Updates from the Week...and a Road Trip

Emma likes to make me venture out of this house.  It's probably a good thing I have people like her in my life otherwise I would never go anywhere or see anything.  

We found the grocery store...

Which means that we've made dinner every night since we've been here.  I can't even tell you how happy that makes me.  Even in this not-quite-settled, slightly dysfunctional, left handed kitchen,  having dinner ready at the same time every night and eating it all together is absolutely one of the greatest blessings of being in this new house.

Speaking of eating together...I found this awesome round table on Craigslist last week and dragged Craig, three kids and both of our vehicles 20 miles away to help me pick it up from the nicest woman who is relocating to Oregon with her dog,  We gave our giant white kitchen table to one of my friends before we moved, so we've been without one for a little while and eating in the dining  room which is a little too formal for dinner at night.  And I kind of like all that light in the kitchen.  It has a leaf so it can extend when we need it to, and I also need to find two additional chairs, but we've totally loved this treasure and it fits perfectly in the space.  

And speaking of adventures...the girls and I had a night by ourselves while Craig was at Scout Camp with McKay, so we (mostly Emma) decided we should explore a little.  She was thrilled with the giant shopping center we found and I was pretty excited about the sunset behind it. 

We drove home after a really fun evening out, put on jammies, and piled in my bed to catch up on all the YouTube happenings I've missed in my life (also according to Emma.) The girls just slept in my room that night.  

On Friday night the girls went to a stake dance in Huntsville.  That's two hours away from us!  The YM president happens to live in our neighborhood, so he and his son picked the girls up at 4:30, met the rest of the youth and leaders at the church at 5:00, and then drove them to Huntsville for a 7:00 dance. Holy cow!  What a long night!  I think they only have dances once a quarter here because it's quite a commitment to get the kids to them.  Since McKay still had one more night of scout camp and Craig and I had a free night, we decided to go to the temple and out for dinner.

Birmingham is a limited use temple which means they only have a handful of sessions scheduled each week and everything else is by appointment only.  That's such a huge change from Dallas where I could just wake up and decide I wanted to go to the temple that day and then drive to the temple.  I'll have to be more intentional with my temple attendance here.  But it was so nice to be there and with a smaller temple, you certainly get tons of attention!  I think we talked to just about everyone in that building.  :)

After the temple, we drove to Craig's favorite restaurant, Rock and Roll Sushi, which is kind of the antithesis of the temple atmosphere where we had just been, but it was so good...and the music was really good...and the menus are on album covers!  #love

We leave tomorrow right after church for our Washington DC road trip where Emma and I will be singing with 1300 other people and recording an MCO CD.  

I got the detailed schedule yesterday morning and honestly had to curl up into a heap in the closet for awhile and regroup before I could even muster the desire to go on this tour.  I know I'll be so happy for the experience once it's over, but right now, all I can see is a lot of orchestrating in a place I'm not familiar with, and a lot of really really big personalities all squished together for three days with two directors who are perfectionists!  hmmm...

It'll be 9:45 on Friday night when we end with How Great Thou Art in that concert hall in Bethesda with all 1300 of us and the orchestra and Jenny Oaks Baker that I'll realize it was all worth it.  

Right now, I need to just stop procrastinating and stop rehearsing all the possible horrific and frustrating things that might happen and just pack all this stuff...

I'm bringing my camera and my iPad so I can take tons of pictures and hopefully post a few of them here, but I really have no idea what to expect this week.  Wish me luck...and wish the rest of my family luck dealing with me in the next 24 hours, and if I happen to be inactive for awhile, have a great week!