Eleven years—what a milestone! I’m still not sure how it came and went so fast.
And really, there are two elevens worth celebrating: Brian and I have now been married for 11 years, and Bucket just turned 11, too. Here’s to many, many more of both!
Creeping towards a year and a half – 17 months have come and gone. Rost is ever the great helper and making big moves in life over the last month. Enjoy the photo dump from over the last month. Xoxo.
The last month has definitely centered around spending time with family and friends.
Sadly, it also included Rost’s first trip (of what I’m sure will be many for this little mountain goat) to the ER. After exhibiting a fever of 102.8 and difficulty breathing we took him in one night. After 4 hours of waiting we got the diagnosis of an ear infection. Due to my history of ear infections as a child, which resulted in multiple sets of tubes, I hope this kid has his father’s ear canals.
We missed the wedding of our wonderful friends in New Zealand due to Covid lockdowns. Thankfully (for us), this also caused them to pause their honeymoon plans, which correlated with our move back to Montana. We spent a wonderful day hanging out with them in Kalispell before their great North American road trip continued.
9 months in, 9 months out.
My 8 month old little adventurer & I have been taking some time this month to explore every inch of our new home as well as the nearby dirt roads. We hope you enjoy the photos we took along the way.
What a change this fourth month of life has brought in Rost. Scheduled tummy time is on its way out as Rost has all but mastered the task.
We finally finished work on the little house, which prompted a week of moving Aunt Joy & Uncle Joe out of their old (our new) home and into the little house. Uncle Joe was excited to get a new room, and Aunt Joy was happy to no longer care for “such a large house.” As soon as their move was complete, I got a few days to clean our new home out before we started moving our stuff, and life in. Rost got his own room, which meant we could convert his bassinet into a crib – a much-needed move as he was quickly outgrowing the bassinet.
It’s great to be in our own space, about 100 feet from Brian’s parents and another hundred from Aunt Joy, Uncle Joe, & Aunt Terri. Having so much family nearby feels great after living so far away from everyone for so long. Hopefully, my family can make trips out to our new home with the enticement of time with Rost and Glacier National Park only 30 minutes from our front door.
A quick photo dump from the month to follow. We’ve got a LOT of work to do around the property & are going to attempt as much as time and finances will allow this summer. Wish us luck! Not much else to say about them other than my kid is ridiculously cute. Thankfully he’s way more photogenic than either of his parents.
New Mexico was an unexpected assignment. It wasn’t a place that crossed my mind as one I’d ever live in but it was home for nearly four years. Brian & I tried to make the best of our time there. Although Covid caused a kink in those adventures we weren’t expecting to leave the southwest anytime soon so we weren’t in any hurry to get back out there.
Just as unexpectedly as the world going into lockdown, I found out I was pregnant. Rost was a couple of weeks old and it was one of those all hands on deck at three a.m. with a crying infant kind of nights. Brian & I had just gotten our little nugget to fall asleep and we were trying to catch a few moments alone with each other before we both passed back out ourselves. We knew we didn’t want to raise our child in New Mexico but it was in that moment of exhaustion that Brian asked if I wanted to pick up and move back home to Montana. The sentence wasn’t even fully out of his lips before I quietly yelled YES! Thankfully, my excitement did not wake Rost back up. Over the next few days, we worked out what would need to happen in order for us to move home: my job would need to agree to my working remotely full time, and Brian would need to find a new job since he was tied to Albuquerque, we would need to work out housing in Montana amidst a housing crisis in Montana, sell our home in Albuquerque, and so the list went on. We figured all this would take roughly six months to a year to work out. It didn’t matter, we weren’t in a hurry. However, the actual timeline took less than two months to complete and before we knew it we were packing up our lives in the southwest and returning home to Northwestern Montana.
If you’re wondering, Bucket is still the queen of long road trips.
Quarantine during the Covid 19 pandemic looked as it looked for most of middle-class America – cleaning, deep cleaning, more cleaning, drinking, baking, tinkering, and many pictures of my pets as I worked from home. I’m just here to share some of the photos from time spent at home over the last few years. Xoxo.
Not sure how time’s flown by so quickly, but today we’re celebrating Yago & Beerus’ first Gotcha Day. We had only been looking for a new cat. While Brian was at The Academy, I had been living out of a suitcase primarily at my Seesters house. Bucket really seemed to enjoy having another cat around, so we began searching for a new feline companion once we’d bought a house.
Somehow this quest for a new feline companion turned into the adoption of this giant lug:
And this mouser on the exact same day (from different shelters).
It’s been an interesting year in a new home with the addition of these big personalities, but I couldn’t be happier about our growing family. Kratos is still not entirely sure about this new living situation tho. He thought surely Yago would have gone home by now.
