What Charlotte Was Like

I thought it would be interesting to post some pictures and talk about our summer in Charlotte.

Actually getting into our place in Charlotte was an experience in itself. We took a weekend in March or April to make the 5-hour trek down to North Carolina to find an apartment with a 3-month lease. We drove all over the city and found what we thought was a nice, yet affordable, complex. Four days before we were planning on moving, Megan happened to be reviewing apartment reviews on-line and came across some shocking information: our future complex had recently had all kinds of home and car burglaries, a murder in the parking lot, and a shoot-out at the pool. I guess you can't tell just by looking at some places over one weekend!

That left us scrambling at the last minute trying to make arrangements with our second and third choices. Fortunately, we were able to get a place (although it was on the 3rd floor) at our second choice--and this time we did all the research to make sure it actually was nice.

Megan really enjoyed Charlotte. Just a short walk from our non-criminal apartment complex was a little lake with a sidewalk all the way around it. We loved going for afternoon/evening walks as a family. But, I think that the real reason she liked Charlotte so much was because she became friends with people with incomes--and that meant scrapbooking parties! In fact, during the 3 months that we were there she did 6 parties! It's amazing what having friends with incomes means to a Stampin' Up business. Most nights after the girls went to bed, this is what our front room looked like:

Alison and Kaitlyn had a great time there as well. I would guess that they spent almost half of the days we were there at the pool. I've never seen such tan little girls! Unfortunately, we couldn't bring very many of their toys with us, so they had to make do with what we had: Ali learned to work the touchpad on my laptop in order to play pbskids.org and both of the girls loved to play dress-up with our clothes!