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.

Back in Cali... and I passed my test!

Good news! I passed my glucose screening! 3 hours and 4 viles of blood later... everything came back normal! We are so thankful!

We made it back to California last night after 22 hours of traveling. We had started our day at 2am east coast time to catch a early flight to DC. Then what was supposed to be our early flight from DC to San Fran had issues that had us sitting on the plane waiting to leave the gate for 2 1/2 hours. Then they deboarded us and a couple hours later deemed our plane unworthy to fly. We spent about 9 hours in the DC airport... trying to get back to the West Coast... along with a couple hundred other people. They managed to get us 3 to LAX by 7:30 west coast time. My parents picked us up and we drove the rest of the way! Poor Emily only slept for about 3 of those 24 hours! We unexpectedly got some practice for our big travels next week! Our bags showed up this morning... they got an extra stop in San Fran and we had to spend the night apart. :)

I'll try to post some pics or videos soon , but just wanted to update quickly until I have time to do that!

fun pic we found from summer of '05

We found this pic from 4 years ago of Bridger as a puppy! Now this is his new family! Everyone looks so much older now... except for Leslie - she looks just as young!

Trip to Washington DC

This week we all got to go to Washington DC! We enjoyed the day out, and it was Scott and Emily's first time to go there. Here are those 2 at the original Smithsonian building.
The Air and Space Museum was interesting for all of us!
We strolled around the mall with some friends and their 2 year old too.
The cherry blossoms were out even though the sun wasn't. And beautiful purple flowers were everywhere.
Emily was happy even though it rained and blew gusty winds.
This picture snuck in twice... ooops.

In other news, I failed my first glucose screening and have to go back for the 3 hour test on Monday. I am bummed about not passing, and really really hope I pass this next one. Some of our plans about where we'd have the baby might need to change if it doesn't go just right! We'll let you know how it turns out when we hear back!

Happy St Patty's Day

Well, today we are having a good day... this is the first day (out of the last 13) that we are not dealing with fever, diarrhea, or vomiting issues with Emily! It is nice to think we might be in the clear now! Just had a lunch of corned beef and boiled potatoes. :) I have no pictures to post from the last few weeks... they wouldn't be pretty! But more to come soon hopefully... of a healthy family!!

Fun in the snow

March has brought us a lot of snow. Emily likes to take a stroll out to take it all in.

She also likes her new pull-up bar which is an all around workout machine you can do different things with. She finds even more creative ways to use it than the creator intended, and loves to exercise with Daddy.

It's a GIRL :)

We went for our ultrasound on the 18th, and here's the little gal we saw! She looks healthy and is already one pound! Normally at 20 wks a baby would only be 10 ounces. She's quite ahead of the curve! This is her head and her little fist by her chin. We are thinking we like the name Aubrey Mei, but we haven't settled on that for sure yet.
Emily loves her winter hat and tries to put it on all by herself. It ended up on backwards, but securely fastened. :) She's going to have so many things to teach her little sister!

Video of Em reading her book

Emily's favorite book right now is a freebie from the kids meal at Chic-Fil-A called Giggle Giggle Quack. She tries to read it to us and is getting good at the title at least. :) In the middle of this clip she sees something out the window and falls into a trance for a minute... but snaps back out of it eventually. :)

Valentine's Dress

Emily was sick for Valentine's Day weekend, but is feeling mostly better now! So she wore her special Valentine's dress today and loved it! Thanks for thinking of us when she was fighting her fever. Hopefully she'll be strong tomorrow when she has to go get a few shots! Daddy has to get more than her though! :)
Always a ready smile... and then runs to look at the camera to see how her picture turned out!

Endless fun with dirt

Playing in grandpa and nana's flower bed. (This pic is a few weeks older than the videos below... and in a different state. I got a little out of whack with the space time continuum.)