Playground

There is a playground that is part of the school grounds. The kids love to go up the hill and play on the slides and swings. I realized after I took these pictures that I should have taken one of the whole playground. Maybe I can convince the kids to go back today. ;)

Note from School

I can be obsessive compulsive at times, but even I didn't think of this... Ian's pencils came back with this note today.

The newly labeled pencils.

First Day on the School Bus

Ian and Isabelle got their bus passes on Monday. Ian rode the bus home Monday, and they are both now riding the bus to and from school. They have really enjoyed it so far. Caleb was anxiously waiting for the school bus. I don't know if he was worried about Ian and Isabelle, or if thought he was missing something fun.

Ian and Isabelle after riding the bus on Tuesday.

Game Night

This past Friday evening, the school had a game night for the students and staff. Here is Ian with his friend Ian. His family lives upstairs from us. He is also eight years old in the 3rd grade. The two Ian's were great friends from the first moment they met.Here are Isabelle and Caleb attempting to play fuse ball.

Outside of Apartment

This is the front and sides of our apartment building. As you can see it is built on a hill. The kids love being able to run around outside on the grass and in the trees. I will have to take some more pictures of the grounds.

Our Apartment

These are pictures of the inside of our apartment. I will post the outside pictures separately, because there are quite a few of the inside. There are 3 steps up the front of the building to the front door. After you go through the front door, you can up a flight of steps (on the left) to Apts 1&2, or down 3 steps to Apts 3&4. If you continue past 3&4 there is another flight of stairs which goes down to Apts 5&6. We are in Apt 5. Fortunately, we had lots of help when we were unloading. That is a lot of steps to carry things down! The building is on a hill, so the back door of the building is at ground level. Once the U-haul was empty enough, Stephen drove around to the back and we carried things in that way. That was much easier.
Things are still not unpacked and put away, etc, but it will give you the general idea.
Directly inside the front door is the hallway. The door to our bedroom is directly on the right, then the door to another hallway, a closet door, the kitchen/living room area, and the bathroom door on the right.

This is our bedroom. We wanted to move it upstairs, but found out we weren't allowed. Yes, that is linoleum on our bedroom floor. I know you are jealous.
Inside the door to the right, there is a closet. It is about the size of one of our closets, in Browning. (We each had one.) As long as Stephen realizes that I need more space than he does, we shouldn't have a problem.

This picture is taken from the doorway to the inside hallway. We have a coat rack, and a small bench to put shoes underneath. There is also a closet under the stairs on the left.

This is the living room. The computer and stereo are on the desk, there is a pantry door and part of the kitchen table in the picture, too.

This is the kitchen. You can see the edge of the pantry and the desk in the picture. It is pretty small. The green curtain in the background covers sliding doors that house all of the fuse boxes etc, for the building, so we have to keep that area clean. There were dishes in the cabinets, so I unpacked some of mine. I left some of the ones that were out, and packed away the ones I didn't think I could use. I could barely fit our Rotisserie in the cabinets. They are all very shallow and small. I finally found space in one of the bottom ones. I am still trying to get used to cooking in the small space, and I am learning what works. The oven is so small I can not fit my large cookie sheet in, but I have a neighbor across the hall who offered the use of hers when we need it.
I have also learned to do any baking at night. It has been pretty warm here, and we don't have air conditioning. The rest of the house stays fairly comfortable with fans, but there is not much air circulation in the kitchen. I'm hoping when the winter comes, the kitchen will stay warm with use of the oven. :)

This is one of the bedrooms upstairs. This is the "boys side." The upstairs bedrooms are bigger than the downstairs, and we had room to put all 3 kids in one room. (There is no door to the outside from the upstairs.) They each have a dresser. You can see Caleb's in the back, and the edge of Ian's right inside the door.

This is Isabelle's side of the room.

This is the other bedroom upstairs, which we have turned into an office/playroom. This room still needs the most unpacking and organizing. The closet in here will have the treadmill, some storage, and some of my crafting things. There are also 2 small linen closets at the top of the stairs. About 1/2 of one closet is linens, and the rest is my crafting stuff and the kids crafting stuff.

We still need to get things unpacked, put away, organized, etc. We started classes this week, so we haven't had much time. Hopefully, we will get some things done this weekend.

Starting School

We have all started school now. I will have to do some catch up posts with the rest of our trip and moving into our apartment. We were able to see friends from our church in Baltimore and spend one night with Stephen's Aunt Lois and Uncle Bill.
Today, I am just going to talk about the kids school, and I will try to do other posts of our school, our apartment, the campus, and the area around us.
Ian and Isabelle are both in the Lennoxville Elementary School, which is about 5-10 minutes from our apartment. It is an English school technically, but it is about 1/2 English and 1/2 French. Ian started Tuesday, and Isabelle started Wednesday. (The kindergarten students come one day later, and their parents get to stay for the first hour.)
There are two Kindergarten teachers, and the 2 classes rotate between them. One speaks all English to the class, and the other all French. They are both very nice, and Isabelle has been very happy so far.
The third grade has an English homeroom, and a French homeroom. Ian is in the English homeroom, but has the French teacher for French, social studies and science.
One thing that is different is that they have shoes they keep at school-their inside shoes-- and shoes they wear home, and out to lunch and recess. Both kids have gym clothes that keeps at school (Ian brings his home to wash on the weekends.) They both have an our for lunch, in which they eat and then play on the playground. Ian signed up for an intermural soccer league that plays Wednesday during lunch.
The school bus stops right in front of our building, and once we get their bus passes they will both ride the bus. (It takes awhile for the paperwork to go though.) They are both really excited about riding the bus. Right now I am enjoying picking them up from school, so I don't really mind if the paper work takes a little while.
As for Caleb, he is stuck at home with his parents. The language school had enough beginners for 2 classes. I go to the morning sessions and Stephen to the afternoon. I will write more about that later. We may put Caleb in day care on Wednesday because there are a few things we both have to attend, and it would be good for him to be around other French speakers some.