NEW HOUSE!!!

After looking at more than 20 houses in 3 days, we finally found our new home!! This one had been one of our favorites from the beginning, but the owner didn't want to show us the house because they still didn't have power from Ike. (I can't imagine!) Our wonderful, amazing agent Carol talked them into letting us in today. We knew immediately that it was the best house we had seen bar none. Here is the link to the listing as well as some pictures:

http://search.har.com/engine/dispSearch.cfm?MLNUM=3876203

Live from Houston, It's Monday Night!

It's 12:30 am central time, and we're finally in our hotel room.

We arrived here on time, around 8pm, to a very efficient baggage handling crew. In fact, we are so used to Phoenix Sky Harbor's inefficiency/dawdling/general slowness that we took our sweet time getting to the Baggage Claim area and found that our bags had already been taken off of the conveyor and put aside with the unclaimed bags! Perhaps there is one thing with Dubya's name on it that works like a well oiled machine. I digress.

We got our car and headed out to The Ramada, Maddie cooing from the back as we sang her nursery rhymes and silly songs the whole way. Jeff goes in to the Ramada, fighting through swarms of mosquitoes thanks to Ike. Jeff comes out of the Ramada with "we're screwed". Seems they overbooked. Also seems that no one in the greater Houston area had a free hotel room for the night. No one could help us, not even Carol our Real Estate agent who was simultaneously calling the hotels we weren't. Crying, I called Vanessa (see aforementioned Spicy Latina in August blog) for moral support, who just said "what hotel was this?" and hung up. 10 minutes later... "Hi Tara, talk to Sarah at the front desk. She has a room for you." I don't know what magic this woman worked, but I know that we're sitting comfortably in our king sized bed in the Suite that we were originally supposed to have. I also know that Ramada is getting a nasty letter from me. And Vanessa is getting a fruit basket.

Once we got out hotel room, we went looking for food at 11pm. We got nasty, soggy fries and stale bread with cold meat from Jack In The Box. Oh, Jack...

I must say that Maddie has been absolutely incredible so far on this trip. She has been smiling and laughing and interacting with everyone. She barely made a sound on the plane (phew) and has just rolled with the punches, even when I bumped her poor little head on the car door. When we got up to our room we put her on the bed and raspberried her little belly, like we always do. And she tried to do it back!! We got lots of video of her imitating us, pursing her little lips and going "Mmmmmmm!!". Once we get home I'll put them up on here.

Tomorrow we go house hunting. Now I'm going to bed!!

how bout now?

More pics

Here are some more pictures Jeff took during tummy time yesterday. She actually rolled over from her back to front yesterday too! Physically, she's at a 5-6 month level (according to The Book - not the Bible, What to Expect). She even brings her legs underneath her and tries to push herself up and crawl. We're in trouble. Cognitively, she appears to be right on track. She discovered that she can clasp her hands together, which only means that now she can attempt to shove both fists in her mouth at the same time. Her grabbing has become more focused (especially on my hair). She also smiles constantly and laughs and laughs when we give her raspberries and when the dogs bark (all the time). I've never seen such a happy baby!!

Catching up

We've been awfully busy the last few weeks looking for houses, getting over colds and making plans to head to Houston for our house hunting trip... and then canceling our plans due to Ike. Ah, well. Now we're planning on heading out next week and we're thrilled!

Not much else has been going on here, really. This is our photodocumentation of everyday stuff...