Morning run

We bought elena her first pair of 'official sneakers' a two weekends ago. In addition to making her look about 2 years older, she had decided to take up the family habit of a morning run. Once or twice a week she will motivate to get out of bed quickly, get dressed, and be waiting by the door to run a cool down with whom ever had the morning run that day. We go to the end of the street and back, she's quite excited about it.

Here is a picture of her first morning run.





And we've found a really great place to run. Sunday morning Jake motivated the whole family to head out to a local park we'd seen a sign for. Turns out it was an old farm that they mow 'paths' through the fields. Elena and I hiked while Jake ran, then we switched. It was really nice, reminded me of my old cross country days (except I'm much slower now). And in an exciting turn of events we found a trail that hooks up closer to our house and connects to a playground. So when we work up to longer long runs, one of us can hang out at the playground with elena.

Mobile Home

This week our home has arrived...the international shipment arrived in it's shipping crate on a flat bed truck. Very impressive.


Our spacious house was quickly filled to over flowing with boxes.




At first we regretted having all 'this stuff' (and just ask my father how much stuff we threw out or gave away!) But as our treasure hunt began (especially with the stuff stored almost two years in Maine) we've discovered some of our favorite things - and the reasons that we did keep things. We found wedding presents, pigeon books, and my favorite, Martha, my seafoam green mixer. Man, I missed her. I'm making a double batch of chocolate chip cookies tomorrow.

Elena is doing much better with some of her stuff back. Jake has made her 'cubbies' by duct taping cardboard boxes together. We hear cardboard furniture is very in right now. We just like to keep up with the Joneses.

The Fruit Bat has landed

Mimosa and ET nicknamed Elena, 'fruit bat,' as an infant - when Mimosa was forced to ration fruit to the little gobbler after she ate herself sick on half a cantilope at age 9 months.

Today, we hit fruit pay dirt. On a whim, I had found a local 'pick-your-own' farm, right down the road from our house. So this morning we loaded up the family and headed off in search of the mythical raspberries, grapes, and blackberries. Well, boy was that a good decision. The raspberries and blackberries are just coming on - we got more blackberries because the raspberries had been pretty picked over, and we sampled some 4 different varieties of grapes, filling up a gallon basket to bring home. We learned that there is picking until the first frost in September and bushes were filled with green berries, waiting to ripen.

Elena with her haul.


Elena stayed true to her fruit loving roots and had to be cut off from grape consumption at lunch.

Tonight we ate fresh black and raspberries sprinkled over some Homestead Creamery (local place) icecream. Oh man, we each had nearly a pint of berries on a little dab of icecream. It was amazing - the other title of the blog entry could be 'gluttony.' Elena comes by her love of fruit the honest way (through me and mostly her Gram). We want believe that there will be fresh blackberries and raspberries for another solid month...In fact, we really don't believe it and have made plans to go to the Tuesday 7am picking hours (just one of us by ourselves - picking with Elena is fun, but not very efficient). We want more berries to eat and freeze and to save to make jam once our kitchen arrives. What if it isn't true and all the berries are gone? The blackberries from the farm taste amazing. As a kid, my brother Seth and I spent a chunk of most summers in Oregon. We usually arrived in raspberry season - I can remember Grammy have a few fresh picked raspberries in a bowl waiting for us. In Texas, the raspberries were sad and flavorless (as were the blackberries) and the real Oregon ones tasted amazing. I remember dishes of them and cobbers filled with them from Grandma Twerp's garden. I associate raspberries and strawberries with those summers. In face, I have a vivid memory of driving out to a farm with my great-grandma Butch to pick up flats of raspberries and strawberries to make jam - I remember this not for the berries but because Grandma Butch explained to me how you knew when to pass other cars by the solid or dashed yellow line down the middle of the road. I was amazing and a little ashamed that it had never occurred to me to notice something so obvious. But we were usually on our way back to Texas just as blackberry season started - too late in the summer. If we were lucky there might be a few ripe ones on the bush behind the shed. In Santa Cruz, Jake and I used to pick blackberries beside the road out to Ben Lomond- but they were always a little small and not quite as sweet as you would hope (and very, very dusty). But these blackberries today were amazing - they burst in your mouth like summer itself. Warm and sweet. So the prize for best blackberries goes to blacksburg. Oregon holds the raspberry spot. And nothing can beat the organic strawberry field at two small farms in Santa Cruz.

Small town

by John Cougar Mellencamp has been frequently playing in our car with good reason. This is a small town. On Friday we went to 'stepping out' the downtown music and street vendor festival. After the little kids race (very cute! we will enter Elena next year), we hear this shreeking - Elena! Elena! Mommy look! I look over and there is Amelia (I couldn't even remember her name) from Elena's new school. The two little kids started chattering away while we met Amelia's parents. We'd spent less than two weeks total in Blacksburg at this point. Other signs of 'small townism' - when Gram was here we were discussing how Nikki Giovanni live in Blacksburg (she teaches at Tech)...just a few hours later I was in the post office and who should walk in, but Nikki Giovanni. Then she went to our Kroger (we did wait in the parking lot so I could show her to mom) - just like our next stop, where she shucked her own corn in the produce section. Mom was impressed. But the true mark of the small town is that Jake was at Home Depot the other day when a car pulled up, windows down, radio on, the guy stopped the car, go out - leaving the engine running and went inside to get something. Hello! You could just drive that thing away. But no one did...and I guess that is the point.

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Monkey makes bread

When we arrived in our new house in Blacksburg, there was a package waiting for us. Aunt Martha had sent a box with southwestern cheeses and a kit to make 'monkey bread' from Williams and Sonoma. It was so thoughtful and nice of her. We've been enjoying the cheese, but only felt ready to make the bread this weekend - tired of our strange assortments for breakfast (no toaster, no good yogurt). Of course, Martha picked out the monkey bread for our little monkey to make, and she was thrilled to do it. Luckily Martha considered that we would have no supplies or pans, so both were sent along.

Getting started


Finished product - lekker!

Settling in

The typical joys, frusterations, and exhaustion of settling in continues here. Elena is in the process of transitioning to her new school, the 'Lab School' at Virginia Tech. (apparently being the daughter of two scientists isn't enough - we must send her to be studied by other scientists). It's really a top notch program, and we should know - we are daycare snobs. This innovative daycare is integrated with their department of Human development, overseen by professors and integrated with their elder day program (the neighbors next door - who they plant flowers with and hear stories from). It's right on campus, just a short distance from our building. Elena has stayed two mornings by herself, next week we will work up to naps.

Jake and I are in the annoying process of sorting out being in a new department...I have a phone but no internet, jake has no phone, no internet. Jake has computers, I don't yet. It's frustrating to have to learn everything all over again, copiers, travel, how to buy supplies. Graduate students start arriving at the end of this week.

We are still figuring out where things are - we got lost looking for stores yesterday and took several scenic loops through Christiansburg along the way. We love our car, the Rav4 has been performing like a champ (we've already put 2000 miles on it!) and getting around 30 mpg. But we miss having bikes and are starting to itch for two wheelers. Turns out to be more difficult to find what we are looking for - we want dutch bikes with gears, mules that are ready for kids seats, groceries, saddle bags. Every bike in town seems to be those bike with all those fancy gears - and I firmly believe that a new bike should not rival the price of a used car. Hopefully we will work our options out soon, we are tiring of driving to work and to the farmers market.

Red Camp

Due to the slow internet connection (dial up, which is kind of a good thing on vacation), we weren't able to update about our two weeks in Maine...so here we go.


After our long drive up, we arrived in Weld and immediately jumped into the lake. We had lots of fun meeting 'baby' Brayden and his poppa, Colby. (His momma, Sara, Jake's cousin, is deployed to Iraq right now.) Elena adored Brayden and they had a blast as 'cousins at the lake.'


Great-grammy Sewall arrived, as did uncle pete and Lynette. So we had lots of hang out time (and more than a few of 'Lynette cookies' - AKA ginger crinkles).


Of course, the lake was mostly filled with the usual things for Elena, playing in the sand, swinging in the hammock, visiting Armand for the important news, and picking wild blueberries by the boathouse. One special person was Jane, the little girl who lives several camps down.
Elena was always hoping that Jane would appear on the beach to play, and often she did. Elena got adopted by the older Isherwood kids, and proxie entered the Weld Heritage Day frog jumping contest on their team.

Jake and I managed to only doing moving or work stuff for about 1/3 of the days (not bad). The rest of our belongs are now on a truck headed for Blacksburg, so our empty house is about to become very crowded, especially since our international shipment is already in the country waiting to clear the Department of Homeland Security.