Poco Mountain Girl

One year ago, we were snug as bugs in a rug in our snowy Colorado mountain home. We had no intention of moving, ever. But in March adventure came knocking, and we sold our house and moved east. Ever since then, we’ve been telling ourselves it will be worth it, we’ll find a place that feels like home where we can have a garden and goats and everything we love.

Today, we bought a farm.

We’re overwhelmed, a little dazed, and so happy. Over the next couple of months we’ll be moving little by little into our new place. Our kids are excited–they’ll have their own rooms, we’ll get some animals, and there is lots of room to run and play.  There are fields, a big garden, blueberry bushes, a pond, and even our own little forest. It’s like a dream:)

More pics to come!

Happy Thanksgiving! Here are some pics of the 3 days we spent at my brother Seth’s house in SC.  Mama and Papa came down from NY, and and five of my brothers were there. 

Mama and Papa

David, Jed, Hans

Seth, Papa, and Jed

Cash and Beppo

Kirke, our little baby brother. LOL

Kirke, Papa, Mama, Kit, and Zia’s hair

Kirke, Hans, Kit, and Zia

Jed and his baby girl, Aria

Mama and Aria

Seth and Cash.

Yep, it’s me…I’m back! Somehow the blog got away from me and I just realized it’s been over two months since I’ve posted, haha. Not sure how that happened, but here are some pics of our life since then.

Kindergarten artwork by Cash.

My crazy reds.

New wood to carve. I picked these out from the bargain bin at Klingspor’s Woodworking Shop in Cary, and little by little, I’m making my way through them.

A sassy little roadrunner for David’s parents. I added a cord so they can hang it from their rear-view mirror. Even better than fuzzy dice!

Steps in the process.

I carved it in butternut wood, and oiled it to deepen the wood tones before adding color.

A tiny fox for a custom necklace order. I’ll paint it, but I wanted to show the bare wood here. I carved it in red oak, which I really liked. It’s nice and dense–not splintery at all.

I’m nearing the end of an oil portrait commission. I find it challenging to work in color from a black and white photo, but it’s finally coming together–and I’m learning a thing or two along the way. Making skin tones here.

Speaking of color, FALL is here! And I’m loving it. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a real one. 🙂

This boy celebrated International Polka Dot Day with his class a while ago. Being the last-minute mama that I sometimes am, I painted the dots on his shirt that same morning.  Then we cut off the sleeves because he was too hot, haha. He got on the bus with wet dots and ragged sleeves. And he loved it.

More art from school. The top is Zia’s 3-D Koi watercolor project, the bottom is Pete the Cat, by Cash.

A small raccoon necklace for an Etsy customer.

And another order for a little bear necklace.

My kids learning to skateboard!

A new sewing pattern I’m illustrating for Meg at Sew Liberated.

Cover drawings for another pattern for Meg.

New shoes! Can you tell I like Vibram Five Fingers? David had me pick all these out online. I thought I would keep my favorite pair and send the others back, but I might just keep them all….

And finally, one of my favorites. Cash made this early one morning and brought it to me…”so we can all remember Colorado.”

I love it, and I can’t think of a better way to picture Colorado. Those happy mountain memories:)

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I’m sitting here in pure Carolina mugginess on a bench on my back porch. It’s the kids’ second day at school after their 3-week break, the day after America’s historic solar eclipse, and close enough to David’s return from NY that I feel like I can start counting down the days.

Though it’s been well over a month since July 12, I never posted my birthday pics, so I decided to put them here. There are so many faces of my life as I embark on another year, all my beautiful cards and flowers, little handmade presents from Zia, four Cinebistro tickets Cash somehow procured(!) and the gifts I enjoy every day–my sweet kids, a few bits of my art, and the man who fills my world with color.

Living in NC still feels new, and I still feel like a displaced Coloradan, but I can’t argue how incredibly good life is. I look at my crazy, spunky kids and it thrills me that I’m their mama. I’m on a journey to love them better, know them better, and respect who they are created to be. I’ve been entrusted with seeing them from babyhood to adulthood, and the gravity of that scares me a little–in a good way.

That man in the black cowboy hat treats me like a jewel, and I treat him like the solid rock that he is. We’re burnishing each other’s rough spots softer and smoother with every year that passes. Of course, I want him to stay a little rough.

We’ve made a home here in the south, or the east, whichever you want to call it. Our kids are happy at their school, I have time to do my work (I should be doing it right now), and David has an awesome job doing breakthrough technological things that I won’t even try to put into words, or I’ll completely reveal how non-techie I am. But on second thought, I’d just be revealing how very artsy I am.

I never want to take these things for granted, and I always want to be overwhelmed with God’s goodness toward me. I could pine for the mountains, or for a home of our own with goats and a garden, for the weather to be cooler and dryer, (or for the zillion bugs to take a hike instead of eating us alive) but the truth is that our life is right here, right now–and it’s going by at lightning speed. Before I know it, forty-two will be sixty-two, and then eighty-two. Like snapshots and lightning bugs, I want to catch bits of this life, hold them, and revel in them before everything changes again…because in a minute, it will. <3

From the whirlwind of July, we leaped into the dizzying sandstorm of August. Cash turned five on July 30, and we celebrated our boy with a cake (he wanted a blue wolf on it) and a night at the Siena Hotel in Chapel Hill.

These two pictures are so perfectly him–one minute a sweet little boy, the next a roaring lion.

I’m not sure why he wanted to attack his cake, but he did the same thing the next morning when the staff at the Siena surprised him with a birthday treat.

The day before Cash’s birthday, on Saturday evening, David’s grandfather Roman passed away at the age of 97. On Monday morning we packed up and flew to Albuquerque, then drove to Santa Fe.

We are finishing up our second week in David’s hometown. We attended the funeral services the first week, spent lots of nice days with David’s parents, and all worked together to clean out Grandpa Roman’s house.

Here are a few snapshots of our time in Santa Fe.

Grandpa Roman’s house.

A hummingbird nest by the house.

David walking in his grandfather’s field.

Roman Jaramillo in the Navy.

Roman Jaramillo as State Representative for New Mexico.

And these photos–just because I like them. These are David’s great-grandparents on his grandmother’s side, Prudencio Romero and Delfina Urioste. I think David’s likeness to Prudencio is striking. I might look a little like Delfina. 😉

David preparing to read at his grandfather’s funeral.

Ceremony with the Knights of Columbus. David’s mother and father, seated.

Going to Santa Fe National Cemetery for the burial.

David with the flag from the casket.

The cozy bed & breakfast we stayed at near Canyon Road art district.

Gate and yard to the b&b.

A couple of pics of the inside.

Ice cream at DeVargas Mall. The flavor they got is called Wild ‘n Reckless. 🙂

A few pics from the road our second b&b was on, at sunset.

David’s parents are always so nice to us. The kids love them, and I think we had one of our very best visits these past two weeks. They are so patient with my (wild ‘n reckless) redheads, and so generous with all they have. I made a few things for them while we were here:

This little jewelry set for Mom. I found pendants I thought she might like and added chains and ear wires.

This carved raccoon for Dad. He wanted one to hang from his Jeep’s rear-view mirror. That adobe wall is the side of our hotel–our third “home” since being here.

We’ve been enjoying the lack of humidity, the mountain views, and just being back in the West in general. The kids are even picking up a nice Santa Fe accent to bring back to the southerners at home.

Adios for now!

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