Shepherd's Pie

Hi Everyone!

I feel like it has been so long since I have blogged that I need to re-introduce myself! No, not really, but it has been a long time since I have updated our blog. We have been staying super busy and we have been re-introducing ourselves to America. All of it seems so surreal to us, we are definitely still experiencing "reverse culture shock", but we are having a lot of fun too!

Last weekend we went to two community garage-sales for a couple of hours in the morning (its a good thing our girls wake up at 6:30 I guess!). I was on the look-out for some baskets to put toys in for our living room, but we hit the "jack pot" with a red coupe car for Jillian for $2 instead and I found some great girl clothes for $0.50 a piece (some new with tags!).

We also made our first trip to the mall this last week. As an early Father's Day gift to Brad we ate at a Thai place and had Mango Chicken! Then on Wednesday night, we went to the library as a family. It is located in the Rockville city center. We checked out some books and as we came out we discovered Wed. night is the summer concert night. They had a great band playing and we just enjoyed the atmosphere for a little bit.

We don't know how long we will be here in Maryland, so we are trying to a soak in all there is to do in this area. We are planning on going to a Heritage Culture Day for Montgomery County next weekend. The list of things we want to see and do here is long, which I think is a lot of fun!

But mostly we are just trying to adjust to being back. We have had to re-purchase a lot of things (and are in still in the process of doing that), because we didn't keep a lot of things in an effort to minimize what we stored. I definitely am able to see that prices have inflated quite a bit since we left two years ago. But thankfully we have found some real bargains (as well as have made some real boo-boos, but because I am the narrator, I will tell you only the happy-ending stories). :-)

The greatest need that we had for our house was a table and chairs. We sat on the ground for over a week to eat all of our meals, so I was really eager to find something/ anything that we could use. I went to used furniture places, as well as several furniture stores desperately trying to find something that would work (and hoping for a spectacular, unbeatable sale). I spent hours looking and I finally resolved that I may have to spend a lot more than I wanted to spend for something that wasn't exactly what we were looking for.

I said a prayer and told God that I needed His help, because I was having no "luck" finding anything (I was quite frustrated by my lack of success at that point). The Lord reminded me that He knew my needs and that I shouldn't stress about it, I just needed to re-release my need to him. After having this conversation with God, I looked at Craig's List for the zillionth time hoping that something would be there... and not 10 minutes earlier a lady had posted a cherry table with 6 chairs and a side board for $300! I immediately e-mailed, and someone else had already beaten me to it. But she said that she really wanted to "give" it to a family who was just starting out and that turned out to be us! I looked up the retail value of the table and chairs and as new it retails for $3000! To top that, my parents wanted to give us a homewarming gift so they gave us the money to purchase it! :)

Jillian is adjusting well and is finally getting to the point where she doesn't throw up every time we get in the car! Yippee for that! Also, Jillian loves being a helper. She helps set the table nearly every night now and she likes to help mommy make her bed in the morning too. In addition, we have had a couple of play dates since being back. She has gotten to play with Boston and Simran Rosborough and Jack Schumacher!

She also has gotten to play with new toys! It is quite funny (in retrospect of course) but I was concerned about Jillian not having many toys to play with when we got back, because we gave a lot of things away when we were moving back. But upon our arrival here, our friends the Rosborough's gave us their "old" play kitchen and a grocery cart for Jillian. My friend Kristen gave us some dolls and a little baby doll crib. And another fun toy has been her new big wheel from MiMi and PawPaw. She loves going down to the basement to play with it! I have set up an area for Faith to play with a 5 X7 carpet that our friends the Wyatt's gave us. We also were given a beautiful hand-painted "bureau" (from our friends Elliott's friends) that we store games/ puzzles and have a CD player on to listen to music while down there.

How I am writing I am sure it looks like we have not bought anything ourselves! But I assure we have spent quite a bit of money (for our budget) trying to re-acquire what we need to function here, but God has been so faithful to us. He is providing abundantly for us and we feel so blessed that others have shared some of their things with us!

Brad has settled back into work and things are really starting to pick up speed for him. He is glad to be back to the NIH, but really misses his old co-worker friends. He is currently riding the bus to the metro station, and then taking the train straight to the NIH campus. It is a longer commute then he had in Cambridge, but is able to get a little work done on the train.

Final thing I will say is I was missing England so much today, I decided to make Shepherd's Pie for our dinner tonight! If I must say myself (and I will) it turned out really well! Just like eating scones and tea conjures up memories for me, so does this remind me of the meals church members brought us right after Faith was born! I miss our friends in Cambridge, the beauty of England, and I even miss British Food!!!

Please keep our family in your prayers as we continue to adjust to our new home. Pray for new relationships/ friendships and wisdom for us as make many decisions. Your prayers mean so much.

With Love and Appreciation,

Lauren