No surprise we beat our furniture to Austin, and had to camp out on the floor the first days (the moving van obviously took the slammer tour along the Mexico border or maybe the driver stopped for some of this). Immediately after our arrival Louise’s parents Christine and Geoff flew in from the UK to help us move in (on January 9–Happy 23rd Birthday Paul! Yeah, right). In addition to no where to sit or sleep we also still had no heat, and were facing a paralyzing freeze unlike anything they’d seen here in like 40 years. This was a far cry from the sub-tropic climate in the brochure:-) But lucky us, after a couple days we had most of our furniture (don’t ask)  and the heat was actually turned on, sort of. It didn’t work very well, and then the cold weather mutated into a menacing ice storm, and finally all of Austin shut down. Couldn’t even get the pizza man. And of course, the builders weren’t around to fix our heat–they all headed to Mexico apparently (and after the ice finally retreated, it took them all a week to hitch hike back to Austin). We did however solve the great heat caper though. As we suspected, the heat was working– the builders just forgot a teensy weensy little detail. Like, the attic insulation. Silly builders. As a side benefit to all of Austin, we single handedly broke the ice

storm by emitting a massive heat cloud into the Austin atmosphere through our roof. Even after the storm we continued to stiffen into corpses inside our new house, because the builders were still all en route back to Austin from Mexico, and hitching can take a long time, especially when you’ve got to evade the U.S. Border Patrol. We almost fled to a hotel. But there was much to do, and the cold didn’t stop Geoff from getting to work straight away. Sadly for Geoff and Christine, we had advised them to pack light for the mild, warm and sunny climate.

Despite this pathetic weather advice, they were a huge help moving in, and we would probably still be fishing through boxes, sleeping on the floor and hanging pictures if not for them. In fact the frigid cold didn’t deter Geoff, who quickly dug out every tool he could find in our mass of boxes and bought those he couldn’t find. Like this wild gorilla ladder that morphs into a million different configurations (as seen on TV!!!).  Among other things, he put blinds throughout the whole house, hung a huge rug that would only fit on the wall in our two story family room (using his handy gorilla ladder of course), and put fans in seven rooms. So why do you need fans in an ice storm you ask? To answer that question, just hop on a plane right now and come for a visit (or hop from UK). The fans actually kicked in right after the ice melted.

Geoff and Christine were with us for six weeks, but we didn’t even put a tiny dent into exploring Austin. It was rather difficult because Geoff was most interested in either moving something in, upgrading the house (many more I haven’t mentioned), fixing things the builders got wrong, building a list for the builders to fix other things they got wrong, and also trying to figure out why our house didn’t have gutters. Yes, it’s true. Gutters are not standard equipment in Texas believe it or not–this was hard to fathom since CA has much less rain, but every house has gutters. In the end, I pulled some strings and got free gutters. Geoff was threatening to pay for them himself unless I got the builders to do it, so I eventually “encourage” them to do it in a rather sly, underhanded way. It’s called the J.D. Powers Builder Survey, and those builders are quite concerned about how you fill those surveys out. Two particular questions in this survey seemed to give our builder insomnia. One in which they ask would you recommend their homes to someone else and would you buy another one. (My answers, if you haven’t guessed, were “yes” and “yes” if you, Mr Carlos Builder,  bless my home with gutters). But their visit wasn’t all work, we did dip our toes into icy Austin, got out to see a little bit of the area (actually ventured out of Austin, into the flatlands of Texas), found the first of many good Austin restaurants (check out Aquarelle when you come:-), and of course, spent most of the time entertaining Sweet Daniel James.

In late February, Christine and Geoff had to head back to the UK. Daniel was a bit teary eyed about this when he said bye bye as

he thought they had moved in permanently. For me, it was a relief because I thought I would have to start paying Geoff to rebuild the house as well as put Chef Christine on the payroll. It was sad to see them go, but we have since discovered video conferencing, which is astonishingly real  these days, and we have already done quite a few video chats. Daniel enjoys flitting by the camera at warp factor 10, “Hi Granny and Papa” as he swooshes across the camera view.

He’s not exactly at the sit still age.