Trouble in paradise

As you know - I have been awol for some time now. All the fabulous things I wrote about in my last blog post are still fabulous, and the list of delightful discoveries is still growing. However, in any move or change you are bound to encounter some sort of challenges. Ours seem to be completely logistical, financial and communications related. We have had no problem making friends, going to good churches, finding time to exercise, enjoying good family time, unpacking, organizing, receiving out of town visitors, exploring the area around us.

But we have gone without internet again for several days, are no longer receiving any mail through the USPS and have had some of our bank accounts frozen due to identity theft protection, have one dead camera and one broken camera that works sometimes, do not have a renter for our CA house, will need to repair Scott's truck (and probably replace it very soon) and both of our cars need tires. I have spent time at the post office trying to find out where our mail is, 4.5+ hours on the phone w/ at&t resolving the internet/email issues, sent text messages and left voicemails that never reached people from my cell phone.

Sigh.....

So - I have many many things to share, but I am 3 weeks behind. Let me start here.

Last week Heidi and Charlotte came to visit. YEAH! The bonus: it is the Olympics. (In case you don't know - our family are Olympic-aholics.) I'm sure Heidi would have rather been in Bejing to watch the gymnastics, but it was pretty awesome to be hanging out together, staying up till all hours watching gymnastics, swimming, diving, and then getting up first thing in the am with "the girls" to go on fun outings.

We went to the Huntsville Botanical Gardens, which are AMAZING!!! The girls enjoyed fountains, flowers and the huge butterfly house. Charlotte says "shoo shoo" anytime she sees a bug. Emma gets excited until she thinks one will land on her, and then she nearly faints.

For the girls this was their first sibling-like experience, and it was fun to watch them enjoy each other at times and get frustrated with it at other times. Charlotte got fed up with Emma and told her "Bye bye," as in "I'm done with you - so get lost." But she also made up a name for her: "Menna." And when I came back from dropping Emma off at school, Charlotte kept asking, "Menna? Menna? HI? Menna?" and looking toward her bedroom. And when we were eating dinner, she would smile and wave and say "HI" to Emma over and over. Emma wanted to treat Charlotte like a dolly and didn't really appreciate how enamored I was with Charlotte, and was irritated that Charlotte didn't appreciate her rock star performances which have great reverb since we have wood floors and still no rugs. But other times she would do a fantastic job helping Charlotte avoid a meltdown when she was really tired or inspiring her to stand up and try walking.

My favorite thing Charlotte says is "pretty." She is 14 months old. It's ridiculous. She will see a flower, or a sparkly dress up item, or a hat, or a bow, or a piece of jewelry and she will point and say "pretty pretty." And her favorite thing is when you put a "pretty" on her - like a hat or a bow. She will point to it and smile and say "pretty." Aunty Carol is trying to teach Charlotte to point to HERSELF and say, "me...pretty"

That's it for now. Maybe this will be the week when I actually DO post many updates and lots of pictures.