merry christmas!

 

 Merry Christmas from our family to yours! We spent Christmas Eve with M+B. They made a delicious duck and we roasted root vegetables and made shredded lemon brussel sprouts. We had sugar cookies for dessert with fruit cake (which we determined was not all that bad - except for the green and red candied cherries on top...). Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures from our meal - but suffice it to say - M+B are excellent cooks!

 

 

 Christmas morning we lit the virtual yule log on the TV bright and early (6:30am) and got to making breakfast...

 ...yummy ambrosia fruit salad and..

 ...wait for it...

 ...sausage cheese balls! yummm...

 Hudson enjoyed them both!

 Then we got down to the  business of opening presents! So fun to watch Hudson!

 He actually tried to re-wrap some of his presents which was super cute to watch!

 Then we skyped with some of our family...

 Hudson like to "talk" to people on the "phone" (aka the flip camera)...

 puzzles are fun!

 After a morning nap, we went the park! It was actually a pretty day!

 And that night we fixed our light fixture - making it more balanced so it didn't hang askew...

 More house pics to follow!

whrilwind of a week!

Hudson *loves* music. Almost as much as he loves to dance! Our friend Rebecca gave Hudson 8 classes to a music class just down the street. Violet said that Hudson was the most out going kid in the class!

Each night we made progress on the house - slowly unpacking as the construction started to wrap up. Tuesday night we were able to unwrap/assemble the rest of our living room and dining room furniture. This was good timing as Wednesday evening Oma and Opa came (to the rescue!)! Thursday they spent helping (getting food and cleaning...can't thank you enough!) while the contractor finished up the final painting touch-ups and the punch-list. Friday they came to our Holiday party at work after playing with Hudson most of the day! We stopped by the tree at Rock Center on our way home!

  It was a chilly night!

The rest of the weekend we had fun hanging out, installing light fixtures and settling in (organizing the kitchen cabinets..figuring out the TV). It was a huge help to have them around. They are such hard workers!

 Hudson loved playing with Oma & Opa...

 My parents even helped us get in the Christmas spirit! We got a tree on Sunday afternoon...

 

It was so tall that Dave had to get a stepladder to put the star on! 

 Tired but happy parents!

 'Thanks, Oma for helping momma and dadda with the house! Now they can play more with me!'

 'Can I touch that camera? It has buttons that look fun to touch!'

We are looking forward to a calmer winter break!

moved in!

The move in process happened in stages. Mainly because we had most of our stuff in storage, but still a good deal of it at M+B's house. We moved most of it Friday and Saturday with the priority of setting up Hudson's room for Sunday night. We had help from our friend David who watched Hudson and from our friend Dan (thanks for helping us get the bed up 3 flights of stairs!).

Saturday night we all slept on travel beds for our last night in the 12 foot house and strolled over to our new digs bright and early the next morning.
It was still a bit of a construction zone. The painting still wasn't finished in the kitchen area, but they had made so much progress in one week! Dave got a croissant for us all to share. Hudson had other ideas...

He devoured most of it! M+B came over and helped us install lights in the hall, Hudson's room, our room, and helped us assemble our bed and layout the area rugs in the bedrooms.  The contractor was hard at work finishing up in the bathroom (working toilets are always good :)) and kitchen sink.

M+B were kind enough to bring over a brand new crock pot and the recipe and ingredients for a delicious slow cooker pulled pork. It kept us fed for most of that week! Their kindness and hospitality is still pretty overwhelming. I'm not sure why God chose to bless us with such great friends, but we are truly grateful to be blessed (and that they are still our friends!)

the movers are coming!

Although it is beginning to look that they already have...We've spent the last two evenings emptying out our stuff from our kind hosts' 12 foot house. It has been exciting, but sad in someways. I've really enjoyed spending time with our good friends (okay they are *super* good friends - could not have done this renovation without them!).
We are also excited to be moving into our new house. I wish it was *more* done than it is now, but this week has had huge progress. Hopefully our toilet, refrigerator and sink (in that order) will be in working order by the end of day tomorrow. Thankfully the shower works - and Hudson can take a bath. Talking about Hudson - with our other good friends help (Maddy - thanks for watching Hudson this afternoon - and Dan & Chelsea - thanks helping us move all our stuff into the new apartment!) we got almost all of our stuff from our current residence into our new home. After we moved in the beds, clothing and other stuff that didn't go into storage we got down to the important stuff - setting up the baby room. We've done our best to try to limit the chaos in his life - and he has been amazingly resilient. So this is the progress so far:

We had to take the door of the hinges to get the rocking chair in - It isn't the biggest room, but it will do! We hung the blackout lined wood shade and the drape for his closet. Only thing that is missing is the area rug that comes out of storage tomorrow

 

We installed an Ikea handle on the side of the sink cabinet that we will use as a hand towel rack...

 And the walls got painted! Love the pretty light shade of blue!

 

And they started painting the living and dining area. The more of the pink walls and yellow trim that gets covered, the more exciting and real it seems...

 They finished grouting the backsplash and they added trim around the new hood.

 The kitchen is coming together! Ikea gave us the wrong door so we had to exchange it today; hence the one missing panel above the fridge. The size of the space feels really good!

The movers are coming tomorrow at 9am with the rest of our stuff! Not sure where they will put it, but I guess we'll figure it out as we go.