We moved in to our new house on May 1! Our first guest arrived May 3 so we settled quickly and then poor Jeremy Keiper (a good friend and co-worker from back home) had to be here while we worked out all of the kinks.  We’ve had just a few major problems, such as the guest shower not having hot water and the sink not draining AND leaking.  Also, during the first big rain, water came pouring in to the kitchen from under our side door.  The door has since been fixed, the sink has kind of been fixed and nothing has been done with the shower.  We are living off of our landlords electricity right now so at night when a lot of people are using it you can get quite a shock from touching the stove, microwave or toaster.  Andy learned his lesson the other night when he touched the stove. Other than that, things are great and we’re all happy to have so much space.

It’s really nice to be in our own place and for everyone to have their own rooms.  We’ve started to accumulate furniture and carpets which have helped to cut down on the echos.  The front porch is one of our favorite things because we can close the gate which allows us to leave the door open for the kids to play inside or on the porch.  We now have 3/4 of our sidewalk which is great but we’re really looking forward to it being completed so that we can push the stroller right to our door.  They’ve also planted grass which they tell us will be looking good in about 3 weeks.  When everything is finished it will be REALLY nice, but living through the process is a bit tiring.  Fortunately, the workers are really nice and the kids love to play together.

I’m including some pictures, although there have been quite a few changes since I took them.  I’ll look to update more over the next few days!

I snapped some pictures so that you all can be as excited as we are about it! We really can’t wait until we have the kids in their own rooms. Here at Joe’s we put Eden in her own room and she slept through the night. But Andy woke up at 1am and wanted to play/flop/giggle in bed with us for too long! Lets hope that was just temporary and he actually does fine tonight.

Our house will be the one on the right:

The front porch:

From the family room into the dining room towards the front porch:

Into the kitchen from the dining room through the waiter window:

One of the kids’ rooms (the other looks just like it):

Main shower or bathroom (another room just like it will have whichever one this isn’t):

Into the master bedroom:

And finally the master bath:

1. You can now “download” any of the full size images. There is a download link in the upper right near the close button.
2. You can now upload your own amazingly cute photos of Ben…or if you have some of Eden, Andy, or Meghan we’ll take those too! There is an upload box near the bottom of the photos page.

For the three of you that are technically minded and actually care: the picture gallery is powered by a great jquery plugin called yoxview.

We travelled to Pittsburgh and Akron this weekend and Andy was great (Eden was really good, too!). He slept pretty much the entire time in the car. He has also started to really use his pacifier. We upgraded to the nuk instead of the newborn pacifier that we were given at the hospital and it has been funny watching him figure out how to hold on to it.

We hope that you enjoy the pictures of our giant baby boy!

Eden was spectacular over the holidays. We had five Christmases in 8 days, drove to Pittsburgh and back, traveled to West Lafayette twice and Eden slept in a strange bed 5 out of 10 nights. Through it all she entertained everyone around her and was as cute as ever!

I know that everyone was worried that Eden might not get completely spoiled at Christmas, but not to worry…she was! Between the five Christmases that she had she got about a gazillion toys and cute outfits and had constant attention from her adoring fans. She has become such a little diva. She pulls out her bag of tricks every time that she has an audience and people just ‘oohh’ and ‘ahhh’ and laugh at her like she is the cutest thing ever. I don’t think five minutes passed in the last two weeks during which someone didn’t say “She is so cute!” or “She’s the smartest baby!” Not that Ben and I don’t agree, but…wow.

We really appreciate everyone’s support and loved getting to introduce Eden to so many people. We hope that the holidays were wonderful for you as well!

The next day we got up bright and early and headed to the airport. To our surprise it turned out that 3 guys from the Boston group were on our flight and it was really nice to see familiar faces! The flight was almost 11 hours which was just WAY too long but I walked a lot and bothered Ben a lot so it wasn’t too horrible.

We got to the Monkey Valley Resort last night around 11:30. It was really dark and it was raining. Our house is very nice but I had no idea what the world outside looked like. Ben did say as we were going to sleep that the sound which I thought was a heater (in my dreams…the place was freezing!) was the ocean.

I was SHOCKED when I woke up this morning and looked out the window. We are practically IN the ocean! It’s beautiful even though it’s been cloudy and rainy today. We’re not exactly roughing it here and I’ve spent a very romantic morning by myself watching the rainbows, breaching whales and horseback riders on the beach from my balcony.

I’m including a couple of pictures of our ‘master suite’ and our view. I’ll work on getting some better pictures of the whales but with the clouds my pictures weren’t turning out. Ben will post our other pictures tonight.  We miss you all and appreciate your comments and emails!