Turkeys North Ho!

Well, there is much to give thanks for this year.

Not only did we make it to week 12 with Baby Embryo, but Baby Celia is thriving, healthy, funny and sleeping sooooo good! We deserve and need some good sleep for the next 6 months before the sleep deprivation train makes it stop at Vollerville in June. We have our Elle pup, we have a warm house, we have cars that start up in the morning when it snows, Steve loves his job, J loves bartending, we have amazing families, and tis the season for chocolate and pie. Could things be any better!?

This year, we decided to go up for Thanksgiving to Petoskey to spend the day with friends. J was originally planning on doing a whole Thanksgiving dinner here for just our family, but once the pregnancy set in, exhaustion and stomach yucks made that sound like a bad idea. But we had a bird from Lubber's Farm, we had sweet potatoes, russian banana potatoes, pumpkins and brussel sprouts all from our garden waiting for the celebratory feast! So we decided to shake it up this year, and north we went.

Our partners in crime were Ann and John Stebelton with their children, James and Molly (and Issac due next month!), as well as Jen and her beau Drew. Thank goodness this was a collective cooking event! Were our moms and grandma's NUTS?! It is official. They were and they are! This was all of our first entire Thanksgiving dinners that we made on our own and after an entire day of cooking, washing dishes, washing more dishes, trying to keep our children happy, trying to time everything, and trying to frantically read recipes we have all decided our ancestors were nuts.

So Ann and J went to turkey land that morning. Looking good so far!




Jen and Drew were on potato detail using Voller garden spuds:






And Drew bravely made pumpkin pie from our pumpkins: Although the consistancy is not the same when you use real pumpkins we were all proud and impressed at the finished product. A new male domestic god in our midst? Yes! We could use some more!



Here the clan is working hard together! Steve and John entertained kids while Ann made cranberry sauce and J peeled sweet potatoes, which Steve later prepared into a yummy treat.



And at the last minute Ann steamed brussel spouts while J and Ann assembled crossiants and the children decided to find their chairs:



Steve began the honors of carving the turkey:



Everyone was poised in their chairs sniffling the fragrant air madly when oops! We suddenly realized that when the oven turned off, we had forgotten to check the temperature of the turkey before we took it out.

Here we were -- it was 4pm, everything was hot at the same time, the table was beautiful, the water glasses dripped slightly with condensation from the cold water, and we discover our turkey was not done.

HA!! Not too bad for a first try.

We ended the day sledding (Celia's first!!) and playing Quibble once our young ones were in bed.






We had a lovely time and we are grateful -- grateful indeed.

Video Mania!!!

A few old vidoes:

The first is Like Mother, Like Daughter -- My family knows this is a replica of me circa 1978!

The second is Celia booging

The third is our new spoon keep away game!

As fallen leaves are covered by snow

We have been so behind in all things bloggish for some time. Catching up seems rather daunting, so we thought we would just post some quick pictures that will hopefully tell the story of our time these past few months.

First off, we would just like to say one thing!



We are SO elated! We are SO excited! We are so inspired! We have been pulling for Barack Obama since 2004 and literally shed tears at our country's election of this great man! In spite of exhaustion and stomach whoozies we stayed up with our close friends until 1:30am celebrating this historic and global revolution moment!

Before all this excitement we enjoyed our favorite season -- fall! We went to harvest festivals, took crunchy walks, carried leaves, manure and compost to our wintered garden, and just basked in the crisp air warmed by fall sun.



Celia did not go trick or treating this year seeing as she is transitioning from two naps to one and going to bed ultra early to make up for it, but she still got in on the fun and was a cow girl this year for her friend Ariel LeBlanc's 1st birthday!




We also had Celia's 2nd illness of her little life. One day she fussed and fussed until she ran over to me and everything came out of her! She vomited over and over throughout the night, but was better by 10 hours later! Thank goodness for slings!




After that we were discouraged to discover that J had caught Celia's flu bug -- or did she? After 3 days of feeling woozy and crappy we discovered what THE REAL culprit was:



This was a SHOCK! J actually cried and almost threw the test across the room! ALreaDY!!?? I'm still breastfeeding Celia, she thought, I'm researching for the book I'm writing, I still HAVE a baby, We'll need a different car, I didn't think I'd make it through the last pregnancy let alone the labor and delivery!

As you can tell, this was not a Voller planned baby. We had thought of having more but not for a few years. We guess our vacation in Lake Ann had different plans for us. We have been diligent protectors seeing as we were NOT ready for another baby... until one night. But it took a YEAR to get pregnant for Celia so we were sure that that one little whoopsie was just that... Looks like there's a new Fertile Mertyle in town!

We are now in our 8th week and are realizing the good timing of this little being. We now look forward to our due date of June 15th. For so many reasons, this is wonderful news now!

We are very excited and are SO pleased that so far, although J has bad days, this pregnancy is a breeze compared to Celia! WHEW! We got to see the little tike or tikette yesterday. We couldn't get a heartbeat and therefore ok'ed a quick ultrasound to make sure all was well seeing as we had reason to be concerned as to the viability of the pregnancy -- and there the little Vollerino was! Heart a-pumping away, arm buds and leg buds hanging out there boyant and happy in mama's womb. So, so far, so good :)

Steve is doing awesome these days. He loves his new position at Foremost and his new boss and his new co-workers. He's so busy every day and he's very into what his role is, so that is a huge relief! We still ache for him to be outside or with a guitar in hand, but for now, this is suiting him quite well.

Elle pup is not scared of Celia anymore and lets her pet her all the time.

Celia is a walking/semi running machine. She calls both of us mama, but is working on dada, banana, and she can say obama. HA!

Videos to come!

What?! And Opps...

Need we say more?

Lake Ann Vacation

The Voller Family just returned from a wonderfully rejuvinating vacation to Lake Ann, Michigan. Lake Ann, for those that do not know, is a tiny town due west of Traverse City about 10 miles from Empire in Sleeping Bear Dunes. Our road trip to Colorado was indeed cancelled since Celia started to walk and has decided that going in the car seat is the worst thing you could possibly do to her. So we stayed in Michigan. Ahhhh! Beautiful Michigan.

Most of you don't know how beautiful Michigan is. It really is a gem of a secret. We endulged in the beauty and took over 200 pictures to tell you so!

Seeing as i could never blog about 200 pictures, we posted the album at our mobileme website for your viewing pleasure.


http://gallery.me.com/jvoller

Difficulties

I keep trying to upload videos to no avail!! Curses!

TO COME! Celia's first steps, Celia's dance party USA, and Celia's down the stairs adventures.

Until then, enjoy these photos of our end of summer fun!

1st - we bought a cow -- Yep. 1/20th of a cow. Lubbers Farms takes care of our cow and we show up once a week for our gallon of raw milk! Yes, we've gone raw! Here is our cow Dolly and Celia watching the cows get milked with Karen Lubbers.





All the while our garden exploded! And my mom and I donned Nellie's aprons for the job!







We had more fun at the beach!



My mom turned 65 and we took her to an outddor concert Cheers Nana!




We also had more pics of Celia graciously taken by our friend who is a brand new photographer out of school who needed to build his portfolio: Here are 2 of Josh's photos. The rest are at http://gallery.me.com/jvoller.




We also got to meet Hyrum Tangren for the 2nd time as they came into town for Sunny's grandpa's funeral. A sad time to meet, but Celia LOOOOOVVVVED Hyrum!



More chatting later!

One Year Pics

It was that time: One Year Pictures! The question that always gets tagged along with that is, where do I go? Will they turn out? Will the photographer be kind? Too goofy? Not goofy enough?

Well, we decided to forego all the other options and just go straight to Holly!

Who is Holly? Well, Holly is my cousin. Holly takes amazing pictures. And Holly is so creative and fun. Here's a picture I took of Holly in action!



It was VERY hard for me to pick which pictures to post here as they are all my favorite in many ways! So here are a few to enjoy! The rest are posted at our MobileMe site. This is the easiest way for me to post new videos and photos so check it often! This site is connected with my Mac and just uploads as I do. It's so awesome to have a Mac!


http://gallery.me.com/jvoller.


Look at these pictures by Holly! All of these pictures were taken in downtown Rockford where we live. I wanted Celia to see where she grew up and where Mommy and Daddy hung out before Celia came to be.

A Tribute to Celia

We really can't believe the speeding locomotive that was Celia's first year of life. And just like the Little Engine that Could ("I think I can, I think I can, I think I can"...) our choo choo train made it... made it! through Year One.

You remember year one parents... confused sleep deprived soggy headed patience lacker trial and error expert sitting, rolling, crawling standing diaper blow out nipple sore let's all have a good cry year?

Well, here she is: ONE, eating her cake Mama made:



Despite all of the days and nights that we thought we might hop a plane to some remote place and never come back, it was truly a beautiful year as well: full of laughs and smiles and accomplishments, and blissful loving heart bursting moments, and of course, opportunities to discover the true depths within ourselves. Like life, I suppose.

So to commemorate Celia's first year, here are my TOP 7 things I love about Celia. 7 for the 7th month in which she was born, 7 for the 2007 year she was born, 7 for if you add up her birth month, date, and year, and break it down to a single number, you get 7. So yes, mixed in with photos of her birthday party, here are Celia's TOP 7!

1. I love that Celia is so much like her daddy. It's said Steve could sit in a corner and look at books for hours as a wee one. Well, she does that. She can sit on her blanket while I work in the garden for literally 45 minutes or more, just picking grass, playing with finger puppets or reading to herself. I look around the corner when it's too quite, and there she is flipping through Dr. Suess. Oh, yes, she has a temper, she scowls a lot and she is severely independent (all from me), but her true nature underneath mom's bad traits is gentle and intelligent - Like Steve. She's so lucky she has so much Steve in there (here she is with books from Andy and Amy. She LOVES these things)



and yes, with some me in there too: (playing in the kiddie pool at her party)



2. I love that Celia loves so much. She is always telling us she loves us in sign language, giving hugs or kisses or just crawling over to sit in our laps. She is really so sweet. Here she is helping Nana Char make her birthday watermelon punch.



3. I love that Celia loves to dance. She can't walk yet, but when I hold her and swirl around the room she just closes her eyes and smiles so wide that all her teeth sparkle in the twirling lights. She can boogie to Red Hot Chili Peppers or do a waltz to Mozart's Adagios... she just loves to dance! Here she is dancing to this Obama song I sing:



This is just a picture I love:



4. I love that Celia can see the little details of life. Every morning on our walk she has to pick 3-4 flowers to hold onto the whole time. And when we return she points and grunts at the swing that hangs from our 100 year old Oak Tree and we swing for 5 minutes in the warm summer breezes that feel so good in the shade of a Michigan 85 degree day.



5. I love that Celia will try anything. She'll try any food, any adventure, any new toy. She checks it out and then lets us know whether or not she will continue eating, going or playing with the newness. Most of the time, she just takes what is given and is happy for it. Here she is playing with her new toy from Grandma Carol.



6. I love that Celia gets so happy when daddy comes home. It is a true huge gigantoid blessing that as soon as Steve walks in, she is smiling, her legs are shaking in excitement and she reaches out for him. That gives me, the full time at home mom a very needed break every night. She'll pull out books for him, crawl like a speeding bullet to him and his guitar, or just lay on the floor with him laughing and crawling over him over and over and over. Here they are reading together.



Steve also came home on her birthday with her first bouquet of roses. Awww.. :)



7. Lastly, I love that Celia has shown me who I really am. She is a literal mirror to me and this has been the greatest blessing, for she is and will continue to be my Zen master. Her faces, her reactions, her decisions all have a little bit of me in there, and at times I have been exceedingly proud (ie: she doesn't know yelling, she smiles and says Hi to all, she hugs and kisses her "Baby" over and over) to extremely discouraged and embarrassed (ie: she scowls too much, she grabs something and hits you if you try to help her,). Having a child has taught me more about myself that I think I could have ever know without her. I have seen areas, through watching her, that I wanted to better MYSELF on. It's amazing. She really is amazing.

Why Don't He Write?

Here we started a lovely montage of a little lady's life. Here we started discussions of local food and a goal of eating within 250 miles of our home for a year. Here we expressed the private on-goings in the Voller life, the 401K, the possibility of losing our home, the stresses taking over our once peaceful lives... and then zap! Where'd they go? We left you hanging! We left you wondering! We left you.

Perhaps this may explain it all:

Yes, our computer was ZAPPED! But that's not really the culprit. The taker of time is... the garden and the farmer's market. Yes, we are still doing our best to feed ourselves completely locally. We are proud to say that as of January we have not purchased meat from more than 50 miles from our house. We know the farmer, we know the cows, and we know it's yummy!

We are proud to say that 75% of our vegetables and fruits have been 100% locally farmed within 30 miles of our home. The other 25% goes to the bananas, and avocados, and sweet potatoes and other organics for Celia that she needs.

And yes, as part of this goal, this means saving up all this spectacular food for the winter. It is our goal to feed ourselves from our storage for half of the winter... hmmmm... that takes some time... ALOT of time! Good times, though. Definitely good times!

Some grizzly murder scene? Oh no. It's cherry time, folks. Which means, stained fingers, juicy countertops, and yes, bowls full of what looks to be bloody eyeballs --



That's right. Don't mess with the cherry pitter in action.

And as a nod to Sunny and Holly whom I used to play Charlie's Angels with: Here it is: Charlie's Angels Go Garden.



And then this happened. This was the 3rd bucket of beans I had picked! OH NO!



All of a sudden the round zucchini seeds I purchased turned in to those huge suckers sitting like bowling balls waiting for some action on the counter top! I had 4 of these to shred. Not to mention, the cucumbers started to flow so fast you'd think we'd have to have cucumber cereal, cucumber sandwiches and cucumber soup three meals a day for a week.



And then our coop order came -- peaches, blueberries, and greens, oh my!



Luckily our daughter thinks playing in the kitchen is just the most fun thing she could do with her day. And speaking of our daughter yes!

GUESS WHO TURNED ONE!!

July 18th, Celia Scarlet Voller officially ended her first year of life and has bounded with unmitigated joy into a second year of exploration, wonder, and fantasy. This will have to be our next post, as we must move on to the garden.