Greetings from Pittsburgh!

I am very aware of the fact that I am not a very good blogger and you all have quite possibly given up on me, so if for no other reason than keeping track of our own life, here is a Williams family update.

we had a rough month of illness that began the day after my last post, but did manage to sell our house again! After six weeks of no viable prospective buyers we decided to attempt to sell it on our own. I created a little website, sent an email out to our network in Roanoke and had a buyer the very next morning! This all happened a week before our scheduled move!

With the support of many dear friends (who I already miss dearly) we were able to get our house packed up, and hired a moving company to do the really hard work. we arrived in pittsburgh on wednesday night, July 8th and began the challenging process of settling into a new home and city with a toddler and a budding toddler in the mix. Add to this another round of sickness - stomach viruses this time, and we feel a little bit in over our heads. As of now, grimes and susannah are the only victims, and we pray that Evan and I can stay healthy because this is a particularly nasty one.

The little bit of exploring we have done has been fantastic - we love our location (very diverse neighborhood of squirrel hill) have great access to two huge parks with more playgrounds than we could ever play on, pools, skating rinks, and miles and miles of hiking trails. we already feel like this spot is a great fit - not to mention we can walk EVERYWHERE! Evan and I were at the grocery store today picking up sick person food and there were stollers pouring into the grocery store!

we are hoping to have a few days of "at home" vacation once everyone recovers and before I start working (more on that later) and grimes starts work and school. we will hopefully take lots of pictures and show you more of this neat city. for now, here are two recent (kind of) pictures of the kids.

long time no talk

Sorry for the long silence. life has been pretty busy. we are in the process of moving to pittsburgh. the kids are great. here are a few pictures from the last few months. we got a new computer and it took a while to figure out how to upload our pictures.

we were scheduled to move july 1st, but found out tonight that our buyers defualted on the contract so we don't know what that means.

we'll keep you posted. . .

January

susannah loves her brother. sometimes a little more than he appreciates. this is just one example of her struggling to give Evan his space - she climbed into the tub with him!

Evan's first hike in the backpack.

DC Trip highlights

make your own pizza at generous george's

this is the first time susannah actually requested that her picture be taken and attemted her biggest smile. notice all the pizza she ate - as we were driving into DC she started complaining that her "belly button" hurt. then she wanted to go home and use the bathroom, meaning she thought she was going to throw up. I guess it was good pizza.

grimes and I decided to take our chances and head into the city. the kids had a great time visiting the national tree and a number of the monuments at night. susannah insisted we run the whole way too!

Christmas

here are some shots from around christmas time - a little late, as usual : )

snuggling in susannah's crib

this was a very very sweet moment.

the days before christmas

picking out just the right tree.

enjoying the triming of tree festivities

sibling love

examining each and every ornament

grimes and the kids

thanksgiving

we had a wonderful thanksgiving with my whole family in town. I am a little overwhelmed by the quantity of pictures taken so here just a few from the ones I've looked through so far.

the kids had a blast running through the halls at the hotel.

posing with cousins by one of the tree displays

playing in the leaves

evan hamming it up with mimi

family picture

trick-or-treat

two year molars coming in, not candy stuck in the teeth - promise.

susannah was a duck (again) for halloween this year and evan was a pumpkin. susannah went trick-or-treating to the houses on our street and had a great time. she is still saying "trick treat thank you" several weeks later.

pumpkin carving

pumpkin carving was an interesting event for us. I was expecting susannah to be very curious about what the inside of the pumpkin looked like after admiring the outside for several weeks. when grimes cut the top open and reached inside susannah literally screamed and lept into my arms. she eventually warmed up to the whole experience, but never really wanted to get her hands dirty.

siblings

susannah loves evan and we are so thankful for that. she wants to help with everything and continues to shower him with kisses. here is a picture of her "holding" evan.

our little snoozer

Evan is quite the snoozer. he's actually more accurately known as the snack n' snoozer. he likes to eat a little sleep a little . . . and then repeat. grimes and I finally figured out that the little guy has the worst case of jet lag possible to man. he came from the womb which is pretty timeless into the world, where his parents would like him to sleep during this thing called night. he would rather continue to run on his own clock of getting up every hour or so to eat. a friend put me onto a plan to keep him awake more during the day and see if we can't kick this habbit. let's hope it works!

visit from auntie

Aunt Michele came to visit last weekend and we had a great time. here are some pictures from the pumpkin festival that we went to. we walked through the corn maze, let susannah pick out a few little pumpkins to complete her collection and drank hot apple cider. Evan slept the whole time.

loving being a big sister

susannah is taking very well to her new role as a big sister. the first word out of her mouth this morning was Evan. Here she is snuggling with him and examining his tiny little fingers.