Good News and Bad News

First, the good news:  as of September 12th, we are officially renters of a flat in North London!  For now, let's overlook the fact that we haven't actually left Spokane yet, and that we're paying rent on a place we don't currently live in.  Also, it's in East Finchley, which is just a bit further (about 1½ miles west) from Muswell Hill than we wanted.  Anyway, we will have a place to live the day we arrive in London...and it's really cute! Check it out:

<singlepic>

• It has a separate living room and dining room (which is rare for the price range and area we were looking at).
• It's on the 2nd floor (which is called the 1st floor in England...you figure it out) of a 2-story period conversion, but it also has a garden (also very rare).
• Best of all, it has 3 bedrooms!  A Sarah & Eric bedroom, a Simone bedroom, and a guest bedroom* for our friends and family.
• This entire 3-bedroom flat would fit inside just the 1st floor of our old house in Spokane...with about 300 square feet to spare!
• Did I mention it's really cute?  Take a peek at the pictures in the <gallery> and see for yourself.
  

*Disclaimer: our British "guest bedroom" is about the size of a small American walk-in closet. No, seriously.

Now, the bad news:  since we weren't in London when school started up on September 3rd, Simone lost her place at Coppetts Wood Primary School.  Simone doesn't seem too broken up over it, but getting her into school was our first real "moving to London" triumph.  Now it's gone, but it's certainly not hopeless.  They have waiting lists for all of their schools, and we've been told that Simone is first in line at Coppetts Wood.  There are also some good schools closer to where we'll be living, so I got her on the waiting lists for those schools as well.  It still seems likely that Simone will be able to start school somewhere shortly after we arrive.

And, of course, we still have no idea when that will be...