Owen Visits North Carolina

I can't believe it's been 12 weeks since little Owen was born.  A lot has happened - it feels like just yesterday, but also like it's been a year!

This marks the end of my maternity leave (WAH!!) and I begin work on Monday.  At least I'm lucky enough to work for a company that cares about their employees and is allowing me to work from home to ease back into things.  

I'm finally to the point where I feel like I can blog again (it just wasn't going to happen after Owen was born), so I'm catching up on some of the highlights.  Here are a few things you  might have missed:

 - Owen's birth story

 - The worst Christmas ever

 - Decorating Owen's room

Today we'll do a brief recap of our trip to NC!  Since Travis took this semester off to care for Owen and I was on maternity leave, we decided it was the perfect time to take a nice long trip to NC so everyone could meet Owen!  We decided to drive so we could stop by my grandma's house in Maryland (and because a baby and dog on an airplane sounded too stressful).  

800 miles and a hotel stay - two big firsts for a 1-month old!  We were nervous.  Thankfully, Owen was an angel.  We split the trip into two days and stopped every 2-2.5 hours.  We had zero traffic, Owen cried maybe 5 minutes the entire trip, and he slept all night in the hotel.  He gets a gold star. 

Enjoying stretching after a looooong day in the car seat!

Family selfie in the hotel room!

Owen's first ride on a luggage cart!

Grandmommy and Alan loved seeing Owen, and it was fantastic to get to see them again!  

Owen also met Tim and Kim, and had lunch at Cracker Barrel...

Alford family picture (with Sarah, Charlie (the cat), and Toby photoshopped in)

...my Virginia family, who drove down to meet him...

...Faye, Pope and Thad...

...Anna Marie, Aaron, Rob, Megan, Howard, Cindy and Alvin at Anna Marie's baby shower (she's due in 2 weeks!!!  Owen will have another cousin!).

...Uncle Robert and Aunt Jewel...

...and many more friends!

We had an awesome time relaxing with our families.

Everyone making our "Owen's not impressed" face

While we were home, we had a "Christmas in January" dinner at my family's house, since everyone was finally together.  After dinner, we had two pies for dessert - one frozen Mrs. Smith's pumpkin pie, one chocolate pie.  My brother, mom and I had the pumpkin pie, and 30 minutes later, my brother and I started to feel sick.  I'll spare you the gory details, but we all got food poisoning.  Thanks a lot Mrs. Smith's.  My mom had a sliver of pie, so her's wasn't as bad, but both my brother and I ended up in the Emergency Room and had to be admitted into the hospital.  We were SICK.  That pie was ROTTEN.  

If I'm looking for a moral of the story, or on the bright side, I'd say:

1)  If you're going to eat pie, make it yourself.

2)  If you're not going to make it yourself, don't buy Mrs. Smith's.

3)  Thankfully this didn't happen sooner - my incision was mostly healed by this point.
4)  Thankfully Travis had the chocolate pie, so he could take care of Owen.

5)  I certainly "ripped off the Band-Aid" when it came to spending the night away from our baby.

6)  My brother and I got rooms next to each other, so my dad didn't have to run from one end of the hospital to another.

The nurse said there was a large number of people in the ER with terrible food poisoning around Thanksgiving and Christmas who had all eaten frozen pumpkin pies.  Apparently no one reported it.  If you have one in your freezer, throw it out.  It's not worth it!  I have a really great recipe for mini pumpkin pies.  Make this one instead...it's super easy!

Also...we're celebrating Hanukkah or something next year.

Thankfully, we were all (mostly) well enough to make the trip to Greenville for Travis' performance at East Carolina University later that week.  Chris Grymes, a clarinetist, commissioned Travis to write him a piece which he was performing at the North Carolina New Music Initiative.  It was nice to see all of our old professors (and several friends) at the concert!  Afterwards, Owen experienced his first post-concert-Krispy-Kreme-run!  He has no idea how amazing it's going to be once he can eat donuts.  

We also got to celebrate family "Christmas" with both sides of Travis' family - Jenny's in Virginia and Terry's at their house in Spring Hope.  Each family gathering had two new babies at them!  Virginia Christmas had Owen and Grace (Grace was born about a month before Owen), and Spring Hope Christmas had Owen and Henry (Henry was born 5 days after Owen).

The Virginia family also had a joint baby shower for the two newest members of the family, which was so sweet.  

Owen's "Russell bear" - a bear made from his late Uncle Russell's shirt to remember him by.  I'll share more about this later!

Jenny's happy place

We were sad to come back to Boston...especially with all the snow happening while we were gone.  Little did we know the next few weeks would bring over 100 inches!  More on that later.

Seagrove Pottery Day Trip & Yates Mill

Saturday of last week, we took a trip to Seagrove, NC, one of the largest community of potters in the United States.  With almost 100 shops and galleries scattered throughout the area, you could drive around and look at these beautiful works of art all day.

Mom and dad have each gone several times, but this was my first visit.  Travis and I love going places like this (see our visit to Antique Alley in New Hampshire), so I had obviously been hoping to visit Seagrove for quite some time.

Seagrove is out in middle of nowhere - quite a nice change from city life.  Lots of winding roads and cows do the heart good.

We started the day at Bulldog Pottery.  I'd seen on Facebook that they were having their Open Kiln that day - I had no idea what that meant, but we were all for it!  As we were trying to find our way there, we had to laugh at the "city" planning.  As we were looking for their house number, we realized none of the numbers were in any particular order - we'd pass 2264, then 2280, then 2168, then 2270, 2423, 2380, and 2435...all on the same side of the road.  No particular order...no right/left, even/odd pattern.  We finally got there and realized an open kiln is just an open house - snacks & lots of work displayed.

Their pottery was BEAUTIFUL.  I took some fantastic pictures I was SO excited to show you all, but my camera malfunctioned and I lost about 60 of my pictures from the first half of the day.  SUCH a bummer, and I'm still not sure what happened.  The pictures below are from their facebook page - go check it out to see more of their work!  It was clean and contemporary, the colors were fantastic, and the shapes of the vases were beautiful.  Mom ended up buying a bowl, which you'll see later.

Their shop - photo from Bulldog Pottery Facebook page

Some of the work they had for sale - photo from Bulldog Pottery Facebook Page

Our next stop was mom's favorite - Dover Pottery.  The potter and her two sons all have stores in Seagrove, and their work is beautiful.  To get to her shop, you turn down a dirt path and drive through the woods for a good ways.  After a few minutes of off-roadin', you come to a cluster of old barns.  Her shop is in one of these barns, and it is so cool!  It had wood panel walls, uneven brick floors, large dark beams in the ceilings, stained glass windows, and was full of beautiful antique cabinets displaying her work.

Dover Pottery - photo courtesy of their Facebook page

My favorite of her work is the crystalline glazed pieces.  These crystal patterns are produced by a specific glaze formulation and controlled firing procedures.  When fired, the cooling cycle is slowed, allowing portions of the glaze to separate from the batch, forming the crystals.  We got a few of these pieces, which you'll see below!

After Dover Pottery, we decided to grab some lunch.  On the way to the restaurant  we passed by some of the funniest looking goats ever.  Some looked like regular goats (1-2 colors per goat), but others had crazy spotted patterns all over their bodies.  I guess everything in Seagrove must be beautiful.

Here are some pictures from the rest of the day.  Our 5 favorite shops were Dover Pottery, Bulldog Pottery, Dirt Works, Frank Neef, and Dean & Martin.

After lunch, we went to Dirt Works Pottery.  I found a Christmas present for Travis (yes...I know Christmas is 9 months away) and a tiny pot used to hold toothpicks.  As I was checking out, we realized we'd hit this shop on the perfect day - his once a year customer appreciation sale, where everything was 25% off!  Mom had been eyeing a large plate, so this sale was all she needed to turn right back around and buy it.  Perfect timing!

Dirt Works Pottery

Frank Neef had some of the most impressive and beautiful work we saw all day.  He does a lot of crystalline pottery, but takes it a step further by adding hand cut designs to his work.  His work was so perfect - I can't imagine how he does it.  We got to chat with his wife, who runs the shop, for a while, and she told us a little about life in Seagrove.  It was nice to hear that Seagrove is a tight-knit community that really supports one another.  They moved to the area about 4 years ago and were a little worried about how they'd be accepted.  Would long-time residents be wary of new competition?  After a few weeks, they realized that wasn't how it would be at all, and they have enjoyed living in a community of like-minded artists who are encouraging and uplifting to each other...and to newcomers!

Here are some other shots from the day.

Johnston & Gentithes Studio

Whynot Pottery

Whynot Pottery

McCanless Pottery

McCanless Pottery

McCanless Pottery

Great White Oak Gallery

Such a fun day.  Now...here's what we came home with.

3 Crystalline pots from Dover Pottery.  (left - right) A thank you for Jess, who was keeping Toby, one I took back to Boston, mom's new multicolored pot.

(Left - Right) A mug for Travis from Dover, my tiny toothpick holder from Dirt Works, and a bowl from Bulldog Pottery.

A platter I got from the Pottery Expo in town.

Mom's plate she purchased from Dirt Works is on the left, 2nd row from the top!
We had fun re-styling her shelves to fit it in.

On the way home, we decided to stop by Yates Mill Park, a 174 acre wildlife refuge and environmental research center.  It was beautiful - such a peaceful place to walk around!