Austin, Texas...Home Sweet Home

Note:  Clearly I have done this wrong--I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to adding pictures to my blog (these are pictures from my iphone that are in a weird order and have no real connection to the entry below)---but I do not have the time or patience to re-do the pictures for this post so the following are the captions for the above pictures: 1. Abbie making me make "heart cakes" as a bribe for her to stop trying to unpack boxes herself 2. a scorpion that I killed on my kitchen floor when Justin was nowhere to be found and I did NOT want it to escape (Jessie googled it, not poisonous) 3. Abbie riding to the front porch on Tate's bike 4. the kids eating lunch on the back patio 4. our bikes, etc. cluttering up the driveway 5. Bracken being asked for the zillionth time NOT to climb the retaining wall

They claim this is Texas---we are in the capitol after all---but I have yet to see big hair, cowboy boots, a 10-gallon hat, or even to hear a howdy!!  There have been a few "y'all's" (although I think at least one has escaped from my own mouth), after hearing from Allie all that Rachael has had to say about Texas in her blog I have decided that I am in the wrong part of the state for immersing myself in the true Texas experience...or at least the one that Hollywood has portrayed.  Maybe I should head north to Dallas and crash with Rachael so that I can really take advantage of what makes this state unique.

Perhaps it is because Austin is the melting pot of the state and the natives are hiding elsewhere. On my street there are two families from Louisiana, one and a half from California (the other half--her husband--is from Maine),  and one from Canada.  There is one family from Texas, and they are truly the loveliest people, but I cannot believe that we have not encountered more Texans.  So far I have been stopped at the grocery store by a man who saw my car and asked if that was a Loudoun County decal on the front windshield (he is a Leesburg native who would rather be back home but is here for the sake of being close to his grandkids), greeted as family by a delivery man who just moved here from Richmond, and served food at Rudy's by a girl who recently relocated from Fairfax.  So, it seems that Virginians are jumping ship but there are no locals to be found...go figure.

Those who know me know that I am the queen of unreturned phone calls, unreturned e-mails, and am basically horrible at keeping in touch.  I LOVE my friends and love to talk to them and to know what is going on in their lives, but for some reason (four small reasons actually) I can never make the time to catch up.  My sisters hear from me more frequently because I feel less guilty about the screaming in the background with them for some reason but they too have made a request for an Allen family blog.  So, the deal that I have made with myself is that when there is time (ha) I will create new posts but I will not beat up on myself (as I do with journal writing) when time passes and I haven't had time to record every tiny thing we have done or every hilarious anecdote about the kids.  We'll see how well I do!

The brief update since the move is:  We miss Virginia, we did move into the house we have been trying to buy though we still haven't closed on it,  we love the house, love the area, and love the neighborhood, our kids are starting preschool this week (hooray), it hasn't rained once since we got here, it is NOT hotter than Virginia but we will definitely miss the fall back east,  Justin is loving his commute to down the hall, I am not loving living without a refrigerator (long story), but all in all things are great for the Allen's!

I now have an iphone (my husband could restrain himself no longer) so my sisters and Dad have been getting multiple pictures a day of my kids which I will try and extract from my phone and put on this blog...if that's possible from my phone.

We love and miss all those we left behind and hope to hear from all of you soon!!