Settling In

We're getting more and more settled here in our new home in Jersey City.  We still have a couple of bookshelves worth of stuff plus some more clothes to unpack, but it's looking more like home every day.  Thanks to multiple trips to Home Depot and a big trip to IKEA last weekend, we may even overcome the storage issues that this apartment came with (such as NO closet in our bedroom).  Why does it seem that every time we move we spend so much money at Home Depot and IKEA?  Another reason we don't want to move again for at least 3 years.

Here is a sneak peak at a couple of areas of our apartment that we've actually completed.

Here, Andrew shows off our coat rack and shoe rack.  On the left is our front door, on the right is the coat closet. This will allow us to use the closet for storage instead of coats.

We added these white shelves and baskets, since the bathroom vanity is small and doesn't have any drawers in it.

While I was working on the bathroom organization, Andrew found my stash of suitcase locks and keys, and had lots of fun putting the keys in the handle holes on the vanity doors.  What a funny guy.

The 18 inches of snow that Jersey City received as soon as Paul arrived here is melted or removed, all except for some piles on some of the side streets.  We keep being teased with the occasional warmer day (40s or 50s), but then it goes back down to the 20s.  Last week I heard from a native here that it doesn't really start warming up until April.

Our church ward here is great.  It's small, has lots of ethnic diversity, and it's the only English-speaking ward in the whole county!  We are about a 17-minute walk from church, so we've walked there every week so far.  There are lots of young families, so we fit right in.  There is a weekly playgroup that rotates around to different people's homes on Fridays.  Also, on Tuesdays there's a weekly "playschool" held at the church building.  It is like a two-hour coop preschool with dancing/movement, a lesson, an art/craft, and snack.  Here is Andrew wearing the three-cornered hat we made last week for the lesson on hats (he wanted to wear it during dinner):