Sunflowers and Moons

January

2010-01-31T08:39:00.001-07:00

Well the first month of the year has been pretty uneventful, which is not necessarily a bad thing! Marley and I started back at school, he missed it a lot, but it has been hard for me to get back into it. I just have one more term of real classes, then my student teaching and I’ll be done! At least for now…

Patrick has been somewhat slow at work, but he is busy trying to make all the little improvements that have to happen in the kitchen. Meliya loves spending time with “her Leslie”, her babysitter, but has been asking to go to school with her brother.

At the beginning of January, we spent a weekend with the Riebsomer’s at their ranch. It was a blast!

Chad taught Patrick all about the cows.

We did a little bit of sledding…

Patrick made us “Christmas Dinner”

It has snowed pretty good here the past two weeks, which means school delays and cancellations, and lots of playing in the snow!

Holidays… etc

2010-01-11T22:48:00.001-07:00

Our Holidays were really good, and really busy. Christmas Eve was spent at the Fuller’s Open House, then on to Grandma’s with the Santa Fe side of the family. Christmas Day was quiet, but fun. Santa was good to us this year, and Patrick’s excellent cooking skills were blessed upon us once again. He made a Christmas “dinner” of leg of lamb, mashed potatoes and green beans, all before he had to go off to work. The kids and I went to a very crowded movie, but they loved it.

The next day we were off to Ohio to spend Christmas with the Gharrity side of the family.

We missed the Oman side, it’s really hard not seeing them for the holidays, but we’ll be there next year. Hope all your holidays were filled with love and family. And may 2010 bring us all health and prosperity. We love you all!!!xoxoxo

FALL!

2009-11-27T16:34:00.001-07:00

The kids had a blast helping to clean up leaves in the backyard. They thought it was the greatest thing to jump in them.

Marley has been learning about Australia at school. The school had a fair to showcase all that they've been learning. Here are some pictures from it, although the quality isn't great. There were SOOO many people! It was really cool, he learned a lot from it. His class sang an Australian song at the end.

This week was Thanksgiving, and as you know, another busy time for Patrick. 80 Turkeys this year! Over 1600 pounds! He is ready for a much needed day off. We are so thankful to him and all the hard work he does.

Looking forward to this Sunday when we will cook together. Amazingly enough, he is not quite tired of looking at turkeys yet… still has one more in him!

We went to Bernadette’s yesterday for Thanksgiving.

As you can see, uncle Timmy didn’t leave hungry :)

HOPE EVERYONE HAD A HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

Catching Up…

2009-11-01T10:26:00.001-07:00

I know, I know, it’s been way too long since we have posted. The end of Summer is always so busy for us. End of Summer?..you say? Well for us, September constitutes as the end of summer because Patrick is still busy at work, although it feels like it should be slowing down. This year September ran into, well, November :) Well here is what we’ve been doing the past couple of months.

On September 13th, Marley turned 5!

On September 17th, I turned 29!

Not a great pic, sorry.

At the end of September, Grandma Katherine so graciously came to help us through Wine and Chile Fiesta Week.

Other highlights of September:

At the beginning of October, Patrick took some vacation time, and although most of it was spent relaxing, we did get out a little bit.

We went to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta for the first time. It was really cool, although the traffic was horrible. Next time we’ll take the train or go in the morning.

Marley thought this balloon was a crying onion :)

Here are a couple of other pictures of the Balloon Fiesta:

On October 14th, we celebrated Uncle Mikey’s 34th birthday with homemade pizza a la Patrick

Patrick’s 43rd birthday was October 18th

Then we were lucky enough to have Grandma Cathy come to help us take care of the kids at the end of October when Patrick had to cover other people’s vacations.

What a busy month! And finally, some Halloween pictures for you. Remember those pumpkins from our garden?

Marley was Superman and Meliya was Tinkerbell :)

Now, let’s get through November!

Into September

2009-09-06T08:38:00.011-06:00

Two weeks passes by so quickly and when I was thinking about posting another blog, initially I didn't think I'd have much to write about. But that's not necessarily the case. We have been so busy and if we didn't take pictures of almost everything we do, I would forget everything. Thank goodness for the digital age!

Well first of all, Marley started Pre-K! He has been so excited all summer. He is doing really well so far, his teachers are really nice and we are all adjusting. As predicted, Meliya had a hard time with him being gone, but I think she is adjusting too. She is not used to being without him, they are always together.

As you can see, she puts on her backpack and shoes every morning, she thinks she is going with him.
Proud little boy!
In other news, my little brother, Dan, came to visit from Oregon and to help tune-up our car. It was great to see him. We had a lot of fun together. We spent a lot of time at my house along with my older brother Mike as well.

Here is a cute video of Mike and Meliya at dinner time:

Patrick and I went on a long overdue date this week. We had dinner at Terra. It was really good, but the company was better :) It was nice to be together for a few hours.
Other than that, we've been hanging out with friends and family a lot. And I have to say, thank goodness for my cousin Bernadette, she helps us a lot with the kids and we are always glad to return the favor. Oh yeah, especially now that our babysitter, Anna, had to go off to New York to get a real job or something :( We are going to miss you Anna! Good luck in your new adventures!

Lazy Summer Days

2009-08-18T21:05:00.019-06:00

Haha yeah right. I wish we had some lazy summer days, there is never a dull moment in the Gharrity household. I swore that I would get everything done during my break between terms that I didn't have time to do at the beginning of summer, and of course it didn't happen. Now I'm scurrying around trying to get everything done all at once. On the list for this week: Garage sale, clean out closets, get ready for Marley and me to start school, and apply at SFPS. I can't believe Marley is starting Pre-K next week! I know it will be so good for him, and he will absolutely love it, but I just can't imagine him not being home all the time! I think Meliya is going to have a hard time with him being gone during the day. She is so used to him being there to play with her, and he really does take care of her. But I also think it will be good for her to have more daddy and mommy time.
So since I was feeling the summer crunch, I decided we needed to accomplish at least one of the things I told the kids we would do this summer: Ride the train. If you are not familiar with the Railrunner, it's the train that now runs from Santa Fe to Belen. Pretty cool. So on Saturday afternoon, I packed up the kids and we got on the train to Albuquerque. We spent the night in a hotel, went out to dinner, swimming, and lots of jumping on our king size bed until the kids were really good and worn out. The next day, Patrick graciously drove to Albuquerque (the train doesn't run on Sundays) and took us to the zoo!

It was pretty hot.

But lucky for us, there was a place to cool off.

We had a blast. The kids were so good, they really did well on the train, in the hotel and at the zoo. They are true adventurers. I love how the more adventures I take them on, the more I feel like we can branch out and do more. I guess it's part of growing up. For all of us :)

Now it's time to get ready for school. *sigh*. Summer's almost over, Patrick is midway through the busiest month of the year, next weekend is one of the busiest weekends of the year for Santa Fe, Indian Market. Yep. Never a lazy day in the Gharrity household. ~Trish

Into the woods...

2009-08-05T20:53:00.039-06:00

We did it! It took some creativity...

The kids were totally comfortable and contained nicely...

And thanks to our new Thule, we were

able to fit everything we needed for 3 days...

We had a blast, it was so nice just to be together. We went up north between Questa and Red River in a campground called Columbine Canyon. The weather was great, it only really rained when we first got there after we set up our camp. It poured on us! We drove around for awhile while we waited for it to pass and when we came back to the campground, we saw that a different amazing site opened up near the river. So being the insane people that we are, we packed everything back up and re-set up camp near the river. We carried our tent to the other site. It was great. Our kids were looking at us like we were crazy people. This is why Patrick and I go so well together. No one else I know would take down their fully set up camp after only an hour of being there and drag their two very young children to a whole completely different site just so we could be by the river. Gotta love it. This is our spread :)

We went on this really cool hike that supposedly takes you about 9 miles up the canyon to a wildflower meadow. We obviously didn't make it that far, but it was a nice hike for what we accomplished. The kids were real troopers.

And considering Patrick carried an extra 30 pounds on his back, I guess you could say he was a trooper as well.

Patrick built us amazing fires and cooked fantastic meals.

We can't wait to do it again!

In other news, I FINALLY finished Marley's quilt I've been working on for months. He picked out all the fabrics and I pieced it all together. I think it came out pretty good, and he likes it so that's the most important thing.

Eleven Years in Santa Fe, Ten Years @ La Casa Sena

2009-07-25T00:10:00.009-06:00

I passed my ten year anniversary with 'La Casa Sena', July 1st. The company gave me a generous gift. See photos, now we can camp with one car!

Summertime in the City

2009-07-24T23:45:00.007-06:00

It's Friday night, the week is over. My insane two days of working/studying for 9-15 hours are over. Tomorrow begins my weekend. Patrick's insane two days of working 9-15 hours are just beginning with Spanish Market this weekend. Ah... so it goes. In one week as of Sunday, we are disappearing into the forests of New Mexico. We made it a point this year to take time to camp for at least 3 days and 2 nights. We are definitely needing the family time. Patrick and I are confused as to what day it is and the kids are discombobulated. But not to worry, we will find ourselves and reconnect again shortly. I just can't believe how fast the summer is passing us by!

On Monday, the kids and I met up with Claire (my other, other half), the twins, and Grandpa Guy to listen to music on the plaza. Patrick joined us briefly but Chad was too far away at work this time to partake in the adventures.

Gotta love it :) We actually attemped to sit down and have lunch at a restaurant after, but as you can imagine with 4 very small children outnumbering us 3 adults, it was a little... well um... quick :). But we gotta do it. Without the insanity, there is no fun to life. No stories. No laughter. Gotta have the laughs!

Marley In Action

2009-07-20T08:15:00.000-06:00

These are from Marley's game on Saturday. I swear the kid's a natural.

Maybe he'll be the next David Beckham :-)

In other news, we have lots going on this week. Patrick is doing a beer dinner on Tuesday night in Albuquerque. Spanish Market is this weekend, a huge weekend in Santa Fe, so of course Patrick will be preparing and working all weekend for that. I am starting to get ready for finals (already!) and so since Patrick will be working a lot, its up to me to keep the kids occupied. Wish me luck!

Summertime

2009-07-17T18:51:00.000-06:00

It seems like summer is going so incrediblely fast! Here are a few pictures to show what we've been up to...

...I know you can't really see, but that's Marley and I at the left at one of his soccer games. Patrick and I are coaching his team, and it's tons of fun! I will post more when we get them...

...Hanging out in the wilderness as much as possible (which isn't as much as we like but we take what we can get)...

...and of course our garden is in full swing. Pumpkins, squash, watermelon, tomatoes, green beans, green chile, carrots, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, radishes, and corn. And in true chef fashion, lots o' herbs. Can't wait till harvest time!