Cottage DIY

Our New House!

Yes, it has been a very long time since I last posted. Apologies for my lack of updates. For those of you who are dying to know what is going on in the world of webb, here it is...We bought a house! Here is is, our little character cottage we bought. It is in Stansted, where we are a five minute walk from the in-laws and a 2 minute walk from the train to London. For those of you who may be thinking of planning to visit us, we still have to fix up the spare room, but there are more pictures to follow of all of our hard work! We managed to get the house just before our trip back home in August, and we also managed to paint it and do the floors. That meant that we had to move all of our stuff in after we came back and before Tim went back to work at his new job. Yes, that's right he is a "proper" teacher now, but that is another story. Anyway more house DIY pictures to follow.

Springtime in England

Here is a picture of the lovely oilseed rape that grows all over the fields apparently normally in June but this year came early and has been growing all of May. I see all these fields on my drive to work every day. There is nice scenery the whole way to work which is good because there is a lot of traffic and sometimes it takes me an hour to get home. I have been getting used to a lot of changes recently, thus the recent silence on my blog. Sorry about that! I will try to continue to write more starting now. I have been adjusting to my new job which has made me utterly exhausted along with living in someone else's house which makes the entire week much more hectic in terms of schedules. The new job is different to say the least, but I am glad to be working again. I already have ideas of how to improve the whole job because I am disillusioned with the NHS system of providing speech therapy. I may end up working privately or in a special school in the long run just to be able to provide good services for kids. Other than that, the people I work with are nice, so that is good. i am doing lots of driving around though. That is nice but also means that it takes time out of my day and I can't do as much as I would like to considering the mountain of paperwork that goes along with seeing each kid. I can see the superiority of the US speech therapy services. Besides the job, Tim and I are also still working on moving out of the house as soon as we can. This is also another change we are trying to prepare for. In the meantime, I joined a new gym so that I can work out before or after work on the way to and from so that I can skip some of the traffic and get a work out too! Lots of changes are going on for us at the moment, so typical of spring on the whole. We are looking forward to moving out and visiting home soon!

House Hunting

Since I just started my new job yesterday, Tim and I are very excited to start looking for a place of our own. It will be great to get to set up house in our own space, and now that I am working it will be easier to get going with that plan. It just so happens that David Lee Estate Agency is in Stansted and Lee (of David Lee) lives 2 doors down so we have talked to him about finding us a place. Above are some pictures of houses in Stansted and Bishop's Stortford which is typical of the houses that are around here. The one with the cream and brick house is a few houses together which is typical as well and these houses are called character cottages. That means that they have quaint features and are much older. The new houses are like the one on the left which are much more modern but thoroughly boring looking inside and out. So I think we are going for a character cottage (which will be small but hopefully we can make it work). All the houses are smaller here anyway so it's a non issue and at lease we will get to be on our own!

Tim Got Dunked!

Just a quick note to say that Tim got baptized on Easter Sunday at our church. He has been a Christian since childhood but never took this brave step. He was a little nervous talking in front of the church but did a great job and even got dunked in twice because he didn't go all the way under the first time! It was a good day. His parents and his brother came and all of our friends were there supporting Tim. I am very proud of him!

Book Review: The Reason for God

I read this in 2 days because I borrowed it from a friend and I had enough spare time to do so. It was a good, logical and well organized discussion of some of the key arguments against God with practical explanations of evidence for the existence of God. It also covered why and how the God of Christianity is the only true God without being preachy or trite. A good read for initial research into Christian apologetics. Next, I will get into more detail with writings by C.S. Lewis and Ravi Zacharias who are both brilliant and can get into a different intellectual realm when it comes to these tough discussions. But, this one is definitely easy to digest without leaving out important details which is why it is so good. Check it out!

Book Review: Deception Point

Dan Brown again! I read his other books, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons in that order and finally got around to this one. I have to say that his books are good for a page turner and a quick and easy read. That is good because they are a bit like an action adventure movie with more action than character development or other literary aspects. There are a lot exciting plot twists which you come to expect with his writing and start to predict after getting to know his style. Apparently there is one other book by him that I could read, Digital Fortress, but by now I may be able to completely predict the entire book's worth of plot twists so I am not sure it will be worth it. So I will probably wait a while before I go after that one once I finish my reading list (which is pretty long). Anyway this one is about a scientific discovery that comes at a critical time during a presidential election, and the details of the discovery could have a dramatic effect on the election as well as the world of science in general. So if you like science, you might actually see all the holes in his scientific events and descriptions and therefore may not be all that gripped by it, but if you can just enjoy it however far-fetched it may be, it is an exciting ride.