Just in case you were wondering, I hate ants. HATE them. After living with hordes of them in Thailand (massive fire ants, big black ones, brown ones, little fast ones, etc....) you'd think I would have learned to handle them. I did learn to cope with them, but I never thought I'd have to live with them again. Apparently, that was not correct. We have ants here. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. We were free of them until last week. There's a litte space at the entrance to the apartment complex where all the mailboxes are along with a garbage can. I don't know what someone put in the garbage, but it attracted ants. Lots of them...for several days. It was so yucky to me, that I would go out of the way and walk up the stairs so I didn't have to go through that. This may seem like a simple thing, but when you're carrying Hannah and groceries those stairs get very long. Anyway, after those ants appeared, we found some in our place. Yuck!
Day 1: A few were found wandering around. That means trouble. We learned in Thailand if there's 1 you might be okay - it could be a scavenger. If you see 2 you're in trouble - there are lots more hiding somewhere close.
Day 2: We find the motherload - they're coming out of a little whole in our wall near our door and walking along the floor boards trying to find somehwere else to go or something to eat. James kills them. Hannah and I evacuate while the fumes fade.
Day 3: We find a couple in our bathroom. Bathroom? Stupid ants. There's nothing for them to eat in the bathroom...and it's easy to just wash them down the drain. Anyway. James found another hole where they were coming in from the floor below us.
Day 4: I'm on the lookout and don't see any. We think we've beaten the battle.
Day 5: We find some in our hall closet. We pull everything out. Fumigate. Let the fumes clear out and then put everything back in...
We are now to day 7 and I haven't seen one since day 5. Hoorray. I'm still on the look out. Actually, I'm always on the lookout. I have the eyes for ants. I can spot them accross the room with my glasses off. It's a talent I've had lots of practice developing while James has become a professional exterminator. I'm hoping we're clear of them, but we shall see. I do take some satisfaction in knowing they never found any little crumbs to feed themselves off of in our apartment. However, it does make me a little nervous about the people the live below us and what we have crawling around in the walls...I'm not going to think about it. Anyway, this may seem like a very long post about ants. It is. Because I HATE them, and we have nothing else going on to report.
We've been sick....and I'm sick of being sick. We've had colds and coughs and sore throats for the past week. James has been going to work but comes home exhausted. Hannah and I stay in the apartment all day and we're pretty sick of it, but don't quite have enough energy to go out and about. I think (maybe it's just wishful thinking) that we're on the mend. So, we haven't done anything lately. Here are just a few random pictures of Hannah from the past few weeks. 
She loves playing with our pillows on the bed.
Here's our little jungle gym. :D
We successfully received our first mailed package. Our intercom works and I was home when the UPS guy came. Hannah loves playing with the box. It was the best toy for about 2 days.
She also loves playing in front of the mirrors. Good thing we've got lots of mirror with our closet doors. I'm pretty sure James is never going to see them clean. I clean him during the day when he's at work and there are always lots of handprints on them by the time he gets home from work. Oh well...she's having fun and I'm pretty sure he doesn't care.
So, today Hannah and I had our first real outing outside the area where we live. We were on a mission to go to JoAnns and Michaels. The closest fabric store is about 13 miles away. It took us about 45 minutes to get there. The Michaels store was on a busy road and all the metered parking was full. There was a parking complex for $5 a day. There's no way I'd pay $5 to shop for an hour, but it was full anyway. So, we bypassed Michaels and headed to JoAnns. We finally made it, but it was a little dissapointing. They don't have the best selection of anything. That's okay, but the downer was that I had looked at the sales ad for California and what they had on sale didn't match the sales ad. So, I didn't end up getting much. I have a feeling, that if it's going to take 45 minutes to get there, we won't be making that outing very often. This is probably a good thing - maybe I'll spend less. :D
I have a new, local, cell number. I sent out a text to everyone in my phone book with the number, but some people didn't get it. Let me know if you need it.
So, this weekend we decided we wanted to get out of the city and see something besides buildings and cement. We took a scenic drive along the coastline for a few miles. We got out at an overlook to take a picture and walk around. It was so nice - you could actually breathe in fresh air. It was really pretty.
We then drove to the largest park in North America. We took a little walk along a trail and stopped to take some pictures with the Hollywood sign in the background. It's kind of far away, but you can see it.
It was nice to get out of the city. We drove through some nicer neighborhoods and actually saw other white people - in fact the majority we saw were Caucasian. It was kind of nice - it felt like we were back in the US for a while. :D Anyway, it was a nice little trip we took.
Here's a shorten, condensed version of the move from Logan to LA. It was only a 2 day process, but felt like much longer. Here's our trailer:
To give you a better idea of the size, here it is attached to the truck. We actually had plenty of space. It was the weight we were worried about. Anyway...
Here's Hannah at the beginning of the trip:
I wish I could say she stayed that happy the entire way, but not quite. She actually did pretty well (all things considering). We had a few good cry sessions, but survived. I thought the forward facing car seat would be a good thing, but it just let me watch her as she cried. Not so fun!!
We arrived in LA the second day and saw our apartment for the first time. It's pretty much what we expected, except maybe a little smaller. But, we spent the afternoon unloading everything. We had a disaster. Here are a few random pics to show how bad it was:
We spent the next day trying to get everything put away. I'm happy to report that it is much more organized, but it's still ugly. I'm trying to help it out with curtains and that kind of stuff, but it needs a lot of help. We're kind of in the ghetto - not quite East LA, but still not the best neighborhood. The complex where we live is good. There are lots of kids and 2 other lds families (hooray!!). But the surrounding area is pretty ugly. But for now it is home. I'll post some picture when I get some decorations up.
..well...kind of. Out of the blue she took her first steps today. And then she did it again....and again. She started with just one or two, but then ended up walking 10+ steps to get to us. Anyway, it was kind of fun. Here's an attempt at gettting a picture of her walking.
...and now of her falling:
We got the phone call today...and we have an apartment in LA. Hooray.... We actually have somewhere to move to. We've only seen a couple pictures of it and don't know much about it, but it's a couple hundred dollars less than everything else we'd looked at. That makes me a little nervous, but oh well. Thailand prepared me for a lot of things...so we'll manage.
