We visited the zoo last Saturday and ended up enjoying it enough to buy a membership and return again today. They have lots of pictures to put your head in for a photo op, which is Natalie's favorite thing ever...
And they had tons of Halloween decorations up, which was very fun
The zoo is much smaller than Atlanta, but still has some awesome exhibits, like the giraffe dock where they come right up to you. They actually have employees lining the walkways nearby because you have to back away from the edge when the king of the herd (pictured) comes by- he can swing his head and easily hurt someone. They had quite a few Cheetahs, which were very exciting, as well as an aviary with multiple rooms full of birds who come right up and land on you and you can feed them seeds on sticks or cups of nectar. The only thing I didn't love was how draining the heat was- the girls were fading after only an hour and a half! Fortunately, they have a neat little kiddie pool to cool off.
There is a confusingly huge concentration of furniture stores near the place we're staying, so we went to get a feel for what pieces we might like to plan on buying once we're in our house. We will have 2.5x the square footage of our last home, so we may have a few empty rooms for a while as we collect pieces. One exciting development- I reached out to the buyers through our realtor to ask if they planned to get rid of any furniture. They're downsizing, so I figured that it wouldn't hurt to ask. It turns out the want to get rid of a lot of stuff, so we're going by tomorrow to see what we might buy from them.
In other news, our temporary housing situation has been up and down- as of last Friday, Harris had not responded whether they would cover the cost of extending our stay. Our 30 days was going to be ending on Monday, so over the weekend, I was researching some alternative places. We asked the relocation company how much it would be to pay ourselves to continue in our apartment, and it was pretty pricey. We could have stayed at a 3bd house nearby from airbnb and saved about $500. We decided to go ahead and commit on Monday that we would pay ourselves to continue to stay in the same apartment to spare the hassle of moving our things twice, as well as putting out kids through one extra adjustment. Then, we found out on Tuesday that Harris approved our extension and so they are paying over $2000 for us to keep staying here and the cost of storing our belongings before the delivery. It was just amazing because if we had been focused most on trying to save money and moved to another accommodation, Harris likely would not have covered the bill because they will only pay their relocation company, who only does business with certain approved facilities. So, there was some anxiety and uncertainty, but it's all worked out so well. Another nice perk- we close on our house on 10/30 but the moving company's closest available date to deliver our stuff was on 11/2. If paying ourselves, we were only going to stay until 10/30 and then spend the weekend in a house with no furniture or bedding or cooking implements. Now that Harris is paying, we asked to stay until 11/2.
We've gone to goodwill and salvation army thrift stores this last week and they are LAME. They have tons of clothes and glass things and curtains, but hardly any toys! We did find a few good books that are keeping the girls from going crazy. I tried to get a library card but was told that I can't until we close on the house. If I have to read Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See one more time, I'm gonna go crazy! And the girls are so sick of the toys we brought. I did find this little partial set of dominos for $.19 and it has entertained them for several glorious hours!
Natalie has been trying hard to get attention lately and not always in the best ways. Daddy say her down on Sunday to discuss some ways to get positive attention. He drew this for her reference and put it on the fridge.
When you go from one to two, life requires a bit of adaptation...
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