Saturday, October 6, 2007

Settling in nicely!

Hello all! Sorry it has been so long since the last post. Time just seems to get away from us these days. Shocker! The new house is good, the babies are getting bigger and doing more everyday, and I am enjoying my new job with the county mental health agency. Penny is becoming a star at baby wrangling and cooking healthy dinners in our new awesome kitchen, while she looks for an exciting new employment situation. The babies go to day care 2 days per week, so that Penny has time for applying for jobs, interviewing, and completing the "Honey Do" list! (LOL!)

Jordan is all about trying to roll over and put his feet in his mouth. He loves to grab his toes. And he is becoming a real challenge to change, because he is always trying to roll over and look behind him. Taylor is big into sitting up. She loves to be propped up on a pillow and sit up like a big girl. Penny calls her "Crunch" because when she is laying down, she is always doing crunches, trying her hardest to sit up. And then when she is not successful, she screams her little head off. Both babies are enjoying finding their voices. They chat with one another and laugh and screech almost constantly. It is so cute. Oh, and they love looking at each other and interacting with each other. Sometimes they hold hands and it is so cute. And sometimes one punches, kicks, or scratches the other one and that is not so cute!

And now, onto the new pictures...


We have very few pictures of the four of us as a new family. We have got to be better about this. Anyway, here we are...all four of us together in one shot. Penny has Taylor and I have Jordan.


Here's Jordan asleep in his swing. Check out his Dr. Evil pose..."I want to hold the world hostage for one million dollars."


Jordan loves the new exersaucer. He stands up in it and touches all the toys, until he tires himself right out. Thanks Auntie Rajni and Auntie Jessica for this great present!


Check out Taylor in her little baby seersucker outfit. So cute!


Penny's longtime friend, Denise (pictured with Taylor) and her partner, Laurie, came to visit us from NH one weekend. It was a lovely visit and we were glad to get a chance to catch up with them!


Here's a picture of the house we are renting. This picture is from the front. The path leads to the driveway. Check out Bear in the pic. More of her a bit later...


This is a picture of the back of the house, taken from the backyard. The backyard is on quite a slope and goes down to a huge garden, a grassy area, and even a little basketball court!


This kitchen is one of the best parts of the house! We are so excited to finally have a house with a kitchen that is open, big, and highly functional. We have been cooking a lot and LOVING the ease of clean-up with a dishwasher. This kitchen has also helped us to cut down on our eating in front of the TV. We now eat most of our meals at the little island.

Here's the living room. The house has really great hardwood floors. And isn't that entertainment center cool? The house was rented to us furnished, so most of the furniture is not ours. But it is comfortable and functional and we are really enjoying it! Think we have enough baby gear all over the place?

We finally bought and set up matching cribs in the nursery. The cribs are actually identical, even though the pic makes them look like different color wood. The cribs convert to toddler beds and then to day beds as the kids get bigger. Sweet! The babies are sleeping really well in their cribs and are each waking up once per night to eat. The mamas seem to actually be getting an OK amount of sleep at this point. YAY!!
Here's another view of the nursery. The room is shaped like an "L," and has lots of windows. It is a lovely room with gorgeous hardwood floors and built-in book shelves. We are still working on the room, though, and have to put stuff up on the walls and buy a nice rug.

Check out our doggy, Bear, in her VT state approved hunting jacket! Bear's coloring makes her super hard to see outside, so we decided to get her this coat so that no one mistakes her for a deer or anything. There should not be any hunters in a residential area anyway, but better safe than sorry. Plus, this even helps us to see Bear when she is outside. She blends in REALLY well!

These apples grow on the two trees that we have in our backyard. There are HUNDREDS of apples, but they are all pretty high up and we do not have one of those long-handled apple pickers. Are you wondering why there are not any apples close to the ground? Read on...

Every evening we have a few visitors in our backyard. You know you're in VT when....

Can you believe this? We are so enamored with their presence that we look for them every evening and try to sneak out on the deck to look at them and take pictures. Each evening there are between 1 and 4 deer out in our yard, grazing on grass and eating our apples.

And here's a better pic of two of the deer. Clearly they knew we were there as they are looking straight at us. So cool! When they are out there, it is all we can do to keep Bear in the house. She so badly wants to chase them...um, I mean play with them!

Well, that's about it for now, I guess. Penny and I are really trying to be better with taking the camera places, but we forget all the time. We have been to two fall foliage arts and crafts festivals over the past few weeks, and we forgot the camera both times. We live in VT and have no foliage pictures yet. And we are about at peak color right now. Gorgeous! Stay tuned, as we are really gonna try to get some good fall pictures up soon.

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