Week 2 Email

Dear Family,
Yes, this will all soon be on a blog, I think Rich already set one up for us, but for now, I’m doing an email because it’s faster and I’m trying to hurry while the two younger boys are napping!
We moved into our house on Wednesday! Yeah! I am so glad now we have a house with a pool! It is great, the kids swim ALL day! Today it is raining, too bad because we planned to finally hit the beach, but it’s probably good for them to have a day out of the sun.
Having a pool brings back so many fun family memories of growing up and having the pool in our CA house – fun family nights, fun parties with friends, etc, etc,. How I would love to have all of you here for a party! The pool has a nice grassy area with a table and chairs, and on the other side it is surrounded by beautiful palm trees and flowers, as well as a bar with a grass-roof top, and at night there are colored lights to light up the yard and pool. It is a lot of fun!
The home’s owner sent his handyman/house helper to our home Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday which was great. He built a fence to the pool so the kids can’t get there without us, fixed random things around the house, went grocery shopping for us, and even cooked us dinner once. We also hired 3 ladies to come clean the house yesterday top to bottom. They worked 8 hours and we paid them $7.50 each, which is a bit more than they typically make for a day’s work! I don’t understand how they survive here! But the people are so kind and we are so impressed with their manners and helpfulness.
It was nice to have our home smell so clean yesterday! Everything here tends to start to smell musty and mildewy, no matter how clean you are! The grocery store smell is something to get used to. However, I have been able to find a lot of American food, almost anything you want, and now that I've talked to the mission home about food safety, my horizons are even more broad, so that is great. Breakfast is easy – we’ve had cereal, pancakes, French toast, eggs, oatmeal, you name it! Dinner is a little trickier. Unfortunately, no salad dressings worth eating a pinch of and no lunchmeat, but some other delicious foods to make up for it. Problem is, we have to take a taxi to the grocery store, all of which are inside of larger malls, so it is hard to take home very much. We have to go every day, even though I'm always buying 5X the amount of food that the others around me are buying. I think we will soon hire someone as our permanent house help, and that will be such a treat to not have to do the daily shopping and have help cleaning, etc.
Our house is great! It is 8 years old, which around here does mean it needs some maintenance. Mostly, everything is really nice except older wallpaper and older bathrooms. To all the people here, we are living like kings and queens, so I really can only be grateful and wonder why we are so blessed in some ways while others have so very little comparatively. We live in such a beautiful neighborhood (most of the houses are newer and would rent for at least 2X what we are paying). Our family room and kitchen area is great with 10-12 foot high ceilings (Rich loves that) and very open. It is a rambler, which is rare. But the floorplan is perfect and because of the high ceilings, the sound never seems too bad, even for the bedrooms which are right off the family room. It has four bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and then there is a separate office as well. It feels very spacious so the kids have had a lot of fun running around indoors and out. I’ll attach pictures, but these are from the listing, so it doesn’t show the current furniture, or us! We’ll try to do some more photos soon!
We've been taking walks as a family through our neighborhood each morning. Most of the houses are so huge and quite beautiful with beautifully manicured yards. All homes are gated and there are always 2 or 3 house helpers out and about at each home who we say hi to. There is one street without houses, just tree-lined with trees that have bunches of white flowers (like those you see in Hawaii). There were yellow and orange butterflies flying around. Magical!
Anyway, the kids are having fun even though they sweat constantly, and people are constantly waving to them and saying, "Hello, Babee! Hi, Babee!" Jonah at least eats it up!
We ate at McDonalds today. Happy meals were $1.30, so some things are a bit cheaper!
We miss you all and love you lots!
Love,
Jill