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Thursday 5 August 2010

Excited? Me? Nah....

I'm beyond excited for our trip home. I took Li out shopping a little this morning (nothing extreme, just to pick up a few things for the trip that we had forgotten about, like baby sunscreen). I bought her a new toy phone and a new teething toy to play with on the plane to hopefully help make the super long journey a little more bearable... wish me luck! I also bought her a new swimming suit (two actually... they were on sale for 2.50!!!). I bought myself one as well (a one piece since the two piece swimming suits I have tend to show off my warrior/stretch marks). We are now pool ready :)

I also went ahead and bought Liara some jars of baby food/packets of food for the plane. She'll have all three of her feedings on the plane (we get there at 2 Houston time, so 8 our time, which is pretty much when we normally get ready for bed), and I didn't want to mess with trying to keep her food frozen and having to thaw it out. I let her try some of it today at her lunch time feed (I bought all organic stuff, that actually looks, smells and tastes yummy!) and she LOVED it. Like, she scarfed down half the jar in no time... hmm. Either she really likes the tastes of pear and banana together, or she likes the stuff better than the homemade goodness that I've been providing. She's had bananas (and liked them) and she's had pears (and loved them) but I hadn't put them together... so maybe that's it. Is it bad that my child apparently prefers store-bought food to homemade?

Oh well... at least I know she'll eat on the plane.

I also got her a cute little outfit to wear on the plane from Houston to Seattle... since she's wearing my favorite outfit tomorrow (Mommy's little love bug). It's a super sweet dress with little bloomers underneath (that's pretty much all the girl wears now anyway since pants tend to be too big on her at the waist, she's long and slim).

Anyways, I'm heading off to clean up the kitchen, again, and see if I can't get her down for nap so I can get some more packing done.

Wednesday 4 August 2010

Who's Ready?!

Ok... so I thought I'd post our crazy schedule for our trip home so that I don't have to repeat myself a million times (like I haven't already!).

Friday, the 6th:

At 6 am our flight leaves from Aberdeen and we fly to Amsterdam (we get there at 8:40). At 10:40, we leave Amsterdam and fly to Houston. We get there at 1:55, and are spending the night with Cris and Tony (Nic's parents).

Saturday, the 7th:

We fly from Houston to Dallas (2-2:55), then from Dallas to Seattle (3:55-7:10). We'll pick up our bags and meet with my Mom, Raime & Joey (sister and brother in law) and Raisa, Taylor and Dax (nieces and nephews). Then we'll head back to arrivals, and pick up my grandparents! We'll all drive back to Olympia that night (in two packed cars!)

Sunday, the 8th-Wednesday, the 11th:

We'll visit with the above mentioned people, then take Great & Grandaddy to the airport so they can fly to California to visit with Thralene (my great aunt).

Wednesday, the 11th-Sunday, the 15th:

We'll continue to visit with Mom, Raime, Joey, Raisa, Taylor & Dax... with some family friends thrown in the mix every now and then.

Monday, the 16th:

We fly from Seattle to Dallas (9:25-4:25), then from Dallas to Houston (5:00-6:05! Eek... that's a tight plane change!). We'll then pick up the rental car, grab a quick bite to eat with Nic's family, and then drive to Galveston. We'll check into Moody Gardens that night :)

Tuesday, the 17th-Thursday, the 18th:

Nic has to attend a conference (the Deepwater Intervention Forum annual conference... he's on the board) during the day, so he'll be busy doing that while Liara and I catch some sunshine and enjoy the pools and activities at Moody Gardens and in Galveston :) At night, we'll catch up with some friends I'm sure and I think some friends of ours are joining me during the daytime (and possibly my cousin too!) a day or two.

Friday, the 19th:

We'll drive back to Houston, turn in the rental car, and stay with Nic's parents again.

Saturday, the 20th-Monday, the 23rd:

We'll still be at Cris & Tony's house. We do have some plans for these days to visit with friends, as well as have a barbeque where family and friends can come and visit and meet Liara for the first time! On Monday, we have a picnic planned for lunchtime :) We'll also get a family photo session done thanks to Marco (Nic's cousin). I'm excited!

Tuesday, the 24th:

We leave to come back to Aberdeen. We fly out at 3:55 and arrive in Amsterdam at 8:05 am, Wednesday.

Wednesday, the 25th:

We finish our flight home... we leave Amsterdam at 10:05 am, and arrive back in Aberdeen at 10:30. We plan to unpack, start laundry and sleep... Nic goes back to work on the 26th.


We still won't get to see everyone that we wanted to (like the rest of my family in the Lubbock/Amarillo/Plainview area...), but hopefully we'll get to see everyone we can while we're there! I'm glad that our landlords come over twice a day every day to feed their horses & shetland ponies, as they'll be checking in on the house and stuff as well. That's a huge comfort to me!

We're still waiting on a few documents to come through for Liara's visa application, which is making me a little nervous. The lawyer needs to amend one of her letters to change a date... that should be arriving today. The one that worries me is the bank statements. I've ordered them from the bank (we get online statements and they don't actually look like statements, so I had to order the original statements from the bank... pain in the booty!), but they still haven't come in yet. We didn't get any mail today, so they had better get here tomorrow or I'm not sure what we'll do about that. :/ Why in the world it takes up to 7 business days to get paper statements is beyond me. Don't you just hit "print" and then stick them in an envelope and mail them (they can't blame the mail either, everything gets here in one day since the country is so small)? So far we're on day 4... so I'm hoping they aren't going to need day 6 or 7! EEK! Too bad I didn't know we were going to need them before Friday. Here I thought that I was doing a good thing to save some trees....

Ok... I've got too many things to do to sit and worry about stuff I can't control. I've got to finish making my list of things to pack and get some stuff sorted! We leave the day after tomorrow! Hip hip hooray! :)

Monday 2 August 2010

Feelin' Good

The past few weeks have been horrible, but things are looking up now! We finally decided to hire a solicitor (lawyer) to help us with Liara's visa issues and she's been wonderful. Hopefully, with her help, things will go smoothly and we can get the necessary evil over with sooner and we won't have to stay in the US by ourselves! Hooray! Fugro has been wonderful and is picking up the tab for her services, double hooray! With all the added expenses regarding her visa and the new car, etc... we didn't know how we were going to swing that, so I'm really happy with Fugro right now.

So, now that the immigration situation is under control, I'm in full swing to get ready for our trip home. I've been doing dishes and laundry and trying to get the house in order (no one likes to come home to a messy house!) before we leave. I'm doing my best to leave the packing until Wednesday or Thursday, but I've been tempted every day to go ahead and get it done. Oh, I've called the airline to check to make sure everything is all clear for our trip as well (like to reserve the little basket for her to sleep in on the plane... they supply them for you free of charge if you ask in advance!) and found out that Nic and I aren't sitting together!!! WHAT?! They have me sitting in a section that doesn't have seats in front of it (so that I can lay the basket on the floor... makes sense) but there are already people sitting next to me on all sides (I'm in the second seat in the section) and the closest open seat is directly behind me. BOO. Hopefully I'll sit next to someone really nice with no children themselves and they'll swap seats with Nic.

Other than that, there isn't really a whole lot going on here... just the usual stuff. We finished filming a few missing shots for the National Geographic show this weekend with Graham, Pauline, Bob, and Dave (well... Nic did, Li and I are still not in this show, I don't want her on TV quite yet). It was good to catch up with them, but man, I miss Vinnie and his crew- they're so quick! We spent pretty much all day Saturday (6 hours) filming about 30 seconds worth of stuff... but Liara was perfect and was so super quiet the whole time. As soon as we were done, she was her usual noisy self again though. She's a pro at this filming stuff! Sunday, we took Pauline and Graham to visit with Mike at Bowtech (SUCH a nice guy!) and then headed over to Costco to pick up a few things. I'm so grateful for that place, even though it can get expensive because you always end up buying more than you go in for... they carry some American stuff that we can't get anywhere else here (like proper marshmallows and popcorn). I can't wait to get back to the USA on FRIDAY!!!

Ok, I need to go finish the dishes and make some lunch before Nic gets home for his break... plus, Liara is getting tired of playing by herself (she's getting really good at that, but only for like 10 minute increments). I hope everyone else is having a great week! :)