to have an even tighter budget so we can have money for fun things like traveling. Yes we do still get paid the same, which is a great income. It is comfortable for us to live in the United States and get paid Blake’s income, but when you live where everything costs twice as much it is like cutting your salary in half. I’m glad we are fresh out of Dental school and have lived pretty close to the same way for the last year. It will make this much easier. I actually think it will be fun. It’s just one of the things I love to do though is to figure out ways to make things work for cheap. It’s like a game for me. It probably drives some people crazy but one of my favorite quotes is,”Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”
