Unpacking and Settling in

Last week was a very busy week.  At the beginning of the week, we had a large crate of our belongings from America delivered.  It arrived on a semi-truck (what they call lorries here), and the driver called my husband to let him know that he couldn't find our house.  Our house is down a little road that wasn't obvious to the truck driver.  We went out to find out where he was parked, and I showed him where our house was.  First, the driver tried backing down the small road towards our house.  I stood there with some of the children, covering my eyes, because I was afraid he was going to run into something on the small road in between houses.  Upon realising he couldn't back down all the way to our house, he pulled his huge truck back up the road and decided he would unload the large crate at the top of the hill and pull it down to our property.

All of the children were out now and watched as he began to lift the large crate and pallet onto the pallet jack.  It all looked so unsteady that I turned away, not wanting to watch.  All of this was happening on top of a hill, and the crate was slanting downwards...all of a sudden there was a large "crash", and I looked back to find that our huge crate had fallen over, off of the lorry, with the majority of the boxes that were inside now fallen into the road.  We all gasped, and I was thankful that none of the children were nearby when the boxes came tumbling down.  When we had prepared our crate back in America, we had secured it with straps, but apparently somewhere along its journey, the straps had been taken off and were never replaced, which caused the instability.  I approached the driver and asked if he would like us to just start carrying boxes down to our house.  He did, but they were quite heavy, so some of the children worked together to carry boxes down the road.  Thankfully, shortly after this, my dear husband came home on his lunch break to help us with our predicament, and he helped us get all of our 26 boxes into the house.

The next couple of days were spent unpacking and putting things away in the house.  Thankfully, my husband had gotten enough bookshelves to contain the many books we brought with us.  We also now have our clothes for the cold weather, as we had been getting cold here without them!

A storm hit here over the weekend, which made it very cloudy, rainy, and windy here.  This made for a great time of snuggling in on Saturday to play games, have Bible study, and watch Little House on the Prairie together as a family.  We have also had some beautiful sunsets.  We also went apple picking last week, as our neighbours have several apple trees and invite us to come and pick their apples.  We have already made applesauce and apple cider, and we have plans to make apple butter, apple tarts, apple crisp, and perhaps some apple pie.  My husband and the children have peeled and cut up much of the apples and put them in the freezer for later.  I also need to make some berry preserves with the blackberries we have picked--they grow wild here all over.  Cherished of God is making homemade candied fruit for the fruit cake she is making for Christmas.  We've never made a fruit cake before, but she wants to try it since we are now in our new home, and it's a tradition here.

Our school books arrived in our crate, so I have to get busy planning everyone's school assignments, and I have to get back to teaching, along with of course getting ready for our many guests coming soon (smiles).