Bold Bright World

After experiencing loads of snow yesterday, we awoke to cleared skies and a bright, still morning. The entire country out here looks like one enormous quilt, with fencelines acting as seams between the squares and haybales offering various patterns. The above shot is from looking East from the house, off the front porch. The picture below is looking South, from the french doors in the living room. Don't ask how much snow was still on the deck - all Anne can say is that, last she checked, snow is still very cold....especially when you are dumb enough to walk out there in your slippers!

The weather outside is frightful

So much for opening day of antelope and Anne's theory of shooting hers off the deck in the wee hours of morning. Yes folks, the above sights are from today - not from our reserve pile of photos we pull out to scare off movie stars trying to settle out here. And it is STILL snowing. This is also a morning that Anne & Eric look at each other and realize just how happy life is - we have a cozy house, a beautiful baby that sleeps occasionally (see proof below), two dogs that think they are people (again, see proof below on the couch) and more than enough food/water/firewood to settle in and enjoy a snow day. Apparently, the City of Billings has decided that their streets and all county roads in the area are for emergency travel only. Up here, on the other hand, we expect to see pickups passing the house on the way to hunt quite shortly.

Evening Plans

No - I am NOT sleepy! Sorry people! Ok Dad, maybe you have a good point............


My willpower is weakening........ Mmmmm....the land of fuzzy blankies and oodles of milk

Happy 50th Mom

Anne's mom, Sally, spent nearly two full weeks with us to help with the post-baby chaos and enjoy the first grandchild of the family. This was the most time that mother and daughter had spent together since roughly jr. high (Anne's high school years were spent flitting about being a social butterfly). We all had a great time. Eric and Sally are distinctly morning birds (more about Anne's not being a morning person later) and spent the wee hours chatting politics and life in general, all while the new grandmother held Gwennie. Anne and Sally spent a lot of valuable time together catching up on life and laughing like crazy about the finer points of diapering 1o1 and what to do when your child refuses to sleep at night. We cannot thank her enough for all of the help!!!!!

During her stay, Sally was ambushed by a 50th birthday celebration. During time she assumed her daughter was upstairs editing some work materials, Anne was nearly passing out from hurrying to fill as many balloons as possible before someone checked on her "office progress." Then, Sally was sent to retrieve a package from her car while House of Miller rapidly got out the presents, a crazy and insanely large singing card and put up some decorations. For those of you curious, the Hops and Yoyo card (courtesy Hallmark) sings it's own variation of a birthday song when opened. Which means that Anne & Eric spent some time upstairs quietly snickering while trying to figure out how the heck to discretely sign a card that basically screams at you when you open it (reminiscent of the "Screamers" received by various characters in the Harry Potter series).

So, from the bottom of our hearts....THANK YOU MOM for all of the tireless help, advice and encouragement in the past several weeks. You are very solely missed out here by the three of us.

A Shorter Version of War and Peace

We have been adamant about reading to our future children, meaning that the House of Miller has been building up kid books for quite some time. Dad decided to treat Gwen to her first book, a touch and feel-type about animals. Although we don't expect to wake up one morning to find War and Peace by the side of her bassinet, at least she is getting used to hearing stories (and not just the tall tale fishing adventures her mom often told while she was in the womb).

Wascally Wabbits

This post is a special request from a particular roomie of the Bozeman variety. Jess provided us with a fun box for the babe, in which she had put several very cute outfits. To Eric's utter amazement, the color pink showed up every litte in her selections (anyone knowing Miss Jess will realize just how much constraint this took! :) ) Gwen was given the "Elmer hat" to top it all off. We think she will grow into her bunny hunting days quite well.

The Baby Bath (aka How to Hold a Slippery Little Tadpole)

Gwennie is officially clean behind the ears now several times over. The parental units are far too modest to say that they have perfected anything, when it comes to not getting soaked and/or assulted with tears, but we're making progress with the sponge baths. Hopefully, she takes after her Dad's enjoyment of swimming and has a brillant Micheal Phelps-like career (her mother sinks like a rock and isn't very happy in water deeper than a bathtub...) We swear half the fun of getting her clean is an excuse to use the little hooded towels on her!

We arrived home (FINALLY) on Monday - still another day later than planned, but we got her out of the "box." The first checkup was yesterday in Miles again. Gwen is in good health. In fact, our pediatrican laughingly informed us that she is definitely going to be "an active child" (hmmm, who guessed). Right now, Gwen is strong enough to hook her arm over the edge of the diaper changing table and turn onto her side without any help. This also means that diaper changing sessions are as brief as possible and eyes are fixed on the daugher at all times.

Anne is looking forward to fitting back into some of her clothes. It's pretty sad when a person gets excited about being able to wear early maternity wear vs the 4 ft long shirts needed to cover the massive basketball-sized tummy late in the months. Eric is celebrating the new child's arrival home by working to chink some of the logs inside and outside the living room to prepare for winter. Right now, he is perched on a ladder above, happily trying not to drop bits of the sticky chinking into his wife's hair and/or laptop. So, as usual, projects of all sorts abound at House of Miller.