Apartment Provided!

We signed a year lease on an apartment yesterday! We need to put some fresh paint, clean, buy a bed and a sofa, and move on in! Emily's favorite features of the complex are the play structure above and the fish pond/fountain seen below.

Going out to dinner to celebrate being homeless no more! Although we've quite enjoyed all the places we've stayed in our journey of homelessness that started 6 months ago! :)
Emily's fan club at the restaurant. You can see that the waitresses enjoy serving as babysitters as well, while Scott and I eat. Em loves the attention and does lots to entertain them! :) Em has a slight fever to go along with her cold and cough now, so hopefully it won't get any worse!

We were out and about in the rain today. Emily is really enjoying using the few phrases she knows in the local language. Probably because of the exuberant responses of the locals. She now also knows when people say "can I have a hug?" in the local language. Sometimes she oblidges, sometimes she doesn't. We often hear camera phones clicking around us as the people walking behind us or beside us take a quick pic of Emily. Actually, Scott went to Wal-Mart alone today and 2 guys were using their phone to take just his picture too. So maybe we are all interesting exhibits. We had thought it was just Emily. I think they were probably impressed with Scott's ability to grow facial hair.
Sure it rains alot, but look how green it is! I'm not sure why that last sentence is underlined, but I can't get it to go away. Oh well. Tomorrow we meet with our language teachers for the first time! The official studies begin! We've had nice success in all our little errands and to do lists. The big thing now is to find an apartment. Then get it cleaned and semi-furnished! Not that it will be a new place, but most that we've seen have been sitting empty with all the windows open so they are quite dirty! I guess they leave the windows open so it doesn't mildew being all shut up?? I don't know. I expect they have a good reason.
Anyways, we are all healthy and happy. (Well, Emily has a cold, but it's not slowing her down too much.) She did fall off a bench backwards today and landed on her head on a hard floor. But we think she's okay from that too. Kids fall down all the time, right? She seemed fine afterwards, and helped Scott play his new guitar this evening when we got home. :)

Thursday adventures

We traveled a bit outside of the city today and here are some of the shots.
Any time outside is a happy time for Emily!
Her hair only seems to grow in the back. :)
Check out the cool old man (if you want to see the pic bigger, just click on it).
Visiting with the shoe shiners
Lunchtime! Yummy yummy eats! $2 later we were quite full!

Em enjoying keeping Bridger's squeaky ball from him

Click play to watch the video

March 28

These pics are from the last few days of March when the Messies came to see us at my parents house. When my dad heard that our blog readers were asking for a belly shot, he had this to offer........
Here's a more appropriate belly shot. :) Aubrey seems to be doing well in there... she gives good strong kicks all the time!

Here safe and doing well

We've made it here and are all doing well! We've had some wonderful people help us get acquainted with our new city. We still need to find an apartment and get accepted at a university to study. Finding an apartment here seems to be more complicated than we imagined, hopefully there's something out there that will work for our family. We'll start looking later this week. Hopefully the realtors will show us what they really have, not the things they are just trying to get rid of!
The local people have been quite friendly, and they especially love to try to talk to Emily. They'll pull her out of our shopping cart or try to pick her up if she is walking around the store. She's getting more comfortable with all the attention and though sometimes shy, she'll say "bye bye" to everyone. The department store workers will play with toys with her (in our view) while we check out the children's department. Today a bakery lady tried to give me her umbrella when she saw me leaving the bakery in the rain with no umbrella. Very sweet people.
There are many things here we didn't expect to find, so that has been comforting! Even good ice-cream.... you know how much that means to the pregnant lady! Dreyers Cookies and Cream and Rocky Road, as well as Magnum bars which are very tasty! :)
The only piece of furniture we've already bought is a crib- which Emily is using now, and Aubrey can use soon! :)
The weather here has been nice. The sun has come out quite a bit, with nice lightning storms at night!
We've all been healthy since we arrived and we're sleeping well at night. We do a LOT of walking during the day and will be glad when Emily is a little older and can do the walking by herself!
Right now we don't have internet at our home... so communication is spotty at the moment. It may take a few weeks more to get that set up. There are a few coffee shops around town where we can go to get a wireless connection, so we should be in touch every few days or so. We also have friends who say we can come to their place if we need to get out some communication... so please send us emails! We'd love to hear from you!
Pictures to come soon... I forgot the camera this time.