18 days old

I'm not sure if I should write about HGTV or the Twins.... I'm slightly addicted to both!

Seriously though, I've really been enjoying this stay at home thing. Ella, Conor and I have worked out a pretty great schedule.

We get Claire & Chris out the door at 8:15am. Then take 15-30 minutes to just calm down from all of the activity. Make sure we've changed both diapers and fed both of them. Then they sleep for 1.5-2 hours. Which gives me plenty of time to clean up from the night before, get the laundry going, dishes done, take the garbage & recycling out, boil some water, shower (!!), eat something and get my "nest" ready for the day.

My nest is the living room :) I have a table full of papers to go through, thank you notes to write, magazines to read, etc.

Then they're up at 11 or so. Change and feed them both. Then they're up for awhile. We do tummy time, jump, lotion up their dry skin and get settled in for another sleeping around 12:30. Then it's time to unload the dishwasher, switch the laundry and try not to get sucked into non stop HGTV.

Then it's wake up time around 1:30 to get things started in order to get out of the house by 2:15-2:30 to pick up big sister Claire at Evergreen.

With all of this HGTV watching Claire and I have decided we need to at least get a quote or two on having the basement finished and possibly extending the house to enlarge the kitchen/back entrance.

I'd love to get a full bath w/ laundry room, bedroom and rec room/pub/beer brewing area out of the basement. Then there's the kitchen... It would be amazing to extend the kitchen, back entrance (mud room?) and main floor bath & bed room. Then wish wish wish list would be doing something with the garage. I'd love to make it a little apartment. But then we're losing the garage which could impact our re-sell ability.

Enough home improvement. It's a funny reality... I spend an equal amount of time searching for a new house and watching HGTV to get remodel ideas. We definitely want to move in 2-3 years but in the meantime it would be great to do some level of remodeling to improve the value of our home.

So in other news. The twins are growing! We had our two week check up last Friday. Conor was up to over 8lbs and Ella over 7lbs. Very exciting :) Conor is growing out of his newborn clothes and Ella is finally filling them out a bit. We learned that the little bump on Conor's lip is a "sucking blister" that he gets from sucking down his bottle so feverishly. Our little man is a serious eater!

We've had a nice pace of visitors. Auntie Anne and Rich were by, Grammy & Grandpa were by a couple times. Grammy brought Spuds fish and chips on Thursday and Schufnudle & meet sauce on Sunday. Pam, Steve & Emily were by with an incredible dinner on Sunday afternoon. It was so nice to see them and catch up. Emily held Ella the whole time and Pam & Steve took turns with grumpy Conor.

We still haven't introduced the twins to uncle Matt... He was sick and then his family members were sick. So we're hoping he and the family are on the mend and we can hang out soon.

Our Seattle Seahawks led by the amazing Badger Russel Wilson won their first playoff game just after the new year and played in Atlanta last weekend, it was a great game but in the end the Hawks couldn't push through. Many are calling the Hawks the team to beat next year but for now, no more post season play for the Texans (JJ Watt), the Packers, the Broncos or the Seahawks. There's always next year!

A few pictures from the last few days. Temptation & confusing are my project 365 words. The brownie (temptation) is the last of a whole mess of amazing chocolate, caramel, brownies that Pam & Steve brought... Yummy & addicting. Trying to figure out which contractors to call for some quotes on the house will fall under the confusing category... If I could just have the "cousins on call", "basement crashers" or one of the fabulous HGTV shows come in and just whip it out...that would be nice.

Hopefully there will be more to come on the whole renovation notion.

Claire has Friday and Monday off and Aunt Michele, Glenn and James will be in town this weekend. I'll be sure and take pictures of these visitors... And others in the future. I haven't gotten the knack of that yet.. Need to take more pictures!

More soon.