We're here!

Although we arrived in League City on Friday afternoon, this is the first chance I've had to update the blog. It has been a really busy few days and there is much to tell, so brace yourself - this may be a long one.

The Trip:
First things first, our drive out was pretty uneventful and easy. The longest day was the leg between Tucson, AZ and Fort Stockton, TX. Although the drive time was supposed to be about eight to nine hours, it ended up being ten because we spent an hour stopped at a rest area trying to staighten out issues with our insurance change over.






Now, if you've ever taken Interstate 10 through this part of the country, you know there is a whole lotta nada between El Paso and San Antonio. (Hence the photos; what else is there to do to keep occupied?) This was especially apparent when we got to Fort Stockton, because when we arrived at 10pm, the hotel parking lot was pretty full of tired travelers, but by 8am the next morning, Mick and I seemed like the only ones left in town. Everyone else had long moved on to other destinations. Well, everyone except the scorpion that Mick found crawling towards our hotel room door to greet us in the morning.

We drove to San Antonio the next day and although Thursday and Friday held shorter drive times, they felt like the longest days because we were anxious to get to our final destination. We finally rolled into town about 2pm on Friday and were able to get settled into our new, temporary home pretty quickly. Which brings me to point number two...

The digs:
We're staying in a furnished one-bedroom apartment that backs up to a golf course. It's nice and we're getting used to having to take Bella outside everytime she needs to go to the bathroom. We thought we had it down until we tried to get away with not taking her out right before we went to bed last night. That resulted in us stumbling around at 2am trying to get dressed and braving the 30 degree temps in order to get Bella to go back to sleep. Yeah, that won't happened again.

The first night in the apartment, we discovered that the bed we were provided with made a ridiculous amount of noise when you sat on it, layed on it, moved on it, etc, so we did not get much sleep at all. After two nights of being woken up any time either of us adjusted even the slightest bit, we took the bed apart and put the matress on the floor. We ended up finding the noisy culprit, a broken box spring, so we're expecting our new, bigger, hopefully quieter bed today.

The job:
Mick's first day was yesterday and it went well. He got there early and got all the things set up and transfered over pretty quickly. He also said he went to lunch with about four other guys, all of whom had moved to Texas from California at some point. Although he mentioned that there was some training programs that they wanted him to go through, Mick was planning on bugging people for some real work to do today.

The fam:


We've been able to see my sister and mom pretty much daily since we arrived. My nephew, Holder, was with us this weekend and he enjoyed playing with Bella, who is way more interested in having him throw her ball than in interacting with the other dogs here. Missing Boswell, I guess.

On Saturday, we went down to the marina with Holder and Mom to look at the boats. Mick and I daydreamed of how cool it would be to live on a boat like our friend Ethan did in Ventura, but then we realized that having a dog and a baby in no more than a hundred square feet might not be realistic. Which brings us to...

The kid:
It's a long story, but due to the move and different diagnostic guidelines here than in CA, I got to go the the doctor yesterday and get a detailed unltrasound of the baby. Since Mick was working, my sister Reagan came with me. It took forever (our appointment was at 9:15 am and when all was said and done, it was 2:15pm) but it was really good to have Reagan there with me. I was able to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time and we also got a foreshadowing of a potential behavioral issue to come.

The ultrasound tech needed to take certain measurements, but the baby was not cooperating. After roughly 30 minutes, she told us we would need to leave and come back later in order to give the baby time to get an attitude adjustment. It's so funny because I apologized like it was somehow my fault, that I should somehow be able to get my child to behave. Whatever. We went to lunch and when we returned, the baby was much more ameanable.

It was really fun to get a glimpse of what's going on in there. The baby was "jumping" up on the side of my uterus and sliding back down. It has long monkey limbs like mom, and Reagan and I had to fight off a bad case of the giggles when it hit itself in the head. All we could think was "quit hittin' yourself!" Any how, these are the latest pics. You can see that go-go-gadget arm waving hello on top.



P.S. Although, I asked, more than once, we do not know the sex yet. We have another ultrasound on the 21st of April, so hopefully we'll find out then!

The house hunt: (last category, I promise!!!)
We started hitting the pavement over the weekend. It was crazy to realize that there would be no down time or adjustment period before we would need to start thinking about where we're going to be in a month. We have found a place that we're planning on putting an offer on this week. I'm not going to say much, because a lot needs to happen before anything is set up, but it is a two-story, 5-6 bedroom, new construction home that is across the street from the house we were considering on our house-hunting trip a few weeks ago. I'll keep you posted as the week goes on.

Whew! Love to all and I'm impressed you made it to the bottom!