I think he has completely forgotten about how being left-handed causes smudging problems, which I recorded in this post here.

Thomas is getting the hang of copying out words now – he cannot spell any words for himself, not even short ones, so he has to look them up.

Then we drove back along to Quechee, where there is a little shopping area we hadn’t tried before. It’s pretty touristy, but there is a train, which made Ollie so happy!

They sell bizarre things there too:

With our new car, we’re “keeping up with the neighbours!”

On Monday it was Labour Day, so a bank holiday. We took a drive up to North Haverhill (going past Thetford and Ely, and even going through Bradford!), to get to the county court. I have been called up for jury service and was a bit slow in sending off the forms, so we thought we’d try and drop the letter in the post box, though of course, courts don’t have anything as dangerous as an outdoor letterbox, which, on reflection, is rather obvious. Still it was a nice drive in our new comfortable car. We stopped to admire a mill on the way:

I am so glad to have a remote central-locking key, that I had to snap this his’n'hers photo:

But actually it absolutely describes our new car! Tah-dah:

David worked extremely hard to fix up the Subaru, doing a lot of the tough work himself and bribing our tireless neighbour with beer, who helped us out a lot. This included taking the wheels off many many times:

Also sanding-off and re-spraying a lot of the paintwork. replacing the replaced speakers so that the windows would open properly, plus a number of hair-raising stories from adventures with his mechanic, which you wouldn’t even believe are true, including, on his last visit today a run-in with some Greek mafia from Brooklyn, where David took a brave stand, which he wouldn’t have done, had he known beforehand about the guns in their belts (behind their backs). Did he ever tell you the story about the Cameroonians in Coventry when he sold our Corolla?

Anyway, he got a good deal, and for $4000 (private sale) we got a minivan, to accommodate family and friends. It is 5 or 6 years newer than our old car. And so so so so BIG!

Don’t I look tiny?!

It is the very basic model:

But basic comes with some pretty cool features which include:
1. Air-conditioning
2. The doors automatically “child-lock” when you start driving.
3. When you turn off the ignition, and take the key out, your music will keep playing until you actually open the door!! (think about it!)

It also has cruise-control, and electric windows, and a remote central-locking key, which I sorely missed with the Subaru!

The kids love it!

You can just about see what the dealer would have charged for it:

$5990

Something I personally found really cool is that the bass and treble adjustments are done with FADERS! FADERS I tell you!

So, like everything, there are some down sides. There is no CD player, just tape. Luckily I have saved a few of these antiquities including, and I don’t know how many of you will remember my “mix tapes” but a particularly good one called “Kibblemixed” which has a lot of very deep bass tracks. We were totally blown away by how good the bass is in the car, and wondered if it’s size turns it into one massive resonance chamber! Also, the tape-player has “scan” which makes it almost like a CD-player if you want to skip to the next “track”.

Finally the major negative detail is the fuel consumption. It’s a 3.3 litre V6 engine – well, it’s a big ol’ vehicle. This means you can hear the sound of your bank balance dropping as you put your foot on the gas. Still, all the more motivation to get out and walk – right?

OK, so not exactly. We had a week of cooler, rainier weather at the end of August, which I think is why this tree thought it best to start changing its garb. However, since then, we’ve been experiencing a heat wave, with barely bearable heat.

We had some unwanted neighbours move in…

I filled out my tenant’s webform to ask someone to take a look. I didn’t file it as an emergency, and usually someone comes out within a couple of days. With this thing, a guy came out to spray it within the hour! He said they were hornets, and can be quite aggressive, especially in the fall.

Meanwhile, the building work continues. It’s quite fun to watch as different houses are at different stages:

In other developments, I dragged myself out of bed the other day to find Ollie was fully dressed and doing some piano practice – it was like stepping into the future! I also had to laugh when he accurately drew and described the workings of a lightning conductor to Bedstemor via Skype.

Thomas continues to speak in Victorian Novel mode. I overheard the boys talking this morning. Ollie said, “Who’s tummy was making that noise?” Thomas, instead of saying, “mine” or even “that’s mine” actually said, “that would be mine.”

I have been reading The Chronicles of Narnia to the boys. Lewis does have quite an old-fashioned turn of phrase here and there, so maybe that didn’t help. We’ve read “The Magician’s Nephew” and “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” so far. Interestingly, there is some dispute as to which order to read the books in, and certainly the U.S and U.K editions I’ve seen have placed them differently. There is a whole table about the order of the books on Wikipedia here.

I’ve nearly finished “To Kill a Mockingbird” and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I’m glad I left it until I was this old to read it, as I don’t think I would have got half as much out of it before I had the kids.

Speaking of kids, the schools went back here on the 1st September. Thomas was pretty melancholic, noticing that every single friend he has made here started Kindergarten without him, with the excitement that surrounds it, but I think he is still looking forward to going to Nursery school. Ollie certainly can’t wait, saying “I’m going to a new school with new friends!” Thomas has also suddenly been talking about his birthday a lot, and every day he wants to write a guest list! I’m starting to worry about what sort of event I can organize to accommodate his list!

I managed to snap all the kids on the first day of school:

Partly because of this, and partly because the cobwebs on the fly-screened windows are now getting thick enough to support large branches of trees, I decided to clear the forest back from the house. It seems unbelievable that I did this a year ago, and already some of the plants are well over a metre tall!
This is the “before” photo: (children to show scale)

…and after (including my weapon of choice)

(Thomas is starting to become useful for blog-photo capture).

While I hacked my way through, I found this cute little fella:

I picked him/her up and showed the boys, and then put the frog back somewhere out of reach of my flailing machete (saw).

A little while later I found this:

This is exactly my passcode. Thomas hadn’t even said anything, he’d just watched which numbers I’d pressed and quietly written it down. Cheeky monkey!

When the heat & humidity is too much, we hang out at the air-conditioned library in town.

Also, a big piece of good news:

The government has given us some of our money back! Unfortunately this money has already been ear-marked. We are using it to fix David’s teeth and the car, and the rest is going to repay a loan, but it still felt good enough to treat ourselves to a meal out. It also means we can safely renew our $95 membership to the Montshire Museum, which is another good place to hang out. They have free little sessions you can just show up to. We went to one about magnets today, which the boys really enjoyed.

I too got out for an airing at my book club which was really great – it’s so refreshing to go somewhere where I can shake off my shackles and learn about what goes on in the world according to other grown-ups. One thing that took me by surprise though, on the way home from my friend’s house, it was PITCH DARK. We are talking no streetlights, no cats’ eyes – Nada. I haven’t had to drive on roads like that for some years now.

Also on the way home from book club, just as I was turning into our Circle, I saw my first live skunk. David and I have been kept awake a couple of nights by some serious scratching and gnawing outside our bedroom window. It cannot be a chipmunk, because the noises sound like something much bigger. I expect it’s the skunk. I’m not worried about the animal, as they are quite reluctant to fire off, unless really provoked – apparently it takes them 10 days to replenish their squirt-tanks, leaving them very vulnerable. I am however going to become extremely grumpy if it keeps me awake much more. Any suggestions?

Someone joked that we lived in the Ghetto of Hanover. This still makes me chuckle. Someone, who doesn’t live in our ghetto, but near the center of town joked that if they dared to hang a washing-line outside their house, they would lower the surrounding house prices by around $100,000.

It’s good to laugh about these things, but in truth a lot of money is being spent on refurbishing our neighbourhood. They have recently cut down a lot of the old trees around, that may have been becoming dangerous. This gave the kids a new playground for a bit:

It has also provided quite a lot of entertainment and spectacle to drag us through the tedium of summer.

This is another picture of that same tree this morning:

As I type it is now just a stump and logs on the ground.

As well as the tree-cutting, other exciting things are afoot. The houses are all being given a garage. The car-ports are completely removed, and the older houses will get new cladding and windows. I don’t know if any work will be carried out inside.

I notice that I mentioned the summer tedium. Summer used to be my favourite season – I normally hate being cold, and don’t mind being too hot. However here, hot is just hotter, and wetter. We have very muggy days, and you can see all the moisture evaporating from the forested hills around us every morning. It does feel a bit like a rainforest sometimes – and the birds do make some pretty bizarre sounds here. Also, being in the forest brings a lot of bugs. I carefully wore my new trainers to the Sunday night party, rather than my crocs, to limit the damage, but after 5 minutes, two different spiders had started crawling up my legs (small red bodies and very long black legs). I rushed home and douse my legs and sneakers with full-strength 30% Deet bug-spray, and still sustained mosquito bites through my sneakers:

These bites were from Friday’s barbeque, after 5 days of healing:

I’m really looking forward to the winter here – I really like the snow, and sledding with the boys, and the outside temperature kills all bugs. (Then it’s just bears to worry about).

This occurred on Friday, which was a great party, but as it was our neighbour’s birthday, and he is russian, well, obviously vodka was involved. There were some great moments, my favourite of which was when I took Thomas, Ollie and Alisa over to the green in the middle of our circle and star-gazed. We saw lots of shooting-stars.

Later on in the evening, there was a water-fight (the adults) and the boys set a precedent by falling asleep on our laps: Ollie on David’s and Thomas on mine. This has never happened before, and is an indicator of just how late it had got.

The next morning, however, was tough. I managed to get enough painkillers down to wake Thomas up at 9am to take him to karate, with a banana on the way, as there was no time for breakfast. On the way back though, we stopped in at Lou’s on main street to make up for it. I had lots of coffee and a “breakfast sandwich” (egg, bacon and cheese muffin) as fried food is always so restoring after a hard night. Thomas had some hot chocolate and a kid’s pancake, which he barely touched, claiming it was too sweet!

Anyway, it was quite an expedition, because, stupidly, I hadn’t given a thought to the fact that I’d never taken both boys swimming on my own before, and that actually, this wasn’t a very responsible thing to do. (In Woking there is a rule that under 4s MUST have a guardian ratio of 1:1). Anyway, thankfully it all went smoothly apart from the fact that Ollie was terrified of the water, and refused to go in (though he did warm up and enjoy it in the end). The best bit was when my back was turned and I heard the lifeguard blow his whistle and say “NO! NO!” and I looked around to see that Ollie had dropped his swimming shorts and was pointing himself to pee in the pool from standing! I died several deaths of shame, and quickly whisked him off to the toilets. Anyway, I vowed not to take them swimming on my own again until we have all aged substantially.

We went a couple of times in the UK with my mum, which helped Ollie to become a bit more confident, and since I have been back, David and I have taken them once a week, so 3 times, and today Ollie and I were both shocked and delighted when he found he could paddle along without being held onto! (Buoyed by various floating devices, obviously.) Thomas and I got out a bit early, which allowed me to acquire photo evidence:

I took this photo really to show you how great the pool is:

The difficulty was getting Ollie to leave the pool – he was so thrilled with this new development that he didn’t want to stop!

Thomas can now doggy-paddle with a couple of “noodles” (foam tubes) under his chest, and we just started trying to work on using just one this afternoon (he doesn’t have a swim-vest like Ollie’s). It has been great for David and me to be able to sneak in a few lengths while the other sits with the boys – there is a large grassy area around the pool where people can relax.