Random thoughts

Here are some of my thoughts about the move:

I hate new grocery stores. Why can't every store be designed exactly the same? I look totally ridiculous wandering around and since it is summer the girls are with me. Which never speeds up the process. And there are 3 grocery store options and not one of the has ALL of our usual stuff. Thus I get even more confused as I mix them up.

I love having a pool that we can walk to. We just grab our swim bag (and cooler cause it is so hot) and go. Best part of our house for sure!  It is funny though cause Brooke tells people that we have a pool in our back yard.

This small town library is killing me. I need a self-check option. And online registration for programs. The one guy who seems to run the desk is soooo (and I cannot emphasize this enough) SLOW. And the lady in charge of kids programming is awful. I hate to say it, but she seems so dumb. Which is unfortunate as the library is our main source of entertainment right now.

Which reminds me of how we have no friends that I can play with during the day. And I now remember how awful I am at small talk with strangers. And even worse at moving from chit chat to arranging an actual get together. Here's a little shout out to Laurie-thanks for the helping me meet someone.  Now I need all of you to follow her lead and send me a friend.

Love the local daiquiri shop. Where a closed container apparently means you just have not put in your straw. Nice.

So last year our family started recycling (basically so the girls would not be humiliated when they discussed recycling at school) and it was in a giant trash can. Now I have to use these tiny containers where our recycling is just out and about. The neighbors must think that all we live on are eggo waffles, coke zero, and wine.

Our appliances crack me up. Our oven is awesome and I am in love with it. It has a meat probe that attaches to the oven and shows you the temp of your meat while cooking. And when I figure out how to use the convection part of the oven it will probably be even cooler. But all our appliances are so polite. The timers are SUPER quiet. It is like they are saying "excuse me, but if it is no problem, you can come get your stuff, but only if that works for you." And our washer and dryer are quite and they don't buzz or beep, even just softly. They play a little song. A polite little song.

The girls were so excited to see that the mall had a merry-go-round.  Audrey could barely eat her lunch cause she was so excited about picking which animal she was going to ride.

The library story time - I tried to secretly take this picture to illustrate the giant bow situation we have going on here.

Destin Beach Trip 2012 - Part 1 Just the Girls

I'll take a break from the riveting narrative of our move to put up some adorable pictures from our beach trip to Destin this past week. I love to take pictures at the beach so it is always a struggle to edit down to my very favorites.  And I like to make sure that I take a picture of them in their different bathing suits.  This year was our first year without a nap and so we really had twice as much time at the beach....which meant twice the time for picture taking! 

Overall the week was fabulous.  Saturday and Sunday were rough weather-wise but by the end of the week it was perfect-o.  So here are a few pictures that I think captured the week....and did I mention that the girls have decided to rock out some fierce poses for their pictures:

Sweet adorable Audrey!

My beautiful Brookie!

 

  

And here they are as double trouble:

Bikes

We upgraded the girls' bikes this past weekend.  Before we had one 12 inch bike for them to share (primarily because Audrey had zero interest in biking).  It was clearly too small for Brooke and we thought Audrey would perhaps enjoy biking more if she picked out her bike.  We let them pick their new bikes and helmets from Academy (though as a side note, buy your 16 inch bikes at Wal-Mart because they will assemble them for you and you have to do it yourself from Academy.  Boo)

As I said in the last post, once we got them all assembled we realized that Brooke's back tire had a huge hole in it.  After buying a new tube and some impressive tire changing from D (thanks to all those years of biking the MS150) we were all set to bike around the neighborhood....or at least our street.

Here are some cute pics of them:

Assembling the bikes

Showing off their new helmets

Audrey biking on her new zebra bike (her dog Ella is riding in the little bag in the front)

First time they were able to ride together

Brooke showing off her new princess bike

Audrey posing by her new bike

And they rode off into the sunset together.

And here is a video (this is for you Kate and Renee as you saw Audrey trying to ride a bike right before we moved) showing their biking prowess:

Getting Settled

Memorial Day weekend we went down into BR to see the river and go see the real tiger at LSU.  It was BLAZING hot outside and I totally forgot what a giant sweaty person I am.  yuck.  And the girls kept commenting on how sticky they were and how thirsty they were.  I think it is going to be a long summer!
And the tiger sighting was a bit of a bust as well as they were apparently having a giant two day country concert in the stadium and therefore driving and parking was a huge hassle.  But we of course persevered and did get to see Mike...well the tiny bit of his nose sticking out as he was way in the back in the shade (smart cat!).  The girls did think it was interesting that his nose was pink so I guess that was a success.

In front of the MS with Gramma and Gary

So now we have entered the everyday life with D back at work and no school for the girls!  Week one went pretty well.  We went to the library for story time.  I cannot emphasize this enough: the kids here wear bows that are HUGE.  Like the size of their heads.  Having no bows in our hair at all, we were clearly the odd girls out.  I am not sure I can bring myself to buy any though.  I mean they are giant.

In front of our subdivision entrance

We have been lucky that we have a couple of friends here from Houston and they both have kids pretty close in age to the girls, though they are summer birthdays and will be in Kindergarten next year.  We have seen those friends a ton and that has made the time go by extremely fast.  Though they are working moms so not super helpful to me in filling up our days....which seem to go rather slowly when they are not in school.  Fortunately we have several new kids channels and the girls have really been enjoying some new shows to watch.

Last week as we were driving to Home Depot (though we decided that it was just too darn hot to start our garden now - we are postponing to the fall) I saw on the FBC sign that they were having VBS this week.  So as we were still in the car, I called them up and registered them.  So this week from nine to noon each day, they are going to VBS. (we did go to church service there this Sunday so it would not be totally weird).  Day 1 went well - though it is weird to just drop them off and pick them up in a carpool line.  Audrey told us that the Bible story was about making a path through the river so the peoples' toes did not get muddy as they crossed it.  Pretty good summary.  They said that they each made a new friend though they did not remember the names and as it turns out there was some shuffling around of the classes and the friends ended up being grasshoppers and the girls are ladybugs.

At our (super tiny) community pool.  The house just to the right of Brooke's head in the background in out house.  We have been walking and riding our tiny bikes to the pool.  It will be nice for the girls to use their new bikes!

Our immediate neighbors on our street are very friendly (though we have not actually met the parents in the house right beside us) and we have gotten some watermelon and (weird) Louisiana cookies and some FABULOUS strawberry jelly.  It is a small street and half of the people are retiree/grandmotherly people.  And there are three husbands named Bob.  There is one little boy who lives on the street who is just a little younger than the girls and will be going to pre-k with them next year (again a working mom so not home during the say).  And one of the ladies frequently watches her grandson and he is also the girls' age.

This was at Great Wolf Lodge in front of their favorite slide - sadly during the move we have lost these bathing suits!

They all were riding bikes together which helped to prompt the purchase of new bikes for both of the girls.  Which is huge that Audrey is now riding her bike!  Unfortunately Brooke's new bike came with a flat tire - which D has now changed - and so she has not gotten to ride it yet, but I assured her that we would do it today.   Will post pics of that later.