Hot Air Balloon

Today I walked the dogs in South Park. When we got there we saw a few hot air balloon trucks. We hung around for a while and saw them set up and launch two balloons. It was interesting to watch and I was surprised that it took nearly an hour to get them ready to get off the ground.
Lesson learned: Don't take Jackson on a hot air balloon ride. He absolutely hated the noise of the balloon and was quite vocal about it.

All moved in

Well our move went pretty well and we are all settled into the new place. It is so much easier to move when you don't have a lot of stuff. It sort of makes me want to forget about all that stuff in storage in New York.
Anyhow the new place is a lot smaller than our original house in Oxford, however, the location is so great for us. We both have easy commutes to work and we have an open field about one minute from our apartment and a large park about five minutes away. Jackson has been enjoying all of his exploring and he really seems to love walking on the main streets as well. Zena likes having the parks nearby because we only really let her walk on grass so she has a lot more opportunity to get out of her bag.

This is the view from South Park

We can see the Magdelan deer park from the field behind our apartment

Moving Day...again

Another slow week. Adam has had a cold which has been a bit funny to watch. I had the same cold the week prior but I took it a bit better than he did.

Anyhow I am on vacation from school so I have next week off ! I look forward to sleeping in a bit but I am disappointed that I don't have any travel buddies for this week.

Anyhow we are all packed up and we are moving into our new place today, we are both pretty anxious to move out. It is still smaller than our first place here but the location is great for both of us and we have a large park right behind the apartments , Zena and Jackson are quite thrilled about that. Although our current place is nice, it is still a studio and it is just too small for us. It also hasn't helped that the cupboard situation still isn't completely sorted out yet.

Autumn

Today we took the dogs to one of our neighborhood parks. Jackson seemed to have more fun watching the kids playing hide and seek than actually running around. Here are a few photos of the changing leaves.

all is quiet

Well not very much has happened since my last post. I spent most of last weekend in bed resting a soar leg and nursing a cold : ( On Sunday I got out for a bit when we went to a pot luck get together with some families from the new MBA class as well as families from Adam's class. It was nice getting to meet some of the new spouses and it was so strange to remember how crazy things were when we first got here. I still can't believe it has been a year though.

Yesterday we finally got the cabinets reinstalled. New cabinet doors are still on order but it was so great to get everything off of the counter. After all that, we are moving again next weekend anyway...

It's Official !!

Well Adam is officially an Oxford graduate. He received his finally grades today and he did in fact pass all of his classes. YEAH !!!!

The rest of our week has been fairly mellow. We are still waiting to have new cupboards installed so our kitchen is a bit insane right now. However, I will take that mess over falling kitchen equipment any day.

AHH !

So I get home from work, start my chores, go outside to talk on the phone, come inside and have the entire kitchen cabinet unit crash onto the floor.
Seriously it was so scary, tons of dishes and food were ruined and I was in shock.
Our landlord came right over, had an electrician come right out and then professional cleaners come to tidy. It is almost 11:30 and they are still cleaning. Oh what a night.

A few firsts

Well Adam had his first day at his new job today. He is working on a research project for the next eight weeks here in Oxford. So far he is really happy about the opportunity and looks forward to working with his new boss and partner.
Tonight I had my first drive on English cars in a standard vehicle. I have been practicing in parking lots for the last week or so but today we took it to the roads. On a scale from 1 - 10 I would say it was about a three. I got in a few too many sticky situations for my comfort. From now on I hope to stick with an automatic.

More of the Southern Coast

Well we are back in the itty bitty Oxford apartment but we had a really nice weekend touring the southern coast of England. Once we got home, Zena and Jackson took all of one minute to find a bed and pass out.

This morning we walked around a church and graveyard in Hythe and then headed out.

First we stopped in a cute seaside village called Rye.

We then ended up in Brighton. Brighton is where many locals have recommended we go for a beach. It has really beautiful water but the seaside reminded me a lot of Myrtle Beach, not very interesting. We did enjoy walking around the town and right before we left, we found two Vegan restaurants !! Adam bought some coconut cake, it wouldn't have been my choice but it was pretty good.

Checking out the competition

This weekend was a three day weekend for me and Adam's last weekend off. On Monday Adam is starting work on a project here in Oxford. So, we decided to take the dogs and see some English towns.

On Friday we went to see Cambridge. It was a nice town but it felt a lot more modern than Oxford... of course the university isn't quite as old.

We spent today in Dover where we saw the white cliffs and drove around Dover castle.

We ended our day in another cute town called Hythe where we some some windsurfers. Adam and I were freezing near the water so we were really impressed by the people in the water.