Roger That?

Winter creeps around the confines, animals burrow deep, and I sit wondering how one best rouses a blog from hibernation.

Two seasons sidled by-- summer bright and brazen, fall less blazing than I would have liked. Too many days, gray and slick, strung together like beads on string. A few weeks of shocking cold, a day of snow, and then a welcome, balmy wind to help us shake a fist at winter.

It's nearly Thanksgiving, and I don't know how to begin again.

I give thanks for more than these, but for these I give thanks...
-four months spent in our trailer. I can't explain how much I loved this short season in our lives.

-two and a half months spent in the old hilltop homestead. Our footsteps on bare board skim the paths worn down by three generations of family whose space we now occupy. There's too much good to fully show here.

-an end in sight. After seven months of hoop-jumping, paper-filing, and phone-calling, we hope to have a closing date within the next month.

-new life. Though the swell of my six-month belly shouts the news even to strangers, sometimes this baby still seems like a wonderful secret-- the kind that fills every last space. A Blackcap Baby. Tiny limbs trace the contours of my belly with kicks and squirms, a rhythm so familiar that I sometimes forget that they're the language of our new child, speaking at all hours with the only words she knows.

We don't have Internet access and don't have plans to Get Some, but when we form some comfortable ruts (i.e. finally finish unpacking), I'll try to make it to the library every week or so to keep in touch with anyone who still checks this.

That is, if anyone still checks this.

(If so, I'm sorry for so many sentence fragments. We're on Long Island at the end of a wonderful visit with our family, and my brain is fried by too little sleep and too much rich food. - - - - - - Yes, I realize that "eating for two" is no excuse for eating for ten, but I use it anyway, and you're duty-bound to accept it, all right?!)

***I have lots of recipes to post. I'll put a post here whenever I put them on buildabelly. Plus, I misplaced a month's worth of pictures. Where are Mildred's birthday pictures?! She's seven years old now! Where are the haying pictures? Where's the picture of 2 inches of snow in mid-October? WHERE is the picture of Annika's head inside my belly?!?!?!? (For real.) I'll let you know if I find them.

***Oh. and forgive the jumble. Fall/Summer/Fall/Summer

***And NOW it's half an hour before we leave, and I'm going to tack words onto dozens of pictures, so I also apologize for the lame quality of the forthcoming posts.

***Still with me? Good. I had to mess with my template to fit giant pictures, and I had to use giant pictures because my flickr account is maxed for the month. Scroll to the bottom of the page to hit more posts. You wouldn't want to miss any giant pictures, would you?

Really, it's been five months.
What did you expect?