Austin so far

Thanks my friends--for all your sweet words of encouragement/chocolate/hugs after my lousy day the other day. I'm doing much better today.Now that I've been in Texas for over a week, I thought I'd tell you about some things I'm learning about this place.

1. It's beautiful. I wake up to the sound of birds chirping and look out my window and see a huge flowering rose bush. I drive down the freeway and see green grass and bluebonnets, and TREES. Did I mention the birds? Tons of them. I think there is a nest in our chimney. And cute little rabbits hopping around everywhere.

2. There are indeed bugs here. I've yet to see anything huge or weird or crazy (other than the cute little lizard on my patio yesterday). Although-- I found out the hard way that if you stand on a giant ant mound with flip flops on, they WILL crawl up your pants and bite you about 50 times. Gross and creepy? Yes.

3. The mornings are awesome. It's more humid here than we're used to. And it's just nice to wake up to a cool and moist morning. This morning it was drizzling a little and Hendrix and I walked to our mailbox in the rain under an umbrellas. It was maybe the most fun I've had this week.(our mailbox is way down the street, which is kinda weird). But a fun memory of me and Hendrix since it was just me and him.

4. People are either extremely nice and friendly, or kind of rude. I've yet to meet someone who falls in the middle. Although I haven't met that many people yet ;)

5. There are so many freeways!! I've gotten lost more than once. Plus there are a bunch of toll roads. That's the worst. You go the wrong way and end up on a toll road and have to pay-- then need to turn around and go the other way to get going in the right direction, but you have to pay again. I've lived in LA, so I feel like I can kind of handle myself in traffic and with crazy highways, but it's just quite a bit bigger than Boise which is what I've been used to the past few years.

I'm sure I'll learn more and more stuff the longer we're here. But so far- I love it.

I'll take pictures of the house once I get things on the walls. I've also realized that I may never be done unpacking. There is just so much to be done. Then you add in sick kids and the normal day to day cooking and cleaning and laundry-- there isn't much time leftover for getting things out of boxes. I try to tackle a little each day, but it's slow going. And Dave just about blew my mind this morning when he said it was Friday. I could have sworn it was Wednesday.