A Place Called "Home"

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Friends:

It's been a while since my last blog because so much is going on in our lives right now. My brother and I found housing! Yeah!

FEMA approved us for one year of housing assistance and we found a very nice duplex apartment community. Gary and I secured the last two units they had available. We have a beautiful three-bedroom duplex in Stafford, Texas, which is located south west of Houston. We are near major road ways and every store you can imagine. Super Wal-Mart is 10 minutes from our new home and my brother and I have been "living" there! :)

The duplex community has small playgrounds all over the place. It's so cool. We have one right next to our house. I can look out my kitchen and bedroom window and see kids playing.

We have been busy moving belongings from our host family's house and purchasing furniture and other household necessities. It's so weird to start from scratch. You don't realize how much you accumulate and use until you have to start over!

FEMA declared my mom's house unliveable because of the mold. We have not had a FEMA rep or our insurance adjustor to do a walk-through at our house yet. They are so overwhelmed. We are also waiting for FEMA to "blue roof" our house -- cover it with a tarp to prevent further damage from rain and the elements.

I managed to furnish our new place on $2000, thanks to the low prices at IKEA and Wal-Mart! But all of my furniture is RTA (ready-to-assemble), which means hours of back breaking labor! Still, it's fun and we are so lucky that we CAN buy new furniture and set up house.

Soleil has a silver double loft bed with a desk underneath - so dorm style but it helps save space. She is decorating in pink, black and white. Retro and funky. Eliana has white furniture and is decorating in purple and pink in a "Princess" motif. My living room has spurts of deep red (always wanted red in my living room!). I have a red chair in the living room. It's fun to decorate and it makes us feel like we're "home."

Mom and Antonio drove in this weekend (Mom from Fort Worth and Antonio from New Orleans) to help with the move. This weekend was spent carting stuff back and forth, shopping, and assembling furniture. Antonio went grocery shopping and stocked my fridge and pantry with the basics. My living room and Eliana's room is done. We still have to do Soleil's room and my room.

I have phone service (281-499-3101) and DSL should be hooked up by next week. So in the meantime, I don't have Internet access at the new place. Ugh! I feel so paralyzed without it!

Gary and I are trying to decide whether or not to move the kids to the elementary school near our apartments. It's in the same school district and we were told it's a good school. We don't really want to uproot the kids since they have settled in but transporting them back and forth to school may become a problem (it's about 25 minutes away). The apartment manager said that there is bus service and the kids could catch the bus to the school nearby. We are going to see how it all pans out.

It's been a challenging road but we are making it. One thing is for sure - it's nice to have a place called "home" again.

Until next time...