I haven’t blogged because I’ve spent the last three days engrossed in the book These is my Words by Nancy E. Turner.  It was a going away gift from a friend and it gobbled me up.  Then after I’ve done nothing but read a novel for days my thoughts start to run like prose and my life becomes dramatic fiction all in my head and I feel a little out of sorts and when I hear a British accent out my front window I’m terribly confused because my present moment is in the Arizona territories in 1887.   Such are the joys of a book.  But then the fall-out is a messy house and demons for children because how could I possibly be troubled to feed and discipline them when poor Miss Prine is fighting for her life against Apaches? 

Friday night we went to Costco.  When we got home, hours later, Richard and I vowed to never forget that a trip to Costco or Ikea is a four hour committment, at least.  And it turns out, not just anyone can get a membership to Costco here.  The woman at customer service kept asking Richard if he was sure we didn’t already have a membership from the States that we could use.  “Don’t all Americans have a Costco membership?” she asked.  But it also turns out that KPMG has an arrangement with Costco so we should be able to get one if we want.  I think the only reason we seem to believe we can’t live without one here when we managed to live without one in Boise is because the portion sizes of groceries in the stores here are so inadequate for a family of six, and we are hoping the Costco sizes will be a bit more like “normal” sizes back home. 

Saturday was cloudy and stormy and Richard took the kids to the church for an activity in the morning.  Saturday afternoon is a blur… I’m not sure what Richard and the kids did…  

Sunday at church I got a calling.  I am now the second counselor in the Young Women Presidency.  There are a total of two young women who attend church regularly and I already adore them.  

I’ll have to devote an entire post just to the school induction and everything we learned.  We went back this morning to buy all the “PE kits”, “jumpers” and backpacks.  (There was a word for those too but I can’t remember it.)  I felt badly for the kids because everyone kept commenting on how small they are and how Eli must be on the brink of a growth spurt so we better buy a size bigger.  Eli has never seemed to mind being small though and when Cameron looked disappointed the same woman said “You will have a growth spurt too!” 

On Monday after the induction we had to walk home because my Oyster card was broke and you can only top-up at stations or online and I haven’t registered to do that yet.  An Oyster card just looks like a credit card and you can use it on the tube, the DLR, the overground, and the rail and  buses when you are in certain zones in the city.  It’s really convenient.  It’s so fancy that you don’t have to scan it anywhere, you just touch it to the electronic pad and it scans it, gives you a green light and tells you your balance.  

Anyway it was really hot and past lunch time so we stopped and had doughnuts on a park bench.  I would say I bribed the kids with doughnuts, but that would have just been bad parenting because they were so naughty at the school they didn’t deserve anything.  I forgave them because I wasn’t smart to make an appointment at lunchtime and I blame the school for making me fill out pages and pages of paperwork that they could have sent home with me on the day I made the appointment.  

Here we are on Tuesday and I feel like we don’t have much to show for the week so far other than that the kids are all registered for school and I finished a whole book.