We moved to London!

I've definitely been MIA for the past two months. Sorry about that. We just had a minor change to the Frizzell family- we moved across the pond to London last week. No biggie. 

WHAT?!?!

I know. It's crazy. 

It's been crazy-times around here, but things are starting to slow down and I can actually take a breather and attempt a blog post while the girls are sleeping.

Frequently asked questions about our life right now:

1. Why did you move to London?

Mike's company won a proposal that moved our family to London for a year. We knew in early September that there was about a 10-20% possibility that this would actually happen, when they submitted the proposal. Well, that 10-20% turned into 100% on November 2, when we found out that his company won the proposal! 

We flew into high gear and ran around like chickens with our heads cut off to get everything in order to move. This included getting passports and visas for the girls (envision trying to get passport pictures and visa pictures taken for your squirmy 2.5 year old and 7 month old- not the most fun I've had), selling my car, figuring out what to do with our house, sorting through our stuff, getting stuff packed to be air-shipped to London, getting stuff packed to be moved into long-term storage, figuring out who would rent our house, finishing up repairs/improvements to our current house, etc.

2. What are you doing with your house in Richardson?

My lovely sister, Liz, and her two friends are renting our house for a year. Truly a win-win situation!

3. What about your job at Children's? Will you work as a nurse practitioner in London?

This was quite a bittersweet choice. There was no option to take a leave of absence, so I had to resign. Very sad as I'd been at Children's for almost 10 years and loved what I was doing in the out-patient endocrinology clinic. But, I know that God is bigger than our circumstances and am looking forward to spending a year a home with my girls, as I will not be working while we are in London. We shall see what I'll be doing when I get back home, though (I have to work 200 hours a year to maintain my NP license in the state of Texas). 

4. Where are you living now? 

We are living in a lovely 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath, two-story mews house (meaning, has a garage) very close to Hyde Park in London. Once everything is set up, I'll post some pics. Our house is unfurnished, meaning that we've had to start from scratch in regards to furniture, dishes, etc. I spent a stressful 2 hours online the Wednesday before we left (with the movers there), furnishing our house from IKEA, so that it would be delivered by the 27th, right after we arrived, before Mike had to leave for a week-long business trip. Crazy-times, people. 

We are loving the close location to lots of fun things to do here- Mike is about a 20 minute walk to work, Paddington tube station is about 10 minutes away, Hyde Park is about a 10 minute walk from our house. It's been wonderful, so far. We won't have a car while in London, so everything will be by foot. Hence, having a house close to everything was important!

5. How long will you be living in London?

Mike's contract is for a year, so we anticipate returning back to Texas right before Christmas of 2014. 

6. When did you all leave? What about all your stuff?

Mike left for the UK on December 1st. The movers came on December 2nd to pack up all our stuff that was air-shipped to London. My last day at work was December 13th.  Another set of movers came on December 18 & 19th to pack up our stuff that was moving into permanent storage (not all our stuff is being stored, as Liz and her friends are using most of our furniture, kitchen stuff, etc- like I said, a win-win situation!). 

The girls and I and Liz (my sister) boarded a plane for London (with a 2.5 hour lay-over in Miami) on December 20th and arrived on the 21st. We had 10 checked bags, including a pack and play, double stroller and breast pump, plus we each had one or two carry-on's. It was insane. 

Another post to come about that lovely plane ride. Not for the faint of heart, my friends. Needless to say, I was VERY GLAD to see my sweet husband waiting for us at the Heathrow terminal. Imagine the opening scene of Love Actually- it was kind of like that.  

Like I said, more posts to come on our adventures here! I just got a UK phone and am trying to figure out how to sync it to iCloud to upload my pics. But until then, here's a pic that Liz took as we boarded the double-decker bus to go on the Harry Potter Tour at Warner Brothers Studio. It was AMAZING.