A Slice of Home (the East Coast version)

Highlights from our trip to Virginia

Rachel walks with Aunt Karen and Grandma to deliver cheese balls to neighbours

Rachel reads with Great-GrandDaddy Lord

Rachel sits with Buddy (Great-GrandDaddy Oliver)

Grandma, Great Grandmother Lord, Rachel, and her Mama

FAMILY
We were fortunate enough to see almost all of Jason's family.  We saw his mom and sister, 4 grandparents,  6 aunts/uncles, 1 great aunt and 1 great uncle, and 10 cousins.  We only missed 1 cousin in all of Jason's extended family.  We also met up with family friends for dinner, saw friends at church on Christmas Eve, and saw over 50 guests at the Oliver Open House on New Years Day.  Rachel even made friends with many residents at the Landing and the Chesapeake (her great-grandparents' residences).  Although Rachel was pretty fussy by the end of the trip, we are thrilled that almost everyone at least got to meet her.

Oliver Great Grandparents

Lord Great Grandparents

Uncle Jim reads to Rachel

FOOD

Dining at IHOP and playing with a straw

Before we left, I was so looking forward to holiday food.  Now that we are home, I have no interest in food at all.  It seems every time we go to Virginia we spend a LOT of time eating and snacking.  We visit with people and eat.  We drive somewhere else, visit and eat.  Food arrives at Grandma's house from friends, neighbours, and Costco and we continue to fail to empty her freezers full of treats.  My favorites are the sweet potato casseroles, eating at Cracker Barrel, eating cooked apples as a side dish (not a dessert), meatballs and sausage patties, and caramel sauce on apple slices.  Jason, Rachel and I all have large appetites.  I also have no self control - if you put something yummy in front of me - I will eat it.  All of it.

Driving the Audi with Grandma

HEALTH
Jason is recovering well from his appendectomy.  Rachel loves to lift up his shirt and look at his incision, and she has become very interested in everyone's belly buttons.  All of our relatives looked to be in good health.  Meggan caught a bad cold and passed it on to Rachel, who had a rough time on the last 2 days of our trip with her first ever fever.

Playing with new camera toy given by Mike and Cindy Montana

EXERCISE
What?!  What was that word?  We were too busy eating and visiting to do much exercise.  Plus, I have no real exercise goals right now which is bad.  Having access to a babysitter named Grandma, we did enjoy running the trails down by the river near Susan's house.  Karen and I ran a 10km run on Dec 31st which was very entertaining.  Neither of us felt well prepared with little training and head colds lingering, and were not sure if we would succeed in running the whole way.  We passed the first 4 miles chatting and catching up before deciding that our time was going to be a bit too slow for our liking, and ran very hard for the last 2.2miles trying to beat 60 minutes.  I'm not proud of the 61 min finishing time, but did have a fun day and it felt good to push hard for the last bit.  Susan and Jason pushed Rachel through a 5km walk in this fun event with 1400 people running or walking for local charities.

Rachel eats a snack while visiting

Rachel looks at photo album while visiting

RACHEL

Rachel practices stair climbing at Aunt Karen's house

Favorite activities - crawling up and down stairs, new cool toys, being chased.
New words - "MA!" for her cousin Matthew, and "Amma" for Grandma, 'back pack' - see below
Funniest things - cheering with us during dice rolling games
Hard times - many poor sleeps, a terrible cold/fever to end the trip, difficulty meeting so many new people, and getting really cold while outside at Wintergreen, not being able to run around while on the plane or bus (Daddy failed to grab any Rachel books for the plane ride.)  All these things combined with a weaning attempt made Rachel very clingy to her mamma.

Wearing her mom's coat at Wintergreen

WEANING
I am terrible at weaning.  Something always seems to come up!  Perhaps it's my lack of self control because I cannot seem to say no to her requests.  Either Rachel gets sick, takes a plane ride, cries nonstop at night, is at elevation, sleeps somewhere new and scary, or we have no substitute milk while on the go...  I had hoped to start January off with 2-3 nursing times a day, but instead it feels like we've gone backwards and Rachel is again asking for milk every few hours.  Sigh.

Super cute penguin hat and mittens from Grandma

GIFTS

We received so many things while we were away!  Christmas day itself we opened gifts in our pajamas from about 8am-4pm with few breaks.  Again, I looked so forward to this before we left and did enjoy it... but also struggle a bit with the concept of this tradition.  We try hard to find 1-2 things for each person we buy gifts for, both to save money and to avoid over consumption in the world.  But I do LOVE gift giving and finding the right gift and have to constantly pull back the reins not to do more.  I also love wrapping paper and ribbons and bows but hate ripping it all up and putting it in the trash and not re-using it.  Recently at the mall I was reminded of just how much STUFF is produced, packaged, and sold in the world.  We continue to accumulate so much stuff ourselves.  I struggle with the internal dilemma of enjoying giving and receiving lovely things, but not wanting to join in to this more-more-more society.

This is particularly evident for Rachel as she has so many things.  We try to get lots of second hand clothes and toys and gear and avoid buying new things.  We do love the many clothes and toys she has been given.  I'm not going to lie - I really enjoy dressing her and having fun clothes for her, whether new or used.  It's so fun to shop for her.  We're huge gear geeks in our family and baby gear is no exception.  I love the toys that she was given for Christmas and am stoked to play bowling games, tower building, doll grooming, shoveling, reading and ball games with her.  But I we don't NEED these things.  So many people out there need so much.  And the second hand store has lots of good things.  Why don't we use these stores more for gifts?  We were thrilled by the hand-me-downs we were given by cousins this year.

So I struggle at this time to be grateful for what we have, thankful for the fun things we were given, and yet conscientious of the environment and the consumer-driven economy.  I want to make this work better next year, but I'm not sure quite how.

Opening up little homeslice backpack from Aunt Karen

HOMESLICE
Contradicting myself perhaps, I will pay special thanks to one particular gift: Homeslice.  Rachel's aunt Karen gave her a purple and teal North Face backpack for Christmas that Rachel loves.  It's tiny - just her size, and fits her blanket and doll inside and her new Life Is Good water bottle on the outside.  The backpack comes with a name: Homeslice.  It is ridiculously cute.  Rachel enjoys putting it on and off and putting things in and out of it.  She had it with her as her own 'carry-on' for the plane ride home, and we spent hours through the airports, trains, buses, and walking hearing 'backpack' as Rachel played with it.  Fun times.