Pool time and IKEA time.

Had a nice day at the pool – the apartment complex had the regular tot time today, but instead of the regular programming, we had a pool party! The kids had a great time playing in the shallow tot pool. Laurie, the apartment complex activites coordinator, had prepared snacks, crafts, lunch, everything. The moms talked about getting pregnant, potty training and sex, the regular mom stuff… Vince and Edda had a blast.

Once we got back from tot time, we headed down to NJ to IKEA where we picked out furniture for our apartment in SGP. I guess IKEA just opened a shop in SGP and our realtor said that we could pick our furniture out from the SGP IKEA catalog, so Jeremy looked through the catalog and we went to NJ to look at our furniture. My first reaction was that I had pretty much outgrown IKEA furniture, which I regard as first apartment post college furniture, and I just can’t image Vince and Edda jumping on any IKEA furniture and it lasting a microsecond. Some the IKEA stuff is really crappy – so basically we looked at the most expensive thing to get (which is still really cheap when you compare to Crate and Barrel or Room and Board). I think it will be durable enough. It’ll be great, Jeremy even put linens and dishes on the list, we’ll see how it goes.

IKEA is a great place for kids, they have free babysitting for 60 minutes, they have a place to eat, Edda loves the swedish meatballs, and thoughout the store, they have little play areas, like doll houses or ball rooms. It’s pretty fun.

Made it home again.

Jeremy’s a bit sick, so I spent most of the time driving home from DC. It took us longer to get home than coming down on Friday, but it was fine. Jeremy’s tummy is still upset, hopefully a bunch of 7Up will help it settle down.

We took full advantage of the (surprise!) DVD player in the minivan. Now our souls are sold to the devil and our children have become quiet zombies in the back of the car. It’s pretty amazing how roomy the minivan is and yet, we still manage to fill it up with CRAP!

There was no traffic on the way home, smooth sailing the whole way though.

Now that we are home and the kids in bed, we just have to start doing our punchlist for moving out of this country!

Back to Dresden

Our friends, Martin and Patricia and their two children, left today to go back home to Germany. We had a lovely 4th of July dinner last night with them, complete with steak and apple pie. This is the toughest thing about moving, our friends are never really close by.

Litian, our friend from graduate school, is in NYC because her husband sang in Carnegie Hall on Monday night with the San Bernadino choir that he’s in. Apparently they have been preparing for this concert for over 5 years and he just joined last year, so he got to go. I was hoping she could come up for dinner, but it’s just too rushed and hectic.

Tonight, I have to pull together the paperwork for the 2 cars and figure out how to do long term storage for the cars (at least for Jeremy’s) and also think about bringing 8 snow tires down from the attic. Ugh.

Back from France.

So we are back home! We had a wonderful time and met lots of wonderful people. Eveybody got up today at 4 am today because of jet lag and now Jeremy and the kids are out on a walk while I do my blogging. I have to say that I didn’t get any pictures of Johanna, Ben’s girlfriend, who now has a wonderfully 2nd trimester shaped belly. Nor did I get photos of Clara and Colette, our hostesses in Evian – friends of bob and katherine – who arranged hotels and massages for us, not did I get photos of the bride and groom of the wedding we went to near Grenoble, but what the hey, there are pictures of the kids, what more can you ask for?