Ew...too long, my friends, too long

9.21.12. Why haven't you asked me where I am? Why haven't you been begging for details of Alyssa's ever-growing vocabulary? Why haven't you reminded me that you don't know what happened after we left Raleigh?!

It's ok. I'll forgive you. I just had a desire to show you a picture or two. And you will have to come back to see Alyssa in her Halloween costume. I think my desire stems from the fact that my camera screen is completely white and now that I have the bitterness of not taking accurate pictures, I feel the pull to takes pictures even more acutely. Alas, all pictures viewed here today were before the camera accident (whatever that was, because it was working fine just a few days ago) and hopefully one day soon I can resume taking pictures.

So what have we been up to?

:: Moving! So long Village 2 {:( with some sadness}. Hello Our New Place (can't reveal the name just in case someone's creeper stalking us...don't think about that.) We like Our New Place...not as sound proof. But I am grateful that our home is not one of yelling.

Alyssa loves our home...so much cookie dough making!

 :: The Famn Damily came to visit and wow! What a week we had! Have you ever tried NYC, Philly, and DC in ONE WEEK? We have! All in all it was quite the enjoyable experience.

We rode the Staten Island Ferry for FREE and saw the Statue of Liberty.

We experienced the {commercialized} New York Stock Exchange (really, ADT?!)

In DC people take Glamour Shots in front of the Capitol Building. So we did too! Don't worry, ladies, Erik is already taken!

Here's a real picture of us. It was sunny. Forgive the squinting. 

Jacob. The photographer who added himself into our pictures. Ladies, he is only kind of partially taken, so if you want his number, call him maybe?

So people of the Asian variety LOVE the DC. And they also LOVE Alyssa's hair. So this is a funny picture capturing all these Asian peeps making funny noises at Alyssa so that they can get a good picture of her. I don't know if you can really tell, but the man in the black was waving his hands and doing a little dance. Hilarious! I took a video but they mostly stopped by then. Alyssa wasn't really having it. 

The movie is a little long, but I really can't resist sharing. She cracks me up! Alyssa is quite the little helper around the house now. She is good at doing what we ask her to do and kind of sings the "clean-up song" with us!

Alyssa and her "set" table. After this picture was taken she proceeded to take a bite out of all 6 corn bread muffins sitting in the bowl. 

The other night Erik got the round ball magnets out. This is what we found after Alyssa had played with them for awhile. Yes, she really did hang her blanket up with magnets all on her own!

Oh my silly Alyssa!

Life is good and fun and busy! We are making many new friends and playing with our old ones! Running is going well. We average 3 times a week. Another 5K will probably be in the near future and I would like to start training for a 10K.

Alyssa is talking talking talking. She recognizes prominent shapes (circles = "balls", kitties, temples, and cars (even cars made out of pancake batter and noodles)), she signs "table" and says it whenever I read her here favorite book about hats and we learn that Walt Whitman had a had, sometimes a makeshift table mat. She loves keys. She has a Little People baby that she always says "shhh" to me when she gets it out because she's sleeping...which has carried over into saying "shhh" when she sees her new friend Baby Hannah. She sings a tune when I sing "I am a Child of God", she loves to clap and roll her hands, and we are starting to get the hand actions for "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." She is officially in nursery and Erik and I are officially out of nursery and we are all just rollin' with the punches!

Stay tuned for more exciting news and probably a bunch of short video clips in replacement of pictures for the next little while! And check in next Wednesday to see if we survived Hurricane Sandy!

Toodles!