so i was...

...looking at pictures of 4 years ago. i was 9 months pregnant with who we then called "junior", a baby who moved around so much it sorta looked like the exorcist prego belly (you could see her moving around across the room. not just, 'hey, i just saw your belly move'...more like 'WHAT THE HELL IS THAT MOVING IN YOUR BELLY & WHY DOES IT SEEM LIKE A FOOT WILL EMERGE IN 3 SECONDS?!!?').  it probably didn't help that i worked with kids who were diagnosed with at least 2 mental health disorders, eh? but really, addy came out with her cord knotted twice & it also wrapped snuggly around her neck twice also. & she came out pissed & crying. ah, sweet adeline.

anyway. looking at those pictures made me miss their bath time tonight b/c then i started to also look at pictures from idaho. i just can't believe it was 4 years ago & that we lived there. i miss it...

even a picture of this inversion has me a bit teary-eyed

 

 view of the foothills from our bedroom window (not a very close view, but still...to ohioans, pretty intense)

 

then the infamous & beloved hot springs we frequented

 

 hot springing-it in the snow

 

 backpacking

  

wes in his white water canoe (while i'm pregnant & at home FREAKING OUT that he's going to die)

 

the group of friends!

 

(gosh, now these dads have mostly two girls. only +1 boy--with 2 sisters--out of all those fathers!)

the rivers, the canyons...just so different than what we are used to here. this was about a 25 minute drive ( i think that's right)

 

 snow caps & clouds

  

snow shoeing!

 

driving past stuff like this just a few hours from home

 

finding snow caves while hiking

 

 & then one little, tiny person could make us *want* to move away from all of this. just so she & any siblings that may yet to be (amelia!) could be closer to their family.

but really, this was such a sweet time & way to start a wee family...albeit with a screeching baby who hated to sleep. but she had lots of hair to play with while wrestling around with her sleepless, angry baby body.

before we moved back to ohio i *knew* it would be really rough on wes to move away from idaho. i had no idea it would be so hard for me, even 3 years later. i still feel close to the friends we made there, i still wake up at night & think i'm back in that bedroom, can still remember how wonderful it was to have new kitchen cabinets (okay, that one is a bit superficial BUT important when compared with our current cabinet situation). when it's a saturday & we have nothing to do, miraculously, i wish i could just blurt out: let's go for a hike in the foothills! let's go let griswold swim in the snake river canyon (a place i never actually saw a snake, thankfully) & see the dam. let's go to a festival about ice sculptures! (what is that called? in mccall?).

so here's to idaho. it was such an important time for wes & i...sometimes it feels like we left a part of us behind. we need to visit soon...however, avoiding all snake episodes & fainting spells (but if my surgeon calculated things correctly, the year we moved to idaho is the year my tumor sprung up & began to grow...hhmmmm...)