Day 15: Saturday, 6/4

After two weeks we're settling into a nice little routine here. I suppose that's good for us but maybe not so good for blog posts. Grace is sleeps pretty well at night and off and on all day. Jeff gets up early and plunks on the computer almost ever day (just like home, right?), and I putter around cleaning and organizing things. Big shocker, that...

We started out this particular Saturday with breakfast, guess where... the Enra! On our way down we stopped at Stacy's to see if she was interested in joining us. She'd already put in a to-go order for the banana pancakes but came down with us to pick them up and joined us for breakfast anyway.

We headed back up to the room for some lounging time – no other plans for the day. We expected to hear from Gordon before he and his family flew out to Hawaii. He'll be gone for 2 weeks while his wife and kids will be staying in Hawaii for an extended amount of time. I assume that while he's gone there will be no adoption court dates scheduled but I don't know that it'll have any affect on the processing of referrals and pre-court documentation. Gordon tells us he does work from Hawaii when he's there and an associate files any paperwork on island that he needs filed.

Miss Grace was not wanting to sleep despite being very tired so I walked around with her outside for a while and she fell fast asleep. We're trying to find the balance with the A/C between tolerable for us and comfortable for her... we usually have her in a full leg/arm sleeper or wrapped in a blanket while we're inside so we can have the A/C at a moderate level – just enough to cut the humidity for us wimpy Minnesotans. She's getting more used to it but consider that when Claudia and the other RMI officials were visiting MN and it was a beautiful 65-70 degrees, they were FREEZING... really, they did not like it at all! It's a good thing we're coming back in the Summer to ease Grace into the MN weather.

So we hung out typing, reading, and sleeping (guess who did what) until the early afternoon when Gordon called. We'd been waiting to hear from him about two items. Gordon and his wife each have a car and sometimes they'll rent the smaller one out to adopting families. Their big car was being fixed and even though they're leaving for 2 weeks, they need to have one working car here for the people who watch over their house/store while they're gone. If the big car wasn't fixed in time, we wouldn't be able to rent the small one. Fortunately, it was fixed and he was sending his wife's sister over to drop it off for us later in the afternoon! We'll have it for at least 2 weeks and maybe more if they don't need it when they return. I feel a new sense of freedom being able to drive wherever we want, whenever we want. And, of course, we are at Stacy's disposal since they were so nice to cart us around for the past two weeks.

The second item we were hoping to hear about was a trip to a nearby island this Sunday. There's a guy on island, Jerry Cramer, who owns many businesses and a lot of land. He takes his boat out to the island ever Sunday at 12:30 and will often invite visiting Americans to go with them. You just need to pack your own lunch and show up – of course, after someone lets him know you're coming. Gordon offered to call him for us (all 3 families) and see if there was room for us this Sunday. Apparently Jerry is currently off island but his brother, Kenneth, is here and is happy to have us join him! I stopped down to tell Stacy an then gave Heather a call to let her know. Tomorrow is the big day – I'll let you know how it goes!

In preparation for the trip on Sunday, we headed over to the hardware store to pick up a styrofoam cooler and then off to Payless for a few groceries. We walked into Payless and immediately could tell something was different... in the cooler containing soda, juice, and beer, it was completely full! I joked that the boat must have come in as we've heard the opposite reason for things in the restaurant being out of stock... and after walking a few more steps, we ran into Andrew (the Consular Officer at the U.S. Embassy) who told us that, in fact, the boat had come in on Thursday. Seriously, I felt like we'd won the lottery!

Walking up and down the aisles was just like being home... same brands, fully in stock. <sigh> We picked up some supplies for the Sunday trip and also a pack of hotdogs/buns for our next trip to Laura Beach. They have fire pits there and we're thinking we'll host a good old-fashioned cookout for out birth family. Then, walking down the diaper aisle to see if they had diapers in Grace's size, I turned around to find none other than the Similac formula we've been using for Grace! (actually, we're using the Up & Up brand that is like Similac...) This was the jackpot! As you know from a past post we are running low and were going to try a brand we've never heard of before. A rough calculation told us that the Similac is about twice as expensive here as home but if it means a smooth transition for Grace, it's more than worth it.

A quite night and two more episodes of Modern Family. Things are prepped for tomorrow so it's off to bed.