The Lau's are in CA...

Hey Everyone!

After taking some leave and visting with family in Massachusetts and Wisconsin, we're now in California. We arrived last Sat. night and have been trying to get settled as much as we can ever since.

They did not have room for us on base, so we've been staying at a Homewood Suites this past week which has been nice as we get breakfast every morning and dinner Monday-Thursday. Brennan enjoys his "job" of being the elevator-man. He is the one who presses the buttons and amazingly, he can reach the "3". I thought it would be too high, but he doesn't even have to stand on his tippy-toes. He's getting so tall and becoming such a big boy.

Alex's top Right front tooth broke through his gums on Thursday so he now has 4 teeth total. I'll try to get pictures and post them on our website: http://vinshanclan.blogspot.com

Even though our room is only a living room/kitchenette/bedroom, we're all getting along fine. Brennan even slept through his "roomate's" screaming the other night when Alex's tooth was hurting him the most as it was probably emerging at that time.

Vinnie and I were very lucky to have found a new vehicle already. Our Chevy Avalanche is still making its way here from Germany and is supposed to arrive at the end of June. Vin happened across a Chevy dealership that had a demonstration model Traverse for a good price, but we got it for a better price and 0% financing so we are very happy. It is Black Granite in color (almost black but truly a very dark grey) with light grey interior. It has a DVD player and we made the "mistake" of buying the computer-animated DVD "Cars" because now, even with his limited speaking ability, Bren can clearly get across to us that he wants to watch the Cars DVD by saying, "T" for 'TV', "Buh-en" for 'Button', "Cah" for 'Cars', and "Voom" for 'Voom'--the sound the Cars make. Another day or two of house-hunting and I'll about have it memorized.

The house-hunting is frustrating because of how bad the housing market is here. The banks have been slow to release the houses so there are a lot of places that are empty but not being sold just yet. A majority of them have been vacant long enough that windows have been broken. Very sad. Our realtor is great and has been steering us away from "questionable" areas in our searches and she's been checking into several properties for us and finding out the "real" stories behind them. Definitely can't judge a book by its cover here...nor a house!

We are still adjusting to living once again in America. We find that beer and wine just aren't the same here as in Germany. We miss it so much! We have only bought a couple of bottles of wine while being back here and they've both been Rieslings from the Mosel region of Germany! I've been so completely excited to find wines from "home"!!!

It still doesn't feel like we're back, but rather that we're on an extended "vacation." I keep telling Vin that we need to be here over a month for me to really realize that we're not headed back to Deutschland. Whenever I and the boys would come over, it would be for 3 wks. to a month so it's just not feeling "permanent" yet. I have to keep telling myself that it's o.k. to buy things at Walmart or Target and I don't have to worry about "shipping" them back to Germany like I normally do. I do have to worry about packing them as we'll be leaving here on Tues. to move into base lodging for a month so I'm not completely setting in yet so I think that keeps the "permanence" at bay and the "vacation" mindset in play.

Vin found out during some of his inprocessing that they fudged a little on his report date. They set his Class Start Date (CSD) for 16 June but it's not actually until 30 June. They've had to start doing that because they've had too many people show up 2 days before their CSD and not have time to do their inprocessing properly before they have to be in class. So this gives us an extra 2 weeks to hunt around for a house to buy and for Vin to try to get inprocessed.

The inprocessing is quite a painful process, surprisingly moreso than outprocessing Ramstein. One of his briefings has been rescheduled 3 times and the base orientation briefing I was supposed to go to along with Vin and that I had to scramble to get childcare for the boys for cancelled ON Friday. So we got us and the boys up super early, dropped the sleepy and cranky boys off at the babysitters house at 6:45am, got to the parking lot for the Airmen & Family Readiness Center, were told by a guy standing in the parking lot that only 4 people were signed up so they were cancelling it, watched as he told the other 2 cars parked next to us the same thing, went and got the boys by 7:15am, apologized to the babysitter profusely who just laughed because she's NOT a new AF wife, then decided since it was a great time of day to do so, drove to San Francisco to drop off the rental. We lucked out as we avoided traffic at that time of day. Whew.

On the plus side, I have located an IKEA right outside of San Francisco so I'm all set for our new house...whenever we get it. On the minus side for Vin, I've located an IKEA right outside of San Francisco so I'm all set for when we get our new house.

For those of you who haven't given up and are still trying to keep track of us through snail mail, our address right now is: PSC 3 BOX 7402
694 A ST.
TRAVIS AFB, CA 94535

We're looking forward to our "little" Alex turning 1 on July 21st! It's hard to believe how fast this year has gone, even though Bren did the same thing to us not that long ago. Vin's parents are coming at the end of August so we're going to do his official birthday party when they come, but we'll have a little celebration for him around his actual birthday with just us...wherever we are!

Luv-n-stuff to all and take care,

Shannon