December

We've been able to do a lot of fun things in December to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and enjoy the festivities of the season! Julia and Ethan have really enjoyed wearing their Christmas clothes (thanks Grandma Little!) to Church and any other opportunity they can think of.

Julia loves wearing fancy dresses; she especially loves when they "twirl" with her as she practices her ballet moves.

This is Ethan's "I don't approve" look he gives us sometimes

On the way back from the temple the other weekend we stopped at this village that holds an annual Dickens Christmas festival, and it was a riot! You can see some of the people dressed up as characters from "A Christmas Carol" singing carols here. It was and has been really cold, so we couldn't stay too long, but it was fun to see the town decorated for the event and crowds of people enjoying it.

Julia talking on the phone with grandparents. We are staying here for Christmas this year and are sad not to be able to see our families; however, it has been fun starting some of our own traditions .

Some sweets of the season Joshua concocted to give out to friends and neighbors

Julia (trying to make a smiley face) and me before we headed out to see the Nutcracker ballet yesterday afternoon. It was a fun mother-daughter bonding time, and I was impressed at how long Julia was able to sit still for the performance (much longer than Sacrament meeting at Church!).

Thanksgiving!

We've had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. Best of all, Joshua was home for four and a half days in a row. We invited someone over for Thanksgiving dinner, but he ended up cancelling; no problem, more food for us! We also went Black Friday shopping, although we didn't end up purchasing too many things--maybe we're just attracted to the sport of the day. Then yesterday, we started a new tradition and went to a Christmas tree farm to pick out our own first fresh tree. It was freezing! We got to drive up to the tree lots in a tractor-pulled wagon, then rushed out and cut our tree (one of the first we saw), and then waited to be picked up again by the wagon. It's a big, fat Blue Spruce, which, as it turns out, are very pokey when you decorate them. But we love the Christmas atmosphere it brings to our home and it smells great.

This is it!

Well, maybe next year...We'll post a picture of ours when it's completed.

Julia's Birthday!

A couple of weekends ago, we got to celebrate Julia's third birthday! I can't believe she's growing up so quickly. She ordered hot dogs for her birthday dinner and cupcakes for her cake, so we really lived it up. We made her wait until evening when Joshua was home for her to open gifts, and I was impressed how patient she was. She loved all her presents, and kept saying "thank you" to the giver (even if he/she wasn't there). We are both so grateful to have had our beautiful Julia in our lives for three years--she brings us joy and laughter daily. We love you Julia!!!

Waiting to open gifts...

An excited Julia showing off her spoils: among them were dresses, ballerina gear and accessories, tickets to The Nutcracker Ballet, a family movie, a princess nightlight, and an apron I clumsily made for her.

Blowing out her candles--no, she didn't eat all those cupcakes; I think she barely got through the frosting on one.

First Day of Nursery

Today was Ethan's first day in Nursery! I can't believe he's growing up so quickly. Luckily, he has just barely started to get the hang of standing (he's been able to walk, but has fallen when he doesn't have a destination), so hopefully he'll be able to hold his own in there. Because Julia's still in nursery, he already has a friend in class; today she did a great job helping to bring him to class and comfort him throughout the two hour block. He was a little hesitant today, but I think soon he'll really warm up and be grateful to be in there instead of Sunday school (I think the Sunday school attendees are already grateful for the peace and quiet and not being Cheerio targets to Ethan's surprisingly and unfortunately accurate throws). We are so proud of him!

Fall Fun

After a very long stretch of being cooped up in the house from sickness, we were all able to get out one Saturday to Greenlake State park for some final fall fun before the cold weather really hits.

There's a nice three mile trail around the lake that's popular among joggers and hikers.
I love that Julia and Ethan are starting to become real playmates and enjoy each other.

One of our favorite passtimes when we do have to stick around in the apartment.

Happy Halloween!

The kids have been excited all October long about Halloween, wearing their costumes, and trick-or-treating. The festivities the last week in Octoboer included a Halloween party at the library, carving pumpkins while eating Spud-nuts (doughnuts), trying to get over colds, decorating cupcakes with worms and "dirt," and finally trick-or-treating at the mall (but only for 45 minutes, since everyone was still kind of sick). The following are kids in their costumes:

I was surprised at how well Ethan caught on to the fact that he was pretending to be a bat--he flapped his wings and pointed to himself saying "bat" all evening!

Julia got this costume as an early birthday present from Grandma Little, so she's had plenty of time to practice being a ballerina. In fact, every day she has insisted on wearing her ballerina costume for a while to practice dancing, singing, exercising, stretching, etc. (whatever she can imagine a princess does). She loved being a ballerina princess for Halloween!

Sacred Grove

One of the things we were most looking forward to about moving to central New York was that we would be able to see some special Church history sites in Palmyra. We are in the Palmyra Temple district, so a few weeks ago we decided to make a family trip to the temple and see the Sacred Grove and Joseph Smith's farm while we were there. We took turns going in the temple while the other person walked around the grounds with the kids. We all really felt a special spirit in the grove, which helped strengthen our testimony that Joseph truly saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ here, just like he said.

Julia sitting on the doorstep of Joseph Smith's log cabin home (where they lived when Joseph Smith was 14, at the time of his vision).
Ethan and Julia at the frame house which Alvin built with the help of his brothers. Joseph was here when he had the gold plates and at one point kept the plates hidden in the hearth.

Julia in the Smiths' barn.

The Sacred Grove, where Joseph Smith saw God, the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.

The Hill Cumorah. We didn't really explore up here on this trip.

It's a boy!

Rebecca went in for the ultrasound yesterday and we found out that we are expecting another boy. Julia was a little disappointed at first (she really wanted a little sister), but now she says she is very excited about having another brother. Once our home internet is back to working we will post some more details and pictures.

Phone Troubles

We got our first phone bill from Verizon. It was just over $200 for what we thought was a $15.95/month plan. Yes we did have to pay for the first two months on this bill and some set up fees, but even still with the Verizon usage fee and the NY state taxes our monthly bill would be over $50/month. Again, we thought we were only going to have to pay $15.95/month!!! So this past weekend we called to cancel our phone line and planned to do our phone service through MagicJack, an internet phone company (only $39 for a whole year with local and long distance calls included). So we have a new phone number. If you call our old number there should be a voice message with our new number.

Unfortunately our friends at Verizon decided to turn our internet off when they disconnected our phone line. Given that MagicJack only works through the internet, we have been without a phone for the past couple of days. Verizon did apologize and promised to have our internet back working by November 4th.

Taughannok Falls State Park

Last Monday Joshua's clinic was closed so we got him for an extra day! We decided to enjoy the splendors of the area, going to Taughannok Falls State Park, a pretty site about an hour and a half away near Ithaca.

On the drive there

At the beginning of the hike to the falls

On the flats

You can't really tell by the pictures, but the Fall leaves are really stunning

It was only a 3/4 mile hike, but it wore us out!

At the base of the falls

Two handsome men at the lookout point above the falls

It was really cold!

One of the Finger Lakes

New York so far

Well, we are officially New York state residents now. It began with an extremely long overnight plane trip from Washington to Syracuse, where we were thankfully picked up by some kind church members and went straight to a glamorous Motel 6 to wait out the couple of days for our apartment to be ready.

In these pictures Julia and Ethan seem pretty happy for having spent so much time in four different airports and on three different planes (11+ hours). Real troopers. Julia did get sick once and her stuffed doggie ended up having to take a bath in an airport sink. Hopefully we will never have to go through an ordeal like that again.

We got really lucky on the apartment, as we selected it online and weren’t sure of what to expect. We are on the main level, so no stairs, and the apartment has two large bedrooms with substantial closet space. The neighborhood seems same and we are less than a mile from our Church. It only took us a day to move all of our stuff in from storage, but about a month to do all of the unpacking.

Our glamorous pink couch and the rest of our secondhand furniture made us feel right at home in our new apartment!

Here is the view from our back porch

We also met a new little critter friend outside our door the other day, and Julia decided to dress up in her bat costume to make him feel more at home.

There’s a great farmer’s market in Syracuse and we’ve gone to it almost every Saturday we’ve been here. Joshua usually has to keep me in check—I tend to go crazy with the fresh produce. You can't tell from this picture but it is really a huge market. There are about six or seven of these rows and probably over 100 vendors.

In preparation for one of the apple festivals we made apple pancakes. They turned out really good. We always thought we were spoiled growing up with good apples in Washington. The apples here in New York though are great. We've definitely been following the "apple a day" adage.

It has been raining here a lot. On top of that this last week we have all been battling colds. So, we have been spending a lot of days entertaining ourselves indoors.

Dancing and Singing

Summer 2009

Because Joshua had a two month lapse between finishing school work and starting his internship in New York, we got to spend a wonderful, idle summer trading off time at the Little and the Swift grandparents’ homes in Washington until we thoroughly wore out our welcome. Some of the highlights that we enjoyed were seeing Joshua’s brother Isaac receive the Melchizedeck priesthood, my brother Tyler coming home from his mission (and meeting him at the airport!), a family reunion in Spokane at Joshua’s sister Tianna’s house, a getaway for me and Joshua in Leavenworth, and best of all, finding out we are expecting! It was so much fun to see Ethan and Julia play and interact with their relatives. We didn't take many pictures, but I've posted those we have:

Playing at the park

At the zoo in Colorado Springs

The kids especially loved feeding the giraffes!

Julia and Ethan had a good time getting to know relatives

(Julia and her second cousin Isobel on the train)

In Spokane at our Swift family reunion--

We separated into teams and did a scavenger hunt, taking pictures of our finds

Tianna planned a great carnival for the kids!

Here is Julia playing the Cake Walk

Ethan going fishing