Here is a picture of when you walk in the front door.
As you can see, you can go upstairs to our bedroom and Thomas' bedroom. If you go to the right of the stairs it brings you down a hall way to this point:
Here is the entrance into our family room. Notice on the left is a storage closet (under the stairs) and on the right is a single bathroom that looks like this
And here are pictures of our family room. Notice the glass sliding glass doors going out to our back patio and yard.
If we go back to down the hallway towards the front door, (here is a view of the front door - notice the dining area to the left)
and take a left, we arrive in the dining room.
The kitchen is to the left of the dining room. Here is Emily cooking. This week she will be 39 weeks! (more on that later)
Now if we go back to the front door and go upstairs, here is Thomas' room. Emily found this furniture on Craigslist for pretty cheap.
Here is the view from Thomas's room. The stairs are to the right and our room is straight down the hall. To the left is our washer dryer closet (we had to remove the doors to fit the washer/dryer).
Then here is our room.
And here is a view of the bathroom off the side of our room. It is a jack and jill bath that connects to Thomas' room.
And here are pictures of the Sas Hall on NCSU campus where I spend my days. (They aren't actual photos, but I couldn't find those).
As for Em and I, we are doing great!
Emily is about 39 weeks pregnant
We are visiting the doctor weekly now and at the last visit he told us that she wasn't dilated or effaced. But the doctor said that Thomas' head was exactly where it should be (head down, deep in the pelvis). Also, Em says that she hasn't even felt any sort of contractions either. All this being said, the doctor still told us that Emily could have the baby any day now so we have our hospital bags packed and ready to go.
Overall we really like it here. I am enjoying my classes thus far (although they keep me very busy) and so far they haven't been extremely difficult. I basically have one course that is really hard and two courses that are fairly easy. While I am at school, Em is spends her days getting things ready for the baby, grocery shopping, cleaning, knitting, and hanging out with other ladies from the ward that she has become friends with. We feel really lucky to have landed in the ward that we did. There are a lot of younger couples around our age that we have become friends with. It seems like every weekend we have something fun going on. Also, it has been nice to have some familiar faces like Heather and Eric so close by and my friend Doug from BYU (he is at Duke studying stats also) and his wife.
When we have some free time, Em and I often go to a park nearby that has a 3 mile walking/running trail that goes around the perimeter of the lake. I run here about 2-3 times a week and Em walks here multiple times a week with various women/walking groups in the ward.
The lake (and Raleigh in general) is especially pretty at this time of year with the leaves changing. The look and feel of the area reminds me a lot of my time in West Virginia/Virginia.
Well that is all for now. The next time we update this blog will be with pictures of Thomas!
PS - We welcome any visitors who would like to come visit!
