Oliver Reunion

I am late in posting this, but that's what happens when you have a busy life. This past weekend (17th-19th) we went to the Oliver Family Reunion...Matt's side of the family. It's held each year at Camp Frame in Hedgesville, West Virginia, the Saturday before Father's Day. Not only do we see Matt's immediate family, but we also see his extended family, and relatives that have descended from one of the six Oliver sisters that were around in the early part of the 1900's. There are no more Olivers...they are now Millers, Frys, Frankenberry's, tbd, tbd, tbd. Each year a different family branch hosts the reunion, and there is an auction (people bring stuff to donate to it) to raise money for future events. Everyone brings a dish to donate to the buffet. There is a pool on site that the kids like to partake in. Mostly people just sit around eating good food and talking.

Here we are at Pappy's house, the day before the reunion. This is the only good picture, unfortunately, given that Liam wouldn't sit still and the lighting was kind of dark.

Here are the actual Reunion pictures:
Granny is holding Maia


A friend of the family, Candy (I think).

There were lots of little souvenirs and decorations sitting around on the tables. Liam seemed to like the carrots-filled-with-bubbles.

Mommy! (finally, some pix of me. There are a few of me holding here here, but this was the best one and there are already an overload of Maia pix).

Sherry (she is Matt's cousin, so not sure what her relationship to Maia is).


Maia with her Aunt Debbie.

Sherry and Debbie chatting.

More of Granny holding Maia.

Liam is being a detective, courtesy of a magnifying glass that his aunt Dawn got him. He went outside with Dawn and her husband Greg and they showed him how to find fossils and how to use the magnifying glass to see them better. Pretty awesome.

Liam socialized a little, entertaining Debby, Jimmy and Juanita, and Pappy.

Liam somehow had enough energy to just keep running around and around at the Reunion.


Liam and I are enjoying a dip at the hotel pool after the reunion. Although it was pretty darn cold, so that's really as far as I got into it.


Maia is poolside, with Granny.

Aunt Dawn finally gets a chance to hold Maia.


After a long day, it's great to just take it easy back at the hotel with something tasty.

Happy Two Months, Maia

Today, my daughter Maia is two months old! Part of me can't believe it's been that long already, while the other part of me feels like she has been around forever and my life without her is starting to seem far away.


I have TONS of pictures of her, but since I already posted them on her journal, I am not going to post them all again here. Instead, you can visit the link above to go directly to that post.

Besides pictures, there are also some details about her, like her smiles and attempts at talking, her weight, and such. I'll just say that I am totally in love with her. I loved her when she was born, but as with Liam, it took a while for it to become the deep love that it is now...to get to know her enough that my love for her makes me breathless and giddy when I think about it. *happy sigh*
Excuse me...I am going to hug and kiss her again. Go enjoy pictures!

Happy Summer Solstice

Just wanted to acknowledge the longest day of the year, a milestone in nature.

Berry picking...

I had meant to put a post on here regarding our berry picking excursion on Monday. We took Liam and Maia to Johnson's Corner Farm and scored us some yummy cherries and blueberries. I posted on Liam's journal since we mainly did it for him and that's what most of the pictures are of, but I had wanted to include a link from here. So...here it is...check it out.

Happy Birthday, Grandpop

Today is my grandfather's birthday. It causes me grief that he is no longer here to celebrate it. It's the first birthday to pass without him. He would have been 80 today. That suddenly seems way too young to not be around to celebrate. I feel like he had so much more life to live and should have had the opportunity to live it. I feel like life cheated him and took it away, giving him cancer-caused pain and suffering for the last year of his life, and then just letting him slip away one night. My mother, a few of her siblings, and her mother were there as he passed out of this world...and every time I think about that, I really wish I had been there as well. In his last moment, to see him off, I guess. It still feels somewhat unreal. One day he was here...and then he wasn't, and I missed that moment where it changed. Heck, I wasn't even in the same state...I was camping in PA and dealing with a leaky pavilion tent in a torrential downpour. (I like to think of it as nature mourning his passing) I didn't even see him until a few days later, for the funeral...looking different than when I had last seen him, and than what he used to look like before the cancer whittled away at him. It didn't quite seem like him, and I am still left with a slightly "unfinished" feeling, that I can't quite believe that he really is gone, that he was stolen away, that something like this could have happened.
But it did...and today is the day he was born, many years ago. And I wish him a happy day of birth, wherever he may be. Love you, grandpop. So very much.

Nature tamed (well, sort of)

I finally got my new gardens! The landscapers came and turned all those nasty weeds into prettiness. I am SO happy with how it turned out and I can't wait to show people! I just have to make sure I do my homework and keep up with it. Hopefully these side gardens are easier to take care of due to the smaller amount of plants, the fact that they are all supposedly low maintenance, and the rock bed instead of mulch (makes it harder for weeds to grow).

So, if you remember, here is the shady side of the house BEFORE (shady weeds, bare earth, no mulch, no stacked stone border):


And THIS is what it looks like NOW! (click to make pictures bigger)

Left to right: cherry laurels, coral bells, hydrangea, more coral bells, another hydtrangea. There is one more coral bell coming on the left, and two deutzia plants to go in front of the hydrangea on the right...landscaper is just waiting on them to come in.



Okay, and now here is the sunny side of the house BEFORE (lots of (now dead) weeds growing up in the mulch, stacked stones kind of messy, stumps from the cut-down arborvitae visible):


And here is the garden AFTER! (again click to enlarge) (and this is taken when the sun is going down so it's not all that sunny here)

Left to right: Two burning bushes, a crape myrtle, with salvia in front, two more burning bushes, and a butterfly bush (tucked in that back corner)


During the work on the sunny-side garden, a rabbit's nest (or scrape, to be correct) was discovered, with five baby bunnies in it. We couldn't just leave them there, not with all the work that had to be done, so they had to be moved. I dug a new scrape out of the way about 15 feet away, donned some gloves, and Matt helped me transport the bunnies, along with the fur lining the nest. According to the article I read, the human scent actually doesn't bother the mother, but given that rabbits can't move babies on their own, they usually assume predators got the babies when they find an empty scrape. If the babies aren't too far, they might find the new location. So I was worried that the mother wouldn't find them, but was hoping that she just hopped along the side of the house towards the back, because then she would stumble across them. And that some stray cat didn't slink along the side of the house from under the deck and find the baby bunnies right there on it's doorstep.
(this is them briefly uncovered when I counted to make sure they were all there...that the disturbed floss wasn't because a predator had gotten a tasty snack)


Following the advice of the article, I put four strands of unscented dental floss across the top of the nest in a tic-tac-toe pattern to see if it got disturbed overnight, which is supposedly when the mother returns to feed the babies. Sure enough, it WAS all disturbed and all five babies were still there...so I am thinking she managed to find them. I plan to try that again tonight, and maybe yet one more night, to make sure she is returning to feed them. Otherwise, at the suggestion of my sister, we'll take them to the local wild animal shelter, to see if they can be cared for there.

And the icing on the cake...the landscapers weeded and trimmed up our front garden, which was in much need of it. Here are the before and after shots. Kind of hard to tell in the pictures, but it IS nicer. Look at the shapes of the plants and the spaces between the plants.
BEFORE:



AFTER:



You know what? If you are local, why don't you come over and take a look in person. SOOO much better. And hop in the pool while you are here. Heh.

Memorial Day Pix

Just realized I never posted any of these. A bit late, but still worth putting up. Most of them are the kids having fun. In fact, all of them have a child in them. Heh. Kids are cuter than adults.

Lots of pool fun. (yes, Liam and Xander are wearing the same shirt. And if they had had the jolly-roger swimshorts in Liam's size at Target, they would be waring the same shorts too. Twins! Heh.)





Maia is taking a nap outside, despite the heat.


Photoshoot with the inflatable dolphin... (couldn't get them to really sit still)




Liam is testing out Cole's new pool float, to see how well it works on land.


Dudes, if I could only just get him to do this all the time. Wonder if I can convince him it's fun and that he always wants to do it.

MONKEY!

So...if you remember back to the post I made about the project I was knitting. You know, the one with the knitting shaped like...um...well...a...well, it was a long tube of knitting, brown with tan at the end. You know...this one!


I had promised to show you the finished product. I finished it over a week ago, but as it was a gift for a baby-soon-to-be, I wanted to wait to post in, just in case someone read the blog entry and saw it and they found out about it and somehow guessed it was for them. Which is silly because how would they guess that, and who would think to tell them, and...well, besides, no one actually probably reads this blog. (sad, isn't it...I am talking to myself). Well, okay, I think every now and then people read it, but not all the entries, and not the people that would talk to these friends (seriously, though, if you read the blog...PLEASE leave a comment now and then. So I don't think I am talking to myself).

So, without further ado, I give you...









(obviously the long tubes were the limbs...come on, people!)
For a baby due July 1st, whose gender is to be a surprise...hope you enjoy the monkey, little darling!

Nature rampant...

I love nature (most of it, most of the time). I love gardening (again, most of the time). I have several garden beds around my house and I usually getting out in them to clean them and plant new things and watch them grow. However, as the years have gone by I have gotten less and less time to work on gardening, and as a result, my gardens have gotten a bit...untidy. They are too much for me. I have too many garden beds, too many flowers, etc. I really should only have one garden bed at this point, but most of them were already part of the house when we moved in. We added one in the back corner of the backyard because it really needed something back there. But there were also four other garden beds already...well, five if you count the hosta border around the pool deck. So that's six total, which is a lot.
Which is why I was happy when one of them (on the side of the house) was cleared out of the huge arborvitae that had taken over and was just a bare patch ready for anything I wanted to put that might be easy to maintain. I foolishly attempted blueberries and raspberries, since I love eating those, but they didn't last very long (barely had leaves on them). That bed pretty much was bare by the end of the summer. On the other side of the house was also cleared out when the foundation on that side had to be repaired. I had intended to put the stacked stone border back and lay down mulch, but never got around to it on account of becoming pregnant and also dealing with indoor house renovations (computer room and family room).

Well, Spring rolled around...and being very pregnant, I just could NOT get out there to take care of the garden beds as much as I wanted. I managed to get to the other four and remove the dead stuff and straighten up, but that was it. But I figured it wasn't a big deal, because the side beds were just empty and bare and...well...one of them wasn't even a garden bed. I could figure out plants at some other point.

Except...well...I forgot about weeds. Yeah, um...if you leave bare earth/mulch on it's own and don't have any plants there to compete with...well...

I give you side garden number one...the shady side of the house:



Not TOO horrible, nice and green, but still not what I would want there. (This is the side where the foundation work was done, so it's just bare earth, no mulch or anything).

Then I give you side garden number two...the sunny side of the house:



Holy growing weeds, batman!
This is AFTER my husband sprayed it with Round-Up and it died. Before this it was almost two foot tall in spots and looked like an small abandoned field. Thistle and hairy watercress and such abounded.

As the weeks rolled by and I couldn't find time to get out there to address it in any way, aside from having my husband spray the crap out of it (newborns don't really like you abandoning them in favor of weeding)...I got panicky. I didn't want to do much to it, just get rid of the nasty weeks and make it look a little nicer and prevent any further weed growth. But I knew I wasn't going to have time for that. Having built up the sunny side garden last year after the trees were cut down the previous autumn, I knew how much work it would be to remove the weeds and mulch, lay down weed barrier fabric, and then a layer of stone/gravel that would make it harder for weeds to grow. And then do the same thing on the other side.

So...we are hiring a landscaper to do this for us, and he is even putting in some nice snazzy perennial plants that are low/easy maintenance. And for just a tad more, as a complimentary service, he is even going to weed and trim the big front garden, which I haven't been able to touch in almost two months now and is starting to look frazzled.

Pictures over the weekend/early next week when it's completed (he is planning to do the work on Friday or Saturday).

Today is Special...silly me...

Today is a special day. Of course, I had known it was a special day for years and years. At least, I thought so. You see, today is my sister Michelle's birthday. Hence special. But silly me, I am apparently wrong. Today is not special because it's her birthday. Apparently today is...

(wait for it)

...Judgement Day!
That's right. Apparently today is the day that all humans are judged and the good and righteous experience The Rapture and enter heaven, while the poor souls that are found wanting are left behind to suffer as the world is destroyed.
WOW. You would have thought that something so big would be a lot more advertised. You know...that I wouldn't be finding out about it just today. I mean, I know I can sometimes be clueless about what is currently going on in the world, but something like the end of the world happening is not something that just slips by you.

Well, not sure what I should do about this. I don't even know what time the whole judgement thing is supposed to happen. I guess if I only have a few more hours to go, I should do something I really enjoy...like knitting. So yeah, I guess I just got permission from the universe to spend the day knitting. Oh, and wishing my sister a very HAPPY (non-judgemental) BIRTHDAY!

*smile*

(p.s. See you all tomorrow)

Mad Crafting Skills

Check it out. For about $35 online you can buy a Bebe au Lait Nursing cover, to discreetly cover yourself while breastfeeding without having to struggle with a blanket that could be pulled off by a squirming baby, and while looking stylish.
Looks like this:




OR, for the cost of the fabric (free if you already have some, as I did for one of them...$3.99 for the other) and a few small materials, and about one hour's time, you could totally make one yourself:


Or two (for when the first gets spit-up on):


Crafty, no? But I didn't stop there. For $10, you can buy a boppy cover to go on your boppy pillow. Like one of these:


Or again, get crafty, and for a small cost of fabric, a zipper, and maybe thread, make one yourself. Shazam!


Kind of pleased with myself, if you can't tell. Oh yeah! (to sort of quote Space Ghost: "How'd you get so crafty?" "Look how craft' I be!"). For probably about $22 I made three items that would have cost $80 total.

Okay, sewing projects done. Back to knitting. (bet you want to know what the brown and tan thing is going to be still).

Can you say Idiot... and other random stuff

1. Yes. Can you say "idiot"? I certainly can. And apparently I am one. *sigh* a big, frickin idiot. I tempted fate and she saw fit to finally slap me in the face. Every morning I have been taking a sitz bath to aid with the postpartum healing. While doing this, I spend some of the 15 minutes doing stuff on my iPhone. Checking email, the weather, texting people, googling stuff, and reading blog posts. Yes...while in the tub. Yes, I know...electronics and water dont mix. But I was being careful. I had a towel on the edge of the tub for comfort and would lean both arms out over the edge of the tub, so that my hands, and hence the iPhone, were at least 6" away from the water. So if I DID drop it, it would land on the floor and NOT in the water. Smart. Right? *sigh*
Well, somehow I got careless this morning. Still had my arms over the edge, but apparently I got too close to the tub itself, because suddenly something tickled my side and I jerked to the one side to scratch at it, leaving just one hand holding my iPhone...and it slipped out of my hand. And landed on the tub edge. And bounced the wrong direction. Directly into the tub of water. Splash.
IDIOT.

Naturally I freaked. I grabbed it pretty quick, figuring it would be dead, that there would be a black screen, that I would hear cracking or fizzing or something. All the time I was yelling for matt to come up with a completely panicked voice that had him thinking I had seriously hurt myself. Surprisingly, the only thing that noticeably happened was that my music (I was listening to my favorite songs) had stopped playing. Screen was fine. Still I attempted to dry it and then handed it off to matt as soon as he got there. He was quick to whisk it out of it's case and start blowing air into the various holes, as well as using a toothpick and tissues to soak up any water in those holes.
Anyway, long story short...the only problem seemed to be that the phone thought the headphones were plugged in, so it wouldnt play music out loud, it routed it to the headphone jack. So calls would have to be via speaker phone, and I would have to listen to music with headphones. But within an hour or so, it apparently dries out enough to start working again. I left it alone for a while, but eventually started using it again. And so far it seems to be working. I am not sure what kind of damage it might have sustained and I won't be surprised if it has issues at some point, or stops working. But I guess I can't complain too much given that right now it seems to be working fine. AFTER completely submerging it in water.

2. I love to knit and some of the projects I knit I love more than others. Fingerless gloves have been my favorite for a bit because they are simple and mostly quick and allow for lots of yummy colors while being a cozy thing to knit. And so very useful. But now I have found a project I adore even more. It's pretty simple (once I figured out what a few of the stitches were supposed to be), it has enough variety in the pattern to be interesting, and it's only 60 rows so it's not a long project and could totally be done in a weekend if you had a good amount of time to knit (and didn't have a newborn wanting attention most of it). It uses either sport or worsted weight yarn, with sport weight making it more delicate and lacey (which I totally loved). It's perfect for Spring knitting. And it's super cute.


It's a girly baby sweater, and I totally want to turn out tons of these. Isn't it so cute? Wouldn't Maia look awesome in it? I just need to add some buttons and loops to it so that it can stay closed (not part of the pattern but something I feel it needs) and then it is completely finished.

3. Instead of doing another baby sweater, I have moved on to a different project that has an actual deadline. Here it is, in the beginning phase. Can you tell what it is? *snicker snicker*

Go on...you KNOW you want to say it. You are wrong, of course, but you want to say it. (when I am all done with the project, I'll show it again. But I couldn't resist showing this first part of it)

4. Mother nature can produce some beautiful stuff. Just a few days ago there was an amazing sun shower, and during that, mother nature decided to show off.



A very BRIGHT double rainbow. She's a good artist, eh? I was amazed at the brightness of the main arc, although these pictures do NOT do it justice at all. It was awesome to see live, and Liam got a kick out of it for sure. Heck, it was so bright maybe even Maia could see it (kidding, but it WAS bright).

5. If your husband offers to spray Round-Up on weeds for you, and you have told him which ones are the weeds and which are the plants that he needs to avoid...you really should triple check to make sure he really knows which is which. You know...to avoid him completely dousing your black-eyed susans with Round-Up and probably killing them thoroughly (I had him spray them off with a hose, but I am guessing the damage is already done. We'll see in a few days, I guess). Just saying...*sigh*

Happy Mother's Day

Just wanted to wish all the Mothers out there a Happy Mother's Day. And post a few pictures from my Mother's Day.

First, here is one of me and my children. Wow. Makes me feel more like a mom, somehow, to see them there. Two of them. My children!



Second, my mother...
I am really annoyed that I didn't get one of my mom with us girls, or at least with me. I only have pictures of her holding Maia, and they aren't even the best ones of her. She is such an amazing woman, and a great mother...and I love her so much. I wish I had gotten pictures that do her more justice.
Here is is holding her granddaughter, Maia.



There are a few others, but they are pictures of Maia with my sisters, or Liam with them, so I think I am just going to post them on their respective journals. So please check out the two links on the right hand-side of this page, Liam's Journal and Maia's Journal, and see the Mother's Day pictures there.

Also, there are some great ones of me holding Maia that my brother-in-law Jay took, but I am waiting for him to email me. Hopefully he will do that in a day or so, so check back for pictures added to this post in a day or so.

(Note from 5/11 - more pictures were added to Maia's blog. Since I had already done another post here, and they were just pictures of Maia, I figured it was best to just put them there. So feel free to go over there to take a look.)

Cute outfit, and polling results

(yes this is a duplicate of the post I just made on Maia's blog).
I finally got a chance to clean some of the new girly clothes that Maia got, and was able to dress her in one of the outfits. Family members have been asking me to put her in some of them and take pictures, so after her bath today I finally was able to oblige. This outfit was just given to us by my Grandmom, and I mainly chose it because it was a two piece and fit the best. And yeah, I am starting to become a pink lover. I mean, I don't want to go overboard, I want tasteful pink, but...I AM liking it more now. She is pretty darn cute in her little pink outfit...thanks Grandmom.




Once Maia's cord stump falls off, I will be able to put her in more of the other outfits, which are one-piece outfits. For now, the separates are easier.


Also, I wanted to acknowledge the birth polling results, both for gender and for stats.
Gender/Stats Predictions
First, we DID finally open the envelope in my wardrobe, with the prediction from the ultrasound taken at the halfway point. The ultrasound picture wasn't something we would have figured out, but it DID say "GIRL" on it, so they were right! Thanks Colleen for reminding us to open that. And congrats to Mom, Michelle, Sandy, Jackie, Lisa, Sue K, Nigia, Suzie, and Jeremy, who guessed a girl (although some of them just wanted it to be a girl).

As for who was closest to Maia's birth time, that would have to be my grandmother, since she had the latest guess on there and Maia blew past all of them, by 27 hours almost. I DID go into labor early enough that Michelle was still in the running, but nature apparently want to even come close to giving her a chance. *sigh*
I was the closest in weight, since every single one of us guessed higher than what she was and mine was only as low as it was because I was HOPING for a smaller baby. I honestly thought she would be a bit heavier than Liam was (he was 7lbs 3oz) because she was several days late and Liam was a whole week early.
No one guessed her length dead on, but four people were close by a half-inch (Jackie, Jeremy, Kevin, Grandmom).

Thank you all for playing...it was fun.

Thank You!

It wanted to post this sooner, but I am still recovering from things and I am still a little dazed and tired and just...not all there mentally yet. There are a few people I wanted to thank, for helping me to get through labor...in no particular order. And hopefully it won't be too rambly or weird...I can't seem to think clearly today...lack of sleep is maybe catching up with me.

I want to thank Jodi, my doula, for putting up with all my calls during my multi-day labor, especially since she was dealing with another labor at the time, right after having come home from a long trip. And for showing me just how much strength I have. I held on for a very long time and didn't think it was possible for any human to endure that much pain for that long. And I truly believe that I could have held on a little longer if I was much further along in labor progression. As it was, I am proud of how much I did hold on. And if epidurals weren't an option, she probably could have gotten me through the rest of the labor, though I am half convinced I would have been unconscious by the end. :) But thank you, Jodi, for being there for me and getting me through that tough time, and for helping me through the pushing phase, which was starting to worry me.

I want to thank my mother, for being so supportive of me, for encouraging me to get through the difficult labor, but for also supporting me when I just couldn't make it anymore. For staying with me so darn long through the multi-day labor and not really getting any sleep. And for reading "The Secret Garden" to me through labor...it was really special and I can't wait for you to find time to come over again and finish reading it...it meant that much to me. And brought back memories. And thanks for staying over our place for two nights after Maia was born, doing our laundry, cleaning our dishes, making food for me, taking care of Maia, and waking up for the overnight feedings so that Matt got somewhat of a break. Thank you for being such an amazing mother...most mothers are NOT that self-sacrificing and supportive and enduring. I hope I am even half as wonderful as that when my children have their own.

And a HUGE thank you to my unbelievable husband, Matthew. For being there for me. For enduring all those hours with me. For holding on to me during the hard contractions, for listening to me in such pain for so long, and for telling me I could do it, that I was an amazing woman and could get through this fine. For straining all your muscles as well in the attempts to comfort me through the contractions, holding positions for hours to make things more bearable for me. For being supportive of me when I just couldn't make it anymore and needed to have medical pain relief. For announcing to me whether we had given birth to a Maia or an Oliver...and for just being you. I am sorry it was so darn hard on you as well...wish it could have gone better, for both of us...but in the end we have a beautiful baby girl, one that I pushed out naturally instead of having another cesarean, one that I could hold and feed within a few minutes of birth. You are an amazing dad and husband and I am so GLAD I found you.

*sigh*
And even though they will never read this, a thank you to the staff at Virtua that made this non-cesarean birth possible. Thank you to Dr. Richman for helping Maia into the world...I never would have planned for a forceps delivery, but apparently it was necessary and apparently most other doctors probably wouldn't have attempted it and would have gone for the cesarean. So thank you!