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

More Pictures of the Kids

Here are some more pictures of Julia and Ethan hanging out around the house.

Julia and Ethan love to do box (car) rides around the house.

Posing on Julia's bed

Ethan trying to tell Julia that she is a little too close

Another movie night. This time Joshua and the kids watched The Emporer's New Groove

Julia is always wanting to wear dresses and if we don't put them on her, she puts them on herself. Unfortunately she had a little trouble with this one. Although she didn't think it was very funny when we were taking the pictures of her instead of helping her out, she did laugh later when we showed the pictures to her.

How the dress is really supposed to look.

Ethan hanging out in his room.

Playing in an old bassinet.

Easter Celebrations

We haven't posted for a while because we were hoping to keep our house pictures at the top of our blog for as long as possible. However, after taking some great Easter pictures of the kids we just couldn't resist.

Julia and Ethan both participated in Easter egg hunts at church and at home (we just reused the eggs from church for their home Easter egg hunt). Julia loved looking for all of the eggs and was very speedy in finding them all. Ethan sat and watched and was satisfied opening all of the eggs that Julia had found. Lucky for Julia, Ethan is still not eating sweets and so she only had to share her eggs with her parents (we call it the parent tax--hopefully there will be no Boston tea parties when she gets older and thinks it is unfair--Joshua already ate almost all of her peeps).

That evening we had some people over from our ward to share our Easter meal with. We all had a wonderful time.

We all missed being around family for this holiday though. I think Joshua especially wanted to participate in the adult Easter egg hunt at his parents' home.

Rebecca and Julia preparing some eggs.

Julia showing off her handy work.

Julia and Ethan taking a break before finding the rest of the treats.

House for Sale

Our house is now on the market. So if you know anyone that may be interested please spread the word. It is a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom home on a double corner lot in Stillwater Oklahoma. Total of 898 sq. ft. The back room, bathroom, and kitchen floor have been updated and it has just been painted. An awesome deal at $73,900. You can call Beverly Carter (405.743.9618--Century 21) if you would like more details.

Blog Tag

Christina and Brooke tagged us. So here is our sixth picture from our sixth folder in our documents/pictures.

This is a picture of us getting ready for our stake's adult only dance in 2006. Each year they hold this dance at an old mansion in a neighboring city. Don't we look good in red! Julia was born 2 weeks later, so this was our last night (ever) out on the town.