happy endings and beginnings

 

These pictures have nothing to do with this blog post, except that I have hardly any pictures of Eli and me together, and since this sort of doubles as his baby book, I needed to represent.  Now...onto the good, great and better news.

 Last week ended on a really sad note with my doggo Cash disappearing into thin air on Friday.  After 3 days of searching and posting flyers and haunting craigslist with no sign of him a kind lady called us on Monday and told us she had seen our flyer on the bulletin board at the grocery store, and then saw Cash running and terrified in her neighborhood on the way home.  Since he wouldn't go to her, she went back, got our number and called, and Loren was able to drive to the location she had seen him and find him.  We are so, so happy.  I had honestly written him off as a goner after days of hiking around the trails in the woods by our house, and driving all the neighborhood streets looking in the ditch for him. Since his return I have received a couple of calls from people saying they saw him here and there, and that poor pup--he was very lost, and pretty much ran an ultra-marathon trying to find his way home.

Our kind new neighbors who Loren met while looking for Cash dropped off a big stack of firewood, and our other neighbor who is a vet came over and checked Cash out to make sure he was whole and healthy after his journey.

To add to the great happiness of our prodigal pup's return, Eli and Sadie got a new cousin yesterday!  Loren's brother and his wife are now the proud parents to a beautiful baby girl (born on my Sister in Law's birthday no less!) And Dimitri gets to be a big brother:)

But that's not all...my mom and her husband who I haven't seen in 8 months get to come stay with us for two weeks.  Yay for Elias who gets to meet his other Grandma and Grandpa for the first time, Yay for Sadie who is already plotting out all the projects she wants grandma Jones to help her with (getting a Christmas tree and baking a gingerbread house and making more bird feeders is what she told me today, but the list is ongoing). And Loren is stoked to have Grandpa Ernie here to help him with his mission to fell the standing dead trees on our property and buck them up into firewood.  

So... in this season of thanksgiving, I am so so thankful, and excited for the warm and busy winter months we have ahead of us!

for the birds

Sadie has been after me to make a bird feeder for all the chickadees that have been flitting around our porch.  I saw this quick and easy idea for a pine cone bird feeder in a book we have, and we decided to give it a try.  It is a perfectly textural and messy project for a 2-year-old.  All you need is a pine cone, birdseed and some peanut butter.  I didn't have peanut butter so I mixed coconut oil and a little bit of almond butter--I'm sure you could use suet or any other sticky fat that birds would dig.

Directions:

1.) Tie a piece of twine (for hanging) around your pine cone before you slather it with the nut butter. Believe me, it is easier to do this way.
2.) Glop the nut butter all over the pine cone (you may need to taste test it first)
3.) Roll sticky messy pine cone in birdseed
4.) Apply a few lingonberries to make it festive.
5.) Hang in trees and wait for birds to come eat it (or squirrels, OR moose and bears according to Sadie).

Happy Holidays to our backyard friends.

tour de house: part 1

Hello friends and family, since everyone is so far away and ya'll been asking for a virtual tour of the new home, here you go!  This is the view from half-way up our driveway.  You see all those tall things growing up towards the sky?  Trees! Wheeeeee! {I will never under appreciate trees again after our 6 years in Nome.} That other large thing is a lawn...also, very novel.

Now...down to important business.  Here is the detached garage/ stable, also know to some members of the household (namely me) as Tara's Pottery Barn. 

Eli at two months

 Come on guys... this is a serious blog post for my serious little guy.  Okay, not really.  Elias has really started to smile and squeal with delight the last couple of weeks...except when I get the camera out.  Then all I can get out of him are these skeptical looks.
Who are you, and where did my mom go? All things considered {the spitting up and screaming being all things} Eli is one charming little fellow, and by little I mean 18 lbs and 26 inches long.  I guess I can rest assured that some of that milk is staying down, or else Eli is just growing on all the loves he gets.

 I confess, I am one smitten mama--who can resist those chubby baby cheeks and sweet smiles?  Even the fussiness isn't as stressful this time around, because I know how fast these stages whiz by and I am trying to just enjoy Eli as a baby, because he wont stay that way for long.  He is getting busy already-- and to keep me on my toes he has decided to do everything different than his sister.  Sadie loved being nursed to sleep--not this guy.  He needs motion to snooze.  Thank goodness for the hand-me-down baby swing from Loren's aunt. He is just starting to grab at things, and his favorite past time is kicking the corner of his play gym to make all the toys wiggle.  I can see the little cause and effect wheels turning in his baby brain.  Eli seems to be a very alert and observant baby; he loves to check out the world around him--his favorite thing probably being his sister, because boy does he ever get to smiling every time she comes around. Sadie is a good big sister.  Although she gets jealous at times, she has a very innate sense of gentleness which I have greatly appreciated these last two months. Well, speaking of Eli--he is awake and needing some mama time now, so I am going to sign off on this post.  I'll be back before you know it with the three month update, because that's just the way time flies.