New Apartment

we moved into our apartment last week. It's nice and big and Dulany LOVES it. The first night she stayed up till about 10 because she was running around like crazy! She loves her new room and sleeps better than EVER! since thanksgiving, she was having trouble sleeping at grandma/grandpa's house and was wanting to sleep with us. Since night one, she's slept in her crib all night and most mornings sleeps in till 8 (a few times till 6 and then sleeps with me for 2 hours) and she always takes a good nap too. She also never cries which is amazing since we thought she would have a tough transition. Nope!
Last night I finally got the apartment decorated, mostly everything put away (minus clothes in our room, which is why we have no pics of that!) and had grandma and grandpa over for dinner. Dulany LOVED showing off infront of them running around showing them her room. it was too funny!

We love it too! we got lucky and found mostly everything we had to get cheap on craigslist or given to us. Here are pictures of the apartment (minus the bedrooms cause those are still a disaster!)




the bathroom - its HUGE



The entry way i guess you would call it, and the hallway




the living room


the kitchen its the first thing you see when you walk in... oh well!



the dinning 'room' as you can call it. (these table/chairs - 50 bucks, can you believe it? wecan't)



the other part of the kitchen, i didnt like it at first but now i love it! so much room. and you can grab food right off the counter at dinner time.


anywho, i figured we would put pics up to show family our new place! too bad we're only going to be here for about 6 months ....

Ears and Eyes, and Mouth and Nose....

here is a video (from our new camcorder {see post below}) of Dulany playing 'Where is Dulany, There she is' with her tent and then continuing to show us where her ears, mouth, nose and eyes are! smart girl. Sorry if the video is dark, i think i accidentally made it more dark when trying to 'edit' it and i don't feel like messing with iMovie again (im too confused!



ps. if anyone knows how to make these youtube videos smaller, PLEASE let me know.

new camcorder!

here is our 'test video'

between my dad's christmas money and Tom's christmas bonus, we decided we needed to invest in a camcorder. My little dinky camera takes horrible videos plus its dead and i have not been able to find the charger. Anytime i pulled it out to take a video, the battery would die midway through even if i just charged it. Dumb thing.

We always are in situations with dulany doing something and we want to record it but.. oh wait, we can't and we always wish we had a camcorder! My sister has one and i figured we needed a little flip video - but those don't zoom well and don't take very good videos of kids unless you're up in their face.. which wouldn't work for Dulany. so we spent a little extra money and got one online for half the price of what it wouldve been at Best Buy.

lost pics/videos

i finally got pics and videos off my crappy camera. Some of these go back to end of august/september.



Cookies for Santa - from Dulany and Ayla (more like christmas candy)



from when I watched Ayla - what a funny girl.


at the airport from Pennsylvania being a goof ball.






Pictures from Pennsylvania with cousin E







Walking around in just her rubber boots, her favorite!




Dulany at Cousin Ayla's house right after she was born, kissing the frog from Swan Princess



Kaylee right before going to the hospital to deliver Ayla!


Dulany and Grandma at the Park.




Here are videos

here is cousin E. she's got rhythm!





here are a mix of videos - Dulany 'plugging her ears' and walking around. She's done this a lot lately.






and Ayla 'talking' for all the family to see how much she's grown.



and my favorite of cousin E and Dulany playing 'peek a boo' in Pennsylvania.

cheese!

anytime the camera comes out, Dulany says "CHEESE!" (and she can actually say it) and gives us her BIG smile (see above). I love it. I never have to fight for pictures from her. These were taken last night while taking a walk on the farm at sunset (hence why i had to do black and white photos). Can she get any cuter?

an update

.. my little baby girl (not so much at 18 months now) just said this....

'baby, air are you, come on' while looking for her 'baby'.... seriously? since when does she know how to form a sentence!!?!?!?!

the other night she was in our bed knocking on our wall (with aunt sessie knocking back) and she yelled, 'Gamma (grandma) riiight now!' - tom and i busted out laughing wondering if she really did just say 'right now' we asked leslie and mom if they heard, they did...

she now puts her baby in her blanket, puts her finger over her mouth, and says 'shh shh nigh nigh' - now if only we could put her down that easily.

she talks like crazy, a lot of it is still jibber jabber, but she'll go in her new princess tent and just start talking like crazy! i can't even count the number of words she can say now. She is starting to repeat like crazy too (ie. today i said darn it and i think she tried to say it back.. yikes. time watch our mouths!)

as for us (Tom and I) ... Tom is officially in at Western Oregon University and will start in March so until then he is working full time for his cousin (working like 60 hours a week, leaving at 6:15 am and not coming home till 7) and is sometimes leaving a few days at a time to work in idaho/washington. We've applied to live in some apartments a few miles down the road where a lot of young couples live so hopefully we'll be able to move in before february (Julie gets home mid february from her mission!) and we know the managers there so hopefully it will all work out. Grandma and Grandpa are already getting sad... grandpa is already planning for Dulany to have sleep overs with them and they can watch Elmo together. Haha. it makes me laugh because we're only moving a few blocks.. good thing we're not moving across the country!

so thats life so far. . sorry for no pictures. Tom took the computer with him to idaho....

Christmas!

here are a bunch of pictures from last nights christmas eve get together with extended family at grandma and grandpa roberts and then pictures from this morning. Dulany was alittle hesitant to come out and see her presents and even ran back into the hallway and cried a little. poor girl. She actually got into the spirit of ripping the paper open off of presents so that was fun. Most def. fun to watch your kids open presents you kinda forget about yourself.

Tom surprised me (kinda) with a pearl necklace and earrings. The pair i got for our wedding broke and then i got a cheap pair from claires and lost one. i don't wear earrings very often but have been wanting a pair of nice ones (and NOT lose it!)and a necklace to wear.. although i only will get to wear them to church, but it was def. a nice present! I got tom a new wedding band.. although i went on the cheap side and bought his off overstock.com. He got a free band when we bought my wedding ring set and its all scratched up so i got him a nice non-scratch ring.. almost 3 years later.

anywho. here are some pics!














I also got a Vera Bradly bag from Bonnie - which i am in LOOOOOOVE with!! i wish i took a picture. Later on, i will take one because it is GORGEOUS and i already unloaded the diaper bag (hideous one i have) and put everything in this new one. Works great already and it looks pretty!

more snow pics

and for a laugh -



lately she's been doing this face to everyone.. that stinker.

our trip to Pennsylvania

this last week we went to PA - it was a LONG trip there and a LONG trip back... - but it was so nice to see my family! We flew in on saturday night and left to go to Pittsburgh to visit my Jody, Alex and Elsa for a few days in their new house. It was so much fun seeing Dulany and E play together. Makes me sad theyre so far away. After a few days we made the trip back to Huntingdon where my older brother and sis in law came up from DC. here are some pictures. (my sis has a lot more of t hem playing and ill just have to steal them from her one of these days!)










We got lucky and on friday afternoon it started to snow.. we got about 1-2 inches. IT was such a pretty snow fall that i HAD to get Dulany out in the snow to play and take some pictures. Also wanted Dulany to play in the snow incase we didn't get any this winter in Oregon (seriously, we got back last night and today it was SO warm and rainy. felt like winter was ending). Here are some of my favorite pictures! Im still editing the rest so ill post more when i finish!