Twas the Night(s) Before, and Around, Christmas

Christmas Eve

As I write this, it's nearly silent in our nut house. All 5 of the kids are sleeping, 4 of them piled into the same bed. Partner #2 is on the phone visiting with her parents, and Partner #1 is doing last minute gift wrapping.  I am just killing time now waiting to play Santa.

The last few days have just been a whirlwind of decorating and baking and activities and Jesus hunting and basically repeatedly discussing 'the big day' and what it will be like over and over and over again. I'm not saying that cynically, I was the person discussing it over and over and over again; you see, Christmas for me for the last few years have been a little bit anti-climactic, with a dash of depressing, with a particular emphasis on last year.

My daughter's dad and I have a "one year on, one year off" kind of arrangement, which means that every second Christmas is child free. And, as it usually happens when kids grow into adults, my brothers developed lives of their own, and it seemed like fewer of us could even make it to our childhood home for the holidays.

This time last year I was getting ready to move! The tree and presents were tucked in around boxes and furniture and it was a childless year for me. So not only was I not seeing any of my brothers, I wasn't sharing the day with my daughter, and all I wanted for Christmas was to be up here with my new family, enjoying a REAL Christmas! It was the most pathetic Christmas I have ever experienced. Lucky for me, my lovely friend, Sofia, who is from Ecuador and unable to go home for the holiday, saved Christmas eve for me by invited me over for a celebration with a bunch of her friends who were likewise, unable to go home for Christmas. It was really, really sweet.

But THIS YEAR!! It's redemption year! And boy what a season it has been! The excitement has honestly been too much for me to handle at times, and I have had to step out of the room to take a breather... Not even kidding. Thank goodness for my partners oldest daughter, Tawny! Because I was MIA catering to my anxiety often enough, without her assisting Partner #2, I think things may have gone a lot differently.

Now it is all coming to a close! A culmination. Tomorrow is the crescendo, what all this craziness has been leading up to, and I can. not. wait! It has been so long since I have had a Christmas with kids, and 5 kids no less! And to top it all off, I just cannot wait to celebrate with my new family. I am so in love with my family and my life, I just want to share this excitement and be part of it with them! Not only for me but for Isabella as well. I am excited for her to be able to share the excitement of a large family Christmas with all of her new siblings and parents.


Christmas Day

I am so tired.

I will admit, we went a little over board with the presents. I was just so swept up in the excitement! And I wasn't the only one! I had help from the partners and even Tawny came home with 7 bleeding banana boxes full of presents! Which is all fine and great, until its 10 o'clock at night and you have to pack all of those presents from their respective hiding places, top them off with bows, and then wait for Partner #1 to finish his last minute wrapping, before being able to go to bed knowing that the kids are going to hold you to that 5:30 am "at the Latest!" wake up time you gave them....

The pile under and around the tree was absurd! The formerly poor child in me was cringing at all the potential groceries those could have been. But to heck with that nonsense! They are bundles of palpable love and happiness painstakingly wrapped in colorful paper and bows! It took us 3 hours to get through it all. And was it ever worth it. The kids were so happy! Geeze, we all scored! I am materialistic enough that I am mutually as happy for the children, as I am for myself lol.

We had prepared a breakfast the night before that we could just pop in the oven and then we spent the rest of the day snacking on the left overs from our Christmas eve celebration, so there was no cooking to be done, and hardly any dishes. I highly recommend this approach for all you with kids! It's a life saver. And then in the afternoon, everyone took naps!! It was so needed by that time. I think both baby and Isabella slept for about 3 hours.

The hooks weren't strong enough to support all 8 of the stockings stuffed, so we ended up arranging them around the hearth for Christmas morning. 

Also, after having ripped out the carpet about a week ago,  Partner #1 finally managed to get some time to install the flooring Christmas Eve. Literally, he finished, we set the table....

Look at our snowflakes! 

Posing in their Christmas Eve pajama presents!

Boxing Day

Today Tawny had to leave, which was bitter sweet. Everyone was so excited to see her, no one wanted her to go. We all had a good visit though. Now she needs to go prepare for her long anticipated trip to Australia for a freaking year. We're actually fantasizing about spending next Christmas in the Cook Islands and meeting her there.... /sigh. 

Boxing day is the day Partner #1's parents come! Which is basically Christmas numero duo, since they spoil us rotten! You'll never believe what I got either!? My first piece of camo! Turns out my mother-in-law reads my blog and so read Its a Redneck Halloween and my comments on my community's egregious use of camouflage as normal everyday attire. Naturally, that translated into "Natalie needs camo!". And I gotta say, I am absolutely in love with my new rabbit fur lined camo hat. It is SO warm. Not to mention, irresistible....

Now I can blend with the locals and no one will suspect I am a complete outsider....

The in-laws come out fairly regularly, but its nice to see them in this capacity, with the kids all hopped up on Christmas spirit! The excitement is infectious.

My mission has been to clean out the house of all junk food, so we can start fresh in the new year, after all our partying is done, and boy does it show! In my defense, that dress is drapey, that's not ALL belly!

Wrap Up (Haha! Punny...)

So all-in-all I think I could safely say that it was a pretty damn magical Christmas. Crazy, and hectic, and at times, stressful, but nonetheless magical. It was exactly what I wanted Christmas to be.  

I am coming to realize, that family isn't necessarily the unit you were born into. It's the group of people you choose to surround yourself with, who you choose to open yourself up to. Our family may be a far cry from most people's ideal, but it's the one I have chosen, and it is exactly perfect for me. 

"Hey, I'm Poly!"

You know, I didn't want this blog to be political. I simply wanted a satirical rendition of my adventurous life that I could share with my family and friends. The only mention of my relationship status was to be my references to Partner #1 and Partner #2; casual and nonchalant, like it should be. I should not have to make some big "Hey I'm poly!" announcement. I should not have to explain myself. Nor do I suppose I have to in any sense of the word... However, as circumstances would have it, I am in a position of constantly being reminded of the people who disagree and outright hate my choices. In trying to maintain the few familial relationships I have left, I expose myself to painful reminders of the people I am trying to forget in an effort to preserve my emotional sanity.

This leaves me in the awkward position of trying to understand them, their reasoning, their ignorance, if only so I don't have to face the fact that perhaps this whole time they have thought little to nothing of me? I shouldn't hate someone just because they are misguided and stupid, right? But how do you rationalize easily rectified ignorance? How do you make allowances for hate?

In my attempt to explain away these peoples painful words and actions I have come up with this understanding,

Humans have a need to categorize, it's how we interact and function in life. For example, we introduce some one as "This is my wife, [Name]" or "This is my friend, [Name]". We need to qualify things, we need categories in order to understand and relate to the world around us. The problem lies in the fact that there is no frame work for polyamory, there are no categories because people don't know about polyamory! The only relations we have to categorize it are Polygamy, Subservience, Brainwashing, Cheater, etc. So you tell someone you're polyamorous and the only way they can understand is to file it under one of these headings. Which unfortunately is completely misguided. The general public is simply misinformed.

It says a lot about about society in general, that a person can understand hate, can understand child abuse, can understand spousal abuse, can understand damaging patriarchy; can understand infidelity and lying and cheating, but someone says that they love more then one person and that all parties involved are agreeable, they simply cannot compute. Period. That's not possible. We are exposed to hate and violence day in and day out through all forms of media, so we understand it. We don't necessarily agree with any of it, but we understand that its there, that its very real, and its part of our lives. The only exposure we have to love are limiting Hollywood rom coms and fantasy romance novels. Even coming into typical monogamous relationships, we have this unrealistic expectations that if you find "The One" everything is going to be sunshine and rainbows, and you will never fight, and never be unhappy for all the days of your life. And that's just not realistic. We haven't been exposed to a realistic portrayal of what real life relationships are like. On the same vein, we have not been exposed to the fact that there are alternatives to the standard "nerdy guy gets the cheerleader". How about "nerdy guy gets the cheerleader, who also happens to be with the quarterback, and they all live happily ever after"? Where is that movie?!

When we hear "polyamory", we hear all the terrible things that could be associated with it, because that's all we know. We do not hear all the wonderful things that are definitely are associated with it, because we have never been given the information to know. We have never been given the framework to understand.

If I look at it this way, I can forgive those people whom I trusted. At least, I can not hold their ignorance against them. As it stands, with the limited exposure they were given by society, they were set up to fail the sibling/father/grandparent/friend test. Where this explanation falls short is in the fact that there ARE resources, there ARE venues for these people to understand. I didn't expect anyone to necessarily "get" my decisions, they certainly didn't have to like them, but if they cared for me, they should have, in my mind, made some minuscule attempt to understand them. They should have trusted my judgement enough to have made an effort. A comparison that makes sense to me is that like extremely devout people who ignore evidence that contradicts their beliefs, these people in my life ignore any information or evidence that I can give them because it may contradict what they need to believe my relationship is.  I  would gladly answer questions, I would cheerfully point them in the right direction to find answers, I would have very happily provided them with the building blocks on which to expand their categories!! But that would have required a base desire to understand on their part, which I am coming to realize these people did not have. They did not want their narrow little worlds shaken by fact and knowledge, by love and understanding.

I am not going to go radical and overhaul Monogamy is for Manhattan to become a politically charged medium. In fact, I sincerely hope that this is the last time I bring up my poly status at all! But I want to start an understanding. I want for when someone mentions polyamory, that the other person can say "Oh yeah! I've heard of that!". I want to provide society with the absolute very basics of understanding simply by introducing the term "Polyamory" into peoples lives, so that it is not this completely foreign concept immediately categorized and understood with hate. I am in no way saying that this life is for everyone, in all honesty, it is extremely hard. I simply want to try to help make things ever so slightly easier for future poly folks who are brave enough to come out to the world.

I am lucky enough that I have this blog, that I have people who enjoy reading it! It boggles my mind sometimes, and I love it! So I feel like it is my responsibility now to try to spread this around a little. So please, to the dear person reading this post right now, please share this post with someone. Please share the concept of polyamory with someone, introduce someone to the idea that maybe there are other options, that there are people out there who actively practice alternatives. Heck, if you want, simply whisper the word "polyamory" to someone, so that maybe their curiosity will get the better of them. And pass it on. Let's give someone the first brick needed to build a foundation of understanding. I realize that sounds cheezy, but if it means I helped a fellow poly person out, I will risk my ego lol.

So please please please share it.

Bruno from Schweiz

Wow, the last few weeks (month?) have just been a whirl wind! Gosh, the last post I wrote was November 13. It seems like eons ago, so much has happened since then.

One of the things was that we had a giant snowstorm. Giant to my standards anyways. It snowed for about 36 hours straight and then on day 2 our power went out for about 14 hours. It was grand. To top it all off the nearest cell tower also went out, so the partners cell phones didn't work for a few days too. Hahaha suckers.

But in the midst of all this, we were supposed to be loading up 2 cattle liners full to take to an auction yard in southern Alberta where the prices are better. One truck didn't even make it anywhere near our area of the province and the second one made it to about a half hour before our house when he got stuck! It turned out that it was a good thing he got stuck when he did for 2 reasons: 1) He got stuck just before a massive hill that would have been completely unmanageable in his truck, and the consequences of going off the road there would have been disastrous, and; 2) There are 2 ways from our location in to Alberta and both were closed at the time. So instead of our animals being stuck on the truck, they were just stuck in our yard for a couple more days.

So partner #1 heads out there in one of our vehicles to see if he can help the trucker get unstuck and ends up calling a little while later to see if we can bring him some tools. Our second vehicle, although 4-wheel drive, still didn't have snow tires on (mostly due to my laziness and our lack of funds at the time). But the tires it did have on were still all seasons and pretty good, though not the best. So I have to venture out and brave the storm in my inadequate vehicle, never daring to go over 50 km/h. Here's a picture to show you how great it was.

To the snow's credit, it was quite beautiful. 

It took me about twice as long to make the trip. I slid several times and saw 2 other vehicles in the ditch. 

when I finally caught up to them on the hill, they had the chains on the tires of our minivan and they were still having trouble navigating the hill! 

In any case, they got the truck unstuck, but decided it would be suicide to drive the hill, so we took the trucker home with us! His name was Bruno and he was really quite nice. Because the storm just kept bloody going, the passes never opened, and our power was out for so long, Bruno ended up staying with us for over 2 days! The whole time we were giggling to ourselves and wondering what he must think of our family since we offered 0 explanation and just operated as we normally would. 

During his 1st night with us, while getting to know each other, we found out that Bruno is from Switzerland and used to live and work as a chef in Nakusp, BC, which is a very small and beautiful town in the Kootneys that just so happens to be home to much of my extended family. So I asked Bruno if he knew of my 2nd cousin (Aunt? Once/twice removed?) Barbie who owns a prolific camp ground in the area, and he responds with "Yeah I know of her. Apparently her and I are very distantly related somehow". So it turns out this utter stranger from Switzerland,  who just so happens to be stranded while hauling my partners cows is somehow, in some very convoluted way, a relative of mine! It was the weirdest coincidence I have ever experienced in my life! 

I ended up calling up my Grandfather to tell him about it. He got a good chuckle out of it and said he would call up his sister to ask her if she knew anything about Bruno from Schweiz. So far I haven't gotten a response from him. But we heard from Bruno a couple times. He let us know that he made it to Alberta in one piece and to thank us for our hospitality, which made me wonder yet again, what his impressions were of my family lol.

Otherwise the last month has been a whirlwind of cattle liners, cows, airplanes (I went to Vancouver Island), and Christmas shopping! By the way Christmas shopping when you have a family of 8 is insanity! Stockings alone are so involved! I mean.... I don't know anything about stockings.... That's Santa's job....

Also I took this picture of a horse....

 

Preg Checking

So you may be wondering what Preg Checking is. I'm not. I know what it is. Consider yourself lucky to be ignorant.

Just a heads up, this post is maybe not my most PG, so if you're easily grossed out by things, or if you're my Grandmother, you should maybe not read this one....

In the spring after all the calves have been born, the bulls are reintroduced to the cow herd and the whole throng is turned out to pasture (oooh listen to me! Practically a natural!) for the summer, to eat, breed, and fatten up. Tis the life. Come fall, when everyone is getting ready to sell, they gather their herds back up, to, I don't know, evaluate? (maybe not quite a natural...) their stock and see who or what they want to sell. This includes preg checking, which if you haven't guessed, is checking to see who is pregnant. Then you typically sell the "empty" or "dry" ones and decide what you want to do with the preggos.

It's the process of preg checking that I want to share with you. Ladies, if you have ever been pregnant you may sympathize with these poor beasts. The veterinarian showed up in the morning in full regalia, I'm talking head-to-toe plastic covering and a shoulder length plastic gloves. Now typically, as I understand it, a vet checks a cow by palpating (feeling) for a specific vein which when enlarged indicates she is pregnant. Or if she is far enough along the vet may also feel the fetus itself. But the vet we hired has a super cool, albeit cringe inducing, portable ultrasound machine. It's basically a 3 foot long (for lack of a better word) dildo attached to a battery containing backpack. It's super interesting! And he had this special goggles that float just above his eyes that allow him to see whats going on inside, while not losing visualization of the outside world.

So basically, we round up all the cows, sort them cows from calves into a corral, which funnels into a chute, which ends in a 'squeeze' and we just start pushing them through the line, one after the other. And assembly line style, the vet inserts the giant dildo and checks to see if there is a calfer. If there is none, he spray paints a big ole' O on her back for Open, and if it is inconclusive, he sprays a dot and we have to stop her in the 'squeeze' to enable the Doc to get in behind her for manual palpation.... I'm cringing just remembering.

To be completely honest, I am not even sure which ... ahum... "entrance" the doctor used for all this... It's a little hard to tell, and one thing I learned about cows is that it doesn't matter what you're doing with them, there is going to be a lot of poop involved....

And then the cows walk off as if nothing happened!! As if this kind of thing happens to them all the time!! To a complete newbie its a disorienting whirlwind of noise, and poop, and disconcerting indifference.

So that is preg checking. I am sorry if I have marred your sensibilities. To some it's just another day on the ranch. For me it begs the question "Is this really my life now?"

It's a Redneck Halloween!

So it was our first Halloween at the ranch this year! And we received an invitation to go to a Halloween party and potluck with "tailgate trick-or-treating" at the local community hall! The other option would be to drive an hour to town with a tired baby and 3 sugar high kids to go trick-or-treating, so we voted on community hall. Despite having been here for over 10 months, I still haven't really met anyone, aside from our closest neighbour, my esthetician, and my tattoo lady.... So I wanted to go also as a sort of coming out, meet the neighbours, let them know who I am thing. Plus, the invitation said "tailgates drop at 6 pm.", and it was so nauseatingly redneck, I couldn't pass it up!

The kids were suitably adorable. Oliver was a red dragon, Silas a military man (or a warrior, as he says), and Isabella was a pirate, complete with mustache tattoos.

Getting there was an adventure in itself. From about October to June our area of the Caribou is just riddled with deer. I mean all over the place. In the winter we make a game out of counting how many deer we see in a trip. The record so far is 182. It wasn't nearly as bad as that, but you really have to keep your eyes open. The babies, too, they don't really know what they are doing yet, so you come across one of them and they just run down the center line for a while, like the victim in a bad action movie.

Anyways, we got there without incident, but realized we had forgotten the babies costume. She was supposed to be an owl, and looked adorable, but she rejected it immediately in the dress rehearsal so I guess it really wasn't that great a loss. The parking lot had maybe 15 vehicles in it, tailgates facing out and decorated. We brought all 7 of our carved pumpkins and set them up as a sort of lit runway to the back of our van. Not too many tailgates, but plenty of kids, which was great. Everyone got to go trick-or-treating round 2 and really score.

The community hall, I learned, was just reopened this year after 24 years out of commission. So really, from the road, it just looks like an old run down barn, and inside it's... much the same, but it added to the ambiance! The organizers decorated the basement as a haunted house, which was really cool! And my kids totally surprised me by loving it! The best part was when someone moved a box in the haunted house and a real pack rat when scurrying away! So authentic!

I met several people, most of whom I forget their names. I remember saying at one point, that I was having trouble keeping people straight because of all the camouflage gear around... No joke, every 3rd person or so, was in a camouflage something. I really should have taken a picture. Silas, in his head-to-toe camo didn't even look like he was in a costume....

It was really really enjoyable. The kids had a tonne of fun.  I think my daughter may have a crush on one of our neighbour's boys. At one point I just glanced over to them sitting together and she gave me a "Don't look at me! This is not what you think it is!" kind of look. Pretty cute, and terrifying.

I'm hoping next year will be even bigger. More tailgates, more kids. Maybe this time next year I will even know a few people! Maybe I will have even rightly assimilated and I'll have a camouflage jacket of my own!

"Where are we going? And why are we in a hand basket?"

So Partner #1 left again and the whole ranch went to heck! Figures. He was down south again, this time for a gun course and to go chucker hunting.... If you don't know what this is, don't ask me because I don't really know either. I know it involves birds and a lot of hiking.

He laid out hay ahead of time so all of the animals would be content (yeah right) and took a dog so we would have less dogs to take care of, so basically all we had to do was make sure nothing died. And we managed that, nothing died. Although that llama is close.

So problem #1 arises in the form of escaped cows and downed fence at some land we lease up the road. Partner #2 has to head up there by herself to take care of this because baby is sleeping and one of us needs to stay home. The funny thing about livestock is they will cross an electric fence that is laying on the ground to get to the perceived "grass is greener" other side of said fence, but when you try to chase them back over the way they came, it all of a sudden becomes the scariest damn downed fence they ever saw!! So how does 1 person force a 1500 lb stubborn piece of beef over the fence again? Luckily for us, Partner #2 is smart. The remaining cows, who we will refer to as "The Good Ones", figured that Partner #2 was there to give them something awesome, so they followed her around like gigantic puppies. So she led them to the far side of the field, away from the renegade cow, who very quickly got lonely, or thought she was missing out on something great, and led herself back over the scariest damn downed fence it ever saw!. Brilliant.

Fence repaired. Crises averted.

Problem #2. I kind of took over feeding and walking dogs while Partner #1 is gone. Amazingly everything was going great this time. I developed a system that worked well, and no one ran away on me! It was like a Christmas miracle! At one point, I went out to go feed our new sheep dog, the one we picked up on our trip to Edmonton (Read it here The Impromptu Edmonton Trip), and I noticed that his face was a little beat up. Since everything had been going so well with the other dogs, I knew it wasn't one of them who snuck in there to be a jerk. So my only conclusion was the llama. If you saw his face you would understand that this conclusion is sound! At one point while I was crouched down pouring the food, he just waltz up behind me and stuck his face in the dish and started eating it! So I'm pretty sure the poor dog got hurt just trying to defend his food. And in some ways, that's an unfortunate sign of a good sheep dog. You don't want him hurting his flock in any way. The sheep will steal his food too, given the chance! Complete vegetarians, but they will scarf a bowl full of dog food with lamb chunks in it! I guess they are herbivores until they are cannibals.

Side note, did you know chickens will do that? If you throw too many meat-based scraps in to them they will eventually start to kill and eat each other?! Same with egg shells. If you don't crush the shells up to be unrecognizable, they will start to eat their own eggs! It's messed up. I guess that could be expected from dinosaur descendants....

Problem #3 is a fun one! I actually wish I had my camera for it. All the horses got out. Again it was a downed fence scenario. This time at least there was two of us to try to herd them back over the ultra scary fence. It didn't work, however. We managed to get them all in a group and started to push them toward the fence, but they panicked and turned around and ran back. We did this twice and gave up. The second time we even rolled up a section of the fence so they wouldn't even have to step over it, but nope. They were not going back for nothing. In any case, a herd of possibly panicked, galloping horses is really pretty.

Problem #4, the cows got out again. This time 3 cows and a calf and they were out on the road, which in itself isn't such a big deal around here, since people graze their animals on the roadside, but still, it was a problem that needed to be fixed. This time we loaded all the kids up and both of us went to try to get these cows back. Half way there (its at least a 20 minute drive) we get a text saying that the land owners chased 2 back in for us and the other 2 were in a neighbor's field and were welcome to stay there until the next day when Partner #1 would be home and could go get them. Still we had to go check things out, check fences, and make sure everything was kosher. Everything was fine, the good ones seemed happy and content, so we loaded up again and went home.

Partner #1 came home a couple hours after problem #4 was resolved and that was it. His problem now. In some ways it's exciting, having all this new stuff to do. But mostly it's just a pain in the butt.

Sometimes I find it so hard to believe that this is my life now...



More things I have learned since moving to the ranch:
12) A llama will make a hilarious face if you hit him with a pot. Also, they are creepier than heck and the threat of being spit on is terrifying.
13) All your efforts to keep a nice, clean, presentable front yard will be completely undone when you let a couple of cows roam free.
14) Snow in October is apparently perfectly normal, and I should just get used to it.

Fall on the Ranch

Oh my gosh it's Fall! 

I think this is one of the first times in my adult life where I have been in a position to actually enjoy fall. Fall is the "precursor to winter and winter is the devil" (a wise woman said that one... recently). Winter is the worst thing that ever recurrently happens to me.Usually I'm stressing about heating bills, and winter tires I can't afford, and driving in the snow, and vitamin D deprivation, and seasonal depression, and having to wear more clothes then I'm comfortable with, and going to work and coming home in the dark, and Christmas concerts I might have to miss, and out-grown snowsuits I can't afford to replace, etc. You get the point. This is what Fall used to mean to me.  

But this year!! THIS year I still have those things to think about, but not to worry about! Why? Because I'm no longer a single mom, I no longer have to bear the brunt of ALL expenses, and any stresses I have are counteracted by cuddles, which I get lots of now. Yay me! 

However, on the ranch, Fall is like crunch time. All projects wrap up. This is the time of year that all ranchers work for. It's pay day! Well pay... month? Anyways, this is the time when everyone is getting all their ducks in a row, stock piling hay for the winter, bringing the cows in from range, sorting off the cattle (ones you keep from the ones you sell), getting trucks in order to take your sale cows to auction, all that fun stuff. Except in our world, its multiplied because we also have sheep, and to a lesser extent horses. PLUS we have our 200+ herd divided in two locations some 436 km apart. It's so much fun. 

My partners to do list over the next 3-4 weeks includes: Go to Merritt, get cows organized to ship back to Quesnel.  Get back home. Go back to Merritt, get cows loaded on truck. Drive home, immediately sort sale-cows from keep-cows. Load sale-cows on truck. Go to sale. Somewhere in there, load up and take wool to Edmonton. Explore possibility of making this a family affair. Sort sale horses, get them to Alberta.  Sort sheep, get them to Calgary. Also, explore the possibility of making this a family trip. Toss in a birthday party, Remembrance Day, Halloween, and a gun course 3 hours from home.

Don't forget to breathe. I wonder is we're going to see him at any point over the next weeks?

For Partner #2 and I, and the kids, Fall will be much the same as any other time of the year. Except that we may have to assist in some sorting shenanigans. It is Isabella's birthday on Friday! I am so excited for her. Everyone else in this house has had a birthday and she has had to watch and wait 10 months for hers to come. Isabella decided that for her birthday she wanted a "girls day", so her, Partner #2, and I are all going to the salon to get our hair done. Its going to be great! I love an excuse to spend money on vanity!

Anyways, this year I am looking forward to being able to relax and enjoy the season. I have decided to become a chai tea junky as the weather gets colder, and Partner #2 will start baking almost weekly! It's the perfect combination. Plus I've really been enjoying taking pictures. So I'm just going to leave you off with some pictures of what we've been up to this fall. 

 Fog across the river.

Baking season! 

Crazy hair day!

 

Our turkey veggie tray

Our Thanksgiving thankful tree

Gringo doing his best Blue Steel impression