One goat, two goat, three goat, four...: So many moons later...

Well, I guess the time gap between blogs suggests that time has been tight. Which it has. But we've also been trying to sleep more, with a little bit of success. And trying to occasionally do things beyond just the necessary, also with a little teeny bit of success, sometimes. So maybe that has gotten in the way of keeping blogs up to date. See pictures from last weekend's Great Race 10K in Pittsburgh -- running slow but nice.

Meanwhile here's the speed run-down from the past 7(!) months.

In March, we went to D.C. for a weekend to visit cousins Antonio and Sebastian (and Jason and Dallys and Pa and Nana) and also for my agricultural policy class field trips.

Also saw some of my old grad school friends there.

Back in Pittsburgh, taught a class on tree climbing.

In April, Li'el turned 4. I was commissioned to make a "rainbow unicorn" cake -- this is how it turned out.

And we tried to go to NY to surprise Safta for her birthday, but Delta went on the fritz that day and all flights were cancelled so we couldn't get there. But Safta and Rafi came for the tail end of Passover instead. Here's Eytan making chocolate matzah.

In May, goats Finn and Oliver went to a new home.

And here are some almost-end-of-school-year pictures

I can't say the kids always do quite this much cleaning, but I like to document it when they do.

In June we went back to Washington State to visit and for my Orchards class.

It was cherry season. Here they are on the packing line.

And little apples.

Apple seedling nursery.

Fancy apple cider.

And kid pictures.

We were back in Pittsburgh for a few weeks, and then picked back up in July to go to upstate NY. Mike ended up switching jobs this year, from the school he'd been at for the past few years to becoming the 6th grade teacher at our kids' current school, and he had to go to a week of training in NY. I, of course, didn't take any pictures (sorry!), but we got to visit Safta and Saba and Great George and also see friends Chavi and Josh and kids and adopt their van. In the absence of NY photos, I'm just putting other random summer kid photos here.

Despite the travels, we were actually home this summer more than most summers. And so we actually had moderate success with a garden! Even weeded a little. And ended up with a lot of tomatoes, kale, chard, and potatoes.

Inspired by a winter visit to Stonebraker friends, we put up a tree rope swing in the yard.

Oren, meanwhile, has been really funny. He has been going through a period of many fears, including lots of fears of inanimate objects that he sees as animate -- worrying that the table is looking at him, and that he doesn't like that, calling most objects he and she, and the like. It's been really interesting. And inspired by some yoga-doing spring visitors, he occasionally likes to do this (see below) and announce that he's doing tree pose (I guess it's more like downward dog, but no matter)

In August we went to Minnesota and visited Grandma and Grandpa, Pa and Nana, and coincided our visit with cousins Jack, Caleb, Siobhan (and Kevin and Leah). I didn't take a lot of pictures there either, but here's one that someone else caught.

And when we returned home there were goat babies (I had a student goat-sitting. He had many adventures). There were 4 mamas overall -- 4 babies born before we got home (oops!) and 7 babies after we got back (although one was a set of quintuplets of which only 2 made it in the end)... so now we're at 8 baby goats. I have a fuller class schedule this fall, including my Dairy class again, and a new student with a LOT of goat milking experience, so we're getting goat-milking up and running these days.

Noa has gotten VERY mobile -- crawling, standing, walking with help, trying stairs. In the picture below, she looks to me a little like Eytan when he was a baby, even though more often she seems to resemble Li'el. Anyway, she's very talkative (we think she says "Ha Ti" to the cat, meaning "Hi Timber" -- meaning her "first word" seems to be "hi"... I think Oren's was too actually). She's still really independent in terms of being more interested than the other kids were in playing on her own... although she does also really like being around the big kids. Now that she can move herself over to where they are, she does.