Things I was not prepared for when moving to El Paso…

Bugs…nasty, nasty bugs.

So, when moving to the desert, I didn’t take into consideration that there would new kinds of creepy crawly things to deal with.  It started about a month ago when we noticed a scorpion near the downstairs bathroom.  We promptly smooshed that little ba$tard and Chris got bug spray for the house.  Since then, there have been two live scorpion sightings and a dead one in the bathroom.  Creepy.

 Then, our neighbors told us about the 6 foot bull snake heading from his yard into our driveway.  I’m just glad that I found out about that one after the fact.  Did I mention the rattlesnake in another neighbor’s garage?

 Then, this morning I found a rather large spider on the first step heading upstairs.  I took a look at it before throwing the phone book at it and I swear…it was a baby tarantula.  What the??? 

Now I am officially creeped out and scared to walk around my own house.  If I need to go downstairs during the night, all the lights are turned on.  I’m not risking stepping on one of those nasty creatures.  And of course, I did have the lovely dream about a dozen or so scorpions scampering under our front door to have a party in the foyer.  AHHH!

Pyrotechnics in El Paso

I guess there’s a reason fireworks are illegal inside the El Paso city limits.  Chris and our neighbors decided last weekend to buy some fireworks fun.  They lit several firecrackers and threw them over the hills behind our houses with no problems.  Of course, then one of the fireworks started a very small brushfire that didn’t go out by itself.  I guess someone driving along the road behind our house saw that and called the fire department.  We heard sirens several minutes later and a very large firetruck rolled up the street.  We all ran into our houses and peeked down the hill to see what was going on.  The firemen were shining lights up the hills, so we thought we were all in big trouble.  Lucky for us, they put out the fire and went along their way.  I’m glad to know that the fire department responds so quickly around here…we’ll try to be good from now on!

Texas is a really BIG state

We should know…we drove from Houston to El Paso.  We flew to Houston and stayed with my brother for two nights and picked up Chris’s car in Galveston.  There were issues with the customs forms so we were already two days behind.  We then drove to Dallas to pick up my car…of course the battery was dead.  Two hours later, the battery was changed and we decided to start on our 650 mile trip to El Paso.  We made it to Abilene and stayed the night.  The next morning we got on the road again.  Let’s just say that there isn’t much going on in central and west Texas…lots of desert and oil wells.  We made it to El Paso and picked up the puppies from the kennel…it was nice to be home.  Our unaccompanied baggage comes next week so things are finally shaping up!

Our last days in Belgium…

It's a week and half until we leave Belgium and move back to the States, and I really wish we were getting on a plane today…oh wait, RIGHT NOW!!!

Cleaning our old, ghetto Belgian house is no fun.  We are discovering little patches of mold as we're cleaning, and the dog hair just seems to end up everywhere.  And oh yeah, did I mention that we're sleeping ona full-sized bed with two labradors?  Really not fun. 

At least the sun was shining here in Belgium, at least for a little bit.  Yes it's June and we are celebrating the the temperature is over 60 degrees, but just barely.  I will have to admit that I will miss the long days, it's almost 11 now and it's just now getting dark outside.

We move into the hotel the day after tomorrow, but that also means I get to clean our moldy bathroom (that we bleached and painted ourselves since our slumlord….I mean landlord, sucks) and our nasty oven.  I'll be happy when all of this is over!!!