We woke to another beautiful morning. The normal Tuesday morning laundry and dish put away. Breakfast. Then moving on to other things... like cleaning the office area. I have always wanted an office but starting out with so many things already stuffed in there has not been the easiest to make the area mine and be able to have it to where I can work on anything in there. We have so many papers from the last 10 years of being married. It is finally time to go through it. A few years back we went to paperless bills for many things but I had held onto bills and bank statements since 2002. Now was the perfect time to get rid of them all. So I sat down and started one to two papers at at time and then moved on to trying to shred the max in the shredder. I emptied the bottom of the shredder once and started again and then the shredder stopped... It has a great safety feature that when it overheats it freezes up LOL. Yep... so I unplugged and moved on to sweeping floors and sent kids up to clean their rooms. Mathew did great but instead of going to his room he cleaned the play room up... great.. then he was off to his room. Paige is a snail when it comes to cleaning. She gets distracted easily so it is a push to get it cleaned. She doesn't argue about doing it but it takes a day!
Mat called in the middle of this all and asked if I had cars that I wanted to see and what the plan was for when we left the house. We needed to see as many cars as possible before closing time here. Everything here closes by 7. He gets home around 4:30 and so that gave us just a little time to drive to where the vehicles were, test drive and do paperwork. In the states, this takes all day to do! I was skeptical that it would be done in the amount of time we had with everything that might need to be done. I found a used care dealer that had a few cars I wanted to look at.
When he got home we left and headed there. When we got there they had a lot full of cars... unfortunately for me, I do not drive manual... nor do I want to try. I do not want to have to think more than I have to especially when already driving on the opposite side of the road on the opposite side of the car. Mat found a car that he like... so we looked at that one first. It was a 2000 MG and only had 38,000 miles.. but when it started it seemed like is was a bit rusty. I think the car sat way too long during it's time. It ran but not smoothly. So we moved on to the next .. this one was a Renault Clio... way to small... Mat barely fit behind the wheel and Paige's legs barely fit in the back behind his seat. It would not last long with us! Plus not enough storage in the back to put any amount of groceries. The third was the Renault Megane Scenic.
This one I liked. It has a spacious inside and plenty of windows to see in all directions. The kids fit perfect in the back and all the seats could lay down or be removed if I needed extra space... not sure why I would need that much and when we would be without the kids needing that type of space...but it was an option. The other thing about it was that it has cupholders in the back of the seats as well as lots of storage compartments for things. The kids little car toys could go in front of each of their seats and be put away and the front seats also have little drawers under them. Plus the normal storage in the dash. The interior was pretty clean compared to many of the car we had seen and the MOT was good until May of next year. I was sold on the looks but we needed to drive it. It started up easily and seemed to be good. Mat took it for a drive with us in there as he would know if something felt off more than I would. It definitely is a larger vehicle with a small engine. The get up and go is not what I am used to driving but I felt safe with it. We were pretty sold once we got back to the lot. The MPG were good for our second vehicle and the price was good as long as it lasts the whole time we are here we will be good to go. So we signed the dotted line and off I went driving on the opposite side of the road on the opposite side of the car. I actually was pretty comfortable doing this. I think being on the opposite side for the last 4 weeks help me to adjust instead of just jumping right in when we first got here. I just had to remind myself at turns which side of the road I was supposed to be on at the turn. The round a bouts are not bad, but not having my GPS with me was not my favourite! I need to know where I am going even when following because not always is the driver in the front using turn signals or there are cars that zoom around the circles and get in between which always makes me nervous for the next move!
Now we have to get UK car seats to go with the UK car. So we are all legal and stuff. I guess our American car seats are not legal in the UK cars so that is another expense we have to incur to drive in the UK. The ones we have seen are here are definitely not comfy looking at all! The padding is minimal on the seat. Poor kids!
I can't believe you found an automatic car! I think it is easier to drive on the left side of the road if you are in a right-hand drive. It feels relative to me. Our car is a stick shift- but our American car is a stick shift too, so it wasn't a big deal for me. As for for the car seats- we were told about the UK car seat thing too, but then we were also told that it is a pretty obscure law that most people don't know about and that police officers won't know by sight if it is a UK or US car seat and most won't check. So... we just put our US seats in the British car. They look similar to me anyway.
ReplyDeleteWe got lucky... they go fast!!! I definitely do not understand the whole carseat thing. They have the regular graco ones here not the turbo boosters like the ones we have but they look the same without the whole handle covers. They just do not have the E with the circle around them. I would be the one to get pulled over and sited for child endangering or something like that so I don't know!
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