Settling in.

Hey! It has been over a month (skirting eyes sheepishly...) since I last posted. Sorry! June went ridiculously fast, as school ended, packing commenced, and we shipped ourselves on out to Omaha. Now we're here, the boxes are 98% unpacked, and I'm feeling a little bit settled in. Brad started his first week at the hospital out here, and it has been a welcome change for him. He feels excited about the new opportunities and responsibilities the come with being an official MD and a resident, so life is good!

A few details about Omaha...
I have the cutest neighbors in the world! See below:

Meet our 'munks.

These guys are the current residents of our back patio. There are 5 babies + 2 big ones (parents?). We set up a bird feeder and they're happy as can be. And so am I. :-)

Otherwise, we're also loving the Omaha Farmer's Market, which takes place downtown. We've been 2 Saturdays in a row since moving in. Last weekend it turned out that the Omaha Arts Festival was also taking place down there, so after taking our market goods home, we stopped back down and toured the festival. It was really nice. They have around 60 artists, which is much smaller than the Cedarburg fests, but they keep it all fine arts. Something to think about for next year!

Also, Omaha is home to lots of golf, much to Brad's happiness, as well as the Henry Doorly Zoo. Our parents are collectively hooking us up - Brad's parents gave us a gift card for golfing at the Knolls, which is pretty much in our backyard, and my parents gave Brad a zoo membership for graduation, which means I get to come along as a free guest. I haven't golfed yet, but Brad has with his dad, and he thinks the course is cool. I've been able to check it out when we've walked Scout because it actually goes through a neighborhood and has a cool cartpath that goes underneath the street and everything. We can peer over the fence and get glimpses. We'll probably try it out next week (hopefully when it's relatively empty, since I haven't been beyond the par 3 this year...). We did, however, visit the zoo last weekend. The day we chose was one that most people deemed too hot to go outdoors, but we still enjoyed ourselves... and probably burned more calories than typical for a hike around the zoo. The most impressive part for me was their desert/night animal dome. I love the klipspringer (see recent artwork) and night animals like spring hauses and bats. They had a neat beaver feature, too. Here's to many happy returns!

I've also been busy painting this week. As you probably guessed from the first pic, I updated my shop today! I have started a series called Tiny Zoo, of all 5x7, watercolor and ink animals. I also painted some Farmer's Market finds, and I did a few new canvases. A peek:


There are more on etsy, so please stop by and check them out. Now that we're in, the internet is running, and I know where most of our belongings are located, I plan to be much more frequent about this blogging business. Feel free to hassle me, etc.

Love, ash