Questions and Answers

I have been getting some questions lately, things I have mentioned in past posts and never followed up on. So here are some of the answers:
Are you keeping your job or not? This has changed multiple times in the past few months. I telecommute right now, so I wondered if this would be a possibility for me, but assumed it would not work out because of the time difference (5 hours). So we took this assignment in England, assuming I would not work. When my boss told me she thought it would work out after all, we decided that I would keep my job, at least for now. It will give me some stability in a world where everything is changing, and extra income will be helpful, especially until we sell our house in Columbus. We will probably constantly reevaluate this, as we both have agreed the children are the main priority. It also may be decided by my company that it isn’t working out. If they need something at 5 p.m., which does happen fairly often, that will be 10 p.m. for me, and I won’t be available. We will see. But for now, the answer is: yes, I am keeping my job.
Where are Bean and Gerbie going to be during the day? Bean is 5 and is in Kindergarten right now. She will start going to Reception (what they call Kindergarten in England), as soon as we can get her into school there, hopefully no more than 1 or 2 weeks after we get there. We have an interview at the school the day we get there, but with paperwork, etc, not sure how long the process will be. Our goal is to get her into school and back into a normal routine, asap. Gerbie will need some sort of childcare now that I am working. Daycares sound too scary for me (strange country and all), so we have feelers out looking for someone who can come into our house to watch her, at least for the better part of the day. Since I work from home, I will be there to make sure things are going ok.
How long will you guys be living in England? Our plan is 2 years. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but that is the goal. We are viewing this as a good opportunity and a once in a lifetime experience, but most definitely not a permanent thing. As the girls get older, we want them to grow up in a stable environment, and not have them be moved around. Right now at their ages, they will handle this experience just fine. But as they get more connected to school and friends, we don’t want to keep moving them around.
Why do you call your kids Bean and Gerbie? Someone who just started reading my blog who had not read previous posts asked this one and I laughed at it. I do pass this blog out to close family and friends, but it is also an open blog. You can find it from google, or by just stumbling across it in blogspot. I never mention the town we actually live in, in Columbus or in England. I don’t mention our last name. Or even our first names. I do put pictures sometimes, and probably will a lot more after we move and start doing things in Europe that I want to share, but without those other facts, no one stumbling across this blog would know who my children are. I want to keep friends and family updated, but I don’t want to risk our privacy for it. So I use nicknames. Bean is truly the nickname for our oldest daughter, she has had this nickname since birth. Gerbie is what we call our 2 year old sometimes, but because she is only 2, we use her real name most of the time when talking to her, so as not to confuse her. If someone comes across this blog that happens to know us, I am totally fine with that. It is the internet predators that I am trying to keep away from. It always surprises me when I come across a blog that has last names, first names and the town they live in, sometimes even home addresses. This scares me. If you are a close friend of ours, you will have our new address or be able to email us for it, if not, you don’t need it.
I am excited about having this blog and committed to keeping it updated. It has proven to be a great outlet for me, and keeps multiple friends and family updated on what is going on in our lives right now. I am even more excited to update it once we get there and have new experiences and travel adventures. Right now, it is all about the logistics of our move –which is totally crazy right now...and probably a little boring to anyone reading it. But this is what our life is right now. My husband and I had to go to lunch yesterday to get out of the house for a showing, and we were coordinating our calendars. Blackberry’s and notebooks out, going through every day until we leave with what is going on. This is also partly because we have one car right now. It takes a lot of coordination to keep this move on track. 14 days until our flight!