Grandmama

Grandmama died last Saturday. With all of the events of Froglet's birth and our current living fiasco (more updates on that in a few days), we've barely had time to process her death.

My grandma was 93. She lived a full life and always talked about how lucky she was to have wonderful children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. We always told her it was her "fault" - she must have done something right to end up with a great family!

Grandma was the matriarch of the family and held us tightly together. I hope that we can remain close without her presence to tie us together.

Little Froglet will never get to meet her great grandma - but Grandmama got to meet her. The last time I visited in August, I held Grandmama's hand to my belly and watched her face light up as Froglet kicked her hard! So, we'll get to tell Froglet the story of how she kicked her great-grandma and how excited she was to hear about Froglet's impending arrival. Of course we'll have tons of other stories to tell about great-grandma - picking blueberries and huckleberries at her house, making hotcakes, and working in the garden, and how much fun stacking wood can be.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Dad.

We'll be thinking about you today.

Love always-

Yay!!!

Welcome to the world Howie!!!

Happy Birthday

As some of you may know, sometime in the last 2 weeks was Kimberly's birthday. It was a joyous time, as Kimberly's mom came out to visit, and we had a nice dinner of gnocchi.

The reason I'm posting this now is because I wanted to brag about the gift I got her. In my opinion, it's one of the better gifts I've ever gotten anyone (the best, if you're wondering, was a 'Can't Sleep, the Clowns Will Eat Me' onesie I bought for a friend's baby a while back).

It was the Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, a huge book that reproduces the diaries of Albertus Seba, an 18th century naturalist that made all these hand drawings of new and different animals being discovered around the world. The drawings are pretty awesome, super detailed and specific, almost like they are photographs. And the book is like 3 feet x 1.5 feet, and weighs like 20 pounds, so it's hefty.

Unfortunately, the online pic above doesn't really do the book justice, so you'll just have to check it out when you come to visit.

Welcome!

Congrats to Em and family over at Totblock who welcomed their newest addition this week. You can see pictures and share the love at http://totblock.blogspot.com/2008/02/newest-addition.html

We're so happy for you guys.

StoryCorps

Perhaps you remember that 2 years ago, PEter and I decided to host a big party, invite the people we love, and get married. Some days I can't believe it was only a few years ago.

One thing we did before we got married was participate in StoryCorps.

If you listen to NPR, you've probably heard about StoryCorp, a national project to record living history. People sign up to interview and the StoryCorp folks provide the technological assistance. You leave with a copy of your recording, the other copy added to the Library of Congress (which if you ever go to DC, you must visit!).

You can interview your mom, dad, next door neighbor, childhood friend, person you met yesterday... anyone you can think of for any reason you imagine.

I decided that one thing PEter and I could do in the crazy hustle and bustle of all the planning was to take a hour for ourselves and talk about where we were now and what the future might hold. It was a precious hour indeed. We have a wonderful recording of our first meeting, our thoughts about getting married, and our plans for the future.

If StoryCorps comes near you, I can't recommend highly enough participating.

Happy anniversary PEter.