Shout out to Santa Cruz!

Well last weekend the fam headed down to one of our favorite places, the city we met in, Santa Cruz.

Ahh..when we were young.

My dear little cousin (not that little I guess) got married, (we need a good excuse to get out if town these days! We had not been back since we left). 

Beautiful Allie<3

It was a beautiful ceremony full of love and joy. My Uncle (her dad) gave a lovely speech, yeah I teared up a bit, and we got to see family that we had nor seen in too long.

It was a tough job to keep the Sprout quite during the ceremony...and her Uncle!

We didn't have a lot of time to play in our favorite city, cause Pops had to get back and get ready for the first day of school, but there were two stops we had to make. 

Us at 99 Bottles.

We had lunch at the place we met, 99 Bottles, and visited the Sock Shop and Shoe Company my favorite job (pre-Pippi's of course) and the place my love obsession with socks began. I was hoping to catch E & E the owners ( it was a Saturday so I knew it was a long shot) they gave me my start and training with buying and managing and were supportive when I moved back home to open my own store. They are great people and their shop is amazing. We think of them fondly and wanted to say hi sadly, the big E's were not in but their daughter was working the sock area! It was cool to see her after 5 years, (I hope my kids take an interest in the business).
We shoe shopped of course, spent too much but left happy! We got lucky too, there was a sweet girl working who read Sprout books while we shoe shopped (thanks June!). Anyway, it was a quick trip, but a good one, next time we will have to do a mini Santa Cruz vacation and hit up all our old haunts.

a little snack...

Auntie B trying to amuse Zo, she is not a fan of the car.

We may wait a while for another car trip though...with potty stops, nursing stops and miscellaneous stops it took us forever to get home!

Lovin' Summer

Lazy days afternoons. 
This summer has been so nice.  I can't remember the last time I got to be home an entire day with no errands to run, no quick (hour +) stops to Pippi's, not much going on except family time.  (It happens sometimes!)  This is the life!  And, it has been sunny so we have been able to spend many of our days outside, hooray!

Rowan and I have been gardening.

Daddy and Zoey can rest their eyes<3.

 

And we get to picnic!

Hooray for sunny summer time!

Happy 1st Month Zo!

Zo Mae Carr

A month in pictures:

New to the world,

  

 Sleepy time.

 Sibling love:

  

A visit from the Fam:

 

 Love, love, love.

 We are loving our new "little nugget:" as pops calls Zo  Rowan is great with Zo and doing really well with sharing mommy and pops with someone new, and we are learning how to juggle...

  Loving that we have this summer together, so glad for this time to be a family and enjoy each other.

A Family Work Day.

Sometimes things don't go as planed, and sometimes if you let it, it can turn out to be something wonderful.

 Yesterday, one of the Pippsters called in sick.  I got the call at 7am.  

We are running the shop pretty thin since I am trying to be on maternity leave(ish).  Anyway, Marshall or I had to go in.  We decided it would be best, and easiest, if we made it a family work day.  

With tot and baby in tow we headed down to Pippi's.  It worked out wonderfully.  We did some tag team parenting and sock selling and had a great (and exhausting) day.  It reminded me how much I  like working with my husband, and how much I enjoyed going to my dad's shop with him when I was a kid.  

Rowan was awesome, she chatted with sock lovers, and played quietly in her little area and was just as sweet as can be.  Zo was also perfect,  mostly slept, and nursed, which was perfect.

I am excited to be able to bring my kids to work with me, and hopefully they will enjoy it and think of it fondly too.

Rowan and Pops working at Pippi's.

P.S.  I realize it has been 3 weeks since my last post, and you probably guessed I had Baby Zo. Yup. June 10th, 1:55 am 8lbs 8oz. Woot! Zo is lovely and perfect and amazing.  I will be posting more about these past few weeks but if you want to read a great dramatic re-telling of Zo's birth check out my sweet husbands blog post: Home-Birth 2.0. 

(Disclaimer: I look a little weird in some of his pictures, but I did just have a baby, and Marsh somehow thinks I still look beautiful, weird faces and all.)

A Beautiful Day & a Blessing Way

When I had Rowan it was a mellow time of year for Pippi's I took weeks off before I was due, and when I did go into work I could really just focus and work as long as I needed to.  This time around with Zoey I am due in a week and still sneaking into Pippi's to try and finish this or that before Zoey decides to join us!  It is a much busier time of year at Pippi's which is great I love Summer time at Pippi's and I will miss working the floor, but man, my work will never be done.
Anyway, I am grateful to have work to do, it is a good thing, but I have been struggling to find time to start my nesting.  Although, I am lucky, my sweet husband likes a clean house, and he has the cleaning gene (I alas, do not have that gene) and he cleaned yesterday in preparation for guests and baby time.  Now I just have to make time for the fun part of baby prep.  Woo hoo to a clean house, thanks Daddy!

Yesterday, three of my very special, lovely lady friends came over and gave me a blessing way. My mom, Nat and Kat.  It turned out to be the perfect group, my mother besides being my mom, is my dearest friend.   Natalie is one of my oldest friends and is as true a friend as you find, she and I are of the same heart.  Kat is probably my newest friend, but also a friend of the same heart who I feel lucky to have found.  I truly love these women, and yesterday I felt so much joy and love from them that I am still feeling high from it today.  We chatted we ate, we blessed and they gave me well wishes for this birth, a beautiful Irish blessing, and they gave me strength and love.  I feel so lucky, and I feel ready to start nesting! Yeay!
Oh and my mom gave us a beautiful quilt for Zoey and she showed me a focus piece she is working on for my birth, I love it and again am so lucky.

Zoey's quilt. <3
The Butterflies each have one of our names quilted under them, so wonderful thank you Gaga!

Another thing that made yesterday so special was that while we ladies had our time, Marsh and Kat's husband took the kids out.  They had a great daddy & kiddo time and when they came back to the house everyone played happily and we had time to chat and hang out.  The other amazing gift we were given yesterday was pictures!  Kat's husband even took some wonderful pictures for us (I had been saying I needed some belly pics because I just never got around to it this time) so now we will have wonderful family photos to remember the short time when there were three, and my little love inside.  So everything is getting done, everything is falling into place, and I am so grateful for having such great people in my life and so close.

Happy 5th Birthday!

5 years ago we opened Pippi's Longstockings, a sweet little sock shop in a 200 square foot space carved out of the front show room of my father's bed store, Flobeds (I couldn't have done it without you Pops!)
I ran the shop 7 days a week those first few years, we built a great and loyal following (couldn't have done it without great customers either!)
Now five years later we are in a space more than 4x the size we started in and I am able to have wonderful employees who care about the shop work for me and manage the store while I take a maternity leave. How far we have come!
This weekend as a thank you to all of our customers we have yummy cupcakes, (come on in and check them out) the Pippsters got super creative and made some great cupcakes!

Cute cupcakes by Elyse <3

Creepy cute cupcakes by Nicole<3

Rowan enjoying her special ladybug cupcake! 

We also have gifts with purchases to hand out but those are going fast so come in early!
Thank you so much sock lovers for the continued support!
And,
Happy Memorial Day weekend!

Sidetracked

Well, I have gotten a little sidetracked from keeping up on my blogging this past week  or so, but life just seems so busy.  I have been trying to prepare Pippi's for my "maternity leave", (really I just wont be on the floor but I will be sort of around).  The Pippsters are ready, they can hold down the fort while I am out and do the daily stuff, (heck they've done it before) but I am trying to get my end of things organized.  That's the challenge.  My last day on the floor is tomorrow (thanks again to the Pippsters coming through in my time of need).  And next week I will spend off the floor at my desk making lists and checking them twice....Just 2 weeks left till Baby Zoey is due!!!

And...

(I will be posting more on this tomorrow), but...drum roll.....

Pippi's Longstockings has been open 5 years as of tomorrow!  Hard to believe, but it's true!  So this Memorial Day weekend is a big thing for us at Pippi's we are gonna have cupcakes for all our lovely customers as well as gifts with purchase (while supplies last). I am excited. This weekend is always fun; there's the Quilt Show downtown, Pippi's birthday, and Marshall's folks are coming to town. So, we will have a super fun, super busy weekend to look forward to. I hope we see all of our loyal customers out and about this weekend, and I am keeping my toes crossed for sun!