the last half year of our lives.

we've been busy.

We finished off the summer in Utah camping and relaxing in the beautiful desert heat. The kids and I stayed cool by visiting waterparks (Drew took 4 weeks of swim lessons) and splashpads and drinking a lot of slurpees. I hiked the Y 26 times and took tennis lessons through Provo Rec.

Spencer studied all summer and took the New York bar exam in Buffalo, NY. He found out in November that he passed with flying colors. Not that I was expecting much less.

At the end of August we spent a wonderful week in Orlando, Florida sweating with 1000's of other tourists at Disney World. It was hot, but the crowds weren't too bad. It's one of those things the babies continue to talk about. They ask to go back often and want to reminisce about things they saw and did while there. We went to a lot of the parades, ate lots of Dole Whip. They loved seeing all the characters from their favorite movies come to life. We had the best time ever. We definitely will be going back.

September 5th we flew to New York City with a couple of suitcases and stepped foot in the apartment we had only seen pictures of. It looked bigger in pictures, but it's just the right size (and price) for us. We spent that first night on the floor sleeping on duffle bags with the windows open. The orange street lights streamed in the windows along with the hot steamy air and a couple of hundred mosquitoes. The next day the movers arrived with all of our stuff that had been stored away for the summer and we became more civilized.

Moving to New York

Spencer started work September 15th. Shortly after he started we understood what everyone had warned us about. Those 80 hour work weeks are real. real hard and real tiring.

Drew is in a co-op preschool with some friends in our neighborhood. I teach 2 weeks every 8 weeks and we rotate to different apartments. Claire wants to go with him every time we drop him off at school. He's learning and growing in all different ways. He has become an excellent scooter rider (he's got to keep up with the city kids) and has expanded his vocabulary with words like taxi, fire escape, Big Apple, subway and Vampire State Building. No matter how many times I tell him it's Empire, he continues to call it Vampire. Drew is still really into Star Wars and surprises me how much he knows about a galaxy far, far away.

Claire is a big 2 year old (2.5 year old) she's been sporting 3T clothes for a while and I fully attribute it to her HUGE appetite. She was potty trained right before she turned 2 in June and now we're just trying to break the pacifier obsession. She got a pink scooter for Christmas, the only thing she continually asked to get for a number of weeks, and has become quite the swift rider. She's funny. She has a cheeky little personality and makes life fun. She is responsible and independent (Often doing more on her own than her older brother does) She is a great listener and usually only has to be told once about a specific rule or request before she remembers (read: before she reminds you and tells you what to do). She always tells you "You're my best friend. You're my favorite." I love it. Her voice is raspy (due to huge oversized tonsils) and instead of saying "The End!" at the end of a story she yells, "AMEN!"

In October we saw as many Halloween decorations and attended as many events as we could. The kids dressed up as mummys and skeletons for different events we went to. We enjoyed trick or treating and braving the crowds of the Upper East Side brownstones and then coming back to our building for even more candy.

November we enjoyed some mild fall weather. The kids and I explored more and more of Manhattan visiting different zoos, museums and lots and lots of parks. They ate lots of pizza and bagels and those carbs went straight to my thighs. (still working on losing some of that weight now that we are getting more settled) Spencer continued to work late (LATE) nights and most weekends and I became a single parent for a lot of the time (read: I gained 15lbs of stress weight). Spencer turned 29 on the 6th of November and we didn't do much except order some late night pizza when he got home from work. My family (parents and sisters family) was able to visit us for Thanksgiving. We saw all the touristy sights, ate cronuts and my sister and I went to go see a show (Matilda!) Thursday morning we got up early and headed to the parade route to see the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade. We had a great view from inside Central Park around 72nd street. Not sure if it is worth going again for though…

In December the City was transformed into a winter wonderland. Decorations popped up everywhere and the Christmasy feeling was in the air. Spencer and I celebrated 6 years of marriage on the 19th. We saw Santa at Macy's at Herald Square, and tried to see as many of the decorated Christmas trees and tree lightings around the city as we could. We went ice skating in Central Park and checked out a few different Holiday Markets that had popped up for December. We took a bus to pick up a Christmas tree and had it delivered a few hours later (new experience for all of us). The kids anxiously stared out the window waiting for it to arrive. We didn't want to waste any of Spencer's precious time off traveling so we spent Christmas here. Just the 4 of us. It was quiet and different, but we had a great time. We went to Chinatown on Christmas eve for a big feast and then headed up to Washington Square park for caroling under the arch with a couple other hundred people. The kids were so excited Christmas morning and we spent the days following just lazily playing with toys and talking with our families.

We've made it to January (and NO we did not attend the ball dropping in Times Square on New Years Eve) and we're excited for what adventures are planned in 2015 for our family. We're adjusting to life in New York. We like it. We like exploring this 22sq mile island we call home. We're adjusting to the sassy and rude people we come in contact with and are trying to remember only the kind hearted ones. The novelty of living with an elevator is slowly wearing off. The kids typically fight about who presses which button, but the longer we live here the shorter the tantrums. They've stopped asking "Where's our car?"and have started asking "are we taking the bus or the subway?"

2015, we're ready for you.