Tundra Topics: August 2008

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Welcome Iris!

Iris Ruby Ida Hale

Born at 5:08 am, Tuesday August 26, in Valparaiso, IN.

9lbs. 7 oz, 22 inches long.
Mom accomplished her goal of a natural, intervention-free birth (though it was really intense!)

Looks like her dad!

Esther with Auntie Erin at the big spitting fountains at Millenium Park, Downtown Chicago

Pictures of Summer & Fall 2006 Travels

We had a great summer of travel -- which extended into a great fall of travel after the tragic burning of Hooper Bay school gave us a few more months of vacation. Esther was 1 and a half this summer, turning 2 just a few days after we returned to Hooper Bay in November of 2006. Below are pictures going backwards from our last trip of the fall (to visit Sunny in California), our road trip to homecoming at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC, our train trip through Pennsylvania, New York, and Toronto, to our visit with Ya-Ya in Indiana, and our first campout ever in California!

Warren Wilson College Homecoming Celebration, October 2006

Esther and I took a ride on the draft horse wagon, around the farm valley. It was so great to take this road trip down to North Carolina and visit old friends (some of whom had never met Esther!) and show Esther all these places special to my heart. It was kind of wild to me that it was all new for her, that since she is so familiar to me and so are these places, that it was strange that she wouldn't know these places already. It was kind of wild to think of myself, without her, in college years earlier. It's really hard to imagine my life or myself without her, now. :)