7 Months

7 months? You've got to be kidding me.

No excuses now, Piper is officially big enough for the jogging stroller! Weighing in at 16.5 lbs and 26 inches long - lil' P is a beautiful, brown-eyed, string-bean baldy! And We love her to PIECES!!!!

Shortly after we arrived in CA, Piper began scooting across the floor. On Father's day, I gave Brian a beautiful picture of Piper on canvas that was taken by Joy, the XO's wife, now CO. Shortly after Brian opened his gift, Piper decided that she wanted the wrapping paper so she nudged and nudged across the floor until she had arrived. We looked on in awe - and so it began. Happy First Father's Day!
(Here are the pics Joy took; the first one is the one I set to canvas.)



Having my daughter crawl is so amazing; she's discovering things at her own pace now which means that moving into our new home has met some challenges...

"Piper, No. Wait what is that..."
"Where did you find that?"
"Should she play with that?"
A lot of "Piper" and "that" if you catch my gist.

Sadly, with the prolonged nature of our move, mobility has been a smidge difficult. I can't wait until we're completely settled in and then Piper can get as wild as she wants!

Not only has crawling been in the picture, but she is starting in on solid food! She is loving her Gerber squash, peas, bananas and brown rice cereal. As much as I've liked Gerber, I really wanted to do homemade food for her but I knew that I should probably unpack the dishes first....so without further ado, once I felt established in my kitchen, I made baby food! (courtesy of the "baby bullet" that Brian's mom got us!) I made applesauce, sweet potatoes and brown rice cereal. The moment of feeding arrived and Piper HATED IT! Awesome. She even made the gagging face. (the first I've seen it while feeding her) I thought I was a good cook...Welcome to motherhood. :) I talked with some of my motherly consults and next time I may add a pinch of brown sugar to my batches of baby food.

As for Piper and the pups, she continues to harass the furry little guys which continues to be quite entertaining. She sings to Tommy and tries to grab Juneau...it's like she already has siblings except they have tails! They both pant though so that's cute.

And here are some pics we took a couple weeks ago in Sequoia National Park!







That's the update for the 7 month mark. Here's a little video around the 6 month mark..."2 minutes in the life of Piper". Enjoy!

Berry Good for You

Berry season is done (at least where I live in the valley) and all I can say is that I thoroughly enjoyed it with jams, berry syrup for pancakes, tartes, and shortcakes. Now we're on to peaches, pluots (plum+abricots?),melons, and grapes!

And despite having exchanged one hot place for another in our move out west, at least this region is a beacon of hope for any foodie. We recently joined the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program called Abundant Harvest and it has been wonderful to not have to stand in the grocery store wondering what pesticides are on my food; plus, it has become a lot easier to eat healthy.
*minus the fact that these past 2 weeks we've gotten dozens of jalapenos and the only thing I know to with them is deep fry or wrap 'em in bacon! ha ...probably need to find some other recipes for those guys...along with a new unknown veg called Sorrel - What in the heck is that!?

anywho - Food in this country - yikes. I'll never forget Michael Pollan, food journalist, saying something to the effect of, "how far have we really come that we need people to tell us how to satisfy our most basic of instincts!? eating." Julia Child even mentioned how difficult it was to find quality food when she was comparing ingredients in the U.S.A. with the food overseas for her "cook-bookery" creation. So basically, the majority of Americans don't know what to eat and don't know how to find it. awesome

My personal conclusion, and I think you may agree, food is important. Good food is best. And even though it may be a little more expensive in the long haul, what is the cost?

I'm quite the hypocrite sitting in sunny CA next to Sunmaid Raisins, wine country, orchards and berry farms. A lot of the U.S. doesn't have all these amenities (like Kingsville TX..) but the best we can do is support local and organic - demand will hopefully win out making the supply a better product! My last thought is: Life's too short to eat bad food!

My Californian/Frenchie Inspiration

I just finished a book! Quite an accomplishment since I think this is the first book I've finished since my daughter was born...
Amidst the diapers, move and the craziness of this past year, Julia was the perfect vehicle in order feel whisked away to a land of fine wine, food, and sights, (also known as France).

For some reason, I always felt that I should read a biography or autobiography or at least want to. Everyone around me was into Gandhi, Jackie O or George Bush. However, I couldn't find anybody I deemed interesting enough or funny enough to sit down and actually learn about - Enter Julia Child.

Prior to the Julia movie, I only knew of her through cooking shows on PBS. She would stand over her food with a hunched posture and a honking voice. I would have never known that she stood over 6' tall, played basketball in college, was fluent in French, hailed from California, traveled around the world as a government employee, deeply in love with her husband, Paul, and ultimately had fallen in love with France and its food. She was a self-made woman, which for her time, was quite a feat.

An aspect that I most admired about her was her love of life. Hosting wild dinner parties, making the best of every situation (especially since the government would plop her and her husband anywhere), and doing everything to the endth degree made her life a real story.

One of my favorite parts in this book included a time she prepared a beautiful dish for a friend and it tasted awful. She talks about choking down the meal but offering no excuses. She says, "Don't apologize for a bad meal...just move on!"



She was a confident yet humble woman who also emanated goofiness offering several onomatopoeia's in her work. And like all good stories must come to an end, her story is a beautiful dose of life's realities - its successes, difficulties, brevity, and ultimately, trying to embrace the Joie de Vivre! A truly beautiful work and a great read. I'd loan it to you but I think I'll hold on to it so I can read it again!

By the way, this was my first attempt at Julia recipe - Une Tarte aux Cerises! mmm YUM! The first of many....


And here are some pictures in France of the food that probably inspired Julia :)

au marché!

une quiche par madame magnifique

un chocolat chaud

les Bûches de Noël

The Move of the Century

At this point, I fear that we'll receive the remainder of our goods when we need to move again....but let me bring you up to speed.

Military moves are difficult - even if you knowingly signed up for this sorta gig - it just is. I personally like to pretend that boxes, stubbed toes, chapped fingers, gross sweatiness while lifting heavy objects, hard "see you later's" never actually occur - instead, we magically pop out at our next destination like Glenda the Good Witch in Wizard of Oz. (fitting reference for a Kansas Girl)


When Brian first mentioned that he wanted to do the majority of the move on our own he met a lot of resistance...from me.

"WHY can't we just do a Military move! They'll take care of it! bah boo roar argh!" (I didn't really say that last part, but I thought of things along those lines).

Despite my two cents, we packed boxes, padded up furniture, and loaded up a POD with the majority of our things, leaving the rest of our bulky things for the Covan movers to take. Due to the timing of Brian's start dates, we had to hit the road quickly in order to find a place to live. This left our dearly dependable friends and landlord to supervise the movers when they finally arrived at our apartment.

All was fine and dandy.

Then the POD was late in arriving in CA. A week late. Not too bad. We got it unloaded with the help of our friends and then waited patiently for our bed, couch, chairs and other important goods to arrive via military contracted move. (Covan)

And we waited.

Phone ring: (in southern drawl)
"Hey, is this Marie? I have your shipment and will be there tomorrow...but don't shoot the messenger, I don't think I have everything..."

"So shipment arrival!? sorta?"

Next day:
"Wait...this is broken! And you're right, this isn't everything...so where's our bed and couch...and other stuff?"

And we're still waiting. (a month and a half after they picked it up)

What they haven't broken, they've lost. This is nothing like our first military contracted move from OK to TX.

So the moral of the story is, moving sucks and if you want something done right, do it yourself. The End.
Well maybe not "the end"...we hope to have some resolve sooner or later. But at least, you're up to speed for now!
Oh, and lastly, I'm reminded that things aren't as important as we think they are...people are though :) There.

Our Trek out West

With the Winging in our rear view mirror, we set out west to our new base. There are two ways to look at a military move: an adventure or a big ol' pain - we like to look at it in both ways! (let's be realistic here) So, the two dogs, 5 month old husband (oops, I think I meant, "5 month old AND husband....ha)and I loaded up and left southern TX. Due to our late start, we couldn't get out of that gosh-darn-hubongous state in a day so we took it in two.

The second and third nights we got to spend with our Aunt and Uncles in Tucson and Phoenix, AZ. Not only was it amazing to spend time with extended family, but Arizona really wow-ed me. It was the first chance I had had to spend any time in that state and the dry heat, dust devils, cacti and rocky plateaus were actually quite breath-taking. I was always under the impression that Arizona was just a hot and ugly desert full of illegals - Not the case! (well, not completely...) :)


The fourth night we spent some more time with Brian's side of the family in the Grand Canyon National Park. How to describe the Canyon....let me see...well, it's impossible to capture it through any other medium except your eyes. There is no wonder why it's a wonder....if that makes any sense.






After hiking around the Grand Canyon, we continued our quest north to visit some other important sights - namely those in Page, AZ. It is in this town, (previous to our trip, I had never heard of), that there's a dam, the beautiful deep blue lake Powell, Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend. My guess is that everyone has a picture of one of these places as a default screensaver on your computer or smart phone, but you'd never guess where it came from. It would probably be Page.

Luckily, we stayed a couple nights in this destination so we could develop a little routine for the our little backseat road warrior. Thank goodness we did because our first day was met with howling winds that sandblasted everything and everyone in sight. Day 2 in Page was worlds better. We saw all the aforementioned landmarks, loaded up and then we were on our way back west again! (This was after Juneau had thoroughly stunk up our mode of transportation. He must have had some bum issues after swimming in the lake, earning him the nickname "squirt" for the remaining trip... so he caught a ride in the back cab...if we wouldn't have had the pick-up, we would have probably strapped him to the hood at this point. HAH oh Junie.)





While going into Utah, we did a little off-roading which was superb for the little one. All the bumps and jostling kept her napping for a long while.

In Utah, we saw Bryce Canyon National Park, took a high road that brought us through snowbanks and ice covered lakes (at the end of May!), ate at a Café which happened to be called Sullivan's, got a good nights rest and then huffed it all the way to our final destination in CA!






In the end, I'm so glad that Brian was hell-bent on making this trip west a real "Trip". I was very skeptical about making a vacation in the midst of a move, but sometimes ya just gotta go with it! And I'm so glad we did because the southwest region of the U.S.A. is breathtaking. I look forward to visiting it again when Piper is old enough to really enjoy it too!