BOO!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Here's a picture of my two loves heading out to trick-or-treat! Sofia the First and Steve Jobs.

 

Claire was SO excited to get dressed up and go trick-or-treating when daddy came home. I waited until after her nap to tell her that she would be going trick-or-treating. It was my incentive to get her to practice saying "trick-or-treat."

This picture is just adorable!

And here is the after trick-or-treating:

Claire's "smile"

 

Obviously, we've been pretty busy over here for the last couple of months with birthdays and parties and MOVING and now unpacking. We are finally at a place where I'm not compelled to unpack a box each day. So I can start blogging again--hopefully regularly.

So here's a virtual tour, through pictures, of the main living areas of our house--the downstairs.

Here's the front of our house--with grass!--all decorated for the big day! Until this afternoon there were only pumpkins on the front porch and a mummy door. Now there is caution tape, spiders and spider webs, and jack-o-lanterns! And a cute little girl ready to go trick-or-treating.

And would you look at that porch!

Would you like a close up of the carvings?

BOO!
Did you get it?
Are you surprised?

I'm already 15 weeks along. It hasn't been too terribly difficult keeping the secret because I don't really have good friends to talk to about that sort of thing here yet. But that has also been the hardest part, not joking about/complaining about the worst part of being pregnant. One friend said she liked waiting to tell people because then those people weren't bugging her so long about "how much longer" she would be pregnant. I dunno. I got bored of not telling people. I'm ready to be excited about having a baby!
Sometimes it's still unreal. Last time I was SO eager. This time, now that I'm feeling better, I've pretty much forgotten that I'm pregnant until I hear that little heartbeat at the doctor's office!

Another factor in us choosing to wait to tell people (mostly just me) was that we know at least 5 other people or more who are having babies early next year--a few of them in April. So I thought we could wait and try to be less white noise in the baby announcing frenzy.

But enough about that. Here's the rest of the house.

 The first room on the right as you enter the house. This is the music room and library. This is also where I'm storing all of our boxes of pictures.

Claire's window stickies in that room.

The stairs are next.

The door to the left of the stairs leads to the basement.

 On the wall opposite the stairs and basement are the coat closet and then powder bathroom.

Straight ahead is the living room.

 To the left is the tech center, dining area, and kitchen.

And the mess of toys in between the two areas.

Off of the kitchen is the mudroom/garage entrance.

And here is my kitchen. To the left of the fridge is my pantry door. It currently stays closed. :-/

I honestly haven't had much trouble keeping the counters "clean." Generally I like it clutter free, but I am also referring to crumbs and marks. I only wipe the whole thing down once a week or so (it's a lot of counter to wipe!). I do big spills as the come.

So there it is. All of the exciting things happening over here are all out now! Hooray! Yay for the holidays!