HHE!

Some of our household effects were delivered on Friday- hooray! We have two shipments coming by boat- one from New York and one from Virginia. We received the one from NY on Friday, which was unfortunate because it had almost no toys in it, except for M's small Statue of Liberty, which he has been inexplicably asking me about for months. It was a bit (ok, a lot) embarrassing to receive so much stuff, especially when I knew that more was coming. However, once we got it upstairs and unpacked it, I wasn't as mortified, because once you took away all the packing materials and boxes that were too big for their contents, it didn't seem like that much stuff. But I couldn't help obsessing about what we must look like to our housekeeper and the guys who were unpacking us. Good incentive to keep reducing our belongings.

This isn't all ours! We had 2 of these crates plus a little one you can't see.

We definitely packed things we don't need- a lot of storage solutions like plastic drawers and shelving. Now that we have sufficient closets and shelving, all of that is superfluous.

We were happy to see our linens, the kids' little bookcase, and our rocking chair. We don't use it that much now that my babies are big, but it fits nicely in our bedroom and will go to a happy home whenever we decide it's time. We are glad to see our artwork, though it doesn't match this furniture at all and definitely doesn't fit all the space in this huge apartment. It will be fun to buy new pieces of art as we travel the world.

Yesterday we went to the beach with a number of friends. It was our first day trip, and it was lovely. We went to a small beach club where you can sit all day, as long as you eat lunch there. They have beds with thatched roofs or cloth covers- including a few that are in the water! Whenever we go somewhere with a pool, M doesn't want anything to do with the beach, but this time, he enjoyed swimming in the salty water and L really had fun playing in the sand. The water is so gentle and shallow that she could run in and out filling up her buckets. It took about an hour to get there, but we ran into some traffic. Looking forward to next time.