"West Virginia, Almost Heaven...."

Life is good here in wild, wonderful WV and we are starting to feel right at home. Things are a little different in Appalachia than the Midwest (oh the humidity! I melt!), but I must say, West Virginia folk are quite friendly. For example, my heart generally gets blessed at least once a day while we're out and about: "Oh bless your heart honey, you sure have your hands full! Let me help you with that buggy (shopping cart)!" Even though we've lived here nearly a month, I still don't have quite everything unpacked....we've been too busy playing and exploring. I also decided to paint our dining room on a whim in the middle of unpacking and that "little" project turned out to be the bane of my existence for over a week (uneven/thirsty walls, streaky color, ugh....)

Marlee modeling the dining room color, it doesn't look too bad...from a distance

Jamie is on internal medicine service for the month of July, and it has been busy. He leaves at 6 every morning and usually gets home around 7:30 at night. In addition, he only has 4 days off this month, so most of his time is spent working or sleeping with a little bit of eating and studying thrown into the mix. I knew what to expect schedule-wise coming into residency, but it still took me a couple of days of feeling sorry for myself until I adjusted to his new schedule (especially since he was home everyday on vacation for the past 3 months). I shouldn't complain though, many have it much worse. Looking back, med school's demands don't seem all too bad now:) The kids and I stay busy playing with the great group of moms here and going on daily adventures to exotic places such as Target or the park. I'm so grateful for the wonderful women I've met already. They have literally saved my sanity and made me realize that residency is survivable.

Marlee has adjusted well to the move. Our house is much bigger here than it was in Nebraska, so she has more room to roam and the number of friends she has available to play with has increased vastly. The humidity is also doing marvelous things to her hair, giving her some lovely "West Virginia curls" (as we like to call them).

 

 My cuddly little cherubim Asher is doing great too. As long as he continues to have a supply of warm milk on demand and gets his requisite naps during the day, he's (mostly) a happy camper. I just love the  sweetness babies bring into our home. Things were a little rough with him in the beginning-he wasn't colicky, but definitely fussy-so now that he's smiling and laughing it turns my mama heart into mush. I think that 2 1/2-4 months is my favorite stage of babyhood. At this age, my babies' personalities begin to shine as they start to smile and laugh, no longer need to be fed continuously, and start sleeping through the night (a sleep deprived Amber=a crabby Amber). Also, they're not on the move, so they can't really wreck havoc on my home (yet).

Gone are the days of chicken legs

Chunky Monkey

I  love the beauty of the hills and the lush green trees that are everywhere 'round these parts. I also love that I can drive 2 hours or less to go somewhere where I can ski,  go spelunking, rock climb, white-water raft, or zipline through a forest. Not that I really do any of those things-especially since I have small kids and a small budget-but the thought that I could is still nice:) When Jamie gets a day off, we try to maximize time spent with Daddy. Here's a  picture of Jamie taking Marlee fishing for the first time at a quaint little pond inside the Kanawha forest. After continually yelling, "I got one! I got one!" and haphazardly reeling in her line immediately after it was cast, we gave up on fishing and let her throw rocks in the water the rest of the night (which is MUCH more entertaining of course).

Another notable event that took place in WV was the celebration of old man winter's 29th birthday. His actual birthday was spent working all day. The next night however, I took him out on a REAL date (aka-no kids!) to Pies and Pints and we devoured a scrumdiddlyumptious Thai shrimp pizza. It was so wonderful to spend time with that boy of mine. I sure nagged me a good one!

I'm obviously a very skilled photographer.... Don't mind Marlee's belly, Jamie's lack of eyebrows, or Asher's flexed guns (such a show-off that boy is!)

Well, this post is a little scattered (that's generally what happens when you don't blog much), so I'm just going to go ahead and call it a night. Y'all come back now ya hear!