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.

ZAP!

Please forgive us.

Our computer was struck by lightening.

We have just received our first Mac and our learning feverishly so that we can return to blog land.

After all, it's summer, Celia turned one, and so much more is going on.

soon...

4th Generation

We decided we wanted to take a trip together every year. A 3 Generations Trip we'd call it! My mom, me, and Celia.

Well, this year, my mom invited Celia and I to accompany her on a trip to Nauvoo, IL. She had promised my grandpa, Cecil, that she would take him there one last time. Him being 92 this year, well... you just never know. I've always dreamed of having my children in the presence of a 4th generation. Now, Cecil is no Nellie, but I said yes anyway.

I could write a short story about this trip, but I have not the time for such a wacky writing right now, I'll just leave it at that.

Off we went! Celia did pretty good on the drive seeing as we made a play space for her when the carseat got to be a bore. I know, naughty me! But this is the way I traveled when I was little and I made it just fine, so when traffic was clear and the road was straight, Celia got to play! Seeing as we ended up in the car for 11 hours that first day (LOOOng story!) this was a blessing!!



We rented a cottage so that a rickity 92 year old, a busy 65 year old, an exhausted 31 year old and a whimsical 10 month old could have some semblence of normalacy. HA! So much for that! You don't put 4 generations in a house for 4 days together and not have adventure!



All in all we had a fun trip! Although I am not a member of the church that my family is, the town of Nauvoo is of great interest to someone like me. Here's Celia in front of one of the Mormon temples.



It's a whole town that is based on how it was back in the late 1800's as a Mormon village. They have demonstrations of baking bread,



making bricks, using a loom, making barrels, making quilts, and even a drug stored that had a herb garden for all their healing



and on and on and on! A future homesteader's wet dream! Not to mention one room cabins. Can you see the Vollers now?!



Seeing as Celia is not letting me type, I'll leave it there. Here are some vidoes I took in the cottage:

Telling some stories:


And here Celia is: She found the joy of her own baby:

Old Videos

Here are some videos from May we meant to post. To us, they're so funny we decided to post them anyway.

May we present: Celia Dancing to Barenaked Ladies

The Vollers Turn 4

HAPPY 4TH ANNIVERSARY, VOLLERS!

Yes, on the 22nd of May, we are happy to say, we have been in wedded bliss for 4 whole years! (did that sound Dr. Suess-ish?) HA! It's funny to think of what a really short time that is in the grand journey that is marriage, but we figure it's best to count every one with festive, banging, steel drums.

2003


In the spirit of my cousins, Sunny, Holly and Nikki, I am going to do a "What I Love" entry about the Voller Marriage. It seems appropriate to pick the.... drum roll, please...

TOP 4 REASONS THE VOLLER MARRIAGE IS THE BOMB.

2004


1. Communication. Yes, I know, all us couples "communicate." Where's my keys? Will you buy me this cereal next grocery stop? What did I do wrong this time? :) But I'm grateful for the fact that Steve and I have great TALKS! Our first date at Bistro Bella Vita, we touched on religion, God, and politics all in an hour dinner conversation and it hasn't stopped yet. Steve still looks at me sometimes and says, "I've been thinking about Goethe-ian Science." Or I grab him and say, "I was thinking about Obama vs. McCain or Hillary vs. McCain." This is my favorite thing about us.

2005


2. Laughter. Steve and I bicker just like everyone else. Lately, it seems like it's more often than before as stessful situaitons take their toll. But in the end I don't laugh as hard with anyone as I do with Steve. Sometimes his humor makes me shake my head in disapproval (him passing gas extra loud because Celia likes to copy the sound he makes -- ummm.. yeah.) But in the end, I think he's funny.

2006


3. Belief. I don't think I could have managed marriage with anyone that wasn't as passionate about their beliefs as I am. (it helps that they are the SAME beliefs :) ) We love learning about food and the farm and the science of our bodies. We are very into the environment and the effects of our choices on Celia's children. We are very passionate about attachment parenting. We are great believers of the outdoors and it's ability to heal, give peace, and excite any day. I love this about Steve.

2007


4. In Your Face Honesty. Sometimes, this doesn't go as planned. My temper sometimes gets a leg up from the brain part of me that WOULD have said, "Umm.. think a minute, this is silly." But all in all, our ability to tell each other ALL -- and I mean ALL -- has given us not only such an open relationship, but it is so freeing to know that we can totally be ourselves and tell each other anything, and the next morning, we're still married, and we still think the other is pretty cool. (sometimes it takes J about that, 24 hours, to cool off)

2008



This year we celebrated our anniversary going on the Leelanau Wine Trail here in Michigan. For the NON-Michiganders, hold up your left hand and the top of your pinky would be Leelanau. And it is GEORGEOUS people! Again, Michigan is a hidden gem. Here is a photo montage of our GREAT FUN!

And Celia did GREAT! 2 days with Grandma Char turned out to be just fine (although she took NO MILK but a few drinks the whole time -- she'd take water from the glass, but no milk -- smarty! Grandma Char stocked her up on lots of food and extra yogurt)And on Sunday we were both up at 6am and excited to get home to our girl we missed SO MUCH!

The View from our room at the Vineyard Inn!



Michigan is SOOO pretty! This is the view from Leelanau Cellars, our first stop.



And get this! The people on our wine tour -- from 14 Mile RD IN ROCKFORD! We just met these people, had no idea who our tour mates were when we booked this! Then, we get to the first winery and the wine pourer, Kathy, used to be a teacher at the VERY school that one of our tour mates is a custodian at here in Rockford! AND THEN, in walks someone I recognize! Low and behold it is a Dr. VanOtteren that I use to work with in Critical Care here in Grand Rapids!! Uncanny! Dr. Glenn even bought us an anniversary gift!


Here we are at Willow Vineyards! It's for SALE PEOPLE! Anyone have 2.2 Million the Vollers could borrow!?


This used to be a chicken coop! Shady Lane Cellars transformed it into a tasting station! Pretty posh place for a chicken.



And Look How Beauiful the vineyards are! You don't have to drink wine to just sit back and enjoy such lovliness!




All in all we visited 7 wineries! We could have visited 7 new ones the next day but had to get home! AHHH!! Next time! :)