A New Chapter

Hello folks, how y'all doing??

Once again, I've been MIA, but I'm sure y'all are used to it by now. Honestly, half the time I tell myself I should can this whole blogging thing. But alas, I love it too much and therefore have started ANOTHER blog. Yes, you read correctly. Miss Once-Every-Two-Months-Blogger has started a second blog.

Don't be alarmed, The Hohman Homestead is not getting canned and hopefully will one day (soon!) be running at full-tilt again. But, I had this little (ok, maybe not so little) squishable, kissable, loveable baby about 5 months ago and well, people are demanding photo updates. So I'm here today to announce:

Russell-Mania

The posting style there will be much different than here at the Homestead, hence why I started a whole new she-bang. Each post will consist of a date, Baby H's age at that time, and a slew of photos. But NO WORDS. Making it much easier for me to get some posting done. :)

And now, on to the real new chapter. Cowboy H and I (and well, the whole entire herd) are packing up and moving out. Yup, after all the sweat and dirt (literally) and tears (not really) and hours of improvement we've poured into this home, we're moving on.

While things are going to be a little complicated at first (think 2 adults, 3 cats, 2 dogs, 2 horses and 1 baby moving into my parents' house) eventually we will be moving onto a 2 acre piece of property, complete with horse pens, a chicken coop, a pump house, a brick patio and a GIANT avocado tree just to name a few amenities. (Wow, that was a really long sentence.) The home is a 150+ year old farm house that my family has owned for many, many years. It was originally bought by my grandmother's parents (yep, my great-grandparents). My parents actually lived here when they first got married and so did I until I was about 5 years old.

The first phase of the move has already been completed; Crow and Maria have already been relocated to the back pasture of my parents house, where I'm sure they're getting even fatter. And just in time for Thanksgiving dinner, the rest of the Homestead will be snuggled closely (and tightly) into my parents' house as well.

Wish us (lots and lots and lots) of luck!

A Few Things

1. Baby H is 3 months old now! (Yes, its been 3 months and I've only blogged about him once. Shut your mouth.) He is growing at an exponential rate; he weighs 19 pounds already! All of his clothes are 6 or 9 months and the 6 months I should probably rotate out since they look like little muscle shirts on him. He talks and laughs up a storm, especially when you stick your tongue out at him, or show him a mirror. He is almost sitting up on his own, but still kinda dumps over forward or sideways. He's very close to rolling over, but hasn't quite figured it out yet. He loves water and bathtime and lounging in the backyard naked. He's grabbing anything that gets near him and of course, everything goes in his mouth now. It's all so amazing!

2. My laptop is dead. RIP Macbook Pro. You were only 2 years old. Yep, my precious, beloved computer is dead. It was sitting on the backyard grass after a naked baby session when the sprinklers accidentally came on and soaked it. For a minute solid. Fortunately, all my data (and baby photos!) is undamaged and safe, but the circuit board of the laptop was fried. So, blogging may (still) be slow while I get used to using Cowboy H's computer and get all my data/programs transferred over to it.

3. This mama is now a stay-at-home mama! That's right folks. Cowboy H and I saved and scraped together anything we could from my disability/maternity leave pay to make it possible. I am trying to get something going with my photography, but its slow-going at this point. You would think that would leave me more time for blogging, but no, that just means I get to spend more time with this guy:

All of these photos are OLD; from when he was 6 weeks or younger. He is so much bigger now!! I'm working on getting the more recent photos processed and uploaded now that I have the data from my computer back. (Sniff, sniff)

4. Speaking of my photography, I donated a few photographs to a fundraiser for the ranch where we keep our horses. The facility does a lot of equine rescue and holds fundraisers every so often. They always put my photos in the silent auction and they are always a big hit. This time, Cowboy H made some killer frames for the photos, but I didn't take pictures of the finished products. Here, however, are the photos:

The first four I had printed in 8" x 12" size and framed them with Cowboy H's old wood frames. The last two I had printed as 4" x 6" and put them together in a double frame. They all turned out awesome. If you would like any of the above photos, shoot me an email or drop a comment!

Until next time (whenever that might be)!!

First Father's Day

I apologize in advance to those of you who want to be updated on Homestead projects (which there are PLENTY, including one happening right now), or the doggies, or our equine children, or the rest of the wedding, or the honeymoon we took last year, or anything else I've alluded to but never posted about. We kinda have baby fever over here, and well, its gonna spill over into this blog.

But at least I'm blogging!

For the first time, Cowboy H celebrated Father's Day with a fur-less, two-legged being this year. And it just kills me dead.

Too bad Baby H has such a sad face in this photo

And lest you think Hank has been kicked to the curb…

Hope y'all had a wonderful Father's Day as well!

Look Who's Here!!

That's right, the newest member of our family has arrived!

Born May 23, 2011 at 3:04 am, Baby H weighed in at 8 pounds, 15 ounces and measured 21 inches. And that was after passing his first poops while still in my belly. Just a small fry, ya know.

I promise that I will update y'all with more baby pics, labor/delivery details (or not), the finished nursery and just life in general with a newborn. It may take a while however, since I am resigned to typing with one hand while the other holds Baby H who, after 3 weeks, will no longer sleep unless held.

Until then, here's a few more photos to hold you over.

A Homemade Wedding Homestead-Style: The Ceremony Aftermath

I could hear the chuckles as we left the church to the sounds of "Forever and Ever, Amen". People couldn't believe we were playing that song for our church wedding. But it fit us perfect, and had the vibe that I wanted. I could barely contain myself from skipping and jumping down the aisle.

Behind us, the rest of the group trickled out, smiling and breathing sighs of relief I'm sure.

A cool thing about this photo: Just to the left of Jenna's face are her mom and dad.

An impromptu receiving line was formed just outside the church doors, and I proceeded to display my finest faces.

If nothing else, I wear my heart on my sleeve. Its written all over my face.

I'm pretty sure we hugged and spoke with every one of our guests (at least the ones who went to the ceremony, ahem). There was so much joy and love and happiness going around.

I made sure to snag one photo with my three ushers before Cowboy H and I whisked off for our own private photo shoot.

In the meantime, the guests slowly made their way to the reception site (a pretty rough 3 minutes down the road) and got ready to party.

Up Next: The Down-Home Barn Party Begins

Of course, I can't forget Applemoon Photography. Thank you for the beautiful pictures!

A Homemade Wedding Homestead-Style: The Ceremony

Or, we seal the deal for the second time.

Since I am Catholic (not a very good one lately) we had a Catholic wedding ceremony inside a Catholic church. But not just any Catholic church. This church is the only Catholic church in my hometown and is dear to my heart. It is the place where I was baptized and the place where I used to altar-serve. Like I've mentioned before, I wanted everything to have as much meaning as possible, so even though its not the most gorgeous church in the area, it was the only one considered because it holds so much meaning to me (and now Cowboy H).

Sidenote: I did not add any decorations to the church because I was too cheap, and thought it would be a waste of money, i.e. it was not that important to me. The church already had flower arrangements in it, which were bright red and white. I hate red. During the rehearsal, I made a note to myself "Have the coordinator remove the flowers before the ceremony" which I completely forgot about. Halfway through the ceremony I looked up and say those dagum red flowers, and thought to myself "Aw, man. I forgot to have those taken down. Oh well". Good thing for black and white, you can't tell what color the flowers are!

The ceremony began with a welcome from the priest. This priest has a long history with my family, as he was the principal for the school my mom taught at when I was born. He also remembers my parents from when they were in high school. Like I said, everything and everyone had very special meaning.

Photo by Katie

Then a series of readings from the Bible were read. My girl Cassie read the first reading, which comes from the Old Testament. I tried to find the booklet with all our readings marked in it because I was going to torture y'all with each and every word stated during the ceremony, but I think I forgot to get it back from our priest. That's how sentimental I am. Whoops.

Then comes a responsorial psalm, which is taken from the Book of Psalms. A line is read, then the entire congregation chimes in with the response. My friend Juan did the honors here.

Cowboy H's sister read the second reading, which comes from the New Testament. It was a huge deal for her to read for us. She used to be painfully shy, but willingly offered to stand up in front of 150 people she didn't know and speak into a microphone. It really meant a lot to us.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the red drapes. There was just red, red, red everywhere. Any other color but red...

The priest then read the gospel, which comes from one of the four books of gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.

I believe the priest then addressed the couple (us) but honestly, I don't really remember. I'm going to go hang my head in shame now.

And then, it was time to say our vows (again). I was just a little giddy. We opted for the traditional vows, and repeated after our priest.

Ha ha, I forgot to mention, that I became sick in the last few days before the wedding. In the middle of the ceremony I had a major coughing attack, which I refused to let out. During all the readings I had my head buried in Cowboy H's armpit trying to muffle the sound of my hacking. Needless to say, my vows were less than heart-stopping. I could barely get any sound out of my mouth. At least I made the people laugh.

And then it was time for the rings. You may remember we had a little, ahem, ring trouble. So we borrowed a ring from a family friend, who, ironically was married by this exact priest a year and a half before us. The same ring was blessed with Holy Water a second time by the same priest. It goes unstated that their marriage had better not fail, being doubly blessed and all.

Cowboy H slid mine on my finger nice and easy first. Please note my bouquet on the altar behind the priest. The night before, our coordinator managed to forget to tell us when the bouquet should be handed back to me, so Jenna jumped the gun and gave it to me right before the ring exchange. I didn't know what to do with it, so our priest grabbed it from me and set it there. Just another one of those moments.

Then, I was my turn to return the favor.

So far, so good.

And then it got stuck. Right at his knuckle. But he told me before the ceremony that it would fit, so I tried to jam it onto his finger. By golly, that ring was going on if he said it would. And Cowboy H grimaced. And then I cracked up. And so the ring was left were it was, halfway up his finger. Sigh.

The Prayers of the Faithful were then read by my dear friend Lauren, who has a couple of blogs of her own: The Next Adventure and Lauren's Next Adventure.

The priest then gave us our final blessing.

Finally, we got to face our guests and were pronounced officially married by the priest! I promise you, Cowboy H is excited too.

And THEN, we got to kiss! Hahahaha.

I realized, at this moment, that I hadn't really kissed him all day, and just grabbed him! Everyone started laughing.

Cowboy H was a little confused. But he survived.

Just as we were supposed to be walking back down the aisle together, we had a music glitch and there was an almost awkward silence. However, my baby cousin Amelia ran out of her seat to me and gave me a cough drop. Yes, she handed it to be because I was coughing so badly during the ceremony.

It was easily one of my favorite moments of the whole ceremony. It was so pure and sweet.

Then, the music started up and down the aisle we went to the chords of Randy Travis's "Forever and Ever, Amen"!

And then, we rode off into the sunset!

Up Next: The Reception Kicks Off

All photography credit goes to Applemoon Photography, unless otherwise noted. You guys rock!