Spring has sprung

Spring has well and truly arrived in Connecticut. We've got regular clear blue skies and the temperature has been in the high 70s for the past few days - lovely. It's been that nice that we decided to get our first round of golf in for the season ahead of the IAE golf league starting on Tuesday 22nd. So we headed down to Minnechaug course between Glastonbury and Hebron. It's a nice 9-holer and three guys from work decided to join us, which was very civilised. It wasn't a bad round for either of us when all said and done.

Ian has also developed a new goal for our time out here - he wants to get his pilots licence. So to start off, he used the money he earned from clearing Carla's yard to get an introductory lesson. The instructor was very impressed with his knowledge from the outset and allowed him to take off and land as well as control the aircraft (piper tomahawk) in cruise. He flew all over the local area and was able to see how flooded it is with the mountain snows melting further north. So now he's planning on trying this career path, Annalie just thinks he's addicted to trolley dollies after his last few airport jobs

The furniture arrived on Thursday and Ian spent the day unpacking with the shipping guys. Some of the stuff had moved in transit so there were a couple of things that had some minor damage but luckily nothing is too bad. It started to feel like home a little but there has been a lot of work to do to go through everything and get it straight. We've done the lounge/diner and the kitchen. The study and our bedroom is partially done but the main living areas were the most important.

With the arrival of our furniture, there was a realisation that we needed some new bits to complement what we have and what we got rid of before we left. So we made the obligatory trip to Ikea, yes, Ikea! About 40 minutes' drive away in New Haven, yes, New Haven!

One of the biggest issues for us was trying to find curtains for our bedroom. We have a door and two windows all next to each other so needed enough material to cover 3 metres! So we've ended up having to buy four whole panels to cover the gap with a nice gather. But trying to find anywhere stocking curtains that were long enough as well was a nightmare as we wanted longer than standard length. We've ended up ordering some in to a store but it was a complete nightmare. We must have tried every possible shop and ended up driving around in circles, but at least we got them in the end.

So our weekend was spent driving around buying bits for the house or doing stuff at the house. We weren't able to make the most of the fab weather but we had other priorities instead.

We also bought a grill, that's a barbeque to you and me! Ian convinced Annalie to go for a Weber, claiming that they're worth the extra investment. So Sunday we put it together and went to the shop to buy some nice steaks and corn to cook. Our deck gets the sun in the late afternoon so it's a fabulous time for the grill to go on and we sat there with a lovely sunset arriving and a wonderful view to accompany it. And even if we do say so ourselves, the food was bloody lovely too!

We haven't moved into the house just yet as we haven't got any TV, telephone or internet. We're getting connected on Monday (21st) so we'll be able to update you with our new details once the phone number has been confirmed. It will be really nice to finally move in and the house is looking really good. Ian is desperate to sleep in his own bed as he's not been doing too well at the temporary digs .

Annalie has been catching up on all the TV series that she's missed during the move. ABC is the main channel in the US for series like Desperate Housewives, Lost, Brothers and Sisters, Ugly Betty etc and the website allows you to watch all the episodes retrospectively. She's nearly up-to-date with Housewives but has yet to start on Betty and Brothers and Sisters. Both of us are hooked on Lost so we caught up with that quite quickly but it doesn't start back again until this Thursday so we'll be on time. We're getting a DVR (like Sky+) with our cable and it provides us with free HD too good job we bought a HD TV then but it also means that we can tape the series while catching up.

So next time we post to the blog, we'll be doing it from our own house somewhere we can finally start calling "home".