All moved in

So we did it! We packed up the house and made the big move to Driggs. We did it over thanksgiving weekend with lots of help. Christine, Bruce and Aaron's Dad all helped load and made the drive up to help us unpack and get settled. Aaron drove the UHaul with the cruiser on a dolly with his dad and bruce following. I drove the Rav4 with the dogs and Rowan and christine followed in her car with Brewer. Christine and I made a short stop in Idaho falls to meet Ryan for a beer and then picked up dinner from Teton Thai on the way to the house. When we got there the men had done the lions share of unloading. We stopped to eat and then finished unloading. Set up the crib and the bed and were fast alseep. The next morning aaron took the Uhaul back and we headed to Scratch for breakfast. A very successful 24 hours! 

The moving team

We have rented a house on ski hill road about ten minutes from Grand Targhee. With luck our house will sell soon and we can start building this spring. The rental is great. There are two bedrooms upstairs and one down. 

Our rental

For Cathy - and anyone else who might stumble across this.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
1 egg
1teaspoon vanilla extract
chocolate chips to desired density

preheat the oven to 350 degrees F
combined flour baking powder, baking soda, cinamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt in a seperate bowl
in stand mixer cream the butter and sugar then add pumpkin, egg and vanilla
mix in dry ingredients and chips
spoon a heaping tablespoon full onto a cookie sheet (i use silpat but parchment  would work just as well) and bake 15-20 minutes.

Up and soon to be running

Lots has been going on around here. First we put our house on the market! We are working with the agent that helped us buy the house. We have had lots of people walk through but unfortunately no offers yet. Fingers crossed.
Second - I quite my job to be a full time stay at home mom in anticipation of our move. The first week was touch and go but I'm getting the hang of it. Here is the progress in video form. E-mail me for the password.
Rowan pulling up and standing from denise bertsch on Vimeo.

Third - we found a rental in Driggs. It is on Ski Hill Road on 2.5 acres with a great view of the tetons. We are hoping to move the Friday after thanksgiving.

Cloth Diapers

So I thought I would write about cloth diapers. Almost everyone I spoke to during my pregnancy thought I was nuts to want to cloth diaper. But it seemed like such a money save and ... being the hippie that I am, it seemed like a good choice for the environment to. It has been even easier and better than I thought it would be. I did some, though not much, research before hand and settled on a system called gdiapers. It is considered a hybrid diaper because it has a shell that can either contain a cloth or disposable insert. The first few weeks I used the disposable inserts because I thought it would be easier and I didn't want to do all the wash with my c-section. In retrospect I don't think it would have been that bad to use cloth inserts from the beginning. I have a diaper pail next to the changing table that has a wet bag in it and I just toss the soiled diaper into it. Since he is still exclusively breast fed (EBF) i don't even bother rinsing the poopy diapers. I wash the diapers every 3 days or so. No worry about running out to the store if i'm getting low, i just toss a load of laundry in. I do have a second wet bag that i swap during wash time. For cloth inserts I use regular gerber prefolds and have a few gflappers that i got from the nappyshoppe. One big bonus to all of this is the cuteness of the diapers - it does become and addiction - i just want to by more and different ones! Bonus - you can get used diapers and save even more. Plus they have great resale value when you are done.

• More than 3 million tons of diapers go into US landfills each year
• Disposable diapers take 1 cup of crude oil each to make and will sit in our landfills for 500+ years.
• Families using disposable diapers will spend $2500-3000 diapering one child, compared to $500-600 using cloth diapers. ) Multiply that by THREE for us, or even FIVE. Yikes!
• The average cloth diaper stash cost around $350. Total.
• You can expect to change your babys' diaper up to 4700 times from birth to potty learning.

farmers market

The weather is still warm (90 yesterday!) So rowan and i packed up early to head to the farmers market. We made off with a great haul. Lamb, beef,chicken, mushrooms, apples, pears, melon, broccoli rabe, eggplant, basil, argula, heirloom tomatos and or coarse berliners to go with our lattes. Should make for some great meals this week.

Aaron spent the day finishing up the house so that we can put it on the market.

First Post - September 28, 2010

I started a website with the then google pages (this  has since become google sites) back in 2005. My aim at the time was to have someplace to chronicle events in my life for my friends and family. While i did not post every day I was updating it about monthly until 2008 or so. I'm not sure why I lost interest exactly, but I did. Fast forward a few years later and now I share my thoughts in short snippets and pictures on facebook. This has allowed me to reconnect with lots of old friends that I had lost touch with. While i value that medium, I think having something with more of a story telling capacity is nice. My renewed interest came from reading my sisters blog. She is not a phone person and the older we get the more I value having her in my life and want to keep up with her activities. So here it is - my first post. If you are wonder about the old google site - i have tried to copy and paste most of the relevant info into one archive page here. Someday I will try to find a better archival medium. I'm sure 30 years from now blogs will be long gone.