I met Zoe my first week of work when I moved to Washington. I had to scan some paperwork, and saw her as I walked by the kitchen at the winery. I learned two things that day: 1) There was a beautiful new chef in the winery that I needed to get to know better 2) I needed to find more reasons to walk into the kitchen. I had never been much of a coffee drinker. Caffeine used to make me wired and restless, but there was a coffee machine in the kitchen. So guess who started drinking coffee….a lot of coffee? One coffee first thing in the morning, one smaller coffee sometime mid-morning, A shot of espresso after lunch. Maybe even a late afternoon coffee during long harvest days. Anything I could do to walk through the kitchen and talk to her, I was doing it. I think She was pretty annoyed with this new guy always walking through her workspace, but that didn’t stop me. It took time, and about a million shots of espresso, but eventually she was convinced that going on date with a co-worker wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. And that is the story of why starting to drink coffee was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life

It's all the little things. The long chase that began as new friends, two transplants sharing a workplace and so many unpredictable moments. George has abilities that are strong as well as tender, he embodies a nature that is steadfast, capable and doting. Individually, we are very different stations but yet together we are somehow on the same frequency. When I met George at the winery in the fall of 2016. I was a surly spider with a vice grip on my tangled spiderweb and here comes along this tall sturdy 'cattle dog' on his lookout. The wry spider shoos away the cattle dog, at first, and then a couple more times after that. But then she finds herself in misery without him. She pretends this isn’t true. He tries to assure her he can and wants to take care of her. Spider laughs at the thought of needing to be taken care of. He persists with his mission. She falls madly (but cautiously) in love with the cattle dog and shorlty after, she throws caution to the wind, they have been gleefully doing life together ever since.

What a year! 2020 shook it all up. We missed people, places, and things but we grew in all sorts of ways. On Dec 2 of 2020, we welcomed our gorgeous baby boy, Lionel Kibugu Elliott. We can't wait for you to meet him.