Baby Hayes!

Well, there you have it! Change #2. I am pregnant! As for the top two questions, 1- We do not know if it is a boy or a girl, we decided to have it be a surprise, and 2- The due date was October 2nd. The entire pregnancy has been really easy and beautiful for me and therefore, for Ryan as well ; ). My favorite quote about pregnancy is that "pregnancy is not a disease" and I have been enjoying my time with that in mind. I have been able to exercise regularly ( I went on a 5.5 mile hike today!), camp, dance, go out with friends, spend time with family members, bake, can fruit, plant bulbs for the spring, work in the yard, you name it, I have been so blessed to have such an easy pregnancy. Our baby's growth is marked by the great times we have had the past nine and a half months, and a few highlights are posted below.

The Due Date Oct 2,2010

Ryan and I went and had a picnic dinner at the local goat farm. He packed a dinner of avocado, tomato, crackers, and onion, and we enjoyed that with fresh goat cheese while enjoying a mild evening in Templeton.

Feeding the friendly goats and dreaming about getting a few of our own some day...

A perfect fit!

On the day I was due, I helped with the Atascadero Creek Clean-Up and worked cleaning up the Salinas River Bed with another good friend Jaime. We got a good amount of trash and loaded out a ton of tires. Jaime and I were unearthing one tire and an entire family of mice scampered out into the bushes!

9 1/2 months, four days before the baby is due! My friend Holly and I went to the beach, I went for another cold-water dunk and she snapped a few photos of me on the beach in Avila.

I miss surfing and the water so much! I had to take a dunk in this alpine lake, along with a few streams we crossed along the way, while we were on our trip (This picture and the one below it are out of order and I can't figure out how to fix them- they should be with the backpacking picture).

This was the lake we backpacked into. The area is called Spanish lakes. The second day Ryan and I hiked up near the ridge in the distance.

Terra and Garrett got married on August 7th! Ryan and I danced all evening. They had a picnic style dinner and great music. I can't beat dancing with my grandpa, I've been ballroom dancing with him ever since I can remember! He taught me how to two-step ballroom style and how to follow when dancing with a partner.

Also around 8 months the girls ( Jessica, Megan, Shellie) and I had a girls weekend in Santa Monica. We rode bikes on the boardwalk, went out to dinner, gave ourselves green facials and had some serious girl time!

Ryan and I went to the Mid-State Fair at 31 weeks or almost 8 months. We saw all the exhibits, some of my students and their animals, and went and watched the rodeo that night.

27 weeks, or about 7 months, Ryan, Jaime, Joe, Dave and I all went on a backpacking trip! This would be the baby's third camping trip since I've been pregnant, but his/her first backpacking trip. I'm pretty sure the baby loved it!

Terra's wedding shower- 6 1/2 months with my cousin Heidi who was due a week ahead of me. She just had her baby girl, "Ella" on Wed, Sept 29th. This is the next generation of cousins in our family!

This was right around the same time, maybe about 6 months along.

How much a month can change! This was about 5 months or so.

This is at about 4 months, I thought I was showing so much. My normal jeans were just starting to feel a little "too tight."

We waited about 11 weeks to tell even our closest family members. We wanted to see that first ultra-sound to confirm pregnancy and be able to tell our family members in person. In this ultrasound picture from about 8 weeks, the baby already has a visible heartbeat and major organs!

New Home

Well, it's been over a year since we've updated the blog, but there have been a few huge changes in our lives that have been keeping us busy. Change #1 = We said farewell to our beloved barn with the Walkers, to enter into our next adventure, a new home! Ryan and I moved in to our new house around the first of the year, January 2010 and have been working on making it our own ever since!

We both wanted a bit more land, so our home is on .8 acres and backs up to open space. This is the front yard, and we now have a few fruit trees that are thriving, planted in this area.

This is our back yard, and it extends up the hill. We get all kinds of wild birds, coyotes, rabbits, foxes and deer back here. This time of the year we have seen buck and doe with their fawns ambling by on our back porch. It's beautiful, but we need to get a better system down to protect our garden!

Here are a few before and after pictures entailing the work we have been doing on the house. First, this was our entry way.

With the help of Atascadero Mutual Water company, we converted it to a dry-scape with flowers and lots of climate appropriate plants. Best of all, the entire area is watered by a recycled grey water system. Our washer hooks up to the drip line that extends to each of the planted areas.

We couldn't leave our chickens behind so Ryan built a coop and a big yard for them to scratch around in. We have nine ladies right now, so when they all start laying we will be searching out all the good egg recipes we can find...any suggestions?

This was the living room before. Notice the large sliding glass door. Right where the picture is being taken, there was a huge brick fireplace blocking the entryway and closing off the room.

Yep, that's about what it felt like, huge and right in your face.

Kitchen before, we really like the cabinets!

Kitchen-dining area afterwards.

This is the living room afterwards. First, Ryan took out the 10 foot sliding glass doors and put in french doors and side-light windows. Next he took out the huge fireplace that used to stand in the foreground where the small gray couch and rug is. That opened up the room and made it so much more light and cheery. He patched up the ceiling and added a light and fan there. We wanted the natural heating though, so recently he put in a slate hearth for a wood stove and a matching slate entry on the ground in front of the french doors. The fireplace is now located in the corner, the top, left of the picture (you can't see it in this photo).

This is the guest room before.

This is the guest room after. Thank you Granny (Carolyn) for decorating this room. She is amazing. We also replaced the old, single pane windows with double pane ones in the entire house. It made an immediate difference in heat retention and has been great both through the winter and now in the summer.

Guest bathroom before...

Guest bathroom afterwards! Ryan had the vision for this room and our good friend Dave helped him tile the floor.

Well, there you have it! A quick update on Change #1. both Ryan and I have been hard at work on our home. There have been lots of big projects, and lots of little projects that we have managed to squeeze in around work this past year. Thankfully, we've managed to have quite a few other memorable times, weddings, backpacking, spending time with friends and family, along the way.

And as if that weren't enough to keep us occupied, wait till you hear about Change #2! I promise you won't be waiting another year to find out, I'll let you in on the secret soon! ; )

Mexico Continued

From taking a mangrove-tour and seeing crocodiles in San Blas, to a sailboat ride, snorkeling and meeting new friends, here are a few pics from the second half of the trip!

Mexico, Sayulita and Puerto Vallerta

In order to capture your interest, and make this more interesting for me, I'm going to review our trip in sections. With that said, here is what the trip looked like.

Day 1-Puerto Vallerta
Day 2-3 - Sayulita
Day 4-5 - San Pancho
Day 6- Travel to/San Blas
Day 7 - San Blas
Day 8 - Travel to/Puerto Vallerta
Day 9 -Puerto Vallerta
Day 10-11 - Sayulita

Our hotel the first night, in Puerto Vallerta, was an art-gallery as well. We woke up to a flooded tile floor from an overflowing air conditioner. The first room-flood of three for the trip

Cooling off in Puerto Vallerta- it was hot and humid!

Villa de Amor, our villa, with a private plunge pool and amazing view...



Our living area and kitchen. This area was flooded by a huge storm our first night here (room flood number 2). The lightning and thunder knocked out the power and some water in the town, and was deafening and scary. We felt lucky to witness such a powerfull tropical storm!

GER_PHOTO_ID_5365584860090756482" border="0">
Breakfast at Villa de Amor. While in Sayulita, we had some amazing Mexican food, including some mole (a Mexican cocao based sauce) that was amazing!

The sunset view from our balcony..

Our balcony overlooking the ocean...notice the amazing swell coming in...

The villa that we stayed in in Sayulita was by far the nicest place we have ever stayed in! The view was spectacular, overlooking the ocean with jungle flowers and plants everwhere. Marble and tile floors, air conditioned and open-air, yes, they pulled that off. It was HOT! The humidity is around 90 percent and it rains almost every night. We happened to be there for an amazing swell, and we got some great waves. This break doesn't get this good that often, so we really lucked out and had head-overhead high surf the whole time we were there, surfing till we were too exhausted or sunburned. Oh yea, the water was about 80 degrees... much better than the central coast!

We stayed in Villa de Amor at the end of the trip and enjoyed Sayulita again the last day. Stay tuned for the rest of our trip! (PS If R. sounds annoyed it's because he really wanted to document the amazing surf.;)

Summer "09

Me and Christine on a Big Sur girls-surf-camp trip

Christine rejoicing when the AAA tow truck finally made it up to the Plaskett Creek campground to open the car. I locked the keys inside. Ahhh, wouldn't be a Hayes adventure without something like that!


Summer 2009 Begins
Camille= on summer break
Ryan= working but has furlough days

We have been enjoying the company of our good friends and family, and I have been enjoying the surf almost daily (yea summer break)! What are the highlights so far?

Well, here goes

• Growing tomatoes, carrots, squash, hot peppers, cucumbers, string beans, cantaloupe, strawberries, sweet peas, sunflowers... (to varying degrees of success) in our garden
• Homemade Strawberry jam, Marionberry jam, peach pie, cobbler, and ice cream (fruit's in season)
  
• Ryan's building a walnut and poplar coffee table for us
  
• Seeing our friends have beautiful babies and spending time with them, Rj and Ana, Katie and Avery, Shelly n Matt, Holly n Garth
  
• Chickens bullying the cats
  
• good surf
• Big Sur trips

One thing we learned, showing up in Big Sur with no reservations in July, is not a great idea, but do-able. Christine and I went on Monday and found a spot with no problem. I really wanted Ryan to be able to go up too, so I packed the car and his stuff, and we took off after work with Lyndal, on Thursday. Of course, there were no sites available, so we decided to treck into the hills and find a spot. After we almost rolled off a cliff in our truck trying to find a campsite above the cloudline, we decided to go back down and just stay in the "overflow" spot (Hayes-adventures continued). Early the next morning, Ryan and I made an aggressive prowl and we found one spot where the family had to go home sick, and reserved it for the second night. Barely got the spot. It was worth it. Sunny all day, decent surf and good company. That was the second or third big sur trip for the summer.

Next adventure on the calendar:

• Mainland Mexico, July 22 - Aug 1st, 2009
  

The Crib is Finished!

Finally, after sporadic weekend work over the last six months, I finished the crib I had promised for RJ and Anna and delivered it this last weekend. (With a month to spare) As usual, there are definitely some things I would do differently next time in order to speed up the process. I guess you're always learning...


Here is a picture of one of the joints. The four sides of the crib and the bottom can be taken apart and moved separately.



The inside of the crib where it attaches to the legs. There are three different settings for the bottom height of the crib.



Here she is. All oak, with the exception of the pegs, which are mahogany. This finish is a mixture of walnut oil and beeswax. And there are no screws, nails or glue holding it all together. Probably wouldn't build it that way again, but it was a great learning experience.