Many New Friends and Cousins!!!

Thank God for all these new friends and cousins, I was kind of getting tired of just mom and dad!.........hey, when am I getting a new puppy!!!!

5 weeks + 1 day

We though it best to let sleeping babies (and daddies) lie, so the pooch agreed to pose on a different couch for Week 5.

If Zack could talk, I'm sure he'd say that Dad's tummy is the best place for a nap.
And just in case you missed the most adorable little toes....

PS. We have a week 4 picture, it just hasn't posted itself yet.

3 Weeks Old!!!!!

...So here we are again pooch, one more week closer to controlling your life!!!




sssssnnnnnnnoooooooorrrrrrrreeeee.........................................................



aaagh.....oogghhh.......aaaarrrrrrrfffff............


heeeyyy!!.....no camerassssssss!!!!!!

2 Weeks Old!

I'm gaining on you pooch..........still need some help getting propped up though!

Keep it down out there, I'm trying to get some shut eye!

Gotta love these giant granpa hands!

Don't ask me what I'm looking at......it's still blurry!

1 Week Old!!!

Okay, so I'm having a rough time propping myself up now......but you'll see mr. pooch, soon I'll be tossing you around my room!.....maybe in a few months......

Getting Adjusted.....

eehhhh........I guess this place is okay?.............

Yah, this place ain't so bad....pretty comfy.....

......pretty damnnnn comfy!...........

....except for these giant hands that keep showing up???.....oh well............

Zachary is finally here!

After such a long wait here are some photos of our new son. Erica and Zack are doing great. The 36 hour labor took a toll on all of us, so we're going to take a nap now!

Zachary Cole Spotts Malootian

Born 2:02pm on February 21, 2008

7lbs. 10 oz.

20 5/8"

We are Ready!!!!!

So, the bed is ready, the tub is ready, Rob's ready and Erica is ready!!.........The question is, is he ready???? Even Erica's new shawl is ready, as you can see by the stylish model. She is already starting on my new scarf!....she's just a machine! We are in countdown mode. It is approaching. I know everyone is anxious and excited to find out the news, but please don't call us right now to find out. The least stress the better. Be sure that we will let everyone know when it happens. Until then you will all have to wait patiently along with us!

She was the bestest dog.

We miss her lots.

Ho ho ho

And the ever-popular Christmas petunias...

And then there were two.

There had to be sacrifices. Soup and pie must be made.

Santa Fe

We're back from our 10 days in Santa Fe. What a great place! So nice to go back again! We did a bit of everything--hiking, shopping, browsing, museums...it was relaxing and way too short!

You can check out more pics here. We took so many pictures that it was hard to whittle them down. Just a few highlights:

-Tent Rocks National Monument is amazing. We were intending to only do the easy loop, and then I said "Hey, let's just see if that [steeper] trail leads through the rocks. We don't have to do the whole trail." Well, it did, we ended up doing the whole thing, and were rewarded with the most amazing view.

-Bandelier is also fabulous, even though it started raining the second we stepped out of the visitor's center and onto the trail. But we had a great place to wait out the rain and again were rewarded with a fabulous hike.

-The Book suggests that you don't travel above 7000 feet unless you're used to it. Santa Fe, at about 6500 feet, was fabulous and I felt great. Taos, at about 7500 feet, was not so great and we weren't able to spend as much time up there as we would have liked. I hate when books are right!

-In my opinion, you should not be able to identify that what is crossing the road in front of your car going about 50 mph is, in fact, a spider. Just saying.

-Do not listen to Rob when he tells you that I buy too much yarn. He is a yarn-buying enabler. Had I gone yarn shopping alone, I would have returned with 6 fewer hanks than I did.

-We encountered some interesting people in Santa Fe: the worst plastic surgery job I think I've ever seen, the worst eyebrow pencil application, a pair of outfits which made me glad I'm not prone to seizures. But we met some of the nicest people, too: a hostess that got us into Cafe Pasqual's without reservations on a busy night, a lovely gallery owner (OK, so she wanted to sell us an amazing piece of pottery, but she didn't have to be that nice) , an artist that I met at the coffee shop because I wanted to pet his Neapolitan mastiff, Blue (who was 8 months old and had to be at least 200 pounds) who told us to call ahead to the gallery to make sure Blue was there if we wanted to visit him again, and lots of other people who just seemed to take the time to be nice.

And now we're home and back to work. Sigh.....

A new bench

I went home to PA last weekend, to see Mom and Dad, and to see Deb's new baby, Haley. It was a lovely weekend, despite the rather un-lovely heat.

Look what found it's way into my trunk as I was leaving:
A bench, walnut with oak legs, made by Dad. Too bad he doesn't make things that'll last!
It's absolutely perfect right there, by the back door to the mudroom. It's much more comfortable than the stoop for taking off our muddy shoes. It's absolutely gorgeous, too. I'm not sure my pictures do it justice.

Thanks, Dad!

Playing in the dirt

I think this might just be the adult version of playing in the sandbox. That said, all that "playing" has now gotten us a patio that's big enough for us to have the table on so we can eat outside! Particularly impressive given the 90+ degree heat we had this weekend, I think.
Abi helped, too.
And look what Geoff brought from the farmer's market! Black raspberries! (Because apparently, in his mind, providing back-breaking labor isn't enough). I'd gotten the blueberries this morning. So I ran back out to get some vanilla ice cream.
Seems like a pretty good way to top off a hot July weekend.

It's looking more like a patio everyday...

Rob has been working hard all weekend putting in the flagstone.
Here it is so far. He figures it's about 1/3 of the way done. It looks absolutely fabulous--we'll have the best patio in the neighborhood.
And a gratuitous picture of the butterfly bush by the side of the house, which seems to have enjoyed being abused by the contractors--it's never looked this good!

Our new patio

Well, perhaps you can use your imagination just a bit...

Rob took a week off while I was away to start digging up the backyard to put in a patio. He did most of what you see above, and all of what you see below. This weekend we finished the digging and most of the gravel. The next steps are to put in a bit more gravel, put in stone dust, then put in the flagstones. But that will have to wait for next weekend because at the moment we're both too sore to move.
All the dirt that was dug up had to go somewhere. Look who's Queen of the Mountain.