Happy Halloween friends and family. We are dressing up as viruses this year, as we are all staying home with a cold. It is not a very exciting year for Halloween but we have each other and are very much in love as a family. It is a good thing as we will be in bed most of the day! It is our fourth wedding anniversary, Andrew and I. I love him so much. He is such a great father to Kaya and Ava and a wonderful husband. I don’t want to write too much as this journal really needs some photos of the girls. It is way overdue for pictures, especially of six month old Ava, who is sitting up!

My mom came to visit last week, an impromptu visit as she had business in New Mexico. It was a nice visit although I think she was our virus culprit!

I am not going back to work, the spa at Enchantment Resort, until the Spring as I couldn’t wean Ava. Also, we are fortunate that Drew has an overabundance of work. I do too but it is in the name of changing diapers, going to the park daily, and feeding infant and toddler. I have dropped even more weight which feels good!

Kaya is hanging out on the deck at the Holman farm in South Dakota.

I hope Kaya and Ava won’t mind that I have hijacked their journal. One day they can read these stories and smile at their goofy and romantic mother.

I didn’t have a chance to write about our trip to South Dakota but now that Drew’s parents, Dean and Vi, have come for a visit to us in Clarkdale, AZ, I must write a tale of two cities and one family.

I always love visiting the Holman family as Dean and Vi are very loving. They have an inspiring marriage, going on forty years this November, their “Ruby” anniversary. Even though they are more conservative in some ways than how I was raised, we get along really well and respect each other’s differences. Andrew (Drew) likes to mention that his parents raised their three boys to be unique individuals, which they are, and they get along well today. I really enjoy Drew’s brothers and I am proud to hang out with them. They are both married to very different types of women. The middle brother, Jon, has two girls. The Holman boys are clever at spitting back girls into the world. We joke with Joe, Drew’s youngest brother, that it is up to him to carry on the family name. Although, it would be sweet if he has two girls, as it would complete the female duo triad.

Anyway, enough storyline this is Kaya and Ava’s website afterall. When we visited South Dakota we had a lot of fun, visiting, and spending quality time with Drew’s grandmother, Dorothy, who is in her late eighties. I am especially close with her, as she reminds me of the nice relationship I had with my own grandmother. The two of us write each other letters and she is quick to understand stories and such, just as she is steadfast in telling them. Andrew and I did a video piece with her asking her about her Norwegian and German ancestors and what life was like growing up on the prairie. We asked her what she wanted to say to our girls when they were older, so as a child of the Great Depression, she replied, “to live conservatively.” At first I thought it was a stale thing to say but in lieu of the recent economic state of America, it was a most ingenious reply and she meant it in a loving way.

I have photos to post of our August visit to South Dakota, of which I will place here. Ava was nearing four months old and Kaya was twenty months.

Kaya at her Grandma Vi’s birthday party

The next image is of Andrew and Jon relaxing in the living room where they were raised.

Ava with her cousins, Abigail and Elizabeth.

Blessed be the little girls, Kaya and Ava. I am so happy I have two beautiful little baby girls. They keep me so busy. I take them on walks every morning and also to the park before lunch. I let Kaya run it out and she uses everything; the slide, the swings, the sandbox, the bridge to somewhere, and the hanging bars.

Ava at almost six months, enjoys watching her sister and I run around on the grass. We have a true green park up here in the mountains of Northern Arizona. The residents built the park at the turn of the century to remind them of the more manicured East Coast.

I still get homesick though, even though I have made some close friends in the mommy world. I have been hanging out almost every day with a gal by the name of Bethany. A beautiful artsy local woman who lived for five years in San Francisco, working at a funky coffee house in Cole Valley. She is actually from our little town here, born and raised, and has three children who range in age between eleven and two months old. Their names our Bailey, Finn, and most recently Elias. Bethany’s husband is also really interesting, he has a culinary background and lived in Porland, Oregon for several years. I also spend my time with her close friend, Amber, who lives up in Jerome with her partner, Dean, and toddler, Matteo, and little baby boy, Juno. She is really mellow and also adorable and progressive. Amber and her Dean live in the old shower stalls of the Jerome miner’s. Her house is really remote and has been transformed into a gem on the cliffs.

My third best mommy buddy is Shana, originally from Connecticut and now lives with her husband, Ilan, from Israel, and their little girl, Ahdivah, in a newer housing development closer to Sedona. I have written about them before. I am so thankful to have these three women in the my life, as they are getting me through an isolating, yet divine, still tiring mommy schedule.

I have lost a good fifteen pounds since giving birth to Ava Rose. I am staying fit by taking the stroller up and down steep sidewalks. It is my miniature San Francisco minus all the cool people and shops.

Speaking of miniature, I lost my miniature Schnauzer, Sophie. Old age got the better of her and she died on 8/8/08. I miss her so much but am happy I got to be with her for fifteen years as she sailed with me during my twenties and thirties, living in such towns as; New Orleans, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, Santa Fe, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Sedona, Arizona.