Like Father Like Daughter

I know he is being cautious, but I sometimes tease KB because he reads the saftey card on every single plane we fly on. I especially tease him on our in-country flights because we fly on the exact same plane every time - same flight crew and everything.

Well now that AB had her own seat, she decided it was time to follow in her daddy's footsteps. She took it upon herself to pull out the safety card and read it. She even got it right side up!

Here it looks as if she is checking to see if the "fasten your seatbelt light" is truly working, or she is watching the "in case of an emergency" video.

It took some debating and ultimately feigning ignorance of the language, but we eventually were able to bring AB's car seat on the plane. It came down to the fact that 1. our airport had never seen a car seat before; 2. they thought it was too big for the seat, and 3. they wanted me to collapse it - clearly they thought it was a stroller. It fit perfectly on all three of our flights, and AB sat in it at least 50% of the time. She finally became sleepy about 8 hours into our 10 hour flight and she was absolutely zonked for the San Francisco to Dallas flight.

We have been extremely busy since arriving back in the US. We are looking forward to this Monday because it will be our first day that absolutely nothing is scheduled for. Maybe we will go to a park, play and have a picnic or something.

We are staying in a house in LB's hometown. It is a comfortable place, and we are slowly settling in. We are using service that provides cars for overseas workers. We are driving a 2001 GMC Safari but it also looks exactly like a Chevy Astro van. Yep, we are driving a mini van, but it is free and seems to run well. LB is a bit mortified she is driving it, but everyone else thinks it is a good dose of humility. We are quite grateful for the van.

AB is adjusting wonderfully to life in the US. For the first 5 days here she woke up around 2:30 am each morning ready to play. That was rough, but she is flipped now. She cannot get enough of going "side" (translation - outside), Grumpy's chickens (LB's dad has chickens), seeing planes or helicopters fly, V8 Fusion, and the cat that visits us every morning outside our back door. The second day in the US we were driving in the evening and she pointed to the moon and said "moon." We were completely shocked she knew what it was because we very rarely, like once every 6 months, ever see the moon in our city because of the pollution. It was a great moment!

Anyways, I will try to update our blog more often now that we are getting settled in. If you are in B-town, give us a call!

Almost Gone

We are in the home stretch of getting ready to come home. This time next week I should (hopefully) be settling into our home of 5 months and making daily wonderful trips to Walmart and HEB...really it took living away from them to gain novelty. I have always loved Target though.

We do have a bit of news. We found out on Wednesday last week that we will be moving to another city within a few days of arriving back here in March. We sat stunned for a couple of days and then it hit us, we have to pack, like now! We had been planning on taking our time packing for the US, but that all got put off, we have to pack-up our entire apartment. We have been frantic. Our helper has been staying overtime to help us, and I would say as of right now we have about 65% of our apartment packed. We will have to spend a couple days here after arriving back in country before we move, so we cannot pack everything. Also, we have just run out of time. At the end of the day today we called off packing our apartment so that tomorrow (Friday) we can focus on packing for our time in the US.

We leave Saturday morning to fly to a large city. We will spend a day and a half there. We plan to go buy AB a big girl bed at Ikea (and mail it back to this apartment), pick up a few other little things, and relax. Monday at 12:40 pm we will board our lovely plane that will hopefully be holding our 5, 50 lb suitcases below, 6 carry-on bags, and AB's car seat and make our way to San Francisco. Elevenish hours later we will land, and couple hours afterwards takeoff for Dallas. We plan to be hugging our family by 4:30 pm on Monday. Yea!

We hope to see all of our Texas friends very soon. To everyone else, we still have Skype : )

Don't Know What to Write About

I am up late tonight. It is about 1am our time. I have a cold and am frustrated because all the cold remedies I see online for pregnant women just do not seem potent enough for me. They also seem to address congestion, but I would like a little bit of congestion to stop the constant flow. Any ideas how to get congested?

We made it back from our trip successfully. Traveling was crazy and I think both KB and I almost threw out our backs at one point with all of our stuff. KB had AB strapped to him in the baby carrier and was pulling our, possibly, 70lb suitcase. I pulled the pack and play to which the stroller was strapped, and carried the baby bag, insulated lunch bag, laptop bag, and my purse. We were quite a sight.

Now we are busy packing and trying to shut down our apartment. In order to avoid paying for our steam heat, we have to shut off our water and electricity. For someone who has been hording food in their refrigerator and freezer for the last 3 years, this has been a strange liberation. I no longer need to save that Velveeta for a special occasion - it must be eaten, like now! I am also going through our cans of food and desert mixes and dividing them into the categories: not close to expiration date, close to expiration date, will expire while gone, already expired and really expired. In the US I threw away all food that was even a day past the expiration date, but we do not waste anything here. One of my friends made some muffins that were 5 years expired. They did not rise as well as they might have, but they were okay.

So, we are about 8 days away from leaving our little city for 5 months. When we return we will be a family of 4 (5 if you include Toby). I experienced this when we went to Thailand to deliver Avril, it is a very strange feeling packing for a baby that is not yet born, gosh that is an entire trimester away from being born. We are not even 100% of the gender. Furthermore, since we plan to move as soon as we return, this baby will come home to an apartment without a nursery ready for it. Although I know it is crazy, this inflicts massive amounts of guilt on me. Thankfully I know it will not mind.

I am writing this post on our computer that does not have any pictures on it, or I would include something for the grandparents. Maybe we will get to see some of you very soon and that will make up for it.