And now for the holidays. 2011 brought a dearth of holiday celebrations. In fact, the only holiday we celebrated was Christmas. That’s what happens when you sell your house, move across the country, start working 90 hours a week and are pregnant-sick all the time. Now that Eole is two, I realize I need to step it up when it comes to celebrating holidays. I remember being two, and I don’t want her to look back and realize what a burn-out mom she had.

While still sick at Christmas, I did manage to finally finish our felt stockings. As a newly- wed couple, Dan and I pulled out our childhood stockings for our first Christmas together. Imagine our surprise to find that we both possessed home-made (and maybe a little homely) felt stockings. Thus began the dream to make new felt stockings for us and our future children. Eight Christmases later, I finally finished our first three!

I might have gone a little over-board for Easter this year…I bought four bags of candy for myself and a two-year old (Dan hates Easter candy, which is a down-right heresy in my book). The worst part is that I actually had to go to the store again because Eole and I had eaten most of that candy before Easter. Eole and I also participated in two Easter egg hunts. Although, she preferred to pick up a few eggs and then hide them again rather than keep them.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio… I don’t know about Joe, but I’ve been out of the blogging realm due to a parasitic infection. Luckily, it will be a parasite that we will love and adore when he is born on May 14th.

But in the meantime, the last several months have been rough and we’ve been running essential systems only. (for the first few months, the essentials didn’t even include clean laundry or food…thanks for flying out three times to help out, Mom!).Despite sickness and a very heavy work load, we have enjoyed our first year in North Carolina. Here are some highlights:

We love living only a mile away from the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. It’s like a little piece of Europe here in Durham.

Eole celebrated her 2nd birthday with her Auntie Jen and cousins and her Nana Anne and Dad-dad-dad Dave.

The mini cupcakes from Daisy Cakes were a big hit...especially because I didn't have to bake them (do you recall the disaster "flat"-cakes I made for her 1 year old birthday?)

We took a late September trip to Roanoke Island and the Outer Banks.

Eole triped and fell at the Settlers display at Roanoke Island. Her knee got scrapped up and was bleeding. For weeks afterward, whenever she couldn’t get what she wanted, Her “old trick knee” would start acting up and she would start rubbing her knee and say “Ouch! Knee!”

Why-oh, why-oh, why-oh, why-oh did I ever leave Ohio…..

Having spent most of our married life in Ohio, I thought it only right to give her a proper farewell salute. What we loved about Ohio Top 10 List:

10: German Town and its quaint churches, shops and cobblestone streets. We will never forget Schmidt’s cream puffs either.

9: Where can you find the world’s largest pumpkins and a festival to commemorate them? Why, Circleville, of course.

8: The most wonderful zoo I have ever been to…if only Baby Girl had been born sooner!

7. The world’s largest roller coasters at King’s Island Park where we learned that we will never be “old” enough (or brave enough) to ride the big kid rides.

6: Unusual weather. In addition to frequent tornado sightings, we experienced a hurricane that left our condo community looking like “Little Guatamala” for nine months. Hurricanes in the summer and ice storms in the winter….Ohio made us appreciate garages…and feel our lack of one.

5: The Renn Fair. While willing to eat turkey legs and watch jousting tournaments, we draw the line at purchasing swords or dressing up in 16th century regalia….but you may call me a “saucy wench” if you’d like.

4: Crazy-wonderful co-workers. Working at Huntington Bank involved producing amazing potluck lunches, and wining the yearly Halloween contest.

3: OSU football. Not for us, but for you, Dad.

2: Fall Foliage….nuff said.

1: Our Baby Girl’s birthplace. I was literally “showered” with gifts by three baby showers! Our baby girl didn’t have a lot of family in the area, but she sure had a lot of people close by who loved her.

June is busting out....

After a most delightful trip to Utah, we faced the great plains yet again and returned to Ohio for Dan's Med School graduation.

Yes, now he finally lives up to his action figure doll Jen gave him 4 years ago: "Doctor Dan!" Thanks to Nana and Papa's help, we loaded our moving truck in one afternoon (the girls provided the drinks and food, while the boys did the manual labor...don't you just love gender inequality?).

Within 48 hours of graduation, we were living in North Carolina. With another month to joyfully kill before the proverbial intern "poop" hit the fan, we decided to let sleeping boxes lie, and explored the gorgeous white sand beaches.

We sho can git use ta livin in da south

May = Vacay

With our destiny finally decided for the next four years, we could finally focus on what really matters: VACATION! With a month of disposable time at our fingertips, a house sold, and a house found, we loaded in the car and trekked off to Utah to CAMP--errr--and to see family.

We broke up the trip with a way too short visit with Susie and these two darling little pixies.

Once in Utah, our first stop was to the Zoo with Jen and the boys. The carousel was a highlight.

There was no reason to leave Steve's playground-of-a-house. Eole discovered a new joy of "jumping" on the trampoline and earned her first skinned knees on the paved badminton court.

We were happy for a chance to see these good looking kids as well, and to go to Jackson's orchestra concert.

Then, we met up with Daniel's first love: San Rafel Swell, for camping with the grandparents.

Nana and Papa Pugmire rounded out the whole vacation by taking us on another breath-taking tour of S. Utah with trips to Capital Reef, Bryce, and Zion.

How did Eole fare with the Great Outdoors? She did very well, thank you.

April

It's been a crazy few months involving two cross country drives, selling our house, and finding a new place to live...in another state. Here is the recap for March/April:
Just when we thought we had the condo in top shape for a possible sell, we discovered these nasty boys living under our deck.

And so, instead of spending the eve of match day fretting about where the "magical match machine" was to send us for the next four years, we spent the night ripping up our deck and exterminating these squatters.

Match Day came, and brought with it the pleasant surprise that we would be heading to.....Duke in North Carolina!!It took two trips to Durham to convince Julia that this was not the murder/drug/gangsta den that she feared. It took only one trip to convince both Julia and Daniel that after four years of home-ownership, they simply couldn't go back to smokey, noisy (not to mention walking a half mile to dump your trash) apartment living. By what can only be described as divine intervention, we found a dream home to rent for an absolute steal in a lovely neighborhood. The charming brick rambler includes hardwood floors,two bedrooms, a library with built in bookshelves, a family room, living room, dining room, HUGE kitchen, and wait for it.......A GREEN HOUSE. What really sealed the deal was that our car broke down in the driveway. In order to save from further embaressment, we wrote the lease cheque while waiting for the tow truck.

Back in Ohio, Eole was a great help with the finishing touches of packing

Doing Hard Work

This Thursday is the "big day" that will let us know where we will be going for the next four years for residency. Yes, it is the long awaited, highly anticipated "Match Day." We each handle our stress for this in different ways. Daddy's way would be to bask on a beach in Maui. Mommy's way is to prepare for the possibility that we will be moving. Due to time restrictions and finances, Mommy's way has won. We have been repainting, repairing, re-fixing and re-packing boxes every day. It's not that we want to leave our little home, in fact, now that it is in top shape, we'd be thrilled to find out that we are staying. Little Baby Girl has been subjected to Mommy's endless shifting and re-shifting of items as you can view in the above video. We had to move the food storage upstairs to repair a wall downstairs. Then we moved the food storage back downstairs, and, well, Baby Girl had to help.