Catching up

It's been so long since I last wrote in this blog that I feel the need to convey everything that I've been up to. If you want to, read on and bear with me . . if not, I totally understand!

All the shipments have arrived and all of our stuff is successfully in one house for the first time. We're still going through and deciding what to keep and what to give away or throw away and I figure we will probably be still going through that for the next couple of years at the rate we get bored with it. (smile) I know some of you have asked what the house is like and also asked if we could post pictures . . I'm thinking that I should be able to be able to do that in the next month or so.

I think the coldest it has been here is 64F in the day and 51F at night. I feel guilty when I keep reading of all the snow, ice and cold weather that Illinois, Iowa, England, and Iceland are getting (although the weather is really just been uncommon for England). Everyone tells me that we will experience cold weather here but I still don't think I'll have any use for sweaters and turtlenecks . . so the debate comes, should they be some of what I dispose of? I've not needed such warm clothing since I left the bitter winters of Illinois behind and continuing to carry them around as they most assuredly go out of style seems silly so perhaps I should revisit this thought as I go through my closets again after having been here a full year to experience the full range of "weather".

Starting the beginning of December I made a variety of Christmas Cookies (as is my usual custom). The first batch was, of course, the chocolate covered cherry cookies. I enjoyed taking these to a cookie exchange party here in the neighborhood and all the girls seemed eager to try them. I also made a variety of other kinds and sent trays upon trays of cookies into the office with David so that I would have the pleasure of cooking them and tasting them but not over-tasting them.

Originally for Christmas Dinner we had anticipated having some of David's office-mates over (those who didn't have family in the area) but they all headed somewhere else (mostly home) for Christmas . . and who can blame them . . therefore Christmas Dinner was a quiet affair with David and myself and it was very nice. Although I must admit that I did miss my Heinrich Family Tradition of big meal with family, church, and then back for snack food and conversation. However, new location and therefore new traditions so we'll see what we can figure out.

David has been lucky enough to obtain from work some of the free game tickets sometimes available to the LA Kings Hockey Games at the Staples Center. We had both really enjoyed seeing the Ice Hogs play in Rockford when we lived there and neither of us had seen an NHL game live before so our first game was such fun! We were thrilled a week later when he was able to get another set. The Staples Center doesn't seem to have "bad seating" anywhere so even though we were at the top of the rows we could see quite well. Although the Kings didn't win the 2nd game we saw we still enjoyed being there and hope to have the opportunity to go again.

Today we got together with the Southern California 1st USSS Company C (American Civil War Berdan's Sharpshooters Reenactors) which is our new unit and had the annual meeting. We looked at the calendar and as a group picked 1 event a month to attend. Of course the weather out here means that you can attend events ALL year round so that was quite a concept. David and I were also impressed that there didn't seem to be a lot of months were the events were stacked back to back making it more difficult to find 1 to attend for that month . . they were all spread nice and even. We also though it was nice that this group gets together other times during the year outside of the reenacting hobby. They try to do a couple of live firing events, just the group at a target range. They have a pot luck picnic type of thing early in the season and a pool party or other get together in the middle. They even discussed doing some group meals for some of the events. I think we'll enjoy reenacting with them over the time we're here. We seem to be slowly building ourselves a reenacting home no matter where we travel, which makes us both smile.

We've been able to be active in the SCA quite a bit since we arrived here. There is a practice almost every night of the week in the local area, however we've narrowed ours down to the 2 within our Barony. We go to the College on Mondays to try to get more college kids involved and enjoying the hobby and then to the Baronial practice on Wednesdays. We have made it to 2 events so far. We attended Dreiburgen's Anniversary and enjoyed having the opportunity to fence some new people as well as getting our local authorizations out of the way. At Coronation we enjoyed visiting with Mary when she came over to visit from England at that event. Mary was kind enough to introduce us to other previous Drachenwalders now residing in the area which means that we'll know even more people in the area and have a common ground with them. Of course David has been out here before and so he knows some people already but I'm starting fresh and knowing someone AND having a common ground with them is a bonus! This past week I went and visited the local Tattershall Study Group and I know I'm going to have fun at their classes on Thursdays!

I guess that about sums up what's been going on here. I'll try to be better about writing more often in this blog. Funny, when I started this for family and friends in Illinois and Iowa it made sense and now I know that some of our friends in England check in on us here too which is lovely. More later . . Promise!

This weekend has been really nice and relaxing overall.

Friday's "Date Night" yielded a nice steak for both of us at Outback.

Saturday saw us putting together furniture and placing it for the office which is located in the basement along with getting a new entertainment center that will consolidate the TV and all the other stuff (DVD, VCR, Surround sound, etc.) and a new bookcase for in the office area.

Sunday we slept in and then started into the rearranging of the boxes to finish placing furniture in the office. Once the furniture was tentatively placed we both felt the need to empty some boxes. We got through about 10-15 boxes (I think) but not everything can be put away yet so some of it still clutters our desk tops. But we definitely feel like we're making headway.

We then headed out for a quick dinner at Souplantation before heading to Dafydd's softball game. Tonight was the playoffs/championship and I'm happy to report that Dafydd's team won!! Yeah!! But it was COLD sitting there watching 2 games. Taught a couple of young ladies a little bit of Lucet before they got distracted by skateboards and playing catch, but they enjoyed playing with the yarn for quite some time even when they decided to give up on Lucet.

Tomorrow while Dafydd is at work I'll undertake getting some more of these boxes and stuff cleared. Part of the unpacking is deciding what we want to continue to hold onto and move around the world with us. My old CRT monitor has been replaced and is headed to the local Salvage store as a donation along with a printer, CD rack and some other odds and ends. Now that we have almost all of our stuff in 1 location it has become clear that we have WAY too much stuff. 3 bedroom sets, 5 sets of pots and pans, 3 sets of dishes plus a set of china and the list goes on and on. Once we get all the stuff separated out into the garage that we're giving away, we'll make that call to the local Salvage store and they'll think they hit Christmas. *smile* Still the decisions don't always come easy.

It's been forever since I posted and I still have yet to finish several of our recent trips but I thought I should post something for any readers that are still out there and go back to the other stuff later (as I've done in the past). So let's see . . well we've moved to California from England and I must admit that I've been missing all the friends we made in England while we were there. Just the other weekend we had a visit from Mary and enjoyed spending some time with her. The moving part is going fairly well. So far we only seem to be missing one thing and there hasn't been any major damage to anything but there are still lots of boxes to unpack and there are still parts of furniture or computer equipment that still has not been found among the boxes. I'm sure it's all here . . somewhere . .

For the past couple of weeks, since we lacked much furniture, both of us had our desktops set up on a pair of filing cabinets and a coffee table. I'm happy to report that today we finished assembling the desks and putting them in place for our office. I'll admit that I'm very excited about this because now when I feel like I need a break from unpacking boxes I can sit down at a desk and do some of the scanning or other things that I've been needing to get done. Additionally, it means that I'm more likely to turn the Skype on now and again just in case someone wants to call. ~smile~

Our current concern seems to be book shelving space. Those of you who have visited our place before know that we had LOTS of bookshelves in SEVERAL rooms all filled with books of some kind. Well, new place and new book shelve positioning. We've managed to put all the tall similarly fashioned book shelves in the room we're going to use as a library but that means that we'll be short book shelves in places like the office, game room or sewing room (all of which are in the same room). I'm sure it will work out somehow and some way and especially after we get all the boxes out of the way. It's amazing how much space the boxed stuff takes up .. once it is put away it doesn't look like we've got that much stuff at all. Well, okay we still have a lot of stuff but it doesn't seem to impede daily living once it is put away.

Well tomorrow we make a SERIOUS dent in the office boxes . . or at least that is the intent.