Tuesday: Feeling quite chipper after a big sleep, good breakfast and slow start. We headed to Brindleyplace to check out our future accommodation and have some lunch. We ended up at a burger joint and spotted something familiar on the menu... small world :) Thereafter a bit of a wander around, ending up at the Bullring shopping centre and discovering the Disney store... the girls were beside themselves! We headed back to the hotel after a short dash to the supermarket for some simple dinner supplies. Another early night for all of us. At the hotel we had two rooms to accommodate us. The girls had turns at sleeping with either of us, or on their own in the extra bed. It was a lovely treat for all of us to have "ring-around-the-rosies-sleepovers" for the first week.
Wednesday: L slept for 15 hours!! A slowish start with the girls having Wheetabix for breakfast. A has never eaten breakfast of this type so quickly - it seems having an "a" in the name makes all the difference :) Off to the bank to open a UK account... sort of. More on that another time. After our appointment we tried to find more lunch... different burger joint followed by a drive to Bournville for a bit of a look-see. We arrived at Cadbury World to find a few mounds of snow from the previous week - hope for A! Wearing a little thin we decided to head back and do the tour the next day.
Thursday: We left in good time for Cadbury World and as we arrived light snow flurries were falling. Again all lovely moments of promise especially for A. The tour was great fun and we learned lots, the girls and D ate lots and all of us enjoyed the experience. It was a bit frigid but that didn't stop the girls from being desperate to go on the outside playground. Afterwards we headed to a local café and had a lovely wee lunch. Back to the hotel afterwards with bedtime now a bit later than those first few nights. The mornings and afternoons/evenings at the hotel usually saw the girls reading, drawing, playing with lego or pretend play. We spent a lot of that time making phone calls, doing research and making decisions - cars, areas, schools, systems and processes, rules and regulations - for many aspects of life here.
Friday: Still feeling a bit worse for wear we decided to have a bit of a suburban sightseeing venture, to start getting a feel for the different areas and locations around Birmingham. We drove for about 10 minutes from the city centre and suddenly found ourselves outside the big smoke and in the country! So quick! We drove around the "green belt", ended up in Bromsgrove and then proceeded to find some yummy lunch. A winding drive through the suburbs back for our final night at the hotel.
Saturday: After the morning spent visiting some car dealers, we had lunch, packed up our hotel rooms and headed for the serviced apartments that would be our home until we found a more permanent place to live. Our new digs were lovely - 12th floor overlooking the city with plenty of room and a kitchen where we could actually cook! Hoorah! And cook we did - that same night! And put a load of washing on too! Amazing how much one longs for these things when you cant do it on a day to day basis.
Sunday: I woke up and felt a whole heap more human than the last week - we all did I think! The fog had lifted a little. We had a "home-based" day and only ventured out to do a small supermarket shop. There was still a lot of paperwork to be done and of course finding a house to live in also takes a bit of time - especially when you have limited knowledge of an area. A quiet day and D's last day before starting work.
Survive week 1 - tick.
L xx