CEEEELLLLOOOO!

It was hard but Gabriel let Oliver and I go just for a few days to head back to our home away from home in Celo. It just would have been heart breaking if Oliver's first summer had come and gone without being baptized in the waters of the South Toe, bottle fedding the baby goats, picking blueberries on the edge of Roan Mountain, having dinner at the Knife and Fork, and having dinner on grandma's porch, in the house that his dad grew up in, with the crickets chirping while gazing at Mt Mitchell. Sigh....Once again, Celo just hits the home run as the most wonderful place on Earth.

Sampling blueberries for the first time








Flowers from grandma's garden


Auntie Em and Uncle Alex


Meeting new life


Napping by the river with 9 week old Shaw and Gray








Crawling to grandpa Bruce


Giggles with grandma Marilyn


Many trips were made to the washer and dryer which are right at Oliver height and right outside of our bedroom




More river time with grandmas



Oliver loved riding back up the driveway from the river in the back with no car seat.






He was also a big fan of grandpa's iPad





Becoming the new face of Mountain Farm yarn

The wild flowers on my mom's hillside were just amazing.

Visit With Cousin Brodie

We have been really lucky so far to have had a good number of visitors already in the month and a half that we have been here in Northampton. We have had many of our parents, friends Will and Jason, and also Gabriel's brother, Jason, his wife Clare and little Brodie.

Oliver's cousin Brodie was born just 2 and a half weeks after Oliver was born which is just remarkable. They were the first grand babies for all of our families and it is so special that they are both boys, and so close in age. Gabe and Jason have a really great relationship so this is all very fun for them to share. They live in Brooklyn and we had been so sad all through our pregnancies and births to live so far away when we were experiencing the same things at the same time. Now we live only 3 hours apart and will get to see much more of each other which is such a huge bonus to where we ended up.

Their visit also fell right on Gabriel's birthday which was an added treat.

As a side note. This lovely hammock was a wedding present from our friends Pace and Laura. They had picked it up in Mexico. We have always loved it but in our almost 5 years of marriage we haven't had the right living conditions to hang it up and use it. As a birthday present to Gabriel this year I got a stand for it. We LOVE it! If you can't find one of us in the house check the hammock.

What Happens When We Leave the Room

Recently Gabriel and I were about to unload the dishwasher. For some reason we paused for a moment to go look at something in the other room and when we came back this is what we found. Not even in the process of getting up there but already up and turned around just sitting there! Crazy kid.

4th of July

We had an unconventional 4th of July. It was really stinking hot here and a 3rd year ER resident invited anyone who wanted over to her house for a BBQ and to swim in her pool. She said she was having a bunch of extended family over and anyone was welcome to join. We decided to take her up on her offer to meet some other residents and also we REALLY wanted to get in some water. As it turned out, we were the only people from Gabe's work to go and it was the three of us and all of Aggie and her husband Steve's extended family. To add to the quirkiness of things Aggie is originally from Poland and all her family that was there was first generation polish. Well they took us right in and it was a really fun time and Aggie's 3 month old Olivia is just adorable. Funny though to spend the 4th of July with a bunch of immigrants!

Oliver was as usual the little ham. These photos of him sitting on the side of the pool with his dad, dipping his toes in the water are just too funny. I can really see his 2 or 3 year old self here. In the second photo you have to picture him humming which he does a lot of.

Doing Just Fine

A few days ago we crossed the one month mark of living in our new home. The home we own, in a new state, figuring out as we go how we want to combine our old lives and our new ones. We miss our friends, and we miss our family, but slowly we build new friendships and are very thankful for how cool of a little town we ended up in. We also love our little street filled with wonderful neighbors and lots of kids.

I will do a different post with a tour of our house but this photo was taken in garden on the side of our house with our recently built and planted vegetable garden. We are also feeling pretty lucky to have a back yard and front yard and some wonderful landscaping that is flowering like crazy from the previous owners.

You can pretty much picture Oliver standing in this exact position every day around 5pm EST as he watches me water the veggies and tries to decide whether to pull the name markers on the tomato plants or eat dirt.

Peekaboo!

Peekaboo! Long time no see!
Lot's going on, what else is new. Highlights include: Gabriel graduating from medical school, buying our first house and moving to Northampton, Massachusetts for his residency, vacation with baby to Puerto Rico, crawling, stair climbing, teeth and being 8 and a half months old. Few!
These photos are already over a month old from our trip to California at the end of May. More fun soon.