From the Inner West to the Mid West

It's been a while but we are finally here, we've moved from the Inner West of Sydney, to the Mid West of America.

We've settled in Evanston to be exact, about 11 miles outside of Chicago. It's a lovely leafy suburb, great parks for the kids, good shopping for mum, the beach is only 1.5 miles away - yes we are on a lake (Lake Michigan) but it's a huge lake and luckily for us it has beaches, a great lakeshore walk, parks and BBQ areas so far so good.

We've been here 5 months now and in that short time we've unpacked our small container of belongings that fitted into a 3 bedroomed house in Sydney's Inner West into a 6 bedroomed house with an attic and basement to boot, the good news, moving into a larger house is, I have my own sewing/craft room, more on that later but I love it, Hubby gets his own man cave, the girls, despite the having plenty of room, are sharing and we have 2 spare guest rooms. It's a big lovely old house built in 1893 and we're enjoying it.

We managed quite quickly & luckily to get the girls into a lovely pre-school, they started in March, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Ruby was in the Red room and Tilly in the Yellow room, and the school is next to a fantastic park called Penny Park built by the residents of the area. Although it is Summer holidays now Tilly will continue there in September, whilst Ruby moves on & upward and starts kindergarten.

Hubby is really enjoying his work and has been jet setting around America - he's been to 6 different states so far.

I've jumped into American life, luckily having children means you get to meet other mums and make friends quickly, I'm already part of a book club - yes another excuse to go out and drink wine, I'm getting use to driving on the right, the lingo, food, transport and the American ways it's all fun so far.

As well as a trip to New York which was utterly fantastic, we've had plenty of visitors, my mum who came over with the girls & I in the beginning thanks Mum, we've had Grannie & Grandad (Hubby's parents) over, Nanna & Pop (my Mum and Step dad), our lovely friends Lesley & Steve dropped in for a weekend whilst visiting NY and we're expecting D-Dad (my dad) over hopefully in August - it's great having people over, showing them our new city and life.

So far the weather has been great for us, some days I feel like we are still living in Sydney, it's bizarre but very familiar.

It's now Summer holidays, the kids have 3 months off here, yes three long months, so far we have managed to survive the last 6 weeks with plenty of museum outings, craft days, movies, play dates and parks. I have to say like Sydney, Chicago is very child friendly, plenty to do and see it's great. With only 6 more weeks to go, not that I'm counting, I am I am, Saturday marks a huge adventure for us we're off on our first American/Canadian road trip for 2 weeks and we are all very excited about it.

Mrs C