Mish-mash

Since there are two of us at home right now, which means I have a fighting chance of NOT having to chase the baby around the house, I figured I'd try to catch up a little bit on the blog and how things are going around here.

So we'll go back a bit to start off with... to San Antonio.... We initially thought we had just a short drive to Houston from San Antonio (you know, before the stop at the repair shop?), so we took some time in the morning to explore a little of San Antonio. I highly recommend doing that first thing in the morning since it got HOT by the time we left at noon. Not as much fun to walk around in that!

We loaded Michaela up in the stoller, broke the hotel rules by leaving Fred in the room, and headed over to the Alamo. Jason had been once before way back during an Academy spring break one time, but I never had. He was worried I wouldn't think that it was worth it, but it definitely was. One of the things that struck me was how funny it was that this modern city had sprung up around this building that has been there for centuries.

The building itself is incredible - especially since it's been there for so long and had so many different uses - and the history is pretty neat. The Daughters of the Republic of Texas (the official "keepers of the Alamo") have done an amazing job, I think, of telling the history.

From there, we headed back over to the Riverwalk, which was much quieter and much less crowded than at dinnertime the night before! Jason and I just laughed as we listened to Michaela go "ooooo" and screech every time she saw her favorite things - the boats, the flowers, and the ducks!!

Right around noon that day, we loaded everything up, blocking traffic again (since trailers are never meant to be driven around a city!!), and headed out toward Houston. At this point, the A/C sort of worked in the truck, and we were rolling along just fine. Of course, that all ended when we got just outside of Columbus, TX. After that, we don't like to talk about the truck.

So we ended up with about a day and a half extra time in Houston, which turned out to be a good thing because we got to spend some extra time with Kim and Brent - and go to Ikea. I'm in love with Ikea. I'm not ashamed to say it. I'm just ashamed of how many long weekends I now want to spend in Houston. Good thing we've got friends there - and they like Ikea, too!!

We finally left Houston around dinnertime on Friday night, and had a fabulous sweaty drive to Lafayette, LA, where we stayed for about 7.5 hours. Since we were without working A/C at that point, we decided to leave bright and early Saturday morning to try to get as close to Mobile as we could before the heat really kicked in. That almost worked! (By the way, the truck is currently at the Dodge dealership here, with the A/C getting fixed!!!)

Since we've been here, we've been busy shopping for furniture (we sold our bedroom set before we moved, and need a kitchen table since we now have an eat-in kitchen and a dining room), chasing the baby around the house now that she just wants to walk/run everywhere, and watching the pool company struggle with the super-hard clay that is the ground in our backyard. We still don't have our household goods, though we're expecting delivery of those on Monday (YAY!), but I do at least have my car now (which has working A/C). We bought furniture yesterday, which will arrive on Wednesday, and the pool will hopefully be done sometime this decade. We feel terrible for the guys working on it - it's been Africa-hot and the clay has been kicking their butts! It even broke the back-hoe!

Michaela's been entertained, though, between the empty cabinets in the built-ins and the heavy equipment in the backyard, so at least we have that going for us!

(Yes, I know there's an electrical outlet back there with no safety things in it. I don't leave her alone to play in there!!)

We had hopes that we'd be swimming in the pool by tomorrow, but since we still have giant mounds of red clay dirt in the backyard and they haven't even been able to finish getting the walls up yet (hole dug and walls up usually happens on day 1...we're on day 4 - and, yes, they're here working today!), we're looking at more like next weekend at this point. That's fine, though, because we have painting to do and closet organizer systems to design and install! YAY for a new house!!

And now I need to go because the baby is napping and I think that means I might be able to try to get to the store ALONE to do some clothes shopping!