Update on everything...

Things are going well. Neil is loving his job & those he works with. His boss has been awesome & so understanding about us getting settled. She let Neil go in late on the first day of school, so he could help me get the kids off to school. Then she let him have the Thurs. & Fri. off when we had our stuff delivered & were trying to unpack. He is going to Nova Scotia this week, to meet one of the Directors that he manages, and to tour some of the stores, etc. Then the 3rd week in October he'll go over to the west coast, to Victoria, BC for a week to meet a couple more of his Directors that he is over. Then in November he'll go to Quebec to do the same. He is trying to get to all the different provinces to meet with the 6 directors that he manages & visit some stores, etc. over the next few months, and then his travel should slow down to just once every couple of months or so.

The kids are all doing good too. They have adjusted (although they still have days that they REALLY miss their friends from Bentonville). They all really like their teachers & have made a few friends at school & church. PJ has been to a Young Men's campout, a multi-stake dance, and youth baptisms, and goes to early morning seminary every day before school. Tessa & Jonah will start going to their Activity Days activities this week as well (they don't do scouts here, so they do Activity Days for girls AND boys--which is very common outside of the U.S.). Jonah is also on the cross country team at school and has his first cross country meet next week. And Tessa is going to start volleyball at her school in January. And Clay will start back into swimming in January. I was going to try to get him into soccer, but didn't get him registered soon enough. And then we are also looking at getting them all back into music again. PJ wants to try guitar, Tessa either the violin or clarinet, Jonah the drums, and Clay...we'll see. Maybe we'll wait a little longer with him, but I've thought about piano or violin.

The ward here is much smaller & a lot fewer youth & primary kids, but they have all been very friendly & welcoming. We had a big ward picnic on Labor Day, and once a month they do a "Souper Sunday" right after church. It's a potluck, everyone brings some kind of soup or chili, then they have rolls to go with it and a few desserts. And we had one family invite us over for dinner a week ago, and then another family is going to have us over for dinner in a couple of weeks. We have our church's semi-annual General Conference this weekend (a world-wide broadcast), and we will do our traditional turkey dinner for it, so we are inviting two families from church over to join us, so we can get to know them better.

We got everything unpacked within the first few days & just finished hanging our pictures this weekend, so it feels more like home. We managed to get everything here without any major damage (just a couple chips from our desk & piano, but nothing very noticeable). And we are still missing a box or two of some kitchen items (3 glass canisters, 3 cutting boards, 1 toaster, 1 knife block with 10 knives, 2 bulliten boards, and 1 electric can opener). But at least it's nothing major, and we are getting reimbursed for some items that we had to go buy. The moving process with that company was NOT impressive at all! We have been very irritated with the service on this end (the driver & delivery). Horrible! But at least we finally got all of our things & are settled. And dealing with the people at the beginning of the move and working to get our reimbursement has been positive, so I think it's more based on the driver that delievered our stuff than the company itself.

I'm staying busy with just the usual "mom" stuff (errands, shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, ironing, paying the bills, balancing the checkbook, helping kids with homework & shuttling them around to various places & activities), and I'm going to start volunteering at the school with reading groups in a couple more weeks. And I still might look for some online degree programs that I could do from home or something. We'll see...

As for our home in Bentonville, we've still had lots of interest. Our realtor says that they are showing it every few days & the comments are all very positive, and it's priced very good. There are 3 people who have it on their list of top couple choices, but no offers yet, so hopefully we get a good offer soon! We don't want to keep paying 2 house payments & utilites for 2 homes for very long. Our realtor (for our land) emailed me the other day saying that another realtor had called her about that too. So at least there has been a little interest with that as well. Hopefully we can get both sold soon & then we'll celebrate BIG! :)

Things have been going SO well and we feel so blessed! Although any move can be stressful & hard, things have gone relatively smoothly, especially considering all that we've had to do to move to another country & get settled. Every now & then I just get this great feeling that this is where we are supposed to be & everything is working out perfectly! We are SO grateful for all we have & all that we've been blessed with, and we know, without a doubt, that Heavenly Father is watching out for us & blessing us in so many ways! :)