Spring has sprung!

Hi everyone, it's been a LONG time since we last posted anything, and a lot has been going on in our world. Let's start with Caroline! She is talking up a storm, lots of new words every day ... and starting to use sentences now for a few weeks. Some of her favorites: "Oww that hurts!" "I'm cooking Mommy" "Cut pizza Mommy" "I brush my hair" "I want my shoes" she is getting good! Sometimes she can be hard to understand but we are learning and she is good at communicating what she wants:) Her favorite foods in no particular order: "roni" (any kind of pasta), veggies, waffles (w/syrup of course), sausage (any kind! she's a true Chicagoan) and YOGURT. This girl does not skip a beat, she's on from the second she wakes up to the minute she passes out in her crib at night. No sign of a big girl bed yet, she is perfectly content in her crib with 20-30 of her nearest and dearest friends (stuffed animals). She is still loving every minute of daycare, and now that the weather has gotten nicer, she's able to spend a lot of time outside with the kids at Miss Tami's. She loves riding around in her Cozy Coupe car, toting her Disney princess suitcase, making pretend coffee in her kitchen for Ben, and playing relentlessly with her puzzles, trying to count to 10 with all her effort. She is about as cute as they come, and really into everything. Just a sweet little girl with a great personality.

Now onto Ben ... he did some traveling for school at the beginning of March, with a nice two-week trip to South Africa. The first week of his trip was solely school related, while he and some classmates worked on a consulting project for a company in Swaziland. The trip was successful and he spent another week cruising Kruger National Park outside of Johannesburg with some friends - great pictures to come soon - but he had a blast. He was also able to visit with our good friends Lauren and Geoff Gursel who were fabulous hosts to Ben and some classmates, showing them the sights of Joburg, and shuffling Ben from place to place. He had an awesome time!! Ben is now in his FINAL quarter of school at Georgetown, and we find ourselves marveling at how quickly our time in DC has gone ... soon enough we will be making our next move ... which takes me to the big news! Ben accepted a job in NYC that starts in mid July. We are in the final process of first time home buying in New Jersey, and we'll be outside Manhattan about 30 minutes by train. We are really excited and will post more news about our new place soon!

All of this has obviously kept me very busy ... Ben's in charge of the finance stuff, and I've been glued to the New Jersey MLS listings searching for our perfect home! Now that we've found it, I'm on to bigger and better things ... paint colors, furniture, you name it! And finding Caroline a new daycare/nursery school, which has been pretty successful so far. If all goes according to plan, we will close on May 25 and move that weekend (Memorial Day!) ... really soon! We've got a few good weekends ahead of us enjoying the time we have left in DC and planning for our next stop. Stay tuned for more updates.

Ben and I also recently celebrated some birthdays ... I'll leave Ben's age out of this post but I hit the big 30! We had a great time celebrating with friends and family at an awesome Mexican fiesta followed by a night out on the town with drinks more friends. We are very lucky to have all that we do!