Our Piece of Chester

Welcome to Chester! We arrived in town after a short 4 hour drive from London. While getting out of London was one of the biggest automotive challenges we've ever faced, the rest of the drive was much like any American highway drive. Once we got to Chester we phoned our leasing agent and no one answered, we figured since it was the lunch hour that they'd taken a short break. However, when we phoned the agent appointed to us by MDH's company we were told that the owners of the leasing company had taken all the clients' money and skipped town. Not only does this mean we lost our deposit, but the keys to the apartment were also inside the leasing office. To make things even more exciting, Drew had been allowed to put all the luggage that he travelled with originally in the apartment and the owner was on vacation until August 20th. Woohoo! After everyone pulling some fast strings, the owner's mother-in-law drove the spare set of keys to a friend, who met our agent, who brought them back to us and we were finally allowed in our apartment. A huge thank you to the owner who was kind enough to let us in even without any official paperwork...
The girls in our new living room...

Our kitchen...I'm sure you all recognize the oven, but what you can't see it that the next cabinet opens as a dishwasher and the one beside that is the washer/dryer =)

The washer/dryer as one unit with no actual words on it to direct me really scared me at first but I think I've got the hang of it now. And after standing in the laundry soap aisle at the store for 20 minutes I've found something that gets our clothes clean and doesn't irritate anyone's skin =) However, it holds about 1/4 of the amount of clothes as our American washer so I do laundry A LOT. But I can only do warm and hot load in the morning before we lose all the hot water because our hot water heater only reheats at night.

This is the master bedroom before we put sheets on and before all of our stuff was delievered to cover every inch of the floor except for a path to my and MDH's sides of the bed.

This is the park just across the street from our house. It also has a playground and lots of open space to play catch or turn cartwheels or whatever. I don't know what I would do without it, we go there everyday.

This is the train that runs around the park. It only costs 75p for the kids to ride and it's actually pretty fun!

Here is the teeter-totter at the playground, neither girls weighs enough to make it go so I have to help.

In front of our apartment building...

Our trip to the Chester Zoo. The monkeys were the best part. We saw the biggest, hairiest ape I've ever seen. I wish I had been fast enough to get a picture of it.

This is our upper balcony. It's the 4th floor of the building so it has a pretty good view of our part of the city. The weather has been so nice lately we've been able to sit up there quite a bit.

That's our little part of Chester. The next time I go into the heart of the city I will bring my camera and show you around town. Cheers!