Settling in...

So we're here. Our stuff has safely arrived, and though I wouldn't yet called us "settled", we're at least all here.

And things are good. I won't deny that it will take some adjustment. I called up the Post Office in Paonia the other day because I forgot to have my mail forwarded before I left. I told them my name, and the lady on the phone said, "Oh, Erynn Wilcox. How can we help?...We'll just hold on to your mail until we get your forwarding slip!" The lady at the Post Office knew me by name.

When I would go to the hardware store, they would ask me how my baby was--or why I hadn't brought him with me. They would remember what project we were working on, or comment on the new bright blue paint job on my shed.

I couldn't walk downtown without saying hello to 4 or 5 people that I knew. The girl at the grocery store remembered that I always use my card as debit and not credit. The man at the lumber yard recognised our car AND our dog!

Saturday night I went grocery shopping to fill our barren refrigerator. (Why is it friDge, but refriGerator?) I went to a giant discount supermarket here in Meridian. I think there may have been as many people inside as live in the town of Paonia. I had to go thru at least 5 stoplights to get there, and it took me over an hour to find my way around once inside. I know this is how most people in this country live, and I know it's how I used to live. But this is definitely going to take some readjustment. (On the upside, my entire grocery shopping trip cost less than $100; a feat hardly possible for as much food at Don's Market...)

I'll have pictures soon--as soon as I can find where we put the memory card reader for the computer!

Hooray! Hooray! We're on our way!

Actually, we're here. We have arrived safely in Boise, ID. The move has gone well (so far...we're still waiting for our stuff) and the job seems to be a good one. Carson and Seamus are adjusting well (you know how territorial 8-month old babies can be), and I'm just waiting for furniture so I can turn our new apartment into home.

It's actually a really nice place. Boise/Meridian seem alright. We actually saw a sunset last nite. (The one drawback to the location of our house in Paonia is that it was right up against a hill on the west side, so we never got very good views of the sunsets.) The apartment was nice and clean, and decently new. (I have my own laundry room! Oh, another drawback to our Paonia house was that the "laundry room" was barely bigger than the washer and dryer. The dryer had to sit so its door could open out into the laundry room doorway, and you had to slide into the room in front of the washer and then open the dryer door in order to move clothes from the washer into the dryer. I loved my house...but it was 80 years old.)

Mostly I have just been driving around, checking things out, playing fetch with Seamus, and trying not to freeze my patootie off. It hasn't broken freezing since we got here, and hung mostly just under 20 degrees yesterday. The locals say this is unusually cold, and it's not much more so than Paonia, but it's still ICY!

Well, seeing as my computer hasn't arrived yet, and I'm at the library, I have no pictures to include in this post. So I'll make it mercifully short. Hope all is going well in Christmas preparations!

Seamus is My Favorite Pal

I like my dog. His name is Seamus. He is a border Collie. He was born on March 18, 2007.

Seamus thinks he is the king of dogs.

Seamus has lots of energy. He likes to play fetch,

climb trees,

play dog trials,

have snowball fights,

jump,

play with Carson,

and pick on smaller dogs.

But sometimes, he just likes to sleep. And when he sleeps, he grunts when I scratch his ear.

Attack Baby!

This may not look very scary to you, but to the unsuspecting shower-er who didn't hear the door open, and only saw it out of the corner of her eye, it caused quite a fright!

(Queue the violins: Ree! Ree! Ree! Ree!)

Ode to Carson

Since every mother (hopefully) believes that her baby is the cutest baby in the world, I don't think it would be a sin to say the same about mine. So here is a Photo Ode (is there such a thing?) to my little Schnoogie.

Carson Neil Wilcox
b. 11 April 2008

Carson has been pretty easy from the beginning. It was a lovely, healthy pregnancy, and a delightfully short and simple delivery.

Austin had it pretty easy too, and was impressed with the outcome.

Carson slept a lot at home. The majority of my pictures from the first few months are of him sleeping.

No matter what your opinion is of co-sleeping, I enjoyed it while he was tiny. He was (and still is) so precious, I could hardly stand to be away from him! (Which isn't to say that I don't now revel in the fact of having my bed back to just me and Austin again.)

His yawning faces still rank among my favorites.

I'm attempting to promote photo-geneticity (is that a word?) in Carson early on. So far so good!

Still sleeping like an angel.

By about 4 months, he was able to lift his head up comfortably from his belly. I'm not sure what is "normal", but I was pleased with the progress. (Human babies stay helpless for so long!)

Sometimes, for fun, Carson dresses up like the Dalai Lama.

No matter what he may tell you when he's older, Carson loves his mama.

Seamus is still trying to decide what he thinks of this usurper of my lap.

Currently, Carson loves eating/making a mess from his high chair;

Going for walks with mom or dad in his stroller;

Going crazy in his bouncy chair;

And bath time.

Cute though he is, he can definitely be mouthy. I hope this trend doesn't continue.

Yep, Carson loves his mama.

A Better Mousetrap

Or, Not So Smart Afterall.

(Warning: This posting is not for the faint of heart.)

I decided last nite that I no longer cared whether our mouse was seemingly smart, or even potentially cute when I heard him chewing on something inside our wall. So I bought a better mouse trap. End of Story.

Halloween Answers.

Okay. The answers to who was what for Halloween are now posted at the bottom of the "Who ARE These People?" post. Thanks for playing!

From This Valley They Say You Are Going...

Two and a half months ago, Austin was informed that he no longer had a job at Chaco. It was a complete shock and we took the weekend to grieve. But then we took a deep breath, looked ahead and said, "Okay, what's next?"

Would we be able to get another job? Would we stay here (and have Austin work in the coal mines) or go elsewhere? Should we put our house on the market now or wait? Should we go to China to spend a few months adventuring and visiting Austin's brother and sister-in-law? The options were endless, but some out of our control, and how to decide between them anyway?

We did a lot of things. We did put our house up for sale. (see http://www.paoniarealty.com/wilcox.html) We looked into getting a passport for Carson. We enjoyed our new found free time and went to Lake Powell and my Uncle Carter and his family. And we went on a two-and-a-half week, 3,500 mile road trip to visit companies and see what opportunities were out there.

View Larger Map

We drove from Paonia to American Fork, UT; then on to Boise, ID; Bend, OR; Portland, OR; Corvallis, OR; Tacoma/Seattle, WA; Moscow, ID; Post Falls, ID; Bozeman, MT; and back to Salt Lake City and home again to Paonia. Sometimes we camped (once, as displayed by Carson); sometimes we stayed in hotels (twice); but mostly we stayed with friends and family--some of whom we hadn't seen for years! It was pretty intense and long, but we learned a ton about what would be a good job for Austin, and where we would be willing to live. It was amazing to realise how many people I know in most of those areas. In fact, now that we're home, I think I missed a couple. Sadly, we weren't very good at taking pictures on this trip. There are only a couple, but here they are below.

The week we got home, Austin received a call from a raft-building company in Boise called AIRE. They build whitewater rafts, fishing boats, and some industrial and military supplies as well. They had been needing to hire an engineer, but hadn't posted a position yet. When Austin showed up, it was somewhat serendipitous to them. And they were so impressed with Austin, that it has turned out to be serendipitous to us as well! After a couple weeks of evaluating and bargaining, they have offered Austin a job at an acceptable salary!

Austin's start date with AIRE is December 17 (my parent's 29th wedding anniversary, actually), so we have just over a month to get things sorted out here (including finally tackling the job of fixing our wretched foundation and packing up all of our stuff) and then we're off onto a new life adventure! Woo hoo!

It's weird, of course. I moved a lot growing up. And then I was a transient student and missionary for a long time too. But moving here was the first time I felt like I was able to--and supposed to--put roots down. Plus, we love this area--I loved it from the first moment I set eyes on it when Austin was visiting as a Chaco Intern. So leaving here will definitely take some adjustment.

And soon we're off to Boise, ID. Back to tract suburbia and big box stores. I've gotten pretty good at not spending frivolously out here in the boonies. We'll have to see how I do with daily access to a Target!

Who ARE These People?

Happy Halloween! (Yesterday/tonite, depending on how weblog savvy you are, and what time zone you're in.) Ever since we met, Austin and I have made it a point to dress up lavishly each Halloween. The year before we were married, he was a pimp and I was his, well, let's just say "side-kick". (I wish I had pictures.)

The first year we moved to Paonia, I was a hula girl (skirt made from all natural Chaco webbing scraps!) and Austin was, yet again, the pimp. (The outfit was too cool to not be brought out again.) I do have a picture of that one. We actually won 1st and 2nd place at the Chaco Halloween Costume competition.

Last year I went as a cave woman as part of the theme for my department at work. We all came as cave persons. Austin went as me, 8 1/2 months pregnant. We were in the top 3 for the competition again.

This year, with Austin not being at Chaco anymore (I secretly think they let Austin go before Halloween so he wouldn't steal the show again), I was afraid there wasn't enough incentive to really dress up. I was wrong. Although I only went in to work for 2-3 hours, I still scrounged together an outfit. And Austin and Carson were able to pull off some pretty spiffy costumes as well for the evening. See if you can guess what we all are:

And here's one of the family, together, in perfect, costumish, harmony:

Happy Halloween!

The Answers:

I am a fortune teller/gypsy.

Austin is Ralph Wiggam from Simpsons--dressed as Idaho.

Carson is a "Small Time Crook".

One Smart Mouse

Recently we have discovered that we have a pet mouse. "No, no," you say. "That isn't right. You don't find pet mice. You find pest mice."

Well, I would normally agree, and that is certainly what I thought at first. But now I'm beginning to wonder. Two nites ago, Austin announced that he had seen a mouse run under our dryer in the laundry room. He told me he was setting a trap with peanut butter.

The next day, Austin came to me from the laundry room, a little perplexed. "That mouse has licked the peanut butter off my trap--twice!" So he set it again, this time with a hair trigger and surrounded it with tall objects so the mouse would have to step down onto the trap to get at the peanut butter.

Tonight after dinner, Austin said, "Guess what the mouse did while we were eating?" (Our laundry room door is right next to the "dining room" table. It's a small house.) Sure enough, I checked behind the dryer where the mouse trap was, apparently untouched, except that it was missing a large portion of peanut butter from the trigger area. I think I even saw little mouse tongue marks in what he left behind!

Did you ever read the book, The Mouse and the Motorcycle? I'm beginning to think we have a little Ralph S. Mouse on our hands here. (The 'S' is for 'Smart'.)

I think I shall be sad if we ever do catch him. You think I should leave a little toy motorcycle out for him?

Conquest on Mount Lamborn!

Two weeks ago, Austin and I set off on a most excellent adventure. Well, let me start from the beginning. Since moving to Paonia, we have had a goal to climb the highest peak in our area: Mount Lamborn. (Pictured above.) It's not the highest mountain anywhere, only 11,400 ft, but it's steep, and it's the first mountain at the edge of the desert, so it shoots pretty quickly upwards. It's also the mountain that we have seen outside our front door every day--towering over our house, taunting us to dare make the journey upwards.

We had actually tried to climb the mount once before, about two years ago, but it turns out that the trail head is pretty difficult to find. If you're ever trying to hike it, find good maps! And here's what the trail head looks like:

It may seem odd that I finally got up the guts and the gumption to do this 6 months after the birth of my first child. Many of you may be familiar with my pre-Austin thoughts on hiking--most particularly with my story of the miserably failed attempt to hike Mount Timpanogus in Utah. (Made it, like, half-way up, and after being passed by several older and more decrepit looking people than myself, I lay down on a pile of rocks and took a nap whilst waiting for the remainder of my party to return.) But since we are looking at having to leave the area soon and we hadn't done it yet, I figured we'd better get a move on!

So we grabbed our GPS, strapped Carson into the Kelty pack, put a pack on Austin with all our jackets, hats and scarves in the event we met cold or inclement weather on the peak, and made Seamus carry a back pack with all our food, baby supplies, and other such necessities and headed up the mountainside.

We decided to take the Bell Creek route, as it begins closest to our house, and there is apparently a less likely chance to get lost approaching the mountain from this direction. (Although that didn't keep us from getting lost last time.) This meant that we had to test the mettle of our Subaru to see if it could make the drive up the narrow, rutted, crazy dirt road to the trail head. But we were not disappointed. The Subie made us proud.

So we started our hike at approximately 7400 feet elevation, and climbed to the 11,400 ft peak.

Here are some of the cool bits of scenery along the way:

Carson's not really scenery, but he's cool.

(Austin is our resident budding photographer. As soon as we get my birthday/Christmas/his birthday camera next week, he'll be able to take really good pictures!)

Below is Needle Rock, a very prominent rock formation around the back side of Lamborn, outside the town of Crawford. You can't really tell from this picture, but our friend's Jeff and Tawnya have a house just in front of this rock. Their roof is so shiny that you can see it from miles around. We could see it from where we stood on the mountainside.

This picture of Needle Rock is from Google Maps. It's from the other side of the rock, but gives you a better idea of what it looks like. I believe it's a volcanic core.

The last 1000 vertical feet to the summit are pretty steep. You climb up some incredibly steep, windy, switchbacks through tall grass on a trail that is barely worn. About halfway up this last bit, I finally had to give up on carrying Carson, so Austin ditched his pack and carried him for me. We still made Seamus carry his load. (We were determined to find something that would actually tire him out!)

And when we finally reached the peak, it was not without some misgiving that I watched Austin carry my child up the last boulder. Yes, that is a picture of Austin doing some light bouldering at 11,000 feet with Carson strapped to his back.

And here we are at last, sitting on top of the highest point in Delta County. I wish there had been a way to take a picture looking down on us so you could see what it looked like around us, but as it is the highest point in the county, it was difficult to find something taller to put the camera on. Or, in other words, we didn't haul a tripod up with us.

Here's a better picture of what the summit looks like from a distance.

Yes, we sat on top of that boulder. Baby, dog, and all. (And Seamus wasn't crazy about being on top of a wind blown rock with nothing else around it. Silly dog. Afraid of candles and heights!)

This is a picture of our valley. You can actually see where our house is in this picture, but it's so teeny, and it's kindof hidden by the church across the street. We're more or less dead center in the picture.

This is me, performing motherly duties at 11,000 feet. I have to say, Carson was a champ. He pretty much slept or babbled happily almost the entire way up. He didn't cry at all until Austin had him for the last bit of the climb. And then all he wanted was some food and a fresh diaper! He's certainly managed to make his first summit at a much younger age than his mom!

Although the hike took us nearly 6 hours to go up, it only took 3 hours to return. It was a good thing too, because we made it back to our car at just barely the last drop of sunlight. We did stop, along the way however, to take this shot of some bear claw marks in an aspen tree that were higher up than Austin's head. That's a big black bear! Glad we didn't meet him in person!

So I have to say, after putting off even the thought of attempting another 11,000 foot summit, this one really wasn't so bad. It was a little cathartic. I think I may be ready to head back to Utah County one day soon and tackle Mt. Timpanogus. There really is no feeling like standing on top of a mountain and looking around at everything below--especially when everything below is area you recognize. It was a beautiful view, and I have a completely different perspective when I walk out of my house and see the mountain now. I can look at that pointy rock on the top and say "I've been there! Yeah!"

(Also, as I typed this, I watched Carson scoot around to grab something he couldn't reach for the first time!)