For those who were not there.

We had large family reunion this last weekend here in Utah and I thought I would share some of the photos from the fun we had. Warning: this is a large photo post mostly for Adam and Miss D's parental unit to see.

Are you ready Grandma?

Anya and I are off tomorrow to Utah for a three week visit. This post is to make sure that they (the grandparental unit) is prepared for the reincarnation of me as a toddler. Anya normally climbs a lot. No drawers are safe. She in on the kitchen counter about 20 times a day and our dresser never actually has clothes in it because she has thrown them all out and then climbs on top. We are constantly the show of the playground. Every parent of a child even close to her age asks how old she is and are amazed by her strange climbing abilities. I am not bragging, it is just the way she is and to be honest it is a pain in the neck. Today I was washing dishes and then went to see where the little monster was hiding at. I found her stuck in our closet in the shelf at my chest level. I'm sorry for the really bad photos, I was trying to be fast before she climbed down.


I pulled her out of the shelves and not 2 seconds later she proceeded to climb all the way to the ceiling. Luckily she also climbed back down and then fell from the third shelf up. No harm done, she is currently spinning in circles as fast as next to me. Oh, wait, now she is dancing wildly on top of the dinning room table.



Hope you are prepared grandparentals. Luckily you have gone through this before sooooo, you should be fine. Just so everyone else knows that she does have her calm moments. Here she is watching TV before church while we were getting ready.

Strawberries!

Anya loves strawberries. In fact, some days strawberries are the only thing I can get her to eat. Today we decided that we needed to get some fresh off the vine strawberries, so I found an organic you pick strawberry farm an hour away from our house. We were able to get over 10 lbs of beautiful strawberries for only 20$. A kicking deal, right! I did most of the picking, with a little help from Adam and Anya. Then she got bored and Adam chased her up and down the rows while she devoured about 1 lb on her own. She totally loved it and insisted on more strawberries when we got home. Now I just have to figure out what to do with 10 lbs of berries without making jam.

Butterflies

One of the great things about living in the DC area is all the cool stuff to do. We will never be bored this summer. Yesterday we went up to the Brookside gardens and butterfly house. There are 40 acres of beautiful gardens, all free and a great butterfly house, not free but pretty cheap. Anya loves butterflies so she totally had a great time wondering around with hundreds of butterflies of different varieties flying around her and us with some even landing on us. We had to walk really carefully because they would often land on the ground in front of us and chase each other in circles around us. I have some pictures but no good ones of Anya because she had no desire to hold and pose for a picture.

We live- just not in Ottawa right now.

I am fully aware that it has been months since our last post. We spent a lot of time packing and moving and then over two weeks without a permanent internet connection, arrghh!!! A certain Grandma has been begging for new photos of our most important family member. So in honor of mother's day, here you go, Mom.



Some of these are really old, here is Adam and Anya chilling and watching TV, there favorite activity.

Anya thinks that she is a great help when I sew and almost always ends up inside the sewing cabinet making messes of my supplies.








Ok, now these are not so old. We are living in Fairfax, VA for the summer. These are a few of our adventures and exploration of our new apartment etc.






And last but not least, these were taken today before we went to church. Happy Mother's Day Mom, I love you!

PhD

Great News! We just found out that Adam has been accepted to and will receive both a base amount of funding as well as an admissions scholarship to the University of Ottawa for his PhD. We are really excited that he is going to start his PhD in September and that we do not have to go into any debt for it. He was accepted to a couple of other schools as well but Ottawa was his first choice. And we had celebratory all you can eat sushi last night which was soooo good, even if I can't have the good stuff right now. Yay Adam!

How to wean a very stubborn 20 month old from night feedings. A not so helpful how to.

To start of I must tell you that this how to may not work for all, but so far it has worked for me and my little breast monster.

1- Early monday morning, like 4 am. wake up with pretty bad abdominal pain, ignore and fall back asleep.

2- Go the entire day with said pain, wondering why you feel like you need to poop so bad but nothing is happening.

3- At 5 pm. drop husband off at his second job.

4- An 6 pm. call the telephone nurses to see what you should do about you increasing pain because you worry that a miscarriage may be occurring. The nurse tells you to go to the emergency room because 8 week pregnant women should not have that much pain.

5- Call your kick ass friends and tell them to go pick up your husband and come watch you little girl for undisclosed amount of time. Yea for super hero friends!

6- Go to the emergency room with husband and sit and wait for 4 hours because that is the wait. During that time you throw up multiple times from the pain.

7- Finally go back and see the doctor, get blood taken, and wait for doctors to figure you out.

8- Be told by doctors that you need to wait on a bed in the emergency room hall all night so that they can watch you and give you fluids via an IV.

9- Husband goes home at 1 am to relieve kick ass friends from baby duty because they both have to work in the morning. Little girl goes first night of her little life with out getting boob milk, and husband has awful night.

10- Morning comes in the ER. You have spent the entire night on a stretcher in a hall, taking various pain meds, all of which make you throw up, but there is nothing to throw up because you have not eaten since lunch monday, and not had anything to drink since 10 pm monday.

11- You finally go for a ultrasound at 11:30 am Tuesday. This is the longest ultrasound of you life, 1 1/2 hours of torture.

12- Ultrasound is inconclusive, baby is fine but they cannot find the appendix like they were looking for.

13- You go back to the ER to wait for a surgery consult, which they have forgotten to call for.

14- Your husband comes back to the ER because another awesome friend leaves work so that he can come and watch the girl and do your dishes, he even gets the girl down for a nap.

15- The surgery doctor decides to send you to get an MRI to try to get a better look at your appendix.

16- The MRI shows you appendix is crap and must be taken out.

17- You go into surgery and your husband goes home for another fun night with little girl.

18- Tuesday night you get out of surgery, throw up, and get taken up to your room for a strange night in the post op ward.

19- Wednesday morning you wake up feeling much better and eat breakfast- the first food you have had for over 40 hours.

20- Wednesday after lunch you get to go home.

All free because Canada rocks!


Draw backs- When your daughter comes to pick you up from the hospital she will not look at you and makes mean faces at you.