Playtime with Miles & Beckham

Well, Cole and I have been hiding out at my parent's house the last few days avoiding workmen at our house in Bloomington, and thankfully we've been able to see lots of family that we don't see so often. It's been fun! This morning my aunt Kim and her 2 boys, Miles and Beckham, came over to play. Miles and Cole are only 3 days apart, and Beckham is 3 weeks old. He's so tiny! I got to hold him a lot and it made me excited for our new baby boy coming in only 9 weeks or so. Cole and Miles had a great time together coloring, eating pretzels, drumming on a box, playing in the tent, and hiding behind window shutters. I hope Miles took as good of a nap as Cole did this afternoon. Whew!

Latest Events

Recently we've been doing some fun things! It's fall in Indiana, so it's a beautiful time of year and we have had a lot of fun celebrating the season. We went to Musgrave Orchard & Cider Mill when Chris's parents visited a couple weeks ago, and Cole picked out a pumpkin. It's resting on our front porch until we carve it a little closer to Halloween. We also spent Saturday morning last weekend baking pumpkin, moon, and star shaped sugar cookies. Sidenote: Cole is fascinated with the moon and the stars right now, so it seemed appropriate. We go outside almost every night to see the moon and stars and say goodnight. It seems silly, but Cole LOVES doing it! And oh yes, Cole insisted on helping Chris rake some leaves in our front yard, too. We didn't have a yard in Vienna, so this is a fun activity!

the work in progress

these are a few pictures of some of the house work we did. my mom stripped the yucky wallpaper from one of the bathrooms and to our surprise, the walls underneath were lime green! chris painted our front door, too, so now it's gray and not pink anymore. cole loves playing with the "bubbles" as he calls them. we kept all of the bubble wrap we used to move, so i think we have enough now to wrap around our entire house a few times!

unloading the truck

well, these pictures are from about a month ago, but nonetheless, you can see chris and a few friends and family getting ready to unload the truck full of our boxes from vienna. the day we moved in was a very long day, and we had a lot of work still ahead of us, but it was a great, great day! we've finally unpacked almost every box and are slowly putting things in new homes.

A Few Photos!

Well, Chris's mom, Judy, so kindly sent us some photos from their visit last week, so here you go! Cole loves his new room, and as you can see we're giving the big boy bed a whirl. Here's the short version of the story...
We had a babysitter about 2 weeks ago. Chris and I went out to dinner to celebrate our 5th anniversary. Yay! Anyway, when we got home, Jade, our babysitter who I've known since she was born, told us that she was nervous that the ground below where Cole was sleeping was really hard and that he may jump out. I was puzzled, because up until then Cole been sleeping in his crib. I dismissed the conversation and told her not to worry because he's never tried to jump out of his bed before. Later, we were laying in bed almost asleep when I knew I had to just check on Cole to see if Jade had in fact put him in the twin bed in his room. So I tiptoed to Cole's room, opened the creaky door, and sure enough, he was sound asleep in his twin bed that I hadn't planned on trying for another month or two. We decided to just leave him there until the morning and see what would happen. Just like normal, Cole woke up around 8 when we walked into his room. The first thing he said was "nice night." There you have it, folks. Our first foray into the big boy bed world. I immediately drove to Target that morning and bought a safety rail for Cole's bed because I can't tell you how many times I woke up that first night waiting for a huge THUD from Cole smacking the floor in the middle of a sound sleep. Scary!

Pregnant Too!

So tonight Chris and I were talking, and I was asking him to stop by the store (on his way home from the drugstore) to pick up something, ANYTHING, with Oreos in it. Ice cream was what I was hoping he could read across my forehead. Anyway, he said to me, "You're just pregnant. I'm pregnant, too. I'm giving birth to a new life. I think I'm about 8 months along."

Enough said. No family needs 2 pregnant people in the house at once! This transition back to life in America is crazy. Every possible thing in our lives is up in the air right now (okay, maybe not EVERY little thing, but still...) except that we do know where we will be sleeping each night. That's a relief. Home sweet pillow.

Updates...

Well, we have a new computer on the way to our house! Yahoo! That means you'll be seeing photos very soon of what our life has been like lately. We have managed in the midst of this transition to take a few pictures to remember it by later. Whew.

Now for a few updates...

1. I had another ultrasound last week of our little boy, and the cyst they had seen a couple months ago is GONE! We are so thankful! This little boy is quite the active one, too! I'll make sure to post a photo of my ever growing stomach soon.

2. Chris is still on the job search. He has had a couple promising interivews, and we are waiting to hear back. He has also had his fair share of ding letters, too. We are doing our best to be hopeful as Chris works hard making contacts, sending out resumes, and praying A LOT.

3. Cole is 18 months old now, almost 19. He's CRAZY! He sings Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star with me, and he is learning how to say words with me in books as we read. I am constantly SHOCKED. One of our favorite things to do is sit on the bench on our front porch after Cole's nap and have a snack while we wait for the mailman to deliver our mail. The mail delivery people walk in our neighborhood, so it makes their day when Cole spots them down the street and yells, "Mailman! HI!" Wow, we are so blessed with such an amazing kid. We're really starting to look forward to Blank Frank #2's arrival in a couple months.

4. Our house is shaping up SO nicely! We have new landscaping, and we finally have unpacked every box. We're waiting on new interior doors and windows that are coming this week, then we'll be free of workmen for a VERY LONG TIME! We don't have anything hung on the walls yet, and we don't have every cabinet Cole-proofed..uggg...but we're getting there. Stay tuned for photos!

5. Cole and I baked pumpkin, star, and moon shaped cookies last weekend. I LOVE to bake, so doing this made me feel like we're really home. We were able to share the cookies with our neighbors who have been so helpful to us, too, which was great.

I think that's it for updates right now. I promise to post pictures very soon. Thanks for hanging in there with us!

Yo.

it's been a while since we've blogged - well, maybe it's just me. My legit excuse is we moved back to the US. We're in our house now, but no computer yet. and no job yet. HOpefully both of those will come soon.

too much to talk about, so I won't even try :) yet