Month: March 2011

Friday afternoon we arrived at the Marine Memorial hotel and decided to go walk around the neighborhood while we waited for Josh’s parents to arrive. I told everyone to put on their warmest clothes because it was 40 degrees outside and getting colder. And then Calvin realized that he forgot to pack a sweatshirt. Before he “realized” it we had a whole back and forth that went like this:

C: I packed it! Me: No, you didn’t. If you did, it would be in your bag! C: I packed it. I really did! Me: You can say, “I thought I packed it” or “I meant to pack it,” but you can not say that you packed it because if you did, it would be here. *repeat multiple times until a phone call to Santa Cruz confirmed that in fact, the sweatshirt had been left at home. (Then we had another conversation about how someone must have taken it out of his bag. *sigh*)

So our exploring expedition turned into a shopping expedition because as much as I am for natural consequences, I wasn’t going to let him freeze all weekend with only a long sleeved shirt to wear. Besides, I wasn’t too upset about having to go to the beautiful Westfield mall (with the circular escalators, huge Nordstrom, etc.) Walking around the city was fun, even though Calvin was insisting in a very martyr-like way that he wasn’t cold at all and didn’t need a jacket. Once we made it to the mall we scored by finding clearance wool beanies ($5) for me and Calvin (we went back the next day and picked them up for the other 2 boys too). Still on a jacket/sweatshirt hunt, we exhausted our possibilities in the mall (it had to be warm and cheap) and then I saw Old Navy, my favorite place for finding great things on clearance. This Old Navy was the biggest one I’ve ever seen – 3 huge floors, every department possible, tons of clearance items. In the men’s clearance section we found these great jackets for $12.99. So not only did we buy one for Calvin, but I got one too. For that price, I wasn’t passing up the opportunity to be extra warm! With some matching gloves from the women’s department ($2), we were all set for any of the cold weather SF had to offer us.    We didn’t end up getting any snow, but it was cold!  

We are going to Oman this month. The orders just say March 2011, but we know they are working on acquiring housing for us and prefer that we come at the end of the month/first of April to give them time to work out all the details in Oman.

The newest development is that we were issued 12 month orders so it is possible that we will actually get to spend a year in Oman instead of only 8 months. I should say it looks likely that we’ll be there a year. Of course it was a “sure thing” that we’d be in Egypt for a year and we all saw what happened there . . .

ETA: And no, I still don’t know what is going to happen with our stuff. We will send a copy of our orders and a special power of attorney to Josh’s boss in Egypt and he will oversee getting our things (and car) shipped to us, but I think there are going to be quite a few hoops to jump through before we actually see any of our stuff again.

Not a big deal, we will probably just have to get some dishes/kitchen things when we arrive in Oman. Or maybe buy here and ship them there. Hmm, and maybe some linens/towels/pillows . . . I better start making a list!

I was just about to write a post about our weekend in SF, but then the hotel fire alarm started going off and a voice recording projected over a loudspeaker ordered everyone to evacuate the building. Seriously. I have to say, the boys were expert evacuators – they popped out of bed (it was 10:30 at night), grabbed their shoes and were out the door before I could even grab my flip-flops and throw on my jacket. I had to run to catch up with them as they raced down the 7 flights of stairs. Because we couldn’t smell any smoke I was sure it wasn’t a fire, but I wasn’t ruling out bomb threat or some other crazy evacuation-worthy event. Thankfully when we got to the lobby we were told that it was a faulty smoke alarm so we didn’t have to go outside, we just had to wait for the fire department to arrive and issue the “all clear.” Since the boys got out of our room so quickly there was only 1 other person in the lobby when we arrived. I did think it was strange that we didn’t see anyone else in the stairwell as we headed down all those steps, but I guess we were just that fast. Over the next 10 minutes the rest of the occupants in the hotel slowly straggled down.I know the whole thing really scared the kids, and it got my heart beating pretty fast, but they all handled it very calmly and did exactly what they were supposed to do. Since now I’m too tired and frazzled to write about SF, I’ll just leave you with some pictures that I took of our girl on our first evening here. Here’s to hoping March is an evacuation-free month!