our pictures

I finally scanned some of the pictures we had taken last month--and here they are. The girls' pictures are great and the family ones turned out okay. Click on the collage to make it bigger.

emma's first day of school

Have you ever tried getting a serious picture of a clown. These are my attempts yesterday before taking Emma to school. I never did get one serious one. She is a cheeky monkey.

Emma Shea had a great first day of school yesterday. All of her friends returned and the class is very small. Her class is all the children who missed the cut off for Reception (Our Kindergarten) Emma missed it by TWO days. The teachers feel she is ready, but there is no compromise on the cut-off date. You are either 4 by August 31 or you wait another year. Oh well. I am not ready to have her gone all day yet anyway!!

She had fun playing and meeting her new teacher. Her teacher from last year decided after 20 years of being a Nursery Nurse to go back to school and become a teacher for the upper grades. Emma had no transitional problems and was ready to go back today!

Ballet started back up also yesterday, so we went up the hill after school and went to ballet class for 40 minutes. Needless to say, by the time she got home she was zonked!!

first day of secondary school!!!!

Michaela is officially a "Year Sevener" {i.e 6th grader}. She was very nervous this morning about going to secondary school, but excited about seeing her friends again and getting back into the routine of school. She is attending Magdalen College (this is what they call the secondary schools here. 11 year olds through 16 attend secondary school and then British children are finished with school at the age of 16. They go onto take GCSEs and continue on to Uni at the age of 18--or they can be finished and go into the work force. The system is complex. This is a simplified version). Mornings are easy--Are you wearing the black pants, white shirt, tie, and jumper?" or "Are you wearing the black skirt, white shirt, tie, and jumper?" Stephen or I take her in and pick her up (She nor I were thrilled with the idea of her standing at the bus stop in the village and riding the bus with 16 year olds, etc.)

She had a fantastic day yesterday. She loves her music teacher and history teacher. We are just praying for a successful year in Math:) The school is separated into two sites and her Music class is in the other site, so the students walk 5 or so blocks through town to get to some of there classes throughout the day. She was very nervous about that (as was I since this is such a foreign concept to an American public school teacher--where the students could not even be in the hallway without a teacher), but she made it--to find her long haired, cute music teacher:):)

She was all smiles and full of stories about her day when I picked her up.

I think this will be a great year for her

its unofficially official..

We received approval from Stephen's unit in Blue Ash to stay another year here. We are now waiting on notification that funding has been approved by the government for the Air National Guard.
We are all very excited about staying.
We love England and the experiences we have had so far.
We would also love to stay and continue working with the church in Mildenhall. Having lost three families to PCSing, we are down to three men to do all of the services. With such a small group, absences are truly felt.
Hopefully we now something definite soon-but the government works on its own schedule, so we will know when the orders are in our hands. We will keep you updated.

happy 4th birthday emma shea!!!!

This is just a quick update--more to come when I have more time.

Yesterday, as a birthday treat, we were taking Emma out to a restaurant. This is something we RARELY do over here, so it is a big treat. When we gave her some choices--Frankie and Benny's, TGI Fridays, Nandos, Pizza Hut (the few within an hour of here) she looks at us and says, "I want chicken nuggets from the bowling alley." The bowling alley is one of two places on the base that we have that serves food--the other is Subway--and we can go to anytime. It took about 20 minutes of talking to her to finally convince her to go to a restaurant on the economy!!
What is she going to do in the states when there are restaurants everywhere??? She will probably still want chicken nuggets from the bowling alley:)

Emma Shea has been telling people for over a week that her birthday was September 2nd and she was going to be 4!!! When she woke up this morning she was very excited that the day had finally arrived. Steve and I sang Happy Birthday to her--she had the biggest grin on her face.
She loved the balloons we snuck in last night for her (especially since I do not like balloons and she always has to let hers go outside when she does get one:).
We then headed up to church--where she ran in and told everyone that she was 4 now!! After church services we had a potluck and a small celebration with the entire church (all 14 of us!!.)

Emma Shea chose a princess theme again--I tried to give her other options but she is very headstrong in her opinions(yea, yea, I hear all of you saying "We know where she gets that from.")--so princesses it was. We ate cake and ice cream, opened presents, and had a good time. (I just dread when she grows up and looks at pictures of Michaela's parties and compares her first few parties to those--we are in trouble:):)

Emma and Michaela are at home now playing with the cash register and grocery store goods Emma received today. She is in her element using her 'magianation' as she puts it. Our liberal arts child!!!

Hope everyone has a great Sunday!