johnnie

we lost my grandmommy yesterday.
my grandmommy, johnnie hutchison,
whose frame is teeny-tiny
but voice is big and strong.
i was so lucky to have her as a kindered spirit.
we don't get many of those in life.
i am infinitely thankful for her for multiple reasons,
for the excellent job she did raising my
beautiful mom and jack,
and how devoted she was to my grandaddy,
for spending so much time with sean and me growing up,
for the countless hours i spent at her house in college,
not even including our weekly lunch dates,
for her kind heart,
for her tough exterior,
for her magnetic personality,
excellent cooking,
for her elegant style,
and how so many of my friends considered her their grandmommy as well,
for her support of any adventure my brain could come up with,
for her delight in hutch and elsa,
loving them,
giving them attention and always engaging them even though
she couldn't hear the majority of what they were saying.
..and the list goes on and on.

Grandmommy loves Jesus, and i can't imagine how amazing this Christmas will be for her.
But we miss you, gmommy, and hutch was really looking forward to showing you the two newest monster trucks in his arsenal, team suzuki and batman, so that will be tough to explain.

And mom, thank you, thank you, thank you for your perfect care of her.

Raul

we have a black bear, raul,
that has routinely visited us this fall.
he's a cute fella, big but cute,
but nocturnal, so it's hard to get a good picture of him.
this is the only one we have. and i just realized you can't
really see raul at all.
i feel like a crazy lady insisting i see
the profile of Mary on my toast or something,
but i promise if you look closely,
and probably for a long time,
you can see raul's silhouette.
or maybe you'll just have to take my word for it.

flashback friday...farm party style

so, the other day,

elsa pushed a couple of keys on the keyboard,

and erased all pictures from the past six months.

she managed to do something in one second

that would take me a year (minimum) to figure out how to do.

and to know me is to know it would never occur

to me to back pictures up on an external hard drive,

so all i have left are pictures i hadn't deleted from my camera yet.

hence, a flashback post.

right before elsa's bday and

while all grandparents were in town,

the farm behind our house, peas farm,

threw one wonderful party.

they grew all of the yummy eats served that night,

along with wine and beer from the vineyard up the road

and the brewery downtown.

it was a really, really beautiful event.

everyone there was smiling,

and hal said he felt like he had been teleported back to

boulder in the sixties. great day, great day.

just look at this cute couple! i think this is my favorite picture

of my parents.

grEEtINgS EaRTHliNGS....

happy halloween from our little astronaut and his martian sidekick.

our section of our neighborhood
was built within an apple orchard,
so everyone gets together annually,
picks apples, and presses all of them into
cider.
this year there was an unusual
cold snap (so they say),
so the apples were frozen, turning a
3-hour process into more like a
10-hour process, but it was oh so yummy
and we have plowed through four gallons in
two weeks.
hutch thinks the coors made it, which is funny
because he was apart of the whole process,
but after every sip he gives kudos to aunt rebecca,
uncle shane, acey and the big boys, and jb. (i am not exaggerating)
all that to say we have one gallon remaining,
in our freezer, and it will be thawed just in time
for turkey day because
THE TROTTERS ARE COMING FOR THANKSGIVING!!!!!!

we like to move it, move it

i'm pretty sure alex is brainwashing hutch,
because the only music he claims to like is
guns 'n' roses and kings of leon.
however, give he and elsa an up-tempo pop song,
and they are both ready to groove.
we've started having nightly dinner dance parties...
i'm not gonna lie, it's a good time.

four years ago....

lots have happened in the following days:
two kiddos, three different states, three different houses.
hutch captured my feelings on alex perfectly today when he said
out of nowhere:
"i love my daddy. he's a nice and good man."
such a wise sage that boy is to speak such true words.

tonight, our ritual anniversary dinner: wings and beer. yum yum.

the day hutch's life changed forever

all it took
was one trip
to the missoula county fair's
demolition derby/motocross event
while cotter was in town
for hutch to see his true calling.

i wasn't able to get a good, un-fuzzy picture of him,
because he was far too busy cheering and
clapping with his hands above his head.
and now, all he does is talk about/play with motorcycles.

i was also suprised how much elsa loved dancing to the arena rock and
playing peek-a-boo with unsavory characters. that's my girl.

for the record, i am not comfortable with
how fearless hutch is on his scooter now,
let alone any potential motocross antics.

first visitor: kelly cotter in the house!

about a month ago, i think,
we were lucky to have cotter,
or Miss Kelly the Kayaker as she's known in our house,
in town for a visit, making her our first
official visitor
to sleep on our comfy air mattress
in an otherwise empty guest room.

cotter's great, up for any outdoor activity,
and fully able to laugh at nuances
in any situation.
Miss K.T.K was also willing to
spend quite a bit of time
figuring out what
smitty is up to these days,
an important quality in any friend of mine.
we definitely
got off to a great house guest start.

in the words of warren g....

'back up, back up, 'cause it's on.'

hmmm..guess it's time to play catch up.
we finally had our internets hooked up on monday.
prior to that, we were, ahem, borrowing from an unsecured
network in the area (thank you, dogsbreath, whoever you are),
making our connection spotty at best, and making uploading more than
one picture at a time nothing short of impossible.

so here we are. i present to you a misceallaneous slideshow of our happenings
in the past few months. there are more to follow of our slew of visitors: cotter, our parents, the coors, as well as other standout events, but i figured this would be the easiest way to get a glimpse of our life here, at least prior to alex starting work a couple of weeks ago.

i am in love with missoula. every day has involved hiking, biking, throwing rocks in the river, visiting the local farm, and going to the farmer's market. the beauty of it all? the farmer's market is the only thing not within walking distance, and even that is just a fifteen minute bike ride downtown. our time here has been great. we have found a church, found new friends, and hutch starts saying,
"today has been a great day" or "sure is a pretty day today," every day around dinnertime.

reality set in a bit when alex started work, and i'm sure january-march/april will prove to be a strong dose of it as well, but it is so fun to get settled in a place where you know you won't be moving in a couple of years. and even more fun that i have a view of the mountains out of every window in our house.

happy birthday to this guy

off we go
to glacier
this weekend
to celebrate the birth
of one
alexander brockman jehle.

LADybUG....

when i asked your daddy
what phrase he thought best described you,
he instantly replied,
'sweet firecracker.'
i couldn't agree more.
i should have known you would have
such a zest for life
when you came on the scene so unexpectedly.
you operate with the 'ta-da!' mentality
and work with a fast and furious pace to keep up
with your brother. you WILL NOT BE LEFT OUT!!
you are so illuminated with happiness
and excitement that you look like a glo-worm,
just bursting with light.
you love to be around others, other kids, babies, to the point you have made other little ones a little guarded (freaked out)
from your exuberence.
however, you *usually* win them over with your lovely, loving self.
and, boy, can you dance, mama. if a good tune comes on, the rythym is going to get you, and i love all of the moves in your arsenal.
sweet e, your enthusiasm is greatly balanced with your cuddly, loving nature, and although you are a go, go, go kind of kid, you also equally go with the flow. it is very rare you are anything but joyful and good-natured.
i can't believe i am lucky enough to have you call me mama, i marvel at you every day and what an example you are of God's grace in my life. i cannot wait to see you, our little spitfire, grow, and to see what Christ has in store for you.

i am very far behind.
there are many things to post
from our first dreamy month in missoula,
but there is a far more pressing event at hand...
tomorrow our elsa is 1!












happy birthday to our sweet, sweet surprise.

so, we know probably three people in montana,
and i confess that one is our real estate agent,
and another is the selling agent who now lives across the street from us.
the third is a man named richard beighle,
who is also one of the nicest people i've ever met.
dr. beighle also happens to live on a cherry orchard on flathead lake.
last week we were invited (mostly by ourselves) to pick cherries
as the market is flooded and he wasn't going to be harvesting and selling them this year.
so away we went for a magical day of sun, water and picking. i really think i could have lived on that deck.

lunch at the lake

time to pick

signs of a successful day