We’ve recently added a bunch of new pictures. We just got Andy’s 18 month pictures and they are really cute but there are 190 of them, so we only posted a few.  I’ll try to post some more over the next few days as I have time to look at them some more.  Enjoy!

We apologize for this post being so long in coming.  We haven’t had internet at the house and it’s quite hard for me to load up the kids and the computer to go someplace with internet.

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 went up and confirmed the completion date with the head contractor today. He also claims a May 1st timeline like the second-in-charge had done a few days ago.

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:

Eden turned 17 months on May 12. She is very busy these days. She recently got a swing for the porch and loves to relax outside. She is now tall enough to reach objects on the counter (yikes!) and is getting very good at feeding herself. She wants to be included in everything and likes to stand on chairs to watch me cook, do my make-up or give Andy a bath. She recently experienced the deliciousness of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as well as goldfish crackers. Today she decided that she is in love with Elmo. We already made a trip to the library to get an Elmo video. We uploaded some recent pictures of Eden and we hope you enjoy them!

I’ve updated our photo gallery to have a few new features:

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.