We're here....
and finally organized enough to start posting some pictures and bringing everyone up to date.

We moved into our apartment just over a month ago. We're in Drexel Hill, just west of Phila, and south of Mike's new job. It's starting to feel like home and of course it helps that we were familiar with the area. We're looking for a house and narrowing things down to a few neighborhoods. We really like Havertown and Media, but we're still open to suggestions.

We've caught up with some old friends and made it into the city a few times to show Ben some sights like Independence Park, Ben Franklin's house, our old neighborhood, the park where we got married, The Pink Rose Pastry Shop, Pearl art store, and the farmers market.


Ben is enjoying preschool and goes 2 mornings per week. It seems like an endless stream of projects and announcements come home in his backpack each time. I can't believe how much they pack into a 2.5 hour morning!
The transition away from working full-time has been a big one for me. I'm looking to get involved in at least a few activities with adults in the next few months, but it's been great to have more time to do things spontaneously with the kids during the week. We've been lucky to have some really beautiful fall weather to spend a lot of time outside walking and going to different parks.


Since moving here we've celebrated 3 birthdays:
Mike's magical number 39 in the first week of October(sounds pretty old, doesn't it?),

then mine (39 doesn't sound so terribly old now that we've had 2 weeks to get used to the idea),
then Ellie's first on 10/19. Now Ellie has more stuff to call her own and tempt Ben with. The telephone from Aunt Donna and Uncle Chuck was the favorite.

So what's not to like about a new place when you've been on one continuous sugar high? In one month we've had three birthday cakes and Halloween.

This was the first 'real' Halloween since last year was a blur (Ellie was 2 weeks old and we were all exhausted) but not too exhausted to go trick-or-treating! And like every year we bought candy a week ahead of time and ate it all and had to buy more before the big day. This year Ben wanted to be a mailman and Ellie dressed up as a bee.