Here is the back of the house. We have a set of french doors that open from the living room to the garden.
The church from the back step.
Our large garden with brick gazebo.
The front entrance
The foyer
The living room
Dining room
And, finally, the kitchen
We have so much more room than our previous house! Our kitchen has twice the space and American size appliances! There is a large office downstairs and three large bedrooms upstairs. In addition, there are two smaller rooms upstairs that we are using as a closet and a study.
The house, according to our antique dealer Bob, is 300 years old with a renovation approx 150 years ago. It used to be an old rectory for the Church, and is called The Manor House. Every hour the church bells chime with the time and on Friday nights and Sun mornings, they play a melody for over an hour (much to Aaron's dismay when he is trying to sleep after working until 4am). The village is really quaint and is approx 1000 people. I went for a run Monday throughout and around the village....along a field in which they were doing the fall harvest, to the marina and along the river, and up/down various other streets exploring our new home. It was a tranquil run of about an hour.
Aaron is going back to school part time. He is starting with a Macroeconomics class via the University of Maryland. At least I will have someone to study with this fall when I start studying for boards! He is also working part time at the sports bar on base. So, he is definitely keeping busy!
Work is going well for me and I continue to absolutely love what I do. The swim season started last week so I am coaching two days a week. All the families/kids are great and it has been a lot of fun to see how the kids have improved over last year. The team sent me and the head coach to a coaches clinic in Austria for a weekend...I know, rough...to learn how to effectively coach the kids. And, I am getting more involved with our Church on base. I started lectoring and am taking over as the liturgical coordinator this month. Keeping busy....and, now I need to get motivated to start studying for my oral boards in Dallas in February.
We continue to appreciate all of your prayers with our desire to add to our family. My doctor recently diagnosed me with "unexplained infertility"---he is not sure why we are not getting pregnant again. I had several studies that showed there was no scarring from the D&C and that there is no tubal blockage; and, Aaron has good swimmers :) It has been a frustrating past two years and I think that diagnosis is more frustrating. If there was blockage, at least they could potentially fix it.... He ruled out polycystic ovarian disease since I am not over weight and don't have the other symptoms and ruled out numerous medical conditions that can decrease your chance of conception (diabetes, thyroid disease...). He said the chance of us getting pregnant (based on studies of women diagnosed with unexplained fertility) each month is 5%--YIKES! So, he started me on Clomid this month to see if that works. This raises my chances to a whopping 7% (although considered to be statistically significant, seems still low) The only downside is that there is a 10% chance of twins and a 0.5% chance of triplets....and, if you read Suz's blog to the right.....a chance of quads. But, at this point, we are putting it in God's hands and will welcome his blessing(s). Please continue to pray that we will have success with Clomid in getting pregnant.
Well, that is all for now. We are going to Bristol (near Bath) next weekend for my half marathon that I am not feeling ready for....
Oh, and we are coming home in Dec for two weeks and hope to see you all!
