Typical Tommy

I love this kid!

Water Damage

So, we didn't have any flooding, but our ceiling did leak. It started as a drip, progressed to a small crack, started peeling and finally evolved into this:

The little bucket to catch the drips. Didn't plan on catching chunks of ceiling!

Welcome Home

My mom wanted to see pictures of our new place, so here we go:

(some pictures are blurry, sorry! and they are kind of scattered)

This is our kitchen from the living room

This is the hallway leading to the kitchen from the living via the bathroom

This is the living room and stairs and a little taste of the opening to the kitchen

Another shot of the living room

Little hallway leading to the master suite (right) or the coat closet (left)

Our front door/entry with a peek at the dining room (taken from the living room)

The wall in out entry taken from the dining room

Dining room taken from entry

Dining room taken from hallway leading to kitchen/bathroom/living room

So, there is a bit of our house. We are clearly ready for Halloween!

Not pictured: Bathrooms, Master suite, Upstairs: Bedrooms, Office, Bathrooms, Hall or Attic.

Puzzling

We thought it would be fun to do a puzzle as a family on Sunday. We wanted to do something fun that we could work on together and would take a few weeks of Sundays to finish. Paul suggested this:

The kids were happy:

I was a little concerned at the complicatedness and volume of pieces:

But, we started it anyway:

This is as far as we got after one session:

Not too bad!

Stay tuned for our progress!

Because he doesn't want to get his clothes dirty?

He saw everyone else wearing aprons and thought he'd see what the fuss was about.

Yeah, you usually wear it over clothes, oh well.

Emergency Preparedness

We had a fire drill at our house. We wanted the kids to be prepared in case we experience an emergency. We did this in our last house and it was fun and eye opening. So, we thought we would do it here. We opened the window, lowered the ladder, and one by one the kids came down. I was at the bottom to help and Paul was at the top. After everyone had a turn, we pulled the ladder up and saw this friendly guy right there outside the window!!

These pictures don't do it justice! This thing was huge and scary!

Needless to say, we won't e having anymore drills out that window without checking for spiders first!

Did somebody say flood gates?

I'm sure you heard on the news about the flooding in Georgia. We are in Georgia! We had flooding all around us, luckily we live on a hill and were not flooded.We had lots of rain and water, but it mostly stayed outside.

Not great pictures, but this is what it looked like for a few days. I think these were taken at like 2 in the afternoon! It was dark and stormy. School was canceled and everything!

HUZAH!

Yea! I finally figured out how to blog on the laptop!

So, grab a snack and get comfy cause the flood gates are opening!

We'll start off with some pictures of Baby eating:

Here the kids are taking a bath:

We have a jetted tub. When you add bubble bath and turn on the jets, watch out!

Little girls + Scissors = New Hair Style

While we were in Utah for my sister's wedding, Emma and Miriam played a lot. Emma's hair kept getting in her face. Instead of pulling it up, she decided to just cut it off.

Really short in the front.



Semi-short on the sides.

So, I gave her a hair cut:

I think she looks really cute!
We think she looks a little like Demi Lavato in "Princess Protection Program".
(Only Emma is much cuter!)

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

In case anyone doesn't know where the road not taken lies, it is in the middle of Texas. Specifically, it's the road that lies between the Carlsbad Caverns and I-20. 5 hours of nothingness. Just heat and bugs. I think I claimed that Georgia was the bug capital of the world, but I forgot about Texas. Getting gas along this untraveled road, I was attacked by a whole slew of nasty bugs along with the insufferable heat...oh, and it was like 1 am. So why would I subject myself and my family to such torment? Simple: we went to the Grand Canyon and the Carlsbad Caverns on the way out to Georgia (yeah, I know that this blog should probably have come before the last one, but I'm a little scatterbrained. That's the way I roll).
Here are some highlights from the trip across the country.

Tommy, Silje, and Emma hanging out in the shade at the Glen Canyon Dam.
















Tommy and Emma looking cute!
















Here is Tommy exploring the area.





































On to the Grand Canyon, where Liam wanted to get into the action.
















Tommy liked exploring at the Grand Canyon as well. Here is is hanging out with Silje and just being stinkin' cute.







From the Grand Canyon we moved on to the Carlsbad Caverns. Liam, Silje, and Emma are awed by the grandeur of the caves (and maybe somewhat spooked by something).








All in it was a great trip. We had a blast, made some memories, and survived Texas.

Peachtree Living

Paul here. This is my first post ever!

As implied by the title of the post, I am coming to you from the land of peach trees (and streets, neighborhoods, and cities named "peachtree"). The Ellison family has just gone southern. We have officially moved to the ATL (though I will NEVER convert to being a Braves fan).

For those of you who don't know (and that's probably everyone who reads the blog to keep up with our comings and goings), I have taken a job with Altea Therapeutics in Atlanta, GA and we have moved to Lilburn, a suburb about 45 minutes North East of downtown.

Some impressions of Atlanta:

Atlanta is HUGE...but not really

Coming from Salt Lake City, Utah (metro population of 1.1 million people), Atlanta (metro population of 5.3 million people) seemed like it would be quite overwelming. However with multiple freeways averaging 5 or 6 lanes and most people apparently traveling in the opposite direction as my commute, it doesn't feel any more crowded on the freeway than in Utah (other than the 1 mile road to the freeway that can take 30mins if I leave when the coke worldwide headquarters employees get off work).

There is no such thing as a "mature tree" in Utah.

The trees in our backyard here are about 50ft tall. And there are much taller trees all around. I look out the upper windows in our 2-story living room and still see trees going up and up. It's amazing.

Utah is quite green...in a brown sort of way.

This is something that I recalled when I first moved back to Utah from Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. Here, freeways are lined by 50ft tall trees (and taller). Vines and bushes hang onto the freeway in sections. Everything is green. It helps that Atlanta gets more annual rainfall than Seattle does.

Atlanta must be the bug capital of the world. Seriously.

In the 4 weeks that we have been in Atlanta I have seen my first ever scorpion (in our bedroom), my first ever praying mantis (on my garbage can), the longest and densest trail of ants ever, fire flies (which I have seen in Washington DC at Lizzie's place), beetles are everywhere, spiders too. Tommy shrieks a lot when he finds HUGE spiders (they are about 1mm in diameter).

We are happy to be living among the peach trees.

What Baby thinks of soccer

He wanted to run and play, too! It won't be long...