What's Up?!

No excuses, but I haven't posted since APRIL!! That's simply too long. So, what have we been up to? We went up to the property two weekends ago, we simply didn't want to wait too long to go up again so we decided that we would do another quick weekend. It was great. We rode our bikes with dogs in tow (on leashes running next to us) down to Lake Superior. The ride there was good, but the ride back was too much for me. My body said "I'm too tired - you stop now." :) I pushed the bike back the last 1/8 mile. We built a fire and enjoyed nature that night. We chilled out on Sunday morning because we were simply too exhausted. In one day we cleared a path on the front 10 acres. It was a lot of work for Tim because he had to use the machette to clear some areas. We are happy how it turned out and plan to continue making some trails. Our next trip up is a long weekend, so we have more time to do things and more time to relax!!! Ahhhh......relax. We haven't had a day off of work since 2009. It will be nice to have an extended weekend. I may want more after that :)

The next weekend we celebrated Mother's Day at our house. My Mom and Dad and Tim's Mom came over. We had a burrito bar and then showed them the video of our 20 week ultrasound. Oh yea! I forget to mention that. We had the 20 week ultrasound. We found out if baby is a boy or girl. Well, we showed the 4 minute video to our parents and they all guessed boy. Well, SURPRISE - it's a girl!! We were surprised too, Tim and I both felt boy. The ultrasound was great, but she was being a little stinker...turning away and moving all over the place. The Dr. was able to get most of the measurements he needed to be sure she was all on track, but he didn't get a good enough look at her heart. We have another Ultrasound in early July that he will take a better look at her heart.....and hopefully she cooperates! There were no worries, so we are very happy about that. Since she was moving all over the place, from what he could get a look at he felt that baby is a girl! I guess we will for sure know by next ultrasound :) Exciting times! We also showed our parents some video we've shot of the land.

My birthday came and went on Monday, 5/11. I'm 30 now - wow! Shocking, but acceptable. This weekend we have errands to run and will also be going to the Green Bay Botanical Gardens. I recently started working with a gal that works there, she was in my media class. Since Tim and I love gardens, we thought it would be nice to support this local group. This will be our first visit with membership. We haven't been there for about 3 years, I'm looking forward to it!

Hope all is well with our family and friends!

Tweeting!

Can't say I know much about it yet, but I've signed up on twitter as "onthefox". So, if you twitter, or are interested in twittering, come "follow" me at twitter.com. Hope to see you there and let me know if you have any good recommendations on twitter or if you twitter! -L

Clothing Give In

After we found out about being pregnant, suddenly baby clothing was looking pretty cute!  We've avoided buying any at this point, since we're sure we'll find lot of nice used stuff and have many essentials from gifting.  Well, today I gave in.  There is a store by my office called "A Better Footprint" and she has all fair trade stuff.  Since it was Earth Day today, she had 22% off of everything in store.  I decided to check it out and found the cutest shirt and onesie (with hat!).  I couldn't resist.  I got the onesie in size 6mo-12mo, and the shirt 12-18mo.  The Onesie says "Future World Explorer" and the shirt says "Peace, baby".  So cute! They are on a unbleached 100% cotton and the sale proceeds go to a group in Honduras (where Tim and I honeymooned) for treatment of women with HIV/AIDS.   Here's a photo!

Spring is in the Air!

Hi Everyone! I am happy to report that spring is here! At least for yesterday and today! It's 70 degrees outside and wonderful! I opened up all the windows in the house to get that winter stuffiness out, it's so refreshing! With spring comes blooms.  Our tulips are coming up, but no flowers yet.  Some perennials are showing their green and the garlics we planted late fall are up and rising!  Of course, so are all the weeds.  How is it that some plants will die off during a harsh winter....but not weeds!  They are persistent, year after year.  I have crab grass growing in my strawberry patch, and in random places in the garden.  This weekend, some spring cleaning is on the list.  We also have to start getting together our camping materials.  We found a cheap, retro hardtop camper for sale that we purchased and will be taking to our land next time we are up.  It's not deluxe by any means, but has what we need.  Bed, storage, stovetop, and heater.  The heater was the biggest thing since it will allow us to spend nights on the land when otherwise we would have to stay at another place about 30 minutes from the property.  We'll post some pictures once we get it up there, we are pumped to get everything together and go up for our first weekend where we can spend all day and night at the land!

Anyhow, back to spring - here's a picture of the garlic coming up and also of the dogs playing outside! 

Cloth Diapering

We've been doing some research on cloth diapering to decide which cloth diaper to get for when baby arrives.  We found a great Pocket Diaper called Bum Genius 3.0.  They are affordable, fit all sizes from infant to toddler (with out having to buy a different size for each weight group), and are environmentally friendly because they are washable and reusable.  I was reading a local blog that shares a lot of great information about "natural" parenting.  She also owns a local shop/cafe: momandpopplace.com

On the blog I found this great information advocating cloth diapering:

Reason Number 1: The Environment

            Disposable diapers are the third most common consumer product filling up our landfills today.  One baby will contribute at least a ton of waste the local landfill!  Not only do disposable diapers take over 500 years to decompose, they require toxic chemicals and vital resources to manufacture.

Reason Number 2:  Your Family’s Money

Disposable diapers cost about $1500-$2000 per child.  Yikes.  You can cloth diaper all your babies for under $500.  And you can use the same diapers for more than one child.  Even with the cost of water and detergent, you WILL save a ton of money.

Reason Number 3:  Your Baby’s Health

Disposable diapers contain polypropylene and other synthetics and chemicals, and dioxins from bleaching.   Their super-absorbency encourages caregivers to go longer between changings.  Many parents find that their babies suffer less diaper rash and irritation when diapered in cloth.  Soft cottons mean healthier bottoms!

Antarctica to Pyramids, lights dim for Earth Hour

Crowds in Times Square watched as many of the massive billboards, including the giant Coca-Cola display, darkened. This phenomenon happened all around the world on Saturday, March 28th from 8:30pm - 9:30pm local time as a coordinated effort to make a statement about global climate change. Visit Earthhour.org for more information and read full story at link below.

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Planning the Garden

Last night we started our garden planning (a little later than usual). Tim really wanted to expand the garden this year, but we've decided to stick to our little garden since we have baby on the way during September harvest time. We have to keep the garden manageable. This year we will continue to have our strawberry patch. We'll also grow green beans, cantaloupe, and we're going to try out the seeds we harvested from Roxie and Doug's paste tomatoes and green peppers. I want to try my hand at some more canning this year, and also some new methods of dehydrating. I got a great book, Food Drying with an Attitude, that gives unique ways to dehydrate and use dehydrated food. Maybe we'll also be able to harvest some apples and blueberries from our property! Tonight we'll start the seed indoors in the basement where we have the huge window with the nice hot sun coming through. That worked great last year!

Obamas Prepare to Plant White House Vegetable Garden

On Friday, Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II. There will be no beets (the president doesn’t like them) but arugula will make the cut. This makes a great statement to sustainability! See the full article written up by the NY Times.

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We're Having a Baby!

I suppose the title of this post told what we have to share, but I'll say it again - We're having a baby! We are as excited as any first parents could be, and we are so blessed to have this baby on the way. The picture below was taken at 12 weeks and 1 day. The heart was beating, the baby was moving all over the place, and hands with fingers and feet with toes could be seen. It was simply amazing! I've been feeling really good, and I hope that that stays the case for the next 6 months :) The due date is September 22nd, which seems like a long time off, but I have a feeling it will just breeze by! In just 7-8 weeks we should be able to find out if the baby is a boy or a girl.  There is a poll on the page here where you can vote if you think baby will be a boy or a girl (to the left).  I won't tell you which once I think it is :)  What an exciting time of our life!

Baby!  Head on left.  Legs on Right.  

Picture doesn't show, but I saw feet and hands with fingers!

Getting Sunburned in the UP (in March!)

This past weekend was the best!  We decided a few weeks ago that if there was a weekend coming up with good weather in the UP we would head up to the property.  We were hoping for anything over 30 degrees, and that happened to be this past weekend! What an awesome time we had!  We left at about 6 AM Saturday morning and got up to the property at about noon after we dropped off our stuff at the cottage we stayed at.  We drove over to the property and were looking around and checking out the area by the road and out walks our immediate neighbor to the North.  We had a good talk with her and her husband and got lots of valuable information on our property and the neighborhood.  After the chat, we had to climb over the 8 foot tall pile of snow on the edge of the property.  (It was particularly deep there because that is where the plow pushes it all).  We thought we walked all over the place on Saturday, but as it turned out we really didn't walk all that far, but it was certainly a work out.  Most of the snow was between 2-3 feet deep, mostly hard and easy to walk on with snowshoes except a few spots where you seemed to sink in a foot.  We saw probably 20 or 30 whitetail deer throughout the day.  (Only two or three on our property, but a herd of about 50-80 hangs out by the neighbors because they feed them).   We were tuckered out and headed back to the cottage.  

Sun coming up in the east.

Looking South, this is the back field which we think is about 5 or more acres.

Fire that Tim built for us to enjoy lunch over.  It smelled so nice like camp and outdoors!

The "tree organizer" - where we hung the stuff we didn't want to carry while we snowshoed.

On Sunday we headed out to the land again.  We were a little more prepared to do some walking than the previous day because we knew better what we were getting in to.  We found a potential building spot for a house when we move up some day, but we will keep looking as we get to know that land more.  The property just seems bigger than we imagined!  Everything seemed bigger than our first tour of the property.  Since we were planning on staying through lunch, we paced PB&J sandwiches, crackers, and lots and lots of water to drink.  Around 12:30 we found a spot to sit.  There was a chair we found, and a big bucket that we flipped over to sit on.  Tim built a fire and ta-da...we had a camp!  We ate and talked about the property.  It was about 45 degrees, with a slight breeze, and was just lovely out!    On the way out we talked to the neighbor again for a while, which was nice!  They seem like very nice people and we are looking forward to getting to know them!

Overall, it was a great weekend and we learned a lot more about the property including more about the trees, landscape and space.   Oh, and regarding the title of the post, I am sunburned!  Between the sun and the snow, I am a bit red in the face!  So, who says you can't get a tan in the U.P. in winter? :)  We can't wait to go back!

-L