Belle in Minnesota: we made it

We've been in Sheffield, England for a few days now. Wow, what a difference a year makes when traveling with our boys! They had their own seats on the airplane, slept for 5+ hours and we all arrived pretty rested. It took us forever to finally rent our van (loaded with more luggage than you could imagine!) and drive 3 hours to Sheffield. Again, the boys napped on the way and were generally entertained by the passing cows and going through tunnels until the very end. They essentially have slept through the nights and are on a loosely similar schedule here. What troopers!! ...When I think about the plane flights and jet lag in Beirut I still feel a little tense- how did we make it?!

Andrew and Gray enjoying the midnight dinner service...Grayson loved his first ever Oreo and was even feeding them to his puppy!

Jackson fell asleep first and woke up first. But he's livin' the life: paci, blankie, puppy, all tucked in and watching Toy Story 3 ("Dino! "Cowboy!" "Choo choo!") before breakfast!

Gray out cold on the drive from London to Sheffield

Here's what we've been up to for our first few days:

Checked out grocery stores- they are pretty good! Definitely no Super Target, but more European with less options (which makes it a little quicker!). There's a range of tiny stores to supermarkets though all close by.
Found 3 parks easily in walking distance that the boys have LOVED! "Running...pease" is one of Grayson's more frequent requests lately!
"Loads" of walking (British term)! We seem to walk at the least a few miles everyday...and I'm feeling how out of shape I am! Thankfully we're run across a few Starbucks on our walks too...
Tried to figure out the National Health Service (NHS) and register our family, which we actually didn't need to, so much less paperwork than anticipated. Hoping we don't have any hospital visits, but I'm also so curious about the healthcare here!
Cooking. I do feel more at home when I can cook! There are several things, mainly Mexican related (no black beans?! thankfully I packed some dried ones so our boys wouldn't starve!), that we haven't found here, but overall it's been easy. I'm also looking forward to exploring new foods!
Unpacking. We're staying in a 3 floor townhouse. The bottom level is walkout and has a storage area which is great to not need to lug strollers up any stairs. The main level is a living room/dining room and kitchen. The upper level is 3 bedrooms and a bathroom. The third bedroom is teeny tiny currently serving as storage and a mini office for A.