Our Home

Here it is with all our stuff inside. I would love to do more with it, but since we are only here for another 7 months, I don't want to put the effort or money into a short term rental. But I think it will be just fine and it feels a lot more like a home now.

Our Bedroom

(our toiletries have to be in the bedroom since there is NO room in the bathroom!)

Colette's Room

Bathroom

Family Room

(Nick's surfboard isn't part of the decor. It's just that we had no space to store it)

The Kitchen

(I normally wouldn't have rugs in a kitchen, but that floor is pretty bad, so I thought the rugs would at least make me able to stand in there)

There you have it! Our humble abode. And yes, I still love my new couch!!

Life according to my phone...

Here are some pictures from my phone. Just for fun. Enjoy.

Colette still does not take a bottle, but I did try to put some water in one, and she seems to like to chew and suck on that. SO...I give her some water. She is at least hydrated and all the bottles we purchased are being used.

And she is trying to 'crawl' or something. She really likes it when she can get her legs underneath her. I think she realizes that her legs can take her places. She is always moving and I constantly find her under the coffee table, halfway under the tv stand, or wedged in the corner of her crib. She loves to move around and see things.

Speaking of seeing things- whenever I am in the kitchen or cleaning, she wants to be there. So I figured out how to use this baby backpack in a way so she can be there with me. Today we made chocolate chip cookies together and she LOVED it. She wanted to touch everything!!

At the park Colette loves the swings

My babysitter...Baby Einstein, which she loves

aahhh. I love this little lady

Just a cute picture from the past. She was so little then...

Narragansett Beach

Here is a name I know my mom would like- Narragansett! After our first Sunday here, it was Labour Day and some new found friends in the ward invited us to the beach. It was an overcast day, but nice to get out and relax a little. They caught some crabs, Nick found a dead sting ray the size of a dinner plate, and Colette put her feet in the Atlantic ocean for the first time! The sand is so much finer than the Pacific side...Nick joked it's because the East is older. haha

A little Colette

She is such a great eater! But alas, still no Binky or bottle .... :(

Brown Bear, Brown Bear...

On our first day here, while we were waiting for our moving truck to come, we decided to walk around Brown campus for the first time together! It is such a cool school. Very small- but the buildings are a mixture of very old, historical, and a couple new ones. I think it is a beautiful campus!

This is the big "Brown Bear" that sits at the entry

The library

This is the infamous gate that only opens two times a year. Once when school starts and once when PhD's graduate. Nick gets to walk through them in several years...

(Nick preparing his entry through the gates. haha) After walking around campus, we went over to the bookstore and purchased a couple sweatshirts and Colette a little Brown onesie. It was exciting!

Nick on his first day of school. He didn't really want me to take a picture, but I had to because it's a special day! We live about 1-1.5 miles from campus so Nick can walk, take his bike, or ride the bus because Brown students get to ride the bus for free! They treat their students there so great! And there are only about 3500 of them. Such a small school.

Our New Home

Our new little home. 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom in Providence. Not much to it, but I thought some of you might want to see what we will call home for the next 8 months. I'll put up after pictures once I get around to taking some.

Our neighbors house. This is the only hurrican damage we have seen since being out here. But it's all cleaned up now. Now all they have to do is erase the curse words spray painted on the garage :)

The family room.

Inside the family room, looking into the dining room and at the end, the kitchen.

The kitchen. Still no dishwasher :(

The master bedroom.

The bathroom.

Colette's room.

There you have it. We are having a fun time getting to know the area we live in and every day we feel a little safer and better about living here. We have made some new friends and our ward is really great! Nick is loving Brown!! The grad students he works with are really wonderful and so kind. The weather hasn't been too bad. We have had some really hot days, and rainy days. So it's been nice. Most of all we are trying to take advantage of all the great things we get to see. This weekend we are thinking of going to do the Freedom Trail and visit Harvard! That might be fun

Drive Out East: Day 5

Day 5! Our final day! We woke up early to go and see the Sacred Grove and the Hill Cumorah before we headed to our new home. After visiting these two church sites we were stuck in hurricane traffic. They closed 2 main freeways due to flooding and directed all the freeway traffic to these back roads, which were also closed due to power lines down and fallen trees, so they re-re-routed us....6 hours later we moved 20 miles closer to our destination. I'M NOT EXAGGERATING!! It was horrible. We were all patient for the first 2-3 hours, but after that, all three of us were irritable and ready to be out of our car. But we did see some cool things on those back country roads...

The Palmyra temple from the fields of the Smith's house. There is a window in the temple right about there, that looks over the sacred grove. President Hinckley specifically wanted it there.

The Smith's second home. They only lived here for a short while before they were late on their payments, but it was such a nice house!

The walk to the Sacred Grove

I think nature has a very peaceful, even spiritual feeling to it, but at the sacred grove, there is just a little something extra special there. And the city of Palmyra is such a cute city! The houses were out of a story book.

The Hill Cumorah. I kept imagining the plates being buried someone around here

Colette was our of her seat in the bumper to bumper traffic

The traffic took us through AMISH country! It was the coolest thing! This is one of their homes

Here are some of the little kids who were interested in all the cars in front of their house! They were so cute. We even saw a dad plowing fields with his horse and about 4 other children running around.

More Amish country