3 weeks in CA

Today marks 3 weeks of living in our new house in CA. While all our things (except 2nd car!!)) are here I still just don't feel settled. I think the hardest part about it all is making new friends. It's just not something that happens over night but takes months to develop. I was not thinking about this when caught in a whirlwind of excitement about living in the USA again. I'm sure it will happen over time- I just hope I have a few girls to call "friends" before this baby is born and especially before Brad takes off to the middle east.

We've had a lot of "battles" the past couple weeks. The most hilarious was the battle of the snails. My mom planted a beautiful garden in front of our house and she takes great pride in it. She was not aware of the amount of snails/slugs that crawl out at night to devour her flowers. It started off as a small pain and turned into a huge obsession with snails. Every night she was crawling on her knees to physically remove all these creatures. Apparently snails hiss. Who knew? Why this knee-crawling method? Because my mom cannot kill anything! All she had to do was sprinkle some snail killer and this problem would be solved. Finally, Brad couldn't take the snail obsession anymore and bought the death powder and sprinkled it himself.

We also have a battle of the birds. We all love birds here but not when we've planted fresh grass seed. You should see this house whenever one of us discovers birds pecking away in our front lawn. It results in everything from a chicken dance to gobbling/grunting noises to scare them off. The birds have learned to ignore us over time so now our cats take watch outside. We will welcome them back as soon as we get some decent grass growing.

The battle of lunch. Somewhere along this huge transition my little power eater has stopped eating his meals- at least willfully and happily. We've all taken turns fighting the lunch battle and I have to admit it's exhausting. Finally, my mom discovered a secret. Let Miles make his very own PB&J and he will devour it whole. I don't know how many PB&J's this kid has eaten but it's only a matter of time til he'll never touch the sandwich again.
In other news- Hyatt and Jeanne came to visit! They spent 6 weeks with us back in Germany this past Fall and it's great living so close. We plan to see them as often as we can. It was great having them pop over. Uncle Hyatt and my Dad put together my new patio set! Thanks guys!
Miles LOVES Aunt Jeanne. I think it's because of all the rounds of bowling she played with him back in Germany. Here they are playing bowling again.

Some exciting news- my Dad got a new ipad! Brad won an ipad back in October of '10 and we finally just got it. My poor Dad is constantly on the road with the most beat-up, out of date computer. Since the ipad was such an unexpected surprise for us, we wanted to pass it on. It came just in time for his 62nd (61? 63?) birthday. Or maybe it was a secret ploy to get my Dad hooked on apple products. :)

Speaking of Dad, we shipped him off a few days ago to start round 2 of trucking. This time he is in the 2nd phase of training and will be making much more money. I was happy to see my parents re-united if only for a couple weeks. It was hard to say goodbye though...
We also sent my mom off yesterday. She is in Auberry visiting family in central CA now. She's been with us since Germany and it was a small shock to our systems to see her go. She is the most active, non-lazy, helping, giving person I know. It's been great having her around while pregnant. She literally does everything... That's not the only reason we miss her though. :)

We got a new grill/patio set last week. This is where you'll find us every night...doing something like this. We are grill-happy.

In baby news- I'm 26 weeks now. Is it bad we haven't bought a single thing for this baby? I feel like this child will be born with nothing and with no name. We have got to get on the ball. We decided to get bunk beds for Miles room and give the baby Miles furniture. So now we're on mission to find something nice to fill Miles room. We still need to buy a stroller, bottles, clothes, carseat... the list goes on forever. One of these days we might find a name.