Just one of her many made-up songs that she performs on a daily basis – over breakfast, in the tub, on the way to school, swinging in the backyard, at bedtime, sitting on the potty, during story time – our budding performer. Always looking to make us smile. I am obsessed with this kid.
This weekend was dominated by major spring cleaning. Racking. Clearing. Clipping. Fertilizing. Planting. Pooper scooping. Chicken coop cleaning. Mulching. Composting. Hauling. Dumping.
Hello backyard homesteading in spring!
James and I were grateful for temperate conditions and sunny skies to enable this yearly chore. Meanwhile, the dependents rollicked in the backyard, including Penelope Pig, who found great pleasure in the piles of racked leaves and mess from last season. I have to admit, James and I paused a number of times mid-clean up to admire the bucolic, fairytale-like scene of chickens and dogs and pig and children running on sun drenched meadow.
hashtagwelovevermont hashtagsohard
In this video, Penny models my attitude toward yard work perfectly. No amount of Flat Coat energy could motivate her otherwise.
A swine after my own heart. And oh how I adore those doggie zoomies.
I had relatively simple expectations for my 32nd birthday. I told James that I wanted to snuggle baby animals with the kids, and attend a concert in Northampton as our adult adventure. I had to work a long day on Wednesday, my actual birthday, so I took Tuesday afternoon off to visit Hancock Shaker Village. This followed a lovely dinner out with two of my girlfriends on Monday night that kicked off the celebrations.
By the time I arrived to my office on Wednesday morning, I felt like my birthday had been appropriately marked and was feeling quite content and ready to dive into a day of work. Upon opening my office door, I was greeted by this magical sight:
I am totally going to recreate this wonderful surprise for a loved one. My colleagues filled my office with balloons and I’ve felt like I’m working in a playful kid’s ball pit ever since. Such a simple, yet impactful, dose of fun.
But the biggest surprise was yet to come. My office picks names out of a hat to assign birthday celebrations. Everyone is responsible for one colleague’s birthday. Typically, we all sign a birthday card and gather together to eat cake, so I assumed that the 4pm hold on my calendar was for such an occasion. And it was, but it had a festive twist thanks to the coordination of my colleague, whose husband is in the all male a capella group that James was a part of while in college. The Williams College Springstreeters are the gift that keep on giving. I was serenaded on my 21st birthday and at our wedding reception by this group, and now, eleven years later, on my 32nd birthday.
A mere 30 seconds before heading into the conference room, I overhead a colleague ask another person on the floor if they were going to “watch” – I didn’t have a handle on the context but it was truly my only tip off that something unique might be about to go down. You can see from my face in the video that I was beyond surprised and thrilled and pink faced. Particularly, since they sang “Let’s Get It On” in front of my office *ahem!*. (Apparently, it was the only “love song” that could be coordinated on such limited rehearsal. I am appreciative to my colleagues who didn’t find it too uncomfortable to watch a group of college students sing a seduction song with their co-worker’s husband. *insertembarrassedemojihere*)
I feel very very fortunate every day, but this week has been a wonderful reminder of the depth and breadth of that gratitude.
A video capturing the explosion of cute. This week has been hashtagblessed. Obnoxiously, wonderfully apt.
I had to fly home early from South Carolina for a whirlwind work weekend. James and the girls stayed south, and it sounds like they had some fairly interesting encounters in my absence. I can’t say that I am sorry to have missed seeing a Copperhead firsthand.
While four days alone in my own home has been somewhat liberating, I am so ready for us all to be back together. I miss my babies!
These are the kind of dolls that I want my children to play with.
Kimmy emailed me this link and simply said: You will love this.
Holy cow, she was right.
Auntie Kimmy’s visiting, so we spent our evening watching years’ worth of All Hockey Hair team videos. Because we are nothing if not fans of a full salad bar in the Ulmer family. I don’t know what it says about us that we wheeze-laughed our way through this entire video, but I know I haven’t been this happy in quite some time.
If that’s a salad, it’s a chop, because a man ordered it.
While we’re certainly sick of shoveling (namely James, and namely for lack of space to pile any more mountains of the fluffy stuff), it is such fun with the kids and dogs. Given how sick we’ve all been, I was grateful for Monday’s snow day, as it provided time as a family to just get outside and have some fun in the ridiculous mounds and mass quantities of snow. We put the iPhone 6 to work and made snow-mo (har har) after snow-mo.
And we were all so worn out and physically wiped from traipsing through the snow that everyone went to bed easily and happily. Here’s a compilation of our favorites from the afternoon. I particularly love our voices in slow motion.
Well, here it is. Our longest video recap yet. 19 minutes and one awkward ending, reflective of our children’s obsession with the slow-mo feature on the iPhone 6. We took more photos than ever this year, and tried to weave in some video. Ultimately, this is our version of a scrapbook. A place to pull together our favorite media from the past 12 months and display it is some (semi) succinct fashion to refer to for years to come. It may only be of interest to a small demographic of people, but how grateful I am to have our years archived in this way.
2014 was a year without any major life changes, losses, or milestones. It is a year that will always be a bright spot in my memory. Consistently good. Consistently happy. After the ups and downs of years’ past and knowing that life is anything but consistent and predictable, I am grateful for that brief, lovely pause. I did love this year so.
We’ve been working away on our annual video, so here’s a quick look at our year through Instagram snaps in prep for the (appallingly) long version we’re creating from the thousands of dSLR photos. 2014, I sure did like you.