Houston Update

I unfortunately do not have any pictures available to post. I have lots of them on my camera, but am missing the needed cord to transfer them. They are all of Camilla. Some of them feature a very naked baby who ran away from us before we could get her into the bathtub and tried to escape out the screen door. This will be more of a journal post, so feel free to skip if you don't want to read lots of text.

The past week and a half have been an organized frenzy, if that makes sense. Mark defended his thesis on the 13th, and Camilla and I got to go listen to most of it. I took her out early as there was at least one person there who didn't seem like he appreciated her presence, and she started to get squirmy (i.e. she decided it would be fun to push her stroller around a crowded conference room). He passed, though I don't think anybody was really worried that he wouldn't. He has worked so hard, and has basically enough research to write two separate theses. It's nice for both of us that it's over, and a little hard to believe at times.

That night, Mark and I got a couple hours of sleep, then hit the road at 2:00 am to drive to Houston to find a place to live. We spent the next night in North Carolina where one of Mark's old roommates lives with his wife. We had a good visit with them, then headed for southern states we had never visited. We spent the next night in Alabama, and the next in Louisiana. We visited another former roommate of Mark's in Mississippi, who much to Camilla's delight has three children and all the toys the accompany them. We utterly failed to take a single picture with said friends. On Sunday afternoon, we found ourselves checked into a hotel in southwest Houston, and we were able to visit my Grandma who I had not seen in about 15 years. She had never met Mark or Camilla. Camilla honored Grandma by walking for the first time at her home. She had taken a few steps here and there, but all of a sudden she walked across the room unaided. And continued walking every day since. She is getting better and better, which means she is very difficult to take out to places like restaurants now. She's just way too impatient to sit still and wants to wander off. *sigh*

Monday and Tuesday were spent driving all over southwest Houston looking at homes with a realtor. It's a good thing they are nice, motivated people, because that is one exhausting process. I can't believe how gross some of these homes are. And then we're desperate to find something, so we keep mulling over which is the least worst of them all. Throw in the fact that Grandma is very nervous about certain areas and neighborhoods, and you end up with a stressful panic that we might not find anything at all and have to fly back not knowing where we'll be living in a couple of weeks. After weeks of me carefully combing through listings of rental houses and coming up with what I thought was a decent list of places to check out, we had no good leads. Enter Mark. He pulls up ONE listing, asks why we didn't go see that one, and it turns out it's absolutely perfect. We both fell in love with this house. Grandma is okay with the neighborhood. We don't need to compromise on anything that we had wanted. We are very happy renters, and can't wait to move into our new house!

We woke up at 3:00 am to catch a flight back to Ithaca on Wednesday, leaving our car behind at Grandma's house. A very tired Camilla turned into "that crying child" on the last leg of our flight. We got back to our non-air-conditioned apartment in the middle of a huge heat wave, ready to take long naps, and Camilla noticed all of the toys she had left behind. No longer tired, she wreaked all manner of havoc while Mark and I lay immobile on our "bed" on the floor (i.e. pile of blankets on which we're sleeping until we buy a new bed in Houston). And by havoc, I really mean that she found Daddy's glasses and had them bent in strange directions by the time we noticed she had them.

We are now just trying to get through this last week until we move. We of course get to speak in church on our last Sunday, and have been trying to arrange a computer schedule since our desktop is in storage. We seem to have both managed to get something written, and trust that our efforts will be enough to get us through Sacrament meeting. Maybe it's best that we've been incredibly busy, because it has left us little time to reflect on what it really means to be leaving Ithaca behind. We've been anxious to move on for so long, but it has been such an important chapter in our lives and we will be sad to move on and know that no place we ever go will ever be quite like Ithaca. If you were one of those people that made this place special for us these past five years, we are so grateful to you. We really had family here, and I truly believe the influence of the good people here has permanently affected us for the better.