A Bronwyn Moment

This morning after bathing the girls, Reed brought Bronwyn out to me so I could dress her.

And to further illustrate what Bronwyn's been learning lately, 

I brought her two little hands together

so he could see how eager she was to clap but how she hasn't mastered it yet.

And she clapped! With the biggest grin and the most enthusiasm I had seen yet!

Reed and I both were surprised, but happy 

that we both got to witness such a cute moment with her.

We love her playful little personality in our family.

Let me out!

Rosy little cheeks from her nap and her mouth in its normal position: making some kind of sound or other

2 people who also love our little Bronwyn

Big Things Happening Around Here

Bronwyn has finally uttered my name: Mumumum
She has mostly said it when she wants out of her crib. :)
Or when she gets left downstairs and she wants to come up.
But she seems to have the grasp of who she's talking to!
(She gets a big grin on her face when I say it to her to get her to say it.
She won't say it unless she wants to. So far.)

Aftyn, the girl who doesn't like ketchup, has found a love for tomato soup. Odd.
And finally, spaghetti sauce as well!
Now that I've said it out loud, she'll probably stop liking both of these things. Again.
Oh well.

Reed finishes one of his classes this week. He can't wait. I can't either.

Next week is Spring Break!! And Reed's birthday!!
We're planning on taking the train into Boston and making a fun day of it.
Walking the Freedom Trail. Seeing Paul Revere's house.
Have some good quality family time.

Before Reed has to go back to crazy school hours again
 and he's adding 2 more classes into the mix for the next 2 months.

Joy!!

As for me, our lives here at home (just me and the kids) seems to have finally gotten back into our
old rhythm. Aftyn just finished digging out all her toys out of the boxes this morning.
T-Rex!
Martian!
Mr. Bubbles!

It's a family reunion! :)

I'm looking forward to meeting my goal of nursing Bronwyn full time until 10 months. I haven't found a way for me to lose weight and continue to nurse Bronwyn, so since we needed to save money over me losing weight, I determined that at 10 months I could start to exercise and diet in earnest and that we could feed Bronwyn formula for 2 months and I would continue to nurse Bronwyn as long as she felt interested in the little I would be giving her. So, with mixed feelings I am looking forward to 16 days from now when Bronwyn turns 10 months!  :) 

I'm looking forward to Thursday night when Reed has his last class
and his Spring Break officially begins!
Can't wait!!

And Then it Snowed

It has felt so like springtime here with warmer temperatures and some sunny days that I had positively decided that this weekend was going to be my winter/spring barrier.
Time to break out our spring dresses and other sunny spring attire.
Today I dressed my girls up in warm springs colors and decked them out with jackets as we prepared to go out shopping for groceries.
 Just as we pulled up to our first grocery stop, it started to snow.
Not kidding.
Oh well.
We hurried and the snow stayed light until a few hours later when we had a bit of what appeared to be a blizzard in the air and nothing on the roads or sidewalks. Since we need some new pictures of my kids on here, I will oblige:

p.s. I know, Aftyn is not wearing tights. Other than some wind though, the temperatures didn't really drop for the snow! Odd, hmm?

A Skyline Full of Possiblities

Don't you just love the green of the bay windows? After 6 weeks, these 2 buildings are beginning to become favorites

I love how gothic this church looks. The one slightly to the right of the middle of the picture, in case you don't see it.

For some reason, this painted on name reminds of a hotel in an old abandoned ghost town. It seems a pretty old way to identify your building.

Mildly crooked, but yet another church steeple in our view out our front room/kitchen window. LOTS and LOTS of old brick buildings in this city. It's pretty neat.

Talking To Strangers

I've decided that I have a bi-weekly, sometimes weekly experience, that is mostly worth writing about. It's called "doing laundry at the laundromat". And I've decided to write about it as often as it happens, especially if something noteworthy occurs. Because most of the time, it's day - altering!

I happen to go to a laundromat in the next town over. Why the next town over? Well, if you saw where I live and the people I see and experience, you might understand why I choose to go the next town over. It's a little less rough, I pay a little more money for a nicer crowd of people, and have yet to really be disappointed there. Plus, it's only about a 7 minute drive.

My first visit to said laundromat ended with 2 very friendly women, one who told me her name was Patty and a few of the close local stores where I could find cheap groceries and household items, and the other woman helped me figure out all the laundromat machines. It always helps when I have my children with me because their cute little faces could charm the pants off of most people, on a good day when they have both been fed and napped. :) My 2 girls went to work, and soon enough we were all talking like old friends! It's always rejuvenating when complete strangers will be kind and helpful. Patty even helped me out to my car with all my bags of now-clean-laundry! What a sweetheart!

I seem to go bi-weekly, so my 2nd visit was two weeks ago and Reed was able to accompany me for the first time since I wanted him to see "our" laundromat and the neat store that Patty  had informed me of on my first visit. That week there was a grumpy hispanic lady who frowned at me anytime I tried to make eye contact or even smiled at her. Her wall was impenetrable. No talkative strangers that day.

This morning I had everything ready to go and despite a rather sleepless night thanks to a teething Bronwyn, I was up and at the laundromat *by myself* by 9 am! Reed stayed home with the girlies, so I got to go do laundry by myself. It was heaven. I was mostly alone until my clothes were almost finished washing, when a man wearing sweatpants approached me to ask me how to wash something for his fiance.
 I was literally tearing up as this man explained he was trying to wash his fiance's sheets because it was their anniversary and the one thing his sweetheart loved more than anything was clean sheets and so he wanted to have that as one of his surprises for her. He just didn't want to mess it all up, so what temperature should he wash them at, should he wash them together and what heat should he dry them? Honestly, at first I thought he was going to ask me for quarters and I was debating what my answer would be.
 So the Bedding Guy and I started talking as he seemed open to talking and very kind hearted. We talked about all kinds of things including kind people and how they're rather hit and miss in this area. Then a man who only dried his clothes began to talk to me. He was a driving instructor named Bill who taught in my city. I learned some interesting driving tips from him, but mostly that you have to drive defensively AND aggressively here otherwise you'll get hit and honked at. And you have to watch out for the red light runners. Evidently they're everywhere. 

All in all, a very talkative day in the laundromat. Such kind and caring men. A little odd that I find the men here more caring and open to talking than the women. (But that's not just at the laundromat). I had to go back into the laundromat after I was done and starting up my car because I hadn't talked to the B.G and wished him good luck with his bedding washing and his anniversary.
And he thanked me again. (!) 

Feel free to come back in another 2 weeks or sooner 

and hear 

about another edition!

Things I'm Learning and Have Learned:

The stress I feel and carry:  Normal!

I can handle more than I think:  Especially if Heavenly Father's on my side and helping me

I'm supposed to learn something from being sick
(everyone woke up on Monday sick with our 3rd cold) : patience? long-suffering? To slow down?

It's important to me and my family's well-being that I learn to handle my stress well: A-huh!

I'm grateful for all the family and friends who support and love me and my kids

This will all only be a little blink of the eye, but what we'll have learned from it will be huge!

I Guess Life Can't Always Be Hunky-Dory

Are you ready to hear a whole lot of whining?
I hope not. I'm going to try to keep it to a minimum.

I can't tell you how much I would rather keep this to myself
 but I think it's making the current pain I'm in worse.

Since we have moved here to Worcester, I have suffered 1 severely sprained/strained wrist, 1 slight
relapse with the same wrist, and several mornings woken up to a very stiff neck. The stiff neck I
attributed to the 2 colds I've had as well since we've moved here. You know, sometimes the achy yuckiness of a cold can move into the parts of your body where you carry stress. Well, I'm here to tell you that I now have a pinched nerve in my neck, which has given me a lot of food for thought that perhaps I've had  stiff neck muscles and today's pinched nerve in my neck because of the current load of stress I'm carrying.

My stress level has been pretty high at different times since we've moved here.

It is stressful living in a new city, surrounded by risks I'm not accustomed to, drug dealers and scariness literally outside our door. My husband is gone A. LOT. Full time jobs have nothing on full time class loads. And I feel like I'm whining to a world full of other people who shoulder more stress than I do and carry it off with a whole lot more grace than I'm managing to right now. 

I guess what I should be asking myself is what is Heavenly Father trying to teach me right now? Maybe he wants me to slow down, obviously he wants me to not get so stressed. Stress is something I've struggled with a lot in my life. I guess I need to learn better ways of handling it.

So now that you know why I've not been blogging this week, do you have any words of wisdom to pass along and make this time while we're in school any easier?

p.s. I miss home. In case you couldn't tell. I miss my quiet street. I miss my backyard for Aftyn to play in and run around in. I miss the playground close by that is nice and safe. I miss, I miss, I miss.

My Little Adventure, Craigslist Style

Here's a funny story to start off your week.
This morning I decided to be super diligent and keep checking craigslist all morning in hopes of finding the perfect piece of furniture to complete my front room area.
I was going about my business, doing my usual daytime routine, when I felt this prompting to go and check craiglist. Lo and behold in the free section was a piece that would be great! And, lucky me, it was just in the next town over which is only about 5 minutes away!
I quickly got the girls ready, then myself and we were out the door and on our way. The ad only mentioned that this wicker trunk, my perfect piece of furniture, was on the curb waiting to be picked up.
The whole time I was driving there, which ended up being about a 20 minute drive, I kept praying and praying that it would still be there and that my drive wouldn't end up being a waste of time and gas.
I finally pulled up to the house in this rather nice neighborhood and there the trunk sat! I was so excited! I quickly parked in front of it and walked over to investigate. It was SO nice!

I cleared off my front seat, all the while pondering how I could tell the person thank you. As I turned back to go and pick up the trunk, another car quickly pulled up behind mine. I smiled, because it was kind of funny that I beat this person, but I was prepared to be nice about getting there first. When out pops this older woman, literally running toward this trunk. I was kind of perplexed as to why she might be running, so I asked her if she was there to get the trunk too. She told me, "Oh no, I just talked to her!", I assume she was alluding to the owner, still coming quite quickly toward me and the trunk. I do not doubt if I had had that thing picked up in my arms that she would have literally pulled the trunk out of my arms. I.Joke.You.Not.

Having seen these people from Massachusetts in action and not wanting to get into anything, I calmly said, "Oh, okay" and walked back to my car. This woman said literally nothing to me. Not a "thanks", not an " Oh, I'm sorry". Nothing.

She was all business as she bustled about getting it into her car as fast as possible. I drove around the neighborhood a little more, hoping to find another freebie, trying to understand what just happened. I saw that woman hightail it out of there. With her trunk lid flying in the wind because the wicker trunk was too big.

( I am a little ashamed to admit I hoped that trunk would come flying out of there.)

Welcome to Massachusetts!! 

A Little Poem

Hickory Dickory Dock

the mouse ran across my floor

I would have screamed

but I wasn't sure I really saw what I saw

and so I went to bed. Upstairs.

Where there had better be no mice.

Our Fabulous Weekend in New York

We had been planning this fun weekend to visit our family in New York for a good week,  but nearly didn't go when it came time due to sickness. After a very persuasive visit on the phone with my sister-in-law Kamber, I decided that to heck with any and all sickness, we were going to go have a fun weekend whether we all got sick or not. Plus we tried to keep up hand washing and coughing into elbows. :)
 We arrived after a 2 1/2 hour drive from Massachusetts, through Connecticut and into New York. One thing I never expected was how quick it is to drive through the states here in the east. We drove through Connecticut in an hour and a half! You could never do that out west. Ever. Unless you were driving at VERY high and dangerous speeds. I think. Or flying.

We got there in the evening so after a few hours of chatting and the kids trying their hardest NOT to go to sleep, we went to bed. In the morning it was so nice not to feel like we had to rush off. We just had a whole day to enjoy each others company in whatever ways we wanted.

We started off at Costco for lunch! :) That was both delicious and fun. People kept stopping and staring at the cartload of kids we had, what with the 2 cute babies sitting in the front of the cart and the 3 older kids sitting in the basket of the cart.  They kept asking if they were all siblings, since there was such a strong family resemblance. Kamber and I kept pointing at each other, saying that there were 2 moms to all these kids. Seeing as how it was Sample Central there in Costco at lunchtime, far too often Reed was not there to claim his girls so I'm pretty sure Brian was getting all the credit for all of the kids. It was pretty funny how many people kept staring at the kids.
After that we went to Stew Leonards. That was an experience! Between all the singing puppets and animals and the rush of ALL the people there, it was indeed memorable. It was fun to get to stop amidst all the groceries to listen to the puppets and to get to try a few of their samples as well. We're still eating our Blue blueberry bagels. Well, mostly Reed since he is the bagel man. Oh and they had the cheapest strawberries I have found here and they were delicious!

 After all the shopping, we trekked over to New Jersey to see the Statue of Liberty. (Remember, the states are so much quicker to drive through. It was a quick drive.)  It was so neat to see so many buildings I had only heard of or seen in pictures. Aftyn was not quite as dazzled. So here is the picture portion of this post:

Ready to go to New York Mom!

Isn't she so sweet to oblige her mom a picture?

Driving to New York. Portable dvd player was the best investment for Aftyn!

Riding in the back of the van for all of our Saturday fun!

See that tall building in the middle of the picture. That is the Empire State Building!

New York skyline

Blurry, but it is the Statue of Liberty!

Sitting on the boardwalk while the rest of us look at the Statue of Liberty

If you close one eye and ignore the blur, that's us with the Statue of Liberty! (As you can clearly see, our camera does not take great dark/night pictures. I'm thinking we could use a new camera since ours is only 5 years old. : / )

Times Square

Look at all the cabs! Know how they talk about all the crazy driving in New York City? From what I saw, it's completely true. Crazy cab drivers.

I think this is right before Times Square. You can't even see the tops of the skyscrapers.

The adults got home and put the kids to bed and then decided to stay up and chat for a few minutes. 4 hours later when we realized it was 2 am, we hurried off to bed. In the morning, Reed and I packed up and got ready for church and said our good-byes.

All in all such a fun weekend.
We got to spend some time with  family and got our first glimpse of New York City!

Our Apartment - One Room at a Time III

Up the stairs! Our little landing before you traverse the large set of steps

Longest closet I've ever seen right at the top of the stairs. The closet runs the entire length of the apartment wall! It's awesome!

Master bedroom right at the top, if you turn left you would see the door to the girls room.

Girls room! Bigger than it looks in this picture. It's bigger than their room was in Idaho.

Lots of big pipes in this room. Bronwyn's side has the heater/cooler thing. :)

Only brick wall in the apartment, and it's in our room painted over. Lots more pipes, but lots of nice windows.

This is how we make our laundry/dresser work. The only light in the room is located on top of our dresser.

Our Apartment - One Room at a Time II

Front Closet/Coat closet in this lovely large hallway spot that also houses the bathroom

The bathroom, directly across from our front closet

A view into our bathroom. Notice the exposed pipes in the ceiling, remember this is a loft. This is a common sight.

Heaviest door ever created. Must be an original because the doorknob and the whole door seem authentic to this building. It has this crazy frosted/lined glass that you REALLY cannot see through. Reed tried.  :)

This is what our floors look like throughout the bottom floor of our house. Kind of gappy. By the way, I'm standing in the tub to take this picture. The bathroom itself is a little small.

Our Apartment - One Room at a Time

This is our Kitchen! Notice no dishwasher. Also, you should know we only have one shallow sink. No divider, so dishwashing is a creative time with lots of soap and then lots of rinsing until our dish drainer is full.

Front Door - please remember we're still moving in and putting things away!

Bronwyn, loving the pots and pans on our rack from Target.I don't know if you noticed, but we don't have a lot of storage in our kitchen, thus we had to buy some shelving to provide more storage!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kitchen table in the lower right, front room/computer area straight ahead. We have a combo kitchen/front room area.

Important people: Aftyn and Reed's lower half.  :)

Bronwyn the crawler eating the buckles on her/Aftyn's booster seat.

Life is Good . . . .No, Really

Things got much better last week after my sprained wrist healed, we got 2 dressers from people in the ward and we got a table and chairs for our kitchen.  It all made a WORLD of difference.

It probably helps that with a little more time, we learn to adapt a little bit better to all the changes we have made in the last 6 weeks. It still makes me laugh a little bit to think I live in Massachusetts. Home is still Idaho, but now also encompasses our apartment here.

Our 2 girls have made some amazing changes in the last few weeks. Aftyn has had to become much more mature and take on a whole lot more. She amazes me. The things she can comprehend and talk to me about are SO different than the things we used to talk about and think about.  Giving away a lot of her toys and moving and being away from her things for so long, she doesn't seem to take things for granted the way she used to. It's made her seem more grown up. She also likes to talk about when she was a baby and hear stories about when she was a baby like Bronwyn.

Bronwyn is a crazy mover girl. Before we moved, she had started this push-up/moving thing that I kinda called crawling since she could get across a whole room that way. Last week, she really started crawling. And going up the stairs! I found this out one day while on the computer, I happened to glance behind me and there she was on the first stair about to climb onto the 2nd one which is also our landing. This girl is majorly motivated to move. Last week she also started pulling herself up confidently to things. No major tumbles yet. The funniest was when we finally set up her crib this past weekend and I sat her in there. She was so excited to grab the bars and pull herself up  over and over. She still has to learn about the sitting down part of pulling yourself up, but she will get there soon I'm sure. She loves Aftyn. Major love affair. Anything that involves Aftyn and Bronwyn together, Bronwyn loves and it's usually about 50/50 with Aftyn loving it or not. She loves that Bronwyn loves her most of the time.

I went to take pictures of our apartment yesterday after finally finding our new media card for the camera only to find out that our batteries are dead on our camera. Sorry! I will work on getting some this week so that we can have these initial moving in memories to remember.