One goat, two goat, three goat, four...: Another year

You know how sometimes people give end-of-year summaries? I guess this is one of those :)

So... last time I wrote it was fall 2018, after we had gotten back from a long road trip to Minnesota

Since then we have had a number of changes. No more cribs, no more swaddles, no more pacifiers, (almost) no more diapers, no more baby monitors (although we're still up at night sometimes, but less), no more nursing or pumping, no more gates at tops or bottoms of stairs... apparently, after close to 9 years, we're pretty much fully out of the trappings of babyhood.

We also moved this past August back into the city, and passed along all our rural/farm remnants -- the cars with Washington license plates, the pickup truck, the animals, and the places to grow gardens. Although... I think that change is temporary, a hiatus from our more favorite lifestyle for one that provides a little more convenience, proximity to other human beings, and walkability. Missing the country, but also good to try on the urban for a few months and have Mike and the kids spend way less time in the car.

So, here are some pictures and highlights from the last year or so.

Fall and Winter 2018-19

It's hard to remember already what last year this time was like. Certainly lots of stacking of mattresses and building of forts...

some Chanukah candles...

Singing from Oren and Noa

A trip Eytan and I took to a friend's memorial service where we saw lots of old friends...

Chalkboard drawings and challah baking...

Some snow

Oren's fourth birthday

Our annual trip to D.C. to see Mike's brother (and for my policy class) and then also a trip for Li'el and I to a friend's son's bar mitzvah (but I only took one picture)...

And the normal routines...

Spring 2019

Passover seders in NY...

Li'el's sixth birthday...

Salsa dancing at May Fair at the kids' school...

Puppet shows put on by those kindergartners (Liel's class) moving up to first grade the next year

Meat class and policy class for me

(farm bill board game made by one of my students!)

And more normal life...

Summer 2019
We spent the summer soaking up as much rural-at-home as we could before moving..

Oren, Li'el and Noa did a week of ballet mornings...

(Li'el as the swan lake sorcerer, other kids as swans, little end-of-week show)

And ballet continued at home...

We discovered that having friends' kids over becomes easier than just having our 4 at home, even with a lower adult to kid ratio.

We then took a couple-weeks' road trip to New England for Mike's yearly teaching training. First stop to see Great George (who as of Dec 30 is 103!) in NY.

Second stop to friends outside New Haven (where I guess I didn't take pictures). Third stop Amherst MA for a kids' woodworking class...

And then a visit to old friends Jimmy, Margaret, Daniel, and Mabel (see our last visit 7 years earlier, when they were in CA instead of MA and we were in WA instead of PA!).

And to Boston to more friends, who then came with us to New Hampshire for a couple of days.

After Mike's class in New Hampshire, we headed back via upstate NY to see friends who had moved there from Pittsburgh a year before.

Later in the summer, we flew to Minnesota, saw our old friend Audrey...

And then had a mega cousin-reunion with various sets of grandparents in Minnesota

With an early birthday celebration for Eytan and Antonio, cousin-twins (born on the same day, same year, different parents)

And then back to Pittsburgh area to pack up and transition to city life.

Harvested our garden potatoes and squash to take with us...

Sold the truck (and went down to one car)

Lost all the chickens to a raccoon while we were away.

Cleaned out the goat pens...

And moved the goats and their house to my school's farm campus.

We went on a (first and) last picnic to the back of the pasture (where I got a teeny bit of poison ivy) (the trick of living where we did was that we spent so much time in the car that we didn't get to enjoy the space much of the time... although in hindsight it may have been worth it, even in small doses :))

Packed up, moved lots of stuff...

And unpacked in a new place across the street from school (for Mike and kids)

Just in time for Eytan's eighth birthday

(which featured a trip up the incline to see the city from above)

This picture, below, is actually not in the jungle, but from a secret passageway in the Garfield neighborhood not too far from our new place (where I think I got even more poison ivy).