First Day in the New House

 Ashley and boxes that have become her dolls beds

 Our den/dining room-we bought these sofas here and this was taken while unpacking bags in the den-the dining area and kitchen are behind where I was standing when I tood the picture.  The pool is outside the longer wall with 4 sets of windows to my left while taking the picture.

 We call this room the bedroom lobby-don't really know what it is supposed to be for-we also bought this blue futon sofa in Manila.  The door you can see leads to mine and Greg's room.  The boys bedrooms are to the left out of the picture and the stairs are behind the white built in shelves in the picture.

 This is Scott's room but both boys are sleeping here for now.  We left Scott's bed in storage to make more room for boxes and bought this bunk bed in Manila.  We also bought Scott a desk and a red (his favorite color) swivel chair. 

 Our first swim in our pool-the day we moved into the house

Thursday, July 14th

We ate lunch-I had to find the jars of peanut butter and honey that I had packed in one of my bags-here at the house.  The kids all had rest time in their new beds.  I spent that time unpacking and beginning to find homes for all of the things we had brought with us on the plane.  The kids were very excited to see the toys we had brought.  We went for our first swim in the backyard pool which was very fun.  We ate a cold dinner that night because when I took the microwave that we had bought out of the box and went to plug it in I discovered that in spite of the fact that we bought it here, it had a 3 prong plug like we would have expected to find in the US and all of our outlets have only 2 slots.  We ate cold leftovers because of in spite of having a stove, we knew that it would be gas but discovered that it needed a gas tank (like the grill on your deck) to work and there wasn't one here yet. 

I was very excited to play their night night story for the kids-I had been saving for our first night in the house a Hallmark store recordable storybook that Greg's mom (Grammy) had recorded herself reading to/talking to the kids while we were at the beach.  The kids LOVE it.  Ashley started calling it "The Grammy book" and requests to hear it often-a great thing to check into if you have loved ones far away from your children.

The boys had a hard time settling down and going to sleep that night in a new place.  However we have been amazed at Ashley.  She is the only one who sleeps upstairs and has never once seemed upset about it.  She loves her new white bed and her specially chosen Disney princess sheets and has slept wonderfully in her new room-guess she was making up for being a pain several nights in the hotel.

Greg and I laughed when we saw the actual size of the air mattress we had bought originally for camping and brought with us, still in the box, to sleep in until our bed comes (in 6 or 8 weeks).  I had sent Greg a text a work that he needed to stop and buy batteries for the pump to inflate the thing to begin with and then it was still very short and small.  So I slept on the air mattress and Greg slept of the futon sofa.  Neither of us slept great that night.