Yay Applebees!...and some other stuff

Hello Family and Friends!

Sorry to leave you hanging there for awhile! L, L, and E are living in their new place. However, we are still in many boxes!

We've been pretty busy. Just this week alone, Len got his first jury duty assignment. Lars took a friend to a doctor's appointment and Emily...well Emily is doing all sorts of things! See? She's all tuckered out in the car! Plus, last week we were in southern GA visiting relatives for a week! So let's do a little old fashioned catch-up!

Emily has been talking, but now you can have conversations with her! She can ask for things or say words after one demonstration! Her favorite phrases continue to be "meow" for cat, "rowh" for lion or tiger, and "Raff" to indicate she needs you to look at/find/talk to/or give kisses to her floppy giraffe blankie.

Sadly, we are down to two giraffe blankies. We lost one at Walmart. (still digressing...) Speaking of lost things, let me give some MAJOR props to the C'ville Applebees. We left Emily's snack tower (Product on Amazon.com) at Applebees one afternoon. I happen to be in a play so we left a card with the server stating he should keep it face out in his pocket to advertise for us. The server calls the THEATER and leaves a message saying the tower was at the hostess station. Two days later, I get the message from our lovely theater friends and call Applebees to double check. They can't find it but say to check later. So another day, I go to Applebees to follow up. It is nowhere to be found but a manager comes out and says I need to see the store manager to take care of this "situation". Well, what's going through my mind is "Situation? What situation?" So I leave my name and number, etc. and get a return call a few days later. (This is now a full two weeks and counting to deal with this.) The manager is VERY apologetic and immediately offers to replace the item without any prompting or complaining on my part! I tell him where we got it and he promises to have it ASAP and will call when it's at the store. Again, another few days...and I got to pick it up. If you haven't guessed by now, I was in shock at the commitment of this store and its employees. Talk about service! (Now, Walmart on the other hand...the managers need to take a serious reality check but the counter employees have got it going on....another long story) Here's what happened: our server didn't tell anyone he had put the item to the side and someone was coming to pick it up. It got trashed and the managers apparently felt obligated to make some recompense seeing as how I had already gotten a call that it was found.

So all's well that ends well ---wait...what was I talking about? Oh yeah! Emily's new words!

Popular things that come out of Emily's mouth besides distasteful food:

• What's this/that?
• Mom
• Dad
• Nan-nan (Gran-Gran)
• Guck (truck)
• Bubble (as in blowing bubbles) - which she did last night by herself!
• Juice (also used to ask for milk)

The latest words this past week are eyebrow, eat, and help.

She's too cute for words. :)

Well, that should be enough for now. We'll see you guys after Father's Day! I should have some pictures for you by then. It's taking us awhile to put the house aright.