I miss army wives...

Hi from the UK! How is everyone back in the states? I miss talking to some of you regularly and others I miss running into about town. The other day I had a craving for Yamato Express and almost started crying. Then I realized it was my nephew Casey's birthday and I was missing it and that pushed me over the edge. I definately let the tears go then.

We are moved into our house and all of our 'stuff' arrived on Monday. This week we have been unpacking boxes, trying to find things amongst the havoc, learning about how to maneuver the electiricty here (aka blowing out light bulbs), realizing how much car insurance is here (the bmw we bought is over $1100.00 a year for full coverage! yikes!) My CRV is supposed to arrive at the port later this week or early next week, so we will be going on a road trip here soon.

Playgroup is going great. We have it every Tuesday and Thursday and Molly has made lots of friends. Yesterday we went to a birthday party and she actually spit out the chocolate cake and didn't like it (not my child). Tomorrow we have an apt with the "Time Warner Cable' of the UK, it's called Sky. They told us we live too far out in the sticks to get broadband so we are going to try out the satellite internet and see how it goes. Hopefully we will have phone and cable soon too! Let me tell you how sad I am to be missing Army Wives this season. Yall will have to give me an update on what is going on, I love that show!

Well, thats it for now. Molly is ready for a nap. Love to all!

Haley

Happy Friday

Happy Friday everyone!
What a week we've had! Camping out in our new house has been quite the adventure. Only three more nights and then our stuff arrives. I have a whole new appreciate for microwave and easy bake meals after this experience. Have I mentioned that it has rained every day since we've been here? And in general it is in the 60's with very low humidity. I think another word for that is heaven.

Molly is doing great. Adjusting pretty well to her new home. She slept 12.5 hours last night, yay! that came after several nights of 4am wake ups and not going back to sleep. God knows how much we can handle. She is crawling up a storm now and has been for the past 6 weeks or so. She gives kisses, high fives, and says lots of words; mama, dada, nana, bye bye, ball, dog, up, bath, baba(bottle) and more that I can't think of right now. She will be walking any day now, she cruises everywhere and has taken 3 steps in a row a couple of times now. She has four teeth (three on bottom and one on top). Everyone on base knows her already. Every person at the bank knows her by name and me as Molly's mom. Even the gate guards know her and chit chat with us when we come onto base (that never happens).

I am at the coffee shop right now. This has become my retreat since I've been here. It is the closest feeling thing to the US that I've found. I feel like I'm in a starbucks.. Thats it for now. Have a blessed weekend!

In the house

We are in our house.... well sort of. We moved in at 8am Monday morning and our air shipment arrived at 9:30 as planned. Unfortunately, customs decided to detain our household goods due to the antique Tureg sword Bryon brought back from Mali, sooo we are camping out on air matresses until Monday when the stuff is supposed to arrive. We'll see.

And we found out that because we live in the sticks we cant get broadband internet, blah. So they are going to try to get us Satallite internet set up so we can have something. Hopefully the connection will be strong enough to support skype. We do have cell phones and a working home phone. If you want our numbers shoot me an email and I will send them to you. I can't put personal information here unfortunately. For family trying to call, you have to dial a 011 44 (and possibly 1223) then the phone number I sent you.

Molly and I are headed to playgroup so I'll sign off.

Miss you all,
Haley

Big day tomorrow!

Hope everyone had a blessed Sunday. I woke up this morning and what did I see on tv? Charles Stanley on his usual 8am time, all the way over in England!

Tomorrow is the big day! We are moving into our house at 8am tomorrow! We are so thrilled to be moving in even though our household goods may not arrive for a week or so. Yesterday we all made a trip to the on base exchange and picked up an air mattress and some 'necessities' until everything arrives. So we are ready!

Guess what else, Bryon and I both passed our driving tests yesterday. If I may brag for a minute, Bryon had to take his twice and I passed after the first time :) I also studied more :) So, on Thursday we go to our official newcomer briefing and we will be issued our license, yay!

Other cool things: Molly took three steps today! She abruptly fell down and has not repeated it since but she definitely took the steps and was fairly confidant about them too. We were so proud! We also finally got our car insurance in line and are able to drive without restriction! Today we loaded up the car and drove to our house to make sure I knew how to get back and forth on my own. I'll be driving about 15 minutes from Molesworth to Alconbury on Tuesday to take Molly to her playgroup, but I think I feel pretty ok about it after the driving practice today.
Definitely keep that in your prayers though :)

Not sure when I'll be posting again. It is my goal to post when we come on base for playgroup but in case I am not able too, you know why. We will not have tv, internet or the ability to call out of our house for 1-6 weeks (hopefully 1). Feel free to call us though!

Have a great week!
Haley, Bryon and Molly Jane

Praying for the McDanelds

Please pray for our dear precious friends, Tony, Holly, Anthony, Halle and Josiah McDaneld. Tony deployed to Iraq a couple of days ago for 6-12 months. He deployed to Afghanistan not too long ago.

Holly, you are such a brave, incredible mom and wife. You are in our prayers daily. You can see their blog link on the right side of this page. It is called "Purpose driven family". They posted pictures of Tony's final day here. Please pray pray pray for them.

I'm not dead!

Well ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to tell you all that I drove on the wrong side of the road today, 5 miles actually and then through a crowded shopping center and did not wreck! I know my family were all placing bets on how long it would take me to wreck, so there ya go! One day down!

Molly and I went to Tesco today for the primary purpose of looking for cell phones and a secondary purpose of me getting out of this dad gum air force base. Both of these goals were accomplished. I can't say that I really liked Tescos but it is definitely a blessing that it is available. Basically it is a two story version of walmart with an added bit of havoc and European rudeness. They had lots and lots of groceries, clothes, tvs, computers, cds/dvds, phones, hardware stuff, basically your usual walmart selection. They even had a flat escilator type thing that you push your cart onto to go up to the second floor, really cool. The main difference is that in Walmart I go to browse, take my time, buy stuff I don't really need. At Tescos, it was almost like get out of my way, I'm on a mission! Regardless, we got our phones, a few groceries and 10 pounds worth of minutes. We'll see how far that goes.

Bryon has been in training all week which has been really beneficial to him. We move into our house Monday and all of our belongings will be arriving as well. I'm sooooo excited to finally get into our house and out of the hotel!

Oh and the 'best aunt' award is now up for grabs.. sorry Mary. Molly has recently discovered elmo and LOVES the show! The problem is that dvd's here are wayyy more than we can afford to pay. So, aunts, grandma's, friends' etc.. discuss among yourselves which dvd's you'd like to get and we will award the winner accordingling :) Oh and Bryon would like to request the grouchland one specifically (Diane you know which one we're talking about).

Love and hugs,
Mum and Pop Mushrush

New Car!!!

Check out our new car! Who wants a ride :)

Side view

Did you notice what side the steering wheel is on?? Anyone want to bet on how long it will take me to get in a wreck?? :P

European license plates. Kinda weird but very bright.

check it out

Wow, I just read an incredible posting. Check out the blog "Building the Blocks" located on the right side of the page under "Blogs we like"... Wow..

Tuesday Update

Hey all!

Sorry for the few postings. We havent taken many pictures lately, mostly due to the fact that all of our cameras are dead and I have no idea where the cords to upload the pics is, soo basically I'm too cheap to buy new batteries in pounds and I'm too lazy to go through 12 pieces of luggage top to bottom to find the cords.

Oh a better note, all is well here. Bryon is working full days now, actually 12 hour days this week, so I wont be seeing a lot of him unfortunately. It is all good though, because he is getting a major portion of his training finished this week. Molly just broke her first tooth on top and hasnt slept the past couple of nights because of it. Hopefully tonight will be better since it has now broken through. We move into our house on Monday! (a week from yesterday). I can't wait for that. Living on base is getting old, granted the base is pretty decent but the hotel room is getting claustrophobic.

Molly and I went to our first playgroup today. It was on base and had tons of little kids with their moms. There were people there speaking all languages and all different types and ages of kids. It was really neat. Molly loved playing with kids and with toys other than the little ones we brought over in her diaper bag. She is used to playing with her cousins and I can tell she has really missed the contact with other children. So, this is something I will be continuing with as often as possible.

And last but certainly not least, I met several ladies today who go to American-esque churches. We'll see how those go. Ive really missed my church and can't wait to get plugged in here somewhere. Please keep that in your prayers.

Thats our update for now.. I'll write more later..

xoxoxo,
Bryon, Haley and Molly

Our New Home!

This is our new home while we are here! These pictures came from the website and aren't the best to view but it gives the general idea. We put our deposit on it yesterday and will move in next Friday. We are so excited and know this is the place God has planned for us to be. As soon as we walked into the house, Bryon and I looked at each other and just smiled because we both knew this was the place. Oh and it's 5 bedrooms and 3.5 baths so we have room for everyone to come visit. See you soon :)

Initial Thoughts

Today is day 2 here in England and while we haven't done a lot thus far, I do have some initial thoughts.
1. First, the weather here ROCKS! It is in the 60's in Mid-July, with a steady breeze. There are short rain showers throughout the day so I've learned already to have an umbrella wherever you go.
2. Driving on the wrong side of the road is very intimidating. The roads are well maintained for the most part and the signs are pretty clear about where to go but people fly and there are lots of roundabouts with ample opportunity to kill myself. Yeah we need prayers about the driving.
3. Staying on base initially has been great. They have American outlets beside the European ones so all of our electric stuff can plug right into the wall! Also we had dinner last night at Subway and bought Ben and Jerry's ice cream for desert. Sweet!
4. Buildings don't have heating or air. If they are really nice, they have heat but having air conditioning is almost unheard of. All the windows open though and the breeze is exceptional. I haven't seen many bugs, aside from the moths that like to visit us inside, so I don't mind opening windows.
5. There are like no large SUV's. Most people drive ugly little fuel efficient cars which are great theoretically. Bryon misses his 4 Runner bad though. Oh and on base there are plenty of SUV's. Good ole gas guzzling Americans :)
6. And from our flight, buying seats for babies is DEFINITELY the way to go, especially on long trips. I was able to fluff up Mollys car seat and she took a nice long nap in there and gave us a break from holding her, plus it gave her more room to play and stretch out. And if you have frequent flier miles, it is worth the upgrade! Oh and disposable bibs rock!

Well thats it for now. I'll leave more interesting tidbits later on as I have them. Keep Bryon in your prayers tomorrow. It is his first day of work!

We are here!!!

We are here! We safely arrived in London today and have checked into our hotel on base. We will be here until we find a house of our own. Our flights were great I am proud to report. We were really protected and blessed during our travel. A few things, our layover in Chicago was barely going to allow us time to get to our next flight from Chicago to London, well, we arrived 25 minutes early so it was non-issue. We didn't have enough hands to get all of our suitcases from baggage claim to the car in London, well, Molly made friends with a security guard and he helped us bring all of our baggage out without making us pay the porter fee. On our long 8 hour flight from Chicago to London we had seats on the very back row beside the toilets, well, the lady who curbside checked us in in Charlotte upgraded us to Economy plus with allowed 5 extra inches of space per person! And perhaps the greatest blessing of all, when we arrived on base and saw our REALLY NICE suite that we will be staying in, Bryon Molly and I all went on a walk/ stroller ride to the shoppette to get a few groceries and they have DIET MOUNTAIN DEW!!!!!!!!! I am in heaven! So, as you can see, we have had a great day and are excited about a wonderful future here in England.

We don't have the internet in our hotel, but we found a coffee shop on base that has wi-fi, so I will post as often as possible. Thank you all for your continued prayers as we make this transition. Next step- a house!!!!

Technology is great!

Killing time at the airport, I forget everything is wi-fi now. How great is that! Having a yummy lunch at Chillis with Grandpa! In the air soon!

PS

I had to get up and post this picture before we left today. This is my new favorite Molly picture.

Bon Voyage!!!

Tomorrow is the day! I will post as soon as I can when we get to England. We love you all!

Getting packed up!

Well we are leaving on Saturday! Hard to believe we are T-3 days today! The packing, shipping, and living out of suitcases is almost over! Please keep us in your prayers as we fly to London on Saturday. Please pray that Molly will not have any major problems on the flight and that she will be able to rest during the overnight portion of the trip. Please pray that we will be able to acclimate to the new time zone and that Bryon's new job transition will go smoothly. I'm not sure how much I will be online but I'll post pictures and updates as often as I can! Thank you all for your support and well wishes. Godspeed!


What is a girl to wear!!!


I'm so tired of shopping and packing, I'm just going to go to bed..