Home Sweet Home

We're slowly making our way towards a suitable home for our family in Singapore. Yesterday afternoon our air shipment from Southlake and most of the furniture we are renting during our stay all showed up at our River Place apartment. I underestimated the psychological boost I would receive when reuniting with my dishes and cookware! The girls opened their new doll house from Gran and PaPa and Elizabeth played with it while Brian and I worked around the apartment. I also had my first experience with cheap labor. We met the real estate agents at the apt earlier in the day to make sure everything looked good but I wasn't happy with the cleanliness of the kitchen and bathrooms. So, Irene, the friendly agent, offered to send over a mother/daughter team to clean. They spent 2 hours scrubbing those areas and we paid them S$20 (about $14 US). I should get their number and have them come back to do ironing when I finally get the suitcases unpacked! The new place is coming together well. We have a loaner sofa and chair that we'll use until I get to the furniture store to pick out fabric for our permanent set. Our furniture is called the "Resort Grandeur" style and is made out of teak in Indonesia. It's pretty and I like it because it's somewhat local in design. A warm honey finish that matches the woodwork well. I'll take a few pictures when we get the boxes out of the way and you can actually see something!
Today we are heading to IKEA in search of a crib for Emily, a desk for Megan and possibly some kid-friendly furnishings for our little family room that sits outside the girls' bedrooms. I fear that Emily's room will look too sparse with just a little crib in it so I might see about getting a chair or two for her for reading. The view from her window is pretty and I'd like to enjoy it more!
I also got rained on for the first time yesterday. It start raining on my way to the apt from the hotel and the girls all found it pretty fun that we were getting wet. There's my lesson in leaving without an umbrella! After the rain, the sky cleared and we had a pleasant outdoor dinner at a good pizza place near the hotel. At times like that, it feels like we're on vacation -- warm, humid place where we swim and eat out alot -- sounds nice, doesn't it? Well, now I'm going furniture shopping so clearly we're back to reality. I'll post more later about my first workout over here :)