Amanda & Brian's Trip Through Parenthood: November 2007

Holy cow! What a whirlwind the past month+ has been! We are currently living in an apartment on the southeast side of Kalamazoo and while it's okay for right now, we are really itching to get back into a house. Speaking of houses, our house in Amarillo has a buyer and assuming all goes well, the soon-to-be owners will close in late November. The date for closing down there is November 28th, but we're trying to get it moved up because we have found a house up here that we're all ready to move into! It's a brand new house in a new neighborhood on the west side of Kalamazoo in Oshtemo Township. It's a two-story, 1800 square foot house with an additional 900 square foot basement. All we need is the closing to go smoothly down in Amarillo and with any luck, we'll be moving into our new house in early December!

The move went pretty well with the opportunity for us to stay with our friends Damon and Laurie in Tulsa the first night and with my sister and brother-in-law in Indianapolis the third night. That was also the day that Olivia got to meet her cousins Clare and Conor for the first time. Most of the time was spent with Clare and Olivia interacting in one way or another. See below for some of the pictures.

Amanda and Olivia are doing well. All three of us caught a cold right after coming up here...and it's one of those nagging colds that just won't let go. Olivia got over it the fastest and I think I'm pretty much done with it too and for the first morning in the past couple of weeks, Amanda is starting to sound/feel better as well. No offense to any of you living in an apartment right now, but apartment life SUCKS!! Our apartment is right on the corner of the building next to the entrance. Combine that with this being a college town and plenty of college students live here...and we get people coming in and out of the apartment complex at all hours of the night. The door into the complex certainly doesn't help as it closes very loudly...and our bedroom is right next to the wall adjacent to that door. We can't get out of here fast enough! But through all of this, Olivia has really done well. She's been sleeping like a champ and continues to be a very happy and healthy baby. She really likes going on walks around the apartment grounds (we're nestled in the woods and there's lots of hiking trails all around the apartment complex). We drive by a lake near the apartment and she'll say duc-K (she always emphasizes the K) because there's a mean black swan that rather aggressively defends its territory along the lakeside. It is very pretty around here though. The fall color has been incredible and the weather has been quite cooperative for the most part...outside of the severe weather outbreak we had for my first day on air up here, but that's another story entirely.

Halloween was a bit of a problem though. When we moved from Amarillo, we had put Olivia's pink dragon costume in with the coats we were going to take with us to the apartment so we would have it handy when Halloween rolled around. Well, somewhere along the way, the costume got lost in the shuffle and we still have no idea where it is. So, we had to improvise and with some sunglasses, a summer hat, sweatpants, sweatshirt, and a towel, we made Olivia into a Winter Beach Babe. It ended up being okay though...we just went over to our new neighborhood and thought it would be the best way to meet our new neighbors and find out who lives in the neighborhood. Here are some pictures from the move and our first couple of weeks up here in Kalamazoo. Enjoy!