How Do You Do It?

Hannah no longer takes a nap (at least not usually).  She's generally pretty happy, but I am going crazy.  With her taking no nap it means I have 0 alone time.  From 5:30 am - 10:00 there is someone else around. I'm one of those people that needs personal time.  Even just 15 minutes with both girls asleep for a nap could make all the difference.  Just a few minutes to myself to hear myself think or do whatever I wanted without helping hands.  I realize most of you have more kids and less nap time than me....what I want to know...is how in the world do all of you do it?

Cake Experiment

I saw this American Flag cake a long time ago and planned on making it for the 4th of July, but didn't get around to it.  We had a ward activity where we celebrating the Olympics and I thought that was the perfect chance to make it.  I improvised a little bit since I didn't have the right size cake pans, cookie cutters, or food coloring.  I definitely didn't level off the cakes (I know, I know...major faux pas, but I just can't do it right).  Anyway, here is the final product:

It's not beautiful by any means..but I think it turned out okay.  And it was fun!

Such a Good Helper

Hannah really is a good helper:

Maybe too good?

Boredom Busters

We've had some long, hot days here.  And, we've finally adjusted to our new apartment and gotten back to a schedule from the trip to Utah.  Translation...we've been bored!!  I'm not creative at all, but we've tried a few things this past week.  Here Hannah and Sofia are showing off their new noodle necklaces:

Hannah was very proud she made it all by herself!!

We have a long enough space in our floor we did a little bowling.  Here are the pins:

We started with a smaller ball, but Hannah was having a hard time knocking the pins over, so she opted for a bigger ball:

and now she's happily cleaning up the knocked over pins:

Our New Home

Here it is...all 390' of our new apartment.

Here's what you see from the front door:  It's our living room, dining room, and bedroom for 3 of us:

Here's an angle from the opposite side so you can see Hannah's bed:

Standing from the main room you look down this hallway:

 The right door goes to our bathroom.  The left goes to our closet, office and Sofia's bedroom.  The temporary curtain is a beach towel, but will hopefully be replaced soon.

 Here's the view without the towel...Sorry it's dark, but Sofia was sleeping.  As you can see there's not much room for sitting in the chair, but at least there is room to push the chair in!

 Here's the kitchen:

That is pretty much the extent of our cupboard space and countertop...so we purchased a table to add a little more:

That's pretty much it.  After being here almost 3 weeks we are liking it.  The location is great.  It's a little too cluttered for my taste...it drives me a little bonkers from time to time, but we're only here for 10 months and the location is worth it!

The Move

We were really excited to move.  Really excited.  But, as always, it was crazy getting everything sorted, boxed, cleaned, etc....the usual, boring moving stuff.  Somehow, the excitement of it all kind of wears off during that.

I tried to do as much as possible in advance.  Here's a look at our living/dining room 3 days before moving.

We had about 90% of our stuff packed.  I had to laugh because we didn't need many boxes.  We've kept all of our diaper and wet wipes boxes...turns out they came in pretty handy!

Here we are the day of just as we are getting ready to move out of the old apartment at about 6:00pm.
 

This is what our new apartment looked that night before we went to bed:

The next day James stayed home from work and we had a full day building, unpacking, arranging, unpacking more, re-arranging, unpacking some more....and re-arranging yet again.

Here's the elevated bed he made our first day:

Luckily the girls were big helpers.  They like to clean - apparently this is a gene that skips generations, but does come in handy sometimes:

Hannah's helping me vacuum and clean out our old cupboards

Here they are sweeping up some of the sawdust after assembling the new bed!


Hands down, this was the best part of the entire process...playing with the boxes!!

This was the last box left....we kept it for a day just to play with, but there's only so much room...and after a day I'd had enough..so goodbye boxes!!

We Are Alive

It's been a while...we've been somewhat busy.

We moved, and just as we were all settled and getting back to normal life, my Grandma passed away.  So, there was an unexpected trip for me and the girls to Utah.  We spent a week in Utah for the funeral as well as lots of playing with family.  It was a good trip, but we've now been home over a week and I barely feel like I'm beginning to recover!  All those late nights and early mornings caught up to me BUT I think I'm finally getting back to normal.  So, hopefully we will actually post something soon.