Day 12: She's Almost There!

Posted by: Cris

After not hearing from her yesterday or today, I did get to talk to Emilie tonight very briefly. She was on a public computer with a time limit and not enough internet speed to do video or audio but we did get a little text chat time.

She did make it to her intermediate stop and it is far from having the luxury and amenities she had in Kuwait...including getting dropped off in the middle of the night and being told there were no open beds so they needed to fend for themselves with a "that's your problem not mine" attitude. But, she did find a bed and she was expecting to get out of there sooner than later and on to her final destination.

For those keeping track, Afghanistan is 9.5 hours ahead of Eastern Time Zone right now / 14.5 hours ahead of Hawaii right now. Yes, that is correct, apparently time zones in the middle east include 1/2 hour increments.

Today I stayed home with the girls and "worked from home" for awhile. Otherwise we went out running around and doing errands/having fun including a trip to the DMV and an hour long visit to Home Depot (yes, they actually consider Home Depot fun - they run around and have a great time everytime we go).

While the girls were taking a nap, I finally got the yard mowed for the first time. It was looking very rough and every time I looked over the balcony it was stressing me out. It was amazing what a simple lawn mowing could do to restore my obsession with our view...
The thing I haven't quite figured out is how you mow yard on three different levels. Today it involved me literally picking up the mower and carrying it up the rock step pathway to the upper backyard. The small area in front of the house needs mowed but I can't carry the mower up there so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with that.

After mowing I climbed up on the rock wall to clean out the gutter in front of the house, misstepped while getting down and fell three feet onto the other rock wall landing squarely on my right hip and left knee. I laid there for a minute making sure I hadn't broken anything then limped back into the house with what has become two severe bruises by tonight.

The set-up of our living room has been awesome for wild playing...again today the girls spent 20 minutes chasing each other around the sectional couch sitting in the middle of the room...this time pretending to be Toy Story Characters.

Actual dialogue for the entire time:

Juneau: "I'm Buzz Lightyear"

Nova: "And I'm the girl cowboy, Jessi!!"

They slept well at naptime...