We went to Maine to go to my high school best friend’s wedding. The wedding was a blast. Our pictures didn’t turn out that great, but I bet they had some beautiful ones. Here is one of the new couple and their dog. I think it’s cute! Congratulations Beck and Stuart!
I can’t remember if I wrote about them when they left, but there was a family that came to Ithaca the same year we did. The mother is Chelsea, who is a great photographer as you can see on her normal blog, which was inspired by us! However, now she has moved back home to Tasmania and is starting a photography business. To kick it off she has put up a new photography website which is awesome. You can even go through her music playlist and pick your favorite song. Mine is Time After Time. It is great to see all of her best photos. It makes us wish we’d hired her before she left.
We are very fortunate to have some people we think of as family in Ithaca. Here is Mirabelle’s Ithaca Popo (grandma). The way she shows off Mirabelle you’d think it was her daughter!
My friend Jayasri had a traditional ceremony to bless her as she enters the last stages of her pregnancy. Mirabelle was an integral part of the ceremony. Here she is eating the new bangles she received.
We also happened to match.
I went to a belated Halloween party with a bunch of moms from prenatal yoga. Here are the babies all lined up.
And here is a picture of the parents.
Well, we went over to Blake and Jie’s place for a nice party. Here are a couple of photographs. Mirabelle really loves parties so she enjoyed themselves.
Halloween in Ithaca’s Fall Creek neighborhood is an exciting affair, with hundreds of kids pouring in from the suburbs and the rural so that the kiddies can get their fill of candy. We decided to have a couple of friends over to help us hand out the candy.
Charlotte’s friend Jen and her partner Sarah was here in Ithaca last month and took some amazing pictures of Mirabelle. Sarah is a professional photographer, so that helped!! Here are a couple of them!
Mirabelle comes to work everyday to get her lunch from Mom. It gave my co-worker, Alex a great opportunity to take pictures. Thanks Alex for sending these to me.
Here are some photos from our adventures at Six Mile Creek and the Dept of Natural Resources picnic. Govind and Charlotte’s mom is posing in front of the newly named “Mirabelle Falls,” which is named after our daughter in honor of Charlotte’s work for Six Mile Creek. Mirabelle 
enjoyed being held by all of Charlotte’s 
departmental colleagues.
Here are the pictures from our visit to Hasbrouck.
Well, we went up to our previous residence at Hasbrouck for a bit this morning. Those pictures are up next. Last night, one of the Program Assistants, Alicia, came over and brought us some scrumptious kale/rice dish. Here she is. Later on (picture on top left), she and the rest of us had a nice dinner outside in our backyard. The last picture is Alicia’s expression when Mirabelle presented her with a rather large bowel movement :-).
Well, Gilles, Marie and Colin stopped by for the last time as they depart back to their home in Belgium. Here is the first time that they visited since Mirabelle’s arrival.
Phyllis, a fellow Board member for Amnesty International got Mirabelle this onesie at the AIUSA Annual General Meeting in Portland in April. She is very hungry here and worried about her own right to food!
Baby (still in utero) and mom are doing quite well. Junior is hanging out enjoying her last few days in the womb, while mom has returned to work. Thanks for all of your queries! Here is a picture of us, together with Gilles and his son Colin (who is tucked away in a sling)
I just found out that a friend, Elliott Smith, from Oakland has died in a ski accident. He was a great, kind man. Everyone will truly miss him. The news came as quite a shock. We will always remember him taking pictures of the restoration work being done at Sausal Creek and the way he loved the children that came out to help. Being such a great photographer, it is a shame I don’t have a better picture of him, but here he is in 2003 at our two week wedding aniversary party. He was definitely someone I was going to visit when I am in California this Christmas. I really wanted to show him the baby.
Alas, it is a reminder that life is not all about birth. Death is a part of it also. Goodbye friend…
Charlotte’s second baby shower, which will be almost all people from her work, takes place today!
Here. Marie and Gilles are back in Hasbrouck walking about.
Jie and Blake are leaving Hasbrouck for the summer to go to New Mexico, so we held a small gathering at our place to say goodbye. Blake seranaded us with his guitaring:
Charlotte then pulls out her violin:
Greg says that he and Stéphanie have taken 7,500 pictures since coming to Ithaca, but they have to take 2,500 more before they leave, so here is Stéphanie taking more! Pictured with her, from left to right is Jie, Stéphanie, Marie and Govind.
Here are some pictures from Charlotte’s baby shower, version 1.0:
Here is (from left to right for all pictures) Vivian, Charlotte and Annette
Here is Charlotte trying to direct a blidfolded Govind to get to the hospital– carefully directed by Marie
Govind and Charlotte trying (unsuccessfully) to clothe our new baby
Here is a panorama of several guestsРChristian, with his young daughter Maren, Blake, Jie, Gregory, St̩phanie, Mayte, sitting in the front and many others in the back.
