Our weekend in wild, wonderful WV!

With permission from our midwife and our emergency birth kit and my medical records in hand, we headed to the hills Thursday afternoon for one last little family vacation away before we hunker down and eagerly await Spark's arrival!  I did chuckle this morning at the fact that should we have needed the emergency birth kit and had welcomed Spark in WV, we hadn't thought to throw in any clothes, a receiving blanket or the carseat.  So we really weren't prepared, but we are now safely at home and on Jason's list tomorrow is to clean out the car and get the carseat installed.  And we have no travel plans (farther than a family outing to the Grand Caverns on Jason's birthday Tuesday) before the birth.

Prior to packing up and heading to WV, I canned our very (for sure this time) last few tomatoes (one round of tomato paste and a few jars of green tomato curry).  By the end of the upcoming weekend, we'll have picked all our peppers and chopped up the plants to make space for us to get in there and dig sweet potatoes. We are feeling enthusiastic about the crop, as the sweet potato hills are pushing up the soil and sweet potatoes are sticking out of the ground.  It's one of our most enjoyable family harvests, which hopefully I'll get to participate in at least part of!

It felt good to Jason and me to get our pre-WV trip to do's done and to be able to leave home feeling eager for a weekend together as a family and with good friends.  I even left my computer at home and made a commitment to my family to be off email until we returned today. It was a lovely break, despite having over 100 emails in my inbox to wade through upon my arrival home.

The first leg of our trip took us back to Allegheny Mountain Institute for Jason to evaluate the flock of chickens he had given them back in the summer when we were there to give a day long chicken workshop.  He picked out 3 breeder hens from the flock for his Allegheny breed and after enjoying supper with the group there we headed to Harman, where we were until this afternoon.

This was our third annual Myers-Benner-Godshall-Showalter weekend at the Mountain House. It has quickly become one of the highlights of my year - a weekend that is full of many of our favorite things (lots of game playing, fabulous food, hikes in the mountains, watching kids enjoy their budding friendships, those of us in the middle generation getting to enjoy complete conversations while grandparents entertain the grandchildren, and this year some wild cranberry picking).

We got there about a day before the others and on a walk Jason and I noted that one of their apple trees was loaded.  So on the spur of the moment, Kali, Jason, Alida and Dad went and picked several bushels of apples and we added some applesauce making to the fun festivities of the weekend.   I was very grateful to Spark for not only staying in utero for the weekend but dropping such that my lungs had more capacity than the last time we were in West Virginia and for that reason I was able to enjoy a few energizing mountain hikes.

As is common after such a weekend, the youngest in our family is showing signs of a weekend of over stimulation, lots of fun minus daily naps and eating differently than she normally would at home.  So she is flopped on the bed behind me spouting out all sorts of unreasonable things in a whiny sing song voice.  I think a good night's sleep will be good for all of us as we kick off another week - and Jason and I both entering a new year of life.  So bedtime stories here we come! I'll end with just a few other pictures from the last few days...