Ben's First Blog Entry - It's a little one!

When Valerie told me she wanted to start a blog, I said "OK" but she shouldn't expect me to contribute anything, because I had no interest. Well things have changed and I really like all the blogging going on, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Many of you have not seen our apartment, so I thought I'd share some pictures with you so you could appreciate how little it is and laugh at how we spend about $2 per square foot each month in rent (barely over 700 sq ft - you do the math).



Try to ignore the ugliness of the pictures (Val takes much better ones than me), and I'll walk you through things (feel free to click on the pictures to get a better look). This is one wall of our living room. You can see the TV is bookended by 2 deep IKEA bookshelves. The one on the left holds our movies (stacked 3 deep) and the one on the right holds books (also stacked 2 or 3 deep). Notice the rocking chair is facing the wrong way. It has 2 purposes, one, to block Xander from getting the movies, and two, to hold the exercise ball (we don't have a closet). On top of the bookshelves you can see my Wii, Guitar, Videogames, Videocamera, speakers, and some flowers. If you want to see better pics of the flowers, check out Val's photo blog - the link is on the right. They had a deal on flowers for $4 a bunch. I thought I would get Val a bunch for each kid, so I shelled out the $16 and earned a bunch of brownie points!



This is our kitchen and dining room. Notice the bar stool chairs. They are great, except that there is no overhang on the bar so your knees are flush against the wall. If you look to the far right, you can see our "stroller garage" - right in front of the front door. Of course sometimes we set up a mini card table and colorful chairs for the kids. It's exciting to have something new every once in a while to trip over as you enter or exit the home! To the left, past the pictures of the kids, you would see a hall the size of a phone booth (you know what a phone booth is right?) with 3 doors, one on each side. One goes to the master bedroom, one to the girls room, and one to the port-a-potty that isn't portable so it's really a bathroom.



This is the opposite wall from the TV. On the left you see our external coat closet. On the right you can see an external toy box. In the middle you see my bed. Yes I sleep on the couch - except for the nights when Val sleeps on the couch, then I sleep on the floor in front of the couch. See, we only have 2 bedrooms, one for the girls and the other we share with Xander. Lately if we sleep in the room with Xander, he wakes up a million times a night and cries. When we sleep in a separate room (pictured above), he only wakes up half a million times. At the end of July, our lease is up and we will be moving into a bigger place - with 3 bedrooms! One for CJ and Mia, one for the other two and one for US! Our backs can't wait!!!

Well, I've rambled long enough. I hope I didn't bore you with this tour, but if I did, at least (like our apartment) it was a little one!