The Adventures of the Sandors

Catchup!

2011-02-03T08:42:00.000-08:00

Months and months of photo's to post. This may be silly but Grandmas really wants photo's and such so here we go.

Beatrix's birthday was in October. Grandmas was in town which was fun and we had a few friends over for pumpkin woopie pies in stead of cake. Trixie loves treats so she gobbled up her cookie. She really loved the balloons (what kid doesn't) and we gave her a couple little gifts.

For Halloween Grandma made Anya a really cute Dorothy costume. She already had red sparkly shoes that worked perfect with the dress. We picked up a monkey costume for Bea and I attached felt wings to the back so that she would be a flying monkey. They looked really cute. We didn't make it trick or treating because we were in DC visiting friends but we did go to their ward's trunk or treat so they got a little candy and were able to show off their costumes. Anya has worn her dress a few times since then as dress up and to church (her pick).

Anya participate in the next gymnastics class and loved every moment of it. She did struggle with how slow the class would move around pretty slow. Her cute teacher was pregnant and there were seven little girls in the class so keeping then on track was pretty tough.

We have added another family member to our little gang. A week before Christmas we finally decided to get the dog we have always wanted. A little Newfoundland puppy who we named Tonks. She is really cute and has grown a ton in the last month and a half. The girls love her and she loves them so it works out well.

We had a really fun Christmas. Adam's brother David and his wife Meagan come up. We totally love them so it made our holiday great having them around. We got the girls a sled so we could take Tonks out for walks on our paths. It has been really fun exploring the outdoors a little more this winter.

Christmas dinner was really funny. We were kind of late getting dinner on so by the time I set the turkey on the table Anya was done. She grabbed the turkey leg and declared that it was HER'S! She got pretty far before the rest for the dinner made it on.

And some random cute pictures of girls. I shaved Trixie's head the other day so she is looking a little boy like right now.

I thought that you might like to see a couple of my latest craftings. I have been totally into wreaths now that we actually have a front door to hang them on soooo

This is our birthday wreath that we put up for.... birthdays. I know, amazing

and a couple of yarn wreaths that I made for Christmas. I taught a class on these for our ward RS Christmas activity.

and a cinnamon stick one that I pulled from a few different photos on apartment therapy.

These are pinwheels that I hung on the wall in Anya's room. They are made of scrapbook paper that match the colors in her quilt.

The banner that I made to hang in the playroom. It is just triangles of fabric that I sewed into store bought double binding and then hung up around the entire room.

And finally, the play kitchen that I made for the girls for Christmas. I got the designs from Ana White which if you have never been to her site you must. She has tons of free plans that are fabulous! This is the first time I have ever built something like this myself but I watched my dad build enough stuff over the years that I pretty much picked up a lot of info. The only tricky part was the fact that I have very few tools. Like only a drill and a saw, no clamps or anything so it is not all square. The building only took me a couple of days with Anya helping but the painting took a while since I have multiple layers and I could only do it at night when kids were distracted by Dad. I am pretty happy with it and so are the girls.

Fall Fun

2010-10-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

Fall is my absolute favorite season, especially here in Ottawa. The trees are all beautiful and it is cool and raining everyday. There are fantastic bike paths that are all over the city where the trees are great. The path by our house is especially beautiful because it runs along the Ottawa river and through little forests. The girls and I have had a great time this week going for bike rides and runs along this path and through the fallen leaves. On Saturday we went as a family to Saunders Farm, a fun fall based farm located outside Ottawa. They have haunted hay rides, tons of play structures for kids, a pumpkin patch, and a whole bunch of different mazes. We had a fun time wondering around enjoying the cool weather and we found a cute little pumpkin that had to come home with us. Here are a few pics from the day.

Time Flies!

2010-08-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

I have about a ton of pictures from over the summer that I have been meaning to blog about and I realized that if I don't get a post up soon the problem is only going to get worse. So, this is going to be big and probably missing a ton of summer info because I can't remember what happened. We will start off with the biggest news... we bought a house! The realization that we actually live here and will be staying here for the foreseeable future hit, so it just made sense for us to stop paying rent. Yay for me because even though it is pretty small it is WAY bigger than any apartment that we have ever had and we can finally use our kitchen table as a kitchen table! So here it is....

And a couple of the bedrooms because Grandma has been asking...

This the the play room.

And this is Anya's room, since this photo it has been painted bright green and has really cute white tissue balls hanging from the ceiling.

The upstairs bathroom.

Parent bedroom.

The girls and I spent a bulk of the summer hanging out in Utah at the grandparental house while Adam was here in Ottawa moving us and studying for his big Phd exam. Anya had a great time eating berries all day and destroying the house and finding all the dangerous places to play, such as this one....

Daphne spent a bit of time at Grandma's house as well, which Anya loved, and it is always great to have the grand-dog Roxy around as well.

Anya had a birthday while in Utah. It was super fun to have lots of Aunts and Uncles around for her big party and what little girl does not love a rainbow cake.

Some cute Bea

While in Utah I put Anya in swimming lessons. The first class was a mommy and me class. Anya has always hated the pool. Screams bloody murder every time we go in one. I know it is really weird, especially since she is not afraid of anything else but I guess that large bodies of water freak her out. So, we started the swimming lessons and for the first week she screamed and cried for the whole of our lessons. Then on the monday of the second week we had a sub teacher and for some reason Anya liked her and something clicked. Suddenly the water was not as scary to her and she slowly started to work her way deeper into the water and would actually go under. By the time she started the second set of lessons on her own she actually would have fun in each class.

Some cute girls at Thanksgiving Point

Halfway through August the girls and I flew back to Ottawa. Let me give you all a little flying tip.... Make sure when you buy tickets with multiple stops that you are given adequate transfer time. Never assume that certain online companies will sell only legal transfers. If you do not double check on your own you may find yourself stuck in the Vegas airport for 12 hours with a toddler who has no shoes because she broke her flip flop on the first flight and a baby, then you may have to take a red eye with said children to Toronto, then wait 3 more hours for your flight to Ottawa. Just warning you.
Since being home we have been keeping ourselves very busy. The house has about a million projects that I have been working on which I will show off my craftyness soon I hope. We have gone to a couple of zoos, enjoyed that last of the summer heat and have started back to school. Hope you enjoy the pics.

Nova Scotia

2010-06-11T13:01:00.000-07:00

Hey Ya'll, thought I would show some pics from our recent trip to Nova Scotia to visit Adam's Mom. We had a really good time just relaxing and seeing the beautiful countryside. We flew in on an early flight direct from Ottawa to Halifax. It is a really short flight so that made life pretty easy. Anya is such a pro flyer that we we entered the airplane she was carrying the boarding passes, when she came to the flight attendant who asked her for the passes Anya just reached out and gave her a big hug.

That night we went back to the airport to pick up Adam's brother from the airport and then headed to the other side of the island to Adam's Mum's house. She has a super cute fixer upper that is about half and hour down the neck past Digby, and if you have no idea what I am talking about then check out a map. We spent a couple of days just hanging out and wandering around the area a tiny bit. Anya loved wandering through the yard and bothering Nanny's dog Charlie.

Trixie and Nanny

Anya and Trixie love their Aunt and Uncle

We went and bought some lobster for dinner one night- I won't tell you how we got them exactly but know that they were fab.

Spring?

2010-05-28T11:37:00.001-07:00

Once again, one special Grandma has gently reminded me that I am behind in photo updates of her grandkids so I am doing my duty and checking in. I actually take photos all the time but I just forget to post for a while. Sorry Mom!

Spring in Ottawa has been beautiful this year. It came a few weeks early which has given us fantastic weather for much longer than usual. Ottawa normally has a big tulip festival every year scheduled for about the second weekend of May but since the warm weather came so early the thousands of tulips around town were almost gone when the festival started, luckily I went out early and took some photos of the girls with some pretty flowers. For those of you who have never been to Ottawa I thought that it would be a good idea to show you some of our beautiful city. Ottawa is pretty small for a capital and the have done a fantastic job making it beautiful all the time. We have a big river that runs North of the city and then down through the Eastern side of the city as well as a canal that runs through the downtown. On both sides of these water ways are paved jogging/bike paths. This day we were taking a walk from the University where Adam goes down one of the canal paths. In no particular order.

PS. more photos are to come soon, we just got back from a little trip to Nova Scotia where I took a ton of photos but we are trying to buy a house this weekend soooooo I will have to do it later.

The Poorly Planned Escape

2010-04-22T15:36:00.001-07:00

Easter and Such

2010-04-19T07:43:00.000-07:00

I am a little behind in actually posting what is going on in our lives right now so I thought that I should play catchup. We went down to Windsor for Easter. Adam's brother and Sister in-law have a big passover dinner where David makes the most amazing lamb that we are totally willing to drive 8 hours in order to partake. This year was fabulous as ever and the weather made it even better. It was a good 70 degrees everyday and sunny most of the time. We had a little easter egg hunt for the kids, (Adam's sister and her three kids were there and some friends with their two kids) and Anya had a great time searching for the eggs on the ground. She is the youngest so I told the older kids to leave her some eggs to find down low so they just passed over one whole area leaving Anya a lot of chocolate to enjoy. She also got a new puzzle set which she was totally into, the little quilt I made for her baby doll, and this cute Mei Tai baby doll carrier.

The rest of the weekend we spent hanging out with David and Meagan and listening to General Conference. On Sunday Grandpa Ron and the fam came over for Easter Lamb which was fun. For fun I finally took pictures of our favorite dream house in Windsor. It is only a couple of blocks from David and Meagan's house. I doubt we will ever move to Windsor but I am totally in love with this house.

David and Meagan love the one right next door and we are always trying to get them to buy it.

Since then we have been busy with life. You know play groups, walks, play grounds and being generally excited about the warm spring we are having. Adam is still crazy busy with papers and studying and such and we miss him since he is gone so much. We did find out that he is going to receive and extra scholarship from the provence next year which we are really grateful for. I am always impressed that his brain can provide for us so well.

Anya had her first major hurt the other day. She was standing on a chair by the stove helping me cook. She helps all the time and is usually very careful but this time as soon as I moved a pan off of the element she put her hand straight down on the glass (we have a ceramic top stove). She got burned pretty bad on almost all of her palm and some finger tips. We cooled right away but she had to spend a rough evening with her hand on various frozen items. She slept well that night and buy morning she was acting as usual. A couple of very large blisters formed on her palm which have since come off and she is now having to keep them bandaged up. She had never worn a band aid before this so it is quite tricky making her keep them on.

Beatrix is now six months old which is totally crazy to me. She is a cute little thing and is very calm all the time. She very rarely laughs for me or Adam but Anya can get her going really well. They lay on the floor together and laugh their head off about nothing. She spends most of her day watching Anya and trying to grab whatever Anya has and she is well on her way to sitting well. Sorry no pictures but it is hard to get photos of her because Anya always jumps in and then moves Bea around.

Here ya go Grandma!

2010-04-01T08:29:00.000-07:00

Grandma asked for more pictures of girls so........

We decided to wear Easter dresses this last Sunday since Conference is this week. Photo's went well for Beatrix but when Anya came there were lots of summersaults and hadstand's which resulted in fuzy pictures of hair.

And Some random ones from today.

Update.

2010-03-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

Hi. I have nothing major to report I just thought that I better get some photo's up for certain grandparents who really love to see their girls, also I figured a little up to date info on what is going on would be nice for ya'll.

Anya is still a crazy little monkey. At the beginning of this year we decided to that we should harness some of her crazy energy and desire to climb everything in sight. (With no playground available during the winter she has been pretty desperate. Yesterday she climbed to the top of the book shelf at Adam's office.) She has been taking a tot gymnastics class for the last couple of months and she could not be happier in it. The whole listening to the teacher and sitting when told has been a little difficult for her but she is getting better at that and she really loves to somersault, swing on bars, walk on balance beams, and hang from rings. The class is for 2-3 year olds and I would say that she is the most advance physically of all the kids which kind of makes me feel a little better about her delayed speech. She is doing way better lately with talking however so we are hopeful she will catch up to her age group soon.

She is also potty trained! Yay!!! A little over a month ago we did the 3 day potty training program that Melissa did. I had heard of it before but was sceptical until Melissa said that it worked and boy did it. After only three accidents on the first day she caught on and has been great ever since. The first couple of nights she wet the bed because we could not convince her to pee before she went to sleep so we put her in pull-ups at night. Since then she has figured out the pee on demand thing so she almost never pees at night any more. We are soooo happy that we only have one kid in diapers now and we are super proud of Anya.

It is super hard to get a picture of Anya lately since she is running all the time and refuses to stand still unless watching tv but here are a few attempts.

Anya is still a monster/dinosaur/ hulk loving girl but she does love a dolly every once in a while so I decided to make a dolly quilt the other day. It is from scraps for another quilt that I am working on. Anya helped sew parts by sitting on my lap while I sewed but I hid is as soon as I finished so that I can give it to her for Easter.

Miss Beatrix, or Bea as most of us call her is now 4 1/2 months old now and is the sweetest little thing ever. She is almost always happy, especially when Anya is poking her with some toy or hugging her way too tight. She loves her sister more that any of us but she is happy for anyone to hold her. She loves to be held and cuddled more that anything and if left on the floor for longer than a minute she will lay flat in despair and will generally fall asleep. She is a great little sleeper at night but really hates to take naps during the day. She will fall asleep fine but wake up very quickly if put down in a bed. When she does wake up from a nap it is usually Anya who hears her first and she will jump up and run for the bedroom yelling " I'm coming Bea, it's ok Bea" which lets me know that Bea is awake.

W recently started putting Bea in our door way jumper thing. By this age Anya loved to jump like crazy but Bea is different. She like to be in it but not because she likes to jump. Bea loves to stand up straight and look ast stuff so the jumper works out great for her.

Oh ya, I am still going to go private, but I am really lazy so it has not happened yet.

Private

2010-01-30T16:13:00.000-08:00

Hey Ya'll, I have decided to make our little family blog private. I am going to go into private mode next week so if there is any chance that I don't have your email and you would like to visit this blog please leave a comment with your email and I will make sure that you get an invite.

loves- Chrys

Hi. Here are some pictures....

2010-01-22T12:31:00.000-08:00

I realize that we are way behind on our posting pictures and such but..... well, no reason other than life and such. We went to Windsor and Utah for the holiday season so I thought that I would update ya'll with some photos of our lives and such.

This was our attempt at getting some sort of a Christmas picture of the girls. Beatrix screamed for the first few shots and then Anya screamed for the next few until I gave up. Oh well.

Bea and Grandpa taking a nap.

Some random Anya pictures.

And some cute ones of Bea.

Just to so how different Anya and Bea look. These were both taken at three months and a few days.

While we were in Utah I had a quilt-fest with their new long arm machine, so much fun. so here are the pics of them,
This one was for Zach and Katlin who got married last year. A very belated wedding present. I pieced the back as well.

This one was for Adam's mom for Christmas.

This is a baby one that I made for some friends here in Ottawa who just had a baby.

And this is one that I made for us because..... well I wanted one too. I did one more for a friend that is pregnant but I didn't have a chance to get a pic yet so stay tuned.

2009-11-01T13:59:00.000-08:00

This is how our lives are going right now. Everything is going by really fast and life is kind of a blur.

But we are having tons of fun trying to catch moments.

This was my attempt to get a photo of both girls. Anya complied for a moment and then tried to pull Beatrix up on her chest by pulling off her head.

Here is a photo of the quilt that I have been working on for Beatrix. It is a paper pieced hexagon quilt. All of the hexagons were stitched together by hand, mostly over the summer while watching TV and at the park with Anya. After they were all stitched together I appliqued it to the brown border. I then sent it off to my fabulous quilter, aka my mom, and my Dad brought it back to me. I am totally in love with it and I think I would do another just because it was nice to have a project that I could bring with me places. My mom's quilting is perfect and I am totally impressed with her new skill/job. Thanks Lady!

Two Weeks

2009-10-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

Miss Beatrix is now two weeks old. She is healthy and getting a little chub on. Her weight is up in one week from 7lb 15oz to 8lbs 7 oz. Pretty good eh? This girl loves to eat and cuddle. She rarely cries and is getting stronger everyday. We have had a pretty good couple of weeks since coming home from the hospital. My sister in law Megan came to visit and help out (thanks Megan!) for a few days. She cleaned my house, cooked, and held little girls which was awesome. Now my Dad is here and Anya and I are both loving having Grandpa around. So here are a few photos of the last week.

We're Home!

2009-10-19T16:10:00.001-07:00

Introducing
Beatrix Elizabeth Pinette Sandor

6 hrs old

Here's the stats

Born Thursday October 15, 2009 at 11:23 am
7 lbs 15 oz
21 inches

10 mins old

Here's the story
Chattin' on the phone Thursday night with my mamma. All of the sudden I am all wet. Question, did I pee or did my water just break. I make my way into the bathroom to find that indeed my water just broke but it is green. Meconium. Great. My birth plan did not include the observation that is necessary when meconium is present. So Adam calls our midwife while I take a shower since I somehow did not get to showering that day. The midwife tells us to meet her at the hospital in an hour so she can check out my stats. We pack up and drop our Anya off at some friends for the night and make our way to the hospital. By the way, we were planning a hospital birth this time so I was not freaking out yet. Why go to the hospital since I despise the place? Remember how I told you in the last post that we moved to Quebec? Well Quebec = bureaucracy= Ontario midwives can't deliver in Quebec= really sad Chrys.
We arrive at hospital with some mild surges (hypnobirthing talk for contractions) happening about every seven minutes. My midwife hooks me up to some machines and we wait. I watch movies on my laptop, Adam attempts to sleep in a hospital chair and we get excited about seeing the baby soon. Problems occur. The babies heart rate is quite high and is not going up and down with the surges like they should. Our midwife consults with the bad bad OB guy (we actually we really comfortable with him, and he was worried about the baby since there was no variability in Trixie's heart rate) and he says that if things don't progress in the surges department he may have to intervene and perform a C-Section. So, obviously all surges stop dead and the babies heart rate stays high.

Seven am rolls around and extra midwifes have arrived. They, with the OB guy decided it would be best to start the Oxytocin. Really far out of my birth plan but Adam assures me that I can handle it and we go ahead with the IV. Now I am attached to the IV as well as the monitor so my water birth plan is totally out of the question. The surges pick up speed as well as the intensity. Hypnobirthing to the rescue. I breathed and relaxed and Adam talked me through each surge (which were way crazier as a result of the oxytocin). The baby is still not doing great so the OB man decided to do a PH test, so he attempted to reach inside (ouch!) and prick the top of babies head with a little razor thing to get some blood to test and make sure she was ok. But luckily the baby would have none of that. Apparently she didn't like OB guys either so he gives me a time line. Two hours and he will do a section. I get up and start moving around more. The surges are awful by then but Adam somehow makes it all ok. About 40 minutes later and only 20 minutes of birth breathing (pushing) and baby Beatrix is born.

Favorite moment of the birth besides having it over with: Imagine me sitting on a birth ball with Adam on the end of the bed. I am leaning over him in the height of a pretty heavy surge. I am pushing on Adam's legs letting all the pain go into him. When that surge is over Adam tells me that I am beautiful. I laugh and say that it is not possible at that moment. He says no, I am beautiful and we move into another surge.

Immediatly after the birth Beatrix was taken by Adam over the the heating tray to be checked out by the Pediatrician. Adam rubbed her and talked to her and she told him stories of her journey. The Pediatrician cleaned the gunk out of her mouth and throat. After noticing that Miss Trixie was super pale and not gaining color they ordered blood tests. After a while they came back to tell us that her hemoglobin level was super duper low. Like scary low. It should be 140 and Beatrix's was 85. They said that they wanted us to hang around and see if it would go up by the evening. Unfortunately during the course the afternoon it dropped to 71. So they decided to transfer her to the children's hospital where there are neonatologists that would know what was going on. This photo is while we waited to the transfer people to come and pick her up.

From thursday night until monday afternoon I spent almost every second with Beatrix at the hospital while Adam spent his time moving back and forth from home to the hospital and moving Anya around between various friend's houses. Beatrix was put on oxygen soon after we arrived because when you have no red blood cells you don't get enough oxygen through out your body. She was off it on Saturday afternoon after she had improved a bit and eaten some. She had been sleeping a ton, even for a newborn because of the anemia, but she eats really well so she started to pick up. They did several blood tests and decided that in the last few weeks before delivery, Beatrix had been transfering blood to me. During the first two days they checked her hemoglobin levels and they were, 73, 75, and then 76. After that they decided to wait 48 hours before checking again in a effort to allow her to build some more cells on her own. This morning the test showed a hemoglobin level of 88 so they decided that we could go home. We are very grateful that she is such a strong sweet little girl.

Upon arrival at home I found a sick two year old who was super excited about having a baby sister at home. Anya is totally in love with baby Beatrix which means that she wants to help with everything involving Trixie including feeding and holding at all times. I guess too much love is something that we can deal with.

New Apartment and Projects.

2009-10-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

I thought a post before the baby comes might be a good idea. Just to update everyone on where we are and what's up in our lives. We left the DC area at the end of August to move back home to Ottawa. Some wonderful friends found us an apartment in Gatineau Quebec. Ottawa is located right on the border of Quebec and it is commonly referred to as the Ottawa/Gatineau area. Quebec is substantially cheaper for rent then the area in Ottawa we are willing to live in (we must stay in our ward boundaries). So our apartment is a good sized three bedroom with a full unfinished basement which means that we can throw all of our "stuff" in the basement and we bought a washer and dryer (yeah for no more laundry mats!). When we moved in we had to re-paint everything so we spent the first couple of weeks painting and moving furniture around, not quite done with that but done enough that it now feels like home. We are in a great location, right next to a major road that has tons of buses for Adam to get to school quickly and super close to the river and paths that I love about the Ottawa area. We are even super close to the good English/French immersion school so in a couple of years Anya will be able to go to Jr Kindergarten there.

We have all been super busy since coming home. Adam and I both were called to fairly big callings. Adam is crazy busy with his Phd. He is having to read tons more than his Masters and still trying to do his own research for publication, work on scholarship applications, working as a TA. I have been trying to get some of the bazillion projects done around the house. Curtins have been made for Anya's room but not yet for ours, I finished a hand pieced quilt for the new baby which I will show as soon as it gets back from the quilters (oh, that's my mom. She is awsome.) And various Christmas presents are on the go. I thought that i would share one project that I have been working on for the last couple of days.

Before

The tenants who lived here before us left this Dutailier glider for us. It was is terrible shape. It was covered in a super thick layer of cat hair and the fabric was stained badly. The wood finish was very warn and it is totally not my style. I have always wanted a Dutailier glider but they are way out of our price range so.... Now I have one that I like. The above photo was taken after hours of scrubbing and washing so don't think that I was just being picky. I spray painted the whole thing a satin finish black which makes it totally match our Broyhill furniture and then I took an old red microfiber duvet cover that I had and recovered the seat and back cushion. I have never made covers for anything like this before so it was a creative process to get it done but I am pretty happy with the results, we just won't let my mom inspect it. So the whole transformation cost me two can's of spray paint and I am super happy with the results. Anya loves it also, I often find her in the office rocking with some book. Now we just need a baby to come out so that I can rock it.

Baby Dolls

2009-08-27T13:33:00.000-07:00

This is The Incredible Hulk

Or as we affectionately refer to him 'hulky' or 'hulk baby'. The Hulk is Anya's favorite dolly. She has many dolls, baby dolls, rag dolls, both homemade and store bought but she has chosen The Hulk as her favorite. As I write this she has The Hulk standing on the window ledge and is telling him to jump to her.

The Hulk stands about 15 inches tall. He is hard plastic with an on and off switch on his bum. If you push a button on his tummy he growles loudly and then makes a crashing sound. If you squeeze his legs together his lifts his arms up in the air and when they fall a large crashing sound occurs and his eyes glow bright green. Most children are actually quite scared of The Hulk, but Anya has been trained to be a warrior so she loves him.

Last night, like many other nights and nap times Anya has insisted on putting Hulky to sleep, wrapped in a blanket in some box before she will consider sleep.

The Hulk often eats and drinks what Anya eats and drinks. Every sippy cup of water is offered to The Hulk while he rests on her hip.

When Anya puts on shoes to go out, The Hulk must have shoes on as well.

Some days, when Anya is tired of carrying The Hulk around (he is awkward) she insists on having him tied to her back like a any good mama carries her baby. That way she can get things done and still keep Hulky happy.

Just wanted to share with you all a little bit if info on our crazy little girl. We sure love her.

Home

2009-07-22T08:08:00.000-07:00

Anya and I have finally made it back home to DC. After staying in Utah for a couple of weeks we drove to Santa Cruz for my brothers wedding and then then drove back to Utah, then drove all the way here to DC. It was a ton of driving with a two year old and a six year old for most of the way. Thank goodness for portable DVD players. I thought I would post some photos of our fun in Utah and Cali. We went to the balloon launch during the freedom festival. Anya loved the balloons even though they didn't actually leave the ground because of weather problems.

The girls had tons of fun going for rides on Grandpa's motorcycle.

We also had a small birthday celebration for Anya. It is so weird that she is now two and acting like a little girl instead of a baby. I made this lady bug cake that I think turned out pretty good. Sorry about the weird color of the photos. For some reason it is really hard to get a good photo in my parents kitchen.

My younger brother Kip got married on the beach in Santa Cruz and almost the whole family was able to come- we were missing two spouses, Adam and Holly. Anya jumped straight into Parkers arms as soon as he arrived, all kids love Parker so it was not surprising. I look awful in the group shot but I figured it was better to so a good one of the bride and groom.

For those who were not there.

2009-06-29T11:05:00.001-07:00

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?

2009-06-23T17:43:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-05-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T14:51:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-05-10T07:46:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-28T05:50:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-18T16:25:00.000-07:00

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.

Pictures and climbing

2009-02-19T17:50:00.000-08:00

My mom has requested new pictures, so here you go lady. I thought that I should document some of Anya's climbing adventures, I have been taking video but am not finished with it so here are some photos instead.

I am not actually sure how she gets in this little drawer but it is her new favorite place to sit.

This girl loves to color.

And when you fall down the stairs you need a fudgesicle to make you feel better.

New Hair Cut

2009-01-15T15:06:00.000-08:00

See this girls messy hair.
It is very long and super messy. The length is crazy because various hairs grow at different rates. The back curly part grows super slow and the front grows fast. We have been talking about getting her hair cut for a while now but had not been able to figure out how exactly to do this. The girl does not hold still for very long. When I pull her hair up I usually have to chase her around the apartment combing and pulling all as I chase on my knees. As you can imagine, going to a hair dresser for a cut seemed to be impossible. So I looked up online how to do a blunt cut and decided that I could handle it and if it was horrible I would bring her to my hairdresser for a fix. After a good bath we put on a movie and I sat behind her on our coffee table. This tactic has worked in the past when I have braided her hair or other more elaborate hair do's. After sectioning it off and carefully cutting we ended up with a pretty cute wedge. It is a little shorter than I had planed but It looks cute. Sorry for so many photos but they are really for grandma.

This is Anya's favorite drawer to play in. I have to keep it empty all the time because she loves it so much. Obviously these photos are pre hair cut.

A good pocket if your pants don't have them.

Home

2009-01-04T16:01:00.000-08:00

We are now back in cold, cold Ottawa after our Christmas excursions. We were able to find last minute flights to Utah for Christmas which some fantastic Grandparents paid for (Thanks again!) so we spent our Christmas with my parents and brothers etc.. We had a really fun time and Anya had an especially great Christmas. She ran around the house playing with everything she could find, going up and down stairs, climbing on things, and generally having a great time. It was really nice to have someone else chase her all the time. So here are some photos of the fun.

So that was the super fun of Christmas- but I wanted to show you a project I started and finished yesterday. I have been wanting to make this for a while now but haven't done it since Anya received the crayons from Santa so I had to wait until after Christmas. It is based on a pattern from Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts with I don't actually own, but have looked at enough that I was able to figure it out. We took it to church today with great results. Anya loves to take the crayons out and put them straight back in.

Big Picture Post

2008-12-12T13:49:00.001-08:00

I keep meaning to post so of the funny happenings here in Ottawa for a while now, however I am a procrastinator so they tend to pile up. Sp here we go...

Our little get-in-skie loves to climb on top of things. She uses any box or container she can find to climb up and get to items that are high up, like stuff in our tv armoire. Notice that she is holding a tooth brush. Well it is mine and about 1 minute later she shoved it into the subwoofer that she is standing on. Now my tooth brush and a couple of small toys are stuck inside.

She is also really good at climbing into things. In and out and then in and out of the bathtub. In and out of this recycling box. Days of fun have been spent pushing this box around and throwing various toys inside and then climbing in for them.

We have been trying to take a couple of good Christmas pictures but this little girl does not want to cooperate.

This little monkey loves to watch movies, so much in fact that she will do anything to get to them. Example, she now climbs up on the arm of the sofa and reaches for movies in the shelf next to the sofa.

Have any of you ever met my slurpee loving husband. He is rarely without this giant cup of slurpee. Well, he has passed this love on to his daughter.

And finally, this is what -20 degrees and 2 feet of snow look like.

Food at the Pinette Sandor House

2008-11-28T15:31:00.000-08:00

I have decided to start a series of posts revolving around the food we eat here at the Pinette Sandor house. Why? Well, I don't know what to post most of the time (I can't show your the Christmas presents that I am making), and that way all my recipes will be in one location in case I get lost and Adam has to fend for himself. Hopefully it will not be too boring for any of you. Just some info before we begin: I do not take good food photos, there is not natural light after 3 p.m. here and I have never been good at food photography so the pictures will not be representative of the yummyness of the food, also I have almost no original ideas, I find most of my recipes on line via food blog or through tastespotting. and then either leave it alone if it is good are more often tweak it a bit to my liking. After all I am was taught to cook by my father, a man who could not leave a recipe alone if he had to.
You will find that a large amount of the food we eat is of a foreign nature. This is because my silly white Canadian husband does not actually believe that he is from Canada but from every country that he believes has better food than what he refers to as "white people food". While in the UK, where food sucks and take out is too expensive and here in Canada when we have no money for going out I have been forced to figure out how to make our favorite food from various countries.
So, I bring you Mapu Tofu
This recipe is from my friend Heather. She is half Chinese and after seeing me order this at every Chinese restaurant we have gone to together she finally gave me the recipe. It is soooo easy and soooo tasty. Anya loves it, and will usually eat tons and tons of the tofu. I generally make it with Honey Ginger Carrots from Steamy Kitchen

Mapu Tofu
Mix together for sauce:
1 Tbs soy sauce
1 Tbs white vinegar
2 tsp sugar
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 tsp chili flakes
1 tsp sesame oil

Mix together:
6 oz ground pork
1 Tbs oyster sauce

In large pot heat 2 Tbs oil, then add 1 tsp minced garlic and 1 tsp minced ginger. Stir until fragrant then add ground pork mixture and cook until pork is done. Add sauce and 16 oz medium tofu, cut up into cubes. Cook until bubbly. Thicken sauce with 1/2 tsp cornstarch mixed in a little water. Serve over rice. Yummy!

By the way, I used firm tofu today, and it looks funny to me, and is not quite as good.

Big Smiles

2008-11-17T16:39:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to clarify- my bad picture taking must not be because Anya does not smile for the camera- so the other explanation is that it gets dark at 4 pm, it is snowing so there is no natural light during the day, and the light in our apartment sucks.

An Explanation

2008-11-16T13:29:00.000-08:00

Some of yous peoples may have notices an addition of 'want lists' to the side of this blog. I believe this requires an explanation. We have had a couple of you loved one's ask us for ideas of Christmas presents this year. Since we live so far from most of you, I felt that it would be OK to post such info on two conditions.
1- in no way does this list mean that we want or expect gifts from anyone, as always we would much rather have a nice Christmasy note of love than a gift so please do not feel the need to give anything.
2- This list is not a hard and fast list of requests, we would love any thoughtful gift, but if you feel the need to buy one of us anything you will notice themes in the individual lists- Adam loves TV and books- but we currently don't get any TV stations, so seasons of his favorites are great for him as are gift cards for book stores. Chrys loves kitchen stuff so anything in that department is appreciated (you may even get a return on you investment in the form of cooked items :). And Anya loves good quality learning toys- we hate having a house full of toys so the smaller is better.

Once again I would like to emphasize the fact that we do not expect any gifts from anyone- a nice email or phone call would be loved just as much- and as you all know I never buy Christmas gifts- handmade is much nicer to me so don't feel like you have to buy anything.

Halloween and my fantastic child!

2008-11-14T06:03:00.000-08:00

So I just remembered that I did not actually post photos from trick or treating. We went we some friends who have 3 little girls (and one baby boy, but he did not go out). Anya loves these girls so we knew that she would follow them and do what ever they were doing. It worked well, she had a good time if only I was able to get a good photo of her. She does not want to look at the camera lately so It is hard to get good shots- sorry. In other news I just wanted to tell you what a great little girl she is. I am trying to finish up two university courses by the end on November and I still have a ton of work to do- so Anya had been babysat a lot these days- and most of the time by people that she has never met before. Thankfully she is such a happy, friendly little girl that she really does not care who is watching her. I drop her off at various peoples homes, she plays and plays and then cries when I try to take her away- young women come to our home to watch her and she wonders why they have to leave at the end of the night. I am so glad that she is so easy going- it makes trying to do homework a lot easier.

Sorry!

2008-10-31T13:47:00.000-07:00

Hey all! I know you are all extremely mad at me for the super long absence, time just got away from me. We are more than slightly busy around here so posting just keeps getting pushed to the end of the to do list. Now that I am here I should probably tell you what has been going on. We are back in Ottawa, and like I expected we really miss Aberystwyth. I guess that is the way life goes. We are living in a two and a half bedroom apartment in little Italy. It is on the top floor of a nice house owned by a cute older Italian couple who live in the rest of the house. They are super nice, always giving us homemade pasta sauce and the yummyest homemade cheese. The apartment is pretty great and super big: an office off of our room that is made into Anya's room which gives us a spare bedroom for guests and rock bands that sleep over, a huge walk in closet, a pantry with a door that closes, and a outside storage unit for all our random stuff. The only problem is that our couch did not fit up the super skinny staircase, so we currently are sitting on our one comfy chair and dining room chairs to watch TV which is not ideal. Anyway, we have almost finished moving everything in so it is feeling like home more each day. On to the pictures eh? I have a ton that have piled up over the last two months so... here are a few

This little girl loves to play at the playground. She runs all over the place trying out every slide they have and has even mastered climbing the rope stair things instead of using the stairs. She may be tiny but she can climb anything.

Loving slurpies, just like her dad!

Playing with uncle David. (Adams older brother)

We went to Florida with my parents to visit my grandparents and had loads of fun. Thanks grandma and grandpa, and great grandma and great grandpa!

Just eating some Tofu and watching TV.

Playing in some leaves.

Anya is going as little red ridding hood for halloween. I had some red and white wool felt lying around that I made into a cloak with a big huge hood, and got a really cute clasp for the front. I have a cool little picnic basket that I got when I was a kid from my cousins in the Azores. At first she did not like the cloak, but after a while it seems that she might do ok. We are going trick or treating with some friends from church, we are hoping that she figures out what to do. I am going to try to get better pictures of her tonight when she is all dressed up, but here are some starter ones.

Leaving Aber

2008-08-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

Well, we are leaving Aber in two days and we are feeling bittersweet. We have really enjoyed our time here. It is beautiful and the town is great to walk around. I have loved being able to walk everywhere. We have made some lovely friends, here is a photo of Anya with a family from church

Many of the people we have met and befriended will be friends for a long time and we will miss them much. However we are really excited to be going home. It has been a year and a half since we have had our stuff, and as much as I try my hardest to not be attached to possessions, I love my furniture and kitchen ware. It has been difficult to live in two separate apartments that have been outfitted with the bare minimum of essentials, non of which have been quality. I cook a lot and we love to entertain but it is hard to prepare many dishes without proper kitchen essentials. I also have missed being in a ward. Our branch has been lovely, but it has many, many problems that wards do not, or maybe I just don't see the same problems because the group is so much larger. I will be glad to not have callings that needs my full attention during every hour of church, but our little girl will miss being so loved by the church members here.

Anyway, we are very busy cleaning out our apartment and giving away stuff. Sunday we will drive to Manchester and Monday we will be flying to Detroit and then drive up to Ottawa. We have found a great apartment there and then hopefully we will find jobs. Here are a couple of pictures of our girl for you to enjoy.

Miss Getinski

2008-08-09T03:51:00.000-07:00

Our small sized girl is a crazy getinski. Like most little ones, she loves to go all the places that we do not want her to. Lately she has taken to pulling everything, and I mean everything out of all the cupboards that she can reach. Since we have a small kitchen these cupboards have lots of stuff that she should not be playing with. Here she is getting into the flour.

That same cupboard actually has all of our food products, so it is very important to reach the very back and pull everything out.

In our living room is a sliding glass door that opens up onto a glass partition preventing you from falling the two stories down. Anya loves to sit with the door open up against the glass partition and look outside, especially when it is raining out. Quite often she takes random items and shoves them under the glass, to a dreadful demise on the rocks below. Anyway- the other day she climbed from the couch onto the end tables and then peaked over the banister. at one point she had pulled herself up in a pull up on the railing. Yea, fun!

These are just super cute, because we all know she is-

In other news, some folks have been asking what we are doing with ourselves next. This is a very interesting question. The current plan is that we are moving back to Ottawa September 1. Adam is currently finishing his masters degree here in Aber, and will be done at the end of this month. He applied to 3 Phd programs that he was interested in, here in Aber, McMaster in Hamilton, Ontario, and Arizona State in Phoenix. He was accepted here and in Arizona, but missed McMaster by one spot. So it all came down to money. They do things a little bit different here than they do in the UK. They do not have funding for all the people they accept to Phd programs. Some funding is available but thye pass it out really slowly as thye receive various grants and such come from the government. Arizona offered Adam funding but in order to go there Adam needs a visa and since the US visa department is backlogged forever we have to defer for a year. So we decided to move to Ottawa in order to live for a year until the US visa comes through. If Adam gets a good job that he likes than we might stay there. Yesterday Adam had a meeting with one of the professors at the school. The Prof basically told him that money was coming to Adam very soon and that they really want him to stay here. Although this is great news, there are many problems. The money that they can give him is not quite enough for us to live in this very expensive place. Also, we have all of our furniture and stuff in storage at home that we are paying for, and we miss North America. So, we might have some decisions to make soon. I was so excited about going home that it is hard to get excited about staying here for three more years, but at the same time the thought of doing a Phd for three years instead of five or six in the States would be great. Like everything in life, it all comes down to money I think, and really I should not be worrying about this since nothing is set.
So there you go, life is pretty up in the air right now. But for now, we will be moving to Ottawa in September and hopefully finding jobs and such there.

Peepo

2008-08-05T10:58:00.000-07:00

My little girl loves to play peek-a-boo. She climbs under blankets, shirts, our fabric grocery bags and peeks out at us all the time. Her favorite book is a little Peepo book that she got from the doctors office here, it goes everywhere with us and is read at least 10 times a day. So, here are a couple of pictures of her playing peek-a-boo in our curtains.

Our friends Brooke and Darren are having a baby soon so I knitted this little jumper this week. I thought that it was super cute and I wanted to make one for Anya as well, but the pattern had a whole bunch of mistakes so I decided no. But this one turned out cute.

Beaching

2008-07-23T12:44:00.000-07:00

You all know that the UK is not known for it great weather conditions. In fact, I will venture to say that it actually is awful, terrible, the worst place ever. It never is actually cold, but it is also never actually warm. All winter long it was between 10 and 12C, and now it is between 12 and 15C. This last week, since we came back from Canada it has been particularly bad. Cold and windy and raining everyday. I have actually missed Canadian winters, you see, I have not experienced any seasons per say. With no winter weather and now no hot weather I am ready to go crazy.

Today was slightly warmer and actually sunny out. We decided to take the opportunity to go down to the beach, but by the time we got there the clouds had rolled in. However no wind meant that we could still enjoy ourselves. Anya had a great time playing in the rocks, and we spent the time trying to keep her from actually eating the rocks. Hope you enjoy the pics!

Birthdays and trips home.

2008-07-18T05:13:00.001-07:00

So sorry for the long absence. Jet-lag has set in and we are having a hard time. Jet-lag is not normally a problem for us, but when you are only gone for a week and have over 24hrs of travel on both ends, bodies and sleep patterns take a beating. This seems like forever ago, but here are a couple of pictures from Anya's birthday. On the Saturday before her birthday we had some friends from church come over. We all went into town and played on the beach for a while and then came back to our house for cake. Anya opened her presents with a little help from us, and we all enjoyed some basic chocolate cake. It seems that Jack's birthday cake curse has entered our house, thank you Jack. I really wanted to make a super cute cake that matched the wrapping paper I used for her presents, but we live in Wales and all of my good cake making and decorating materials are currently in storage in Ottawa. So, I made a basic chocolate cake, which I have made a million times and made look really cute, but this time it turned out really ugly- hence the no picture of the actual cake. Anya enjoyed it though, and made a royal mess with it.

On Sunday July 6 we began our giant journey to Ottawa. After a car ride, bus trip, train journey, and 7 hour flight, we made it to our destination. Anya slept 4 straight hours on the plane, thank goodness, so that was not too bad. Adam's cousins Zach and Jeremy were at the airport in Ottawa waiting for us, which was great since it has been a long time since we have seen them. We stayed our whole trip at Adam's aunt and uncle's house just outside of Ottawa. Tom, Adam's uncle is currently training a puppy to be an assist dog. Astro, the puppy is really cute and very well behaved and Anya loved him. Because Astro is so well behaved Anya was able to play with him in a way she would not with other dogs. She was pulling on him, sharing her toys with him, stealing his toys, and trying to lead him around with his leash the whole week. She had pigtails in her hair one day and Astro decided that he wanted to play with the rubber band in her hair. He reached down and put his entire mouth around one of the pigtails and gently pulled the band out. Anya didn't even notice, and she always screams when we mess around with her hair. Anyway, by the end of the week I think Astro was ready for Anya to be gone, but she sure had fun.

Anya loved all the attention from Tom, Karen, Zach and Jeremy. This is Anya playing with Zach.

We spent the week scouring Ottawa for a decent apartment. Everyday we we would make a ton of phone calls, so view apartments, and then make more phone calls. Everyday we were seeing 4 or 5 apartments none of them were good. Actually tons of them were the exact same apartment just in different locations. It seems like sometime in the 70's there was one architect in Ottawa who put out this plan for a low rise that everyone and their dog bought. It totally sucked. So finally on Saturday when time was running out and we were getting ready to take one of the crappy places, we were driving through one of our favorite areas and I saw a sign for an apartment for rent in a house. We called and had a look at it immediately, and it was perfect. Two bedroom, like we were looking for but it also had a den off of the larger bedroom. It upstairs in a house where a cute old Italian couple lives. All of our stuff will fit and there is even a little garage storage place where we can put our bikes stroller and such. I am really excited to have a good apartment figured out, if only we can find jobs now!

So we are back now in Wales, not enjoying the weather. It is 57 degrees and raining- super fantastic. We are actually wondering why in heck we even came back here...

Home

2008-07-05T15:49:00.000-07:00

We are off to Ottawa for a week so you'll have to wait for 1 year old pictures until we get back. But yeah for North America!

Harry Elephante and Cheerios

2008-06-28T08:27:00.000-07:00

I have been working on this little knitted elephant for Anya's birthday coming up. As you know, I learned to knit when we came to Aber almost a year ago and I am totally hooked. I read knitting blogs and am always looking for cool patterns. I am still learning lots of new things and like to include a new skill in each project. This elephant is a very clever pattern called Elijah by Ysolda S. Teague. I found it through a couple of the knitting blogs I have been reading lately. He is knit in the round with no seams. You just pick up stitches to knit the limbs and such. I learned how to do short rows for the ears (thank you you tube) for this project. I really enjoyed knitting this little guy and am super excited to give him to Anya. She tries to grab Harry every chance she gets so hopefully she will like him. There are some mistakes but I learned a ton knitting him so next time I will do a better job. The creator of this pattern also made a bunny and a bear knit in a similar manner that I want to try soon.

These are from a couple weeks ago, anybody in my family recognize the messy cheerio pictures?

The Dress

2008-06-20T07:54:00.001-07:00

So, these pictures are mostly for a grandma who sent us a nice package with a birthday dress. We broke it out early because it is a size 9 month and although Anya is a little one, I wanted a good amount of wearing before she grows out of it. Thanks Grandma!

11 months/ Ireland

2008-06-07T04:51:00.000-07:00

This Baby

Is 11 months old- Crazy! She is so cute and funny and makes everyone laugh and smile. Sheis the most fantastic person I know actually (sorry Adam). She is so friendly and ready to play with, hug, smile at, and kiss everyone we see that she makes everyone fall in love with her.
Currently she is learning to walk. She stands at every possible moment and can now walk/ shuffle a total of 4 steps unassisted. This happens all day long, standing up a foot away from the couch and then shuffling over to it to hold on. She also loves to climb. We go to the playground and she loves to clime on the jungle gyms and go all the way across to slide down the slide, if only there were not a rope walkway that I didn't have to help her on, she would be in heaven. She also recently learned how to climb onto the couch, little monkey.

On to Ireland. We flew to Dublin in the evening on Wednesday May 28. After finding our friend Paddy and getting our rental car we made our way down to his parents house Kill, about 10 miles south west of Dublin. We had a lovely evening with Paddy's parents Mary and Con in their home. They run a very small B&B out of their home so they had space for us. Thursday morning Mary made a fabulous breakfast for us and we were off on the bus to check out Dublin. Paddy acted as our tour guide extraordinaire taking us on a giant walking tour of the city. We saw all that we could including this fabulous door, we rode the bus back to Kill for roast dinner and sleep.

Friday morning after another yummy breakfast we started our drive to the west coast. Our first stop was Galway, a little city on the coast. We wondered around and looked at churches and waterways, and enjoyed a pretty good Mexican meal.

In the evening we left Galway and drove further west to find a place to stay. Pretty much everywhere you go here in the UK as well as in Ireland there are B&B's everywhere. You can drive down the most remote road possible and there will be signs for B&B's, so we knew there would be no problem finding a place to stay. About 5 minutes from Clifden we ran into a beautiful large historical building with a huge room and even wifi.

Saturday we started on a driving tour around the Connemara coast and mountains. We ran into some beautiful coast line and landscape

Along with a really cute baby who slept well in during the twisty turny drive.

This is Kylemore Abbey- beautiful eh? Super expensive to go to-

After the Abby we made our way down to The Burren, along the way we stopped at various ruins.

We stopped at a birds of prey center, which was Adam's dream come true. It was pretty cool, with all these different birds sitting in their little enclosures with only one foot tethered.

After checking out the birds, we drove around the Burren for a while looking at the cool rocks and such. Ireland is absolutly beautiful. The landscape changes so dramaticly so quickly.

We then drove over to the Cliffs of Moher. This was soooo cool.

Sunday we began our drive back over to Kill, stopping along the way to see random sites.

And Monday morning we caught a flight from Dublin back to Birmingham and then a train to Aber. We had a great time and we really loved Ireland. It is beautiful and lots of fun, but really expensive. We are really grateful that we are able to visit lots of places in Europe while we are living here. Thankfully Anya is a super fantastic traveler, so we are always able to have a great time.

Lulu

2008-06-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

We returned from Ireland to find a package for me from Lulu. I was soooo excited. Lulu is an online self publishing company which I am totally in love with. The book I received today was a knitting journal that I created a couple of weeks ago. See, my knitting projects were begining to stack up and I was in need of a way to keep track of what I have finished, alterations I made etc. and projects waiting to be made. To solve this problem I decided to make a book that I could record information as well as pictures and yarn samples. This is where Lulu came in. I created a pdf file using word and then uploaded it to my lulu account, then sent it for printing. Two weeks later, my hard back, 150 page book arrived from North Carolina. Fantastic. There are just a few alterations I would make to my document, mistakes that I noticed a couple of days after sending it to be printed but other than that it turned out great as you can see.

Those of you interested should check out their web site, www.lulu.com-- They do everything from black and white word documents to full color portfolios. I have looked into lots of different publishing sites and this one give you the most freedom of creation on your own, so if you are a wiz at say, photoshop you could totally create a kickin scrapbook in a multiple of sizes (workin on in), or say a full color cookbook (if you regularly receive Christmas presents from me don't even think of this idea!) I have had a great experience with lulu so far and I plan on using them again.

Here are a couple of pictures of Anya in a new hat I knit the other day. I can't show you most of the stuff I am knitting right now as there are Christmas presents but rest assured I am still knitting away. Enjoy!

Beautiful Ireland

2008-05-30T13:44:00.001-07:00

Sorry for being gone so long, but we are still around. Actually we are currently driving around Ireland. We have a friend who is from Dublin, he came home for a long weekend and invited us along. We stayed the first two nights at is parents house which was great. His mum, Mary is super sweet and took great care of us and our friend Paddy took us on a fantastic tour of Dublin. We are now on the west coast chillin in a beautiful B&B for the night and then tomorrow we will make our way down the west coast to the south. Pictures to come soon.

10 Months Old

2008-05-08T04:25:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to post a few pictures of our cute little girl. Nothing too exciting has been happening lately except for watching our little girl grow up. She is currently practicing her standing skills. A couple of times a day she will let go of the couch and stand for about 10 seconds. In fact, yesterday she was trying to pickup her little drum and stand up with it, which she actually did for about 5 seconds, quite funny. She is talking a to too. She will just sit and play forever while she talks to herself. Anyway, here are a few pictures we took in the woods above our house.

A Knitty Weekend

2008-04-27T06:13:00.000-07:00

I have had a very knitty weekend. First of all, I finished knitting and assembling a little dress that I have been working on for a while. It turned out very nice, I love it actually. It has a green ribbon now but I made it so that I could change the ribbon whenever. Anya likes it as well.

Yesterday, Anya and I went to the Welsh Wool Festival. It was about 1 1/2 hours away but well worth the time spent to get there. We wondered around looking at various farmers, spinners and dye companies. Anya love looking at the the sheep and the Alpaca's and I enjoyed buying way too much yarn.

And this is just a random picture of my cute baby.

Paris/London

2008-04-25T06:04:00.001-07:00

So, I thought I would finally post a few pictures of our trip to Paris and London. My parents and I took the train from Aber to Paris where we spent a couple of days checking stuff out. I have been there a number of times in the last couple of years by my dad had never been and it has been a long time since my mom was there so I took role of tour guide. We had a really great time seeing the sights. Anya had a fantastic time visiting with random people. Every time we rode the metro she would find someone to flirt with. She would peak around poles at people and make everyone around her smile. Random people were taking pictures of her and she was passed around a group of girls at the Louvre like she was a dolly.

I London Adam met up with us for a couple of days of sightseeing. We had fantastic food, all the good stuff that we can not get here in Aber. Anya loved, loved , loved Pad Thai and the Thai curries that we had there. She loves Indian curry but we have that here in Aber so that is old but she really love the Thai food we had. Besides food we had a great time wondering around. We went on a great walking tour and we went to see Stomp. Anya loved Stomp, all the noise and pounding was fun for her to watch, and when she got bored and started talking the performers started to include her in the performance so none of the audience got upset.

Climbing

2008-04-17T16:32:00.000-07:00

We returned from Paris and London on monday and I have not yet found time to post pictures, sorry. After a week of having Anya strapped to my back she has become needy. She wants to be with me all the time, if I go into the kitchen she follows and holds my legs, she follows me around the apartment everywhere I go. The only place she will play on her own is in our living room but only if I stay with her so lots of knitting has been getting done as I sit by her playing. So, sorry for not posting Paris and London pictures yet, we had a great time with lots of great food but you will have to wait. I am sharing this video of her climbing up to the tv. We try to keep her away from it since we only have a crapy tv stand here. She loves to get the DVD player and pull out cords and stuff but lately she has been taking the stuff off the top of the tv as shown here. Besides climbing on the suitcase, she also climbs on her bouncy chair that is blocking the entrance to behind the stand. She will clime on and then stand up in the chair to get to the playstation remote on top. Crazy kid!

Anya Climbs from Chrysalis Sandor on Vimeo.

9 Months old/ Grandparentals visit.

2008-04-07T00:07:00.000-07:00

The child has now been out as long as she was in. It is so crazy how quickly this has occurred, time flies by so fast. We love her so much and are so grateful we get to enjoy her and share her fun spirit with others. We are having lots of fun this week since my parental unit is here visiting. We have explored Aber as well as outlying areas with great success and the baby has loved every minute of it. She fully believes that the grandfather is here strictly as her personal jungle gym and grandma is available for silly songs and stories. We are off tomorrow for a quick trip to Paris and London so I felt I should share some pictures before we go.

Swinging is fun, especially with Grandma and Grandpa

Eatin some toast

We all rode a train to the top of Constitution Hill, a large hill one one side of Aber. The view was fantastic, even if the wind was blowing hard.

It snowed in Aber! I know that it does not look like much but it is crazy for here. The little kids in the branch were so excited, throwing pathetic snowballs around and playing. Sad that this is only the second time they has seen snow.

Home, Home, Home

2008-03-27T02:40:00.000-07:00

Well, we arrived back in Aber on Tuesday afternoon and have been cleaning and doing laundry since, this is the first chance I have had to sit down and work on photo organization and such. We had a great time, but are glad to be home. We were away the perfect length of time, not so long that we were sick of it but enough that we were glad to be home. So here is a run down on the trip.

Tuesday the 18 we woke up at 1am Aber time and quickly got dressed, finished packing, and loaded the car. We live in the middle of no where, well actually further than no where, like crazy far out in Wales. The nearest airport in three hours away, so to make it to a 7 am flight we had to leave early. So at 7 am we flew from Birmingham to Almaria Spain. Almaria is on the southern tip of Spain, on the Mediterranean side. We arrived in the Almaria airport and proceeded to the bus stop. Our hotel was located in Aguadulce which is about 15 miles from the airport. After two bus rides and a small walk we arrived at our beautiful beach side hotel.

During check in, we discovered that our passports were missing. We are usually very vigilant about keeping them safe but somehow we miss placed them. Not good. Mine and Anya's are USA passports, and Adam's is Canadian, but our visas for our stay in the UK are inside them, plus I did not bring any ID with me except for my passport. We also have all kinds of immigration things going on which would be extremely hard to explain to nice embassy people. We quickly went up to our room and said a quick prayer, then Adam ran off to see if he could find them. The last bus station we had been to was the place to look. Adam had taken out all the passports as ID when he changed money at a bank. He went and searched the bus station while I put Anya down for a nap. Two hours later he returned with no passports. He had searched the station, and asked at all the info desks and such but no luck. He was unable to search the bank however as they were closed for siesta. We tried to relax the rest of the afternoon and decided to go back to the bank the next morning.

Wednesday morning we ate breakfast and made our way back to Almeria to ask at the bank if they had seen our passports. The second we walked in the bank manager pulled our passport case out of drawer. Adam had left them on a desk. The manager noticed the second Adam left but we were gone on the next bus so fast that he could not catch us. Hurray for miracles! We were so worried that our little trip was going to be ruined but thankfully it all worked out and we could start having fun.
Our hotel was half board, so breakfast and dinner were provided which worked out great because then we could find super yummy lunch in town. We had high hopes of finding some Lebanese for Moroccan food, but no luck. We have a hard time finding when the best time to eat lunch is in Spain. Everything closes for 3 or 4 hours in the afternoon for siesta and they eat dinner really late so many times we ended up wanting lunch when everything was already closed. Our other problem was that Thursday and Friday were really big holidays so everything was closed all day. We did find some Argentine food and a great roasted chicken place so eating still turned out OK, even though I did not get my falafel.
Lots of people ask us what kind of traveler Anya is. She loves to travel. Trains, planes, busses are super fun to her. She loves people to look and that give her lots of attention. Often she loves to stand on our laps and look at all the people around her, or play peekaboo with people between seats. She got tons of attention at the hotel also, the wait staff at the hotel loved her. There were tons of old ladies from France, Germany, and Spain who would come and talk to her all the time, which she loves. She was however happy to be home. As soon as we walked into our flat she got all excited and started looking around at our stuff.

This is the view from our balcony, great huh?

Adam and Anya on the beach in front of our hotel.

Relaxing by the beach.

Miss Anya loves strawberries. We found this giant box of beautiful strawberries for super cheap, they were sooooo tasty we gobbled them up in no time.

Adam with a giant cool tree, there were entire boulevards full of trees like this one.

This is one of many shots of a giant Arab ruin which is located in Almaria. It was an early fortress dating back to 955, super cool. It is high up on a hill and you can see the entire town and the Med forever. It had beautiful gardens and water ways all the way through. If you click on this photo it should connect you to my flickr page where there are more of the Alcazaba.

Me and Anya chilling.

Some cool foliage.

There were tons of beautiful flowers all over the place, including my second favorite, the African Daisy. We wanted to get pictures of Anya sitting in the flowers but she would have none of it. We settled for sitting on my knee looking at them.

Anya loves to fly!

Yea for babybel keeping a baby quiet and happy.

Off to Spain

2008-03-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

Adam has a 3 1/2 week Easter break which began on Friday. We wanted to get away to some warm weather (not that it is really cold, but my tan has faded and I need a good touch up) but we needed to wait to make a decision until we received our next three months pay. It came in on friday so we have been searching for last minute deals since. Today we chose a resort and town and we are off early tuesday morning. We have to leave here at 2 am to make it to Birmingham for a 7 am flight, although this is not ideal, by 11 am we will be in warm southern Spain sitting on the beach! Here are some cutness pictures of Anya. She started to put her arms up in the air on Saturday, it is really cute and funny and she loves to try to get my plants.

8 Months old!

2008-03-07T14:21:00.003-08:00

Our little monkey is 8 months old today. She is so much fun right now, we love having her around. Anya is total social butterfly and loves to have people around. Last night we had a whole bunch of masters students over for dinner (the come over every Thursday) and she spent the entire night being passed around from person to person, kissing, hugging and smiling at everyone. She loves to have kids from the branch over for sleepovers and to visit with random people in the street. She has two teeth (they have been there for over a month but it is hard to get a picture of them) and likes to eat sometimes. She hates pureed baby food and would much rather eat slightly mashed food from our plates her favorite being butter chicken, or other various rice and sauce Indian dishes, potatoes, carrots, peas, grapes, apples, strawberries, oatmeal, and bread products. She weighs in at a low 16 and 1/2 pounds and she can move pretty fast now. She crawls all over the apartment, following me around until she finds something interesting to climb on, her favorite being the edge of the couch and dining chairs and she has mastered getting off of the couch with out disaster. She also knows where her toys are kept and therefore pulls the basket out and all over the living room floor three or four times a day. I was going to take her out today to take pictures with the spring flowers but she was not feeling great so we will have to try that tomorrow. I do however have plenty of pictures from the last week to share.

On this day, she was not feeling so great so she snuggled down and watched Cars.

Book Tag

2008-03-01T14:47:00.000-08:00

From Holly:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find sentences 5,6, and 7, and post them.
4. Tag five people.

"But the Coordinator for the Improvement of the Status of Women reported to the General Assembly in 1987 that women from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa comprised a far smaller proportion of the officials from those regions than was equitable. Whereas 31.0 per cent of all geographically appointed officials from Asian and Pacific countries were women, only 5.4 per cent of all geographically appointed officials from Eastern Europe were women. Second, those Eastern European, Middle Eastern and African women who where appointed were most likely to fill service and administration posts, not posts responsible for technical projects or with policy-making authority."

This excerpt is from a book I just bought, "Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics." So far it is a fantastic book, but I am only a little way in, and yes I am reading it for fun.

I tag- Liz, Liz, Catherine, and Kip

By the way, is this exercise supposed to say something deep and meaningful about me as a person, or is it to show that three sentences taken from the middle of a book can give a good representation of that book? I am just wondering.

She Crawls

2008-02-26T13:00:00.001-08:00

I thought that I would share some video of Miss Anya making her move. She has moving around by rolling for over a month now, and has done quite well but this last weekend she started crawling more than four "steps" at a time. This video is quite long, but I figure only grandparents are the only ones that interested and they won't care how long it is. By the way- she is now pulling herself up into a standing position on the couch and her toy basket and trying to walk around while holding on, this has created many accidental falls but she continues on. Also, she just woke up so her hair is a mess- I usually have it pulled back.

Beautiful temps!

2008-02-09T07:48:00.000-08:00

Today was absolutely beautiful in Aber. It was about 60 degrees with no wind and the sun shining brightly. We went for a walk through town and along the ocean along with what seemed like everyone else in Wales. Tons of people were out and about but it was still so pretty. It has been really rainy lately, which I realize I should not complain about as many of you are experiencing crazy ice storms but it was nice to be warm. Here are some pics of us out and about.

Last week we went with some friends to a beach a little north of our town. Our friends brought their big kites to fly in the crazy wind. It was so windy that the little kite was picking our friend Rich up off the ground. It was fun to walk around the beach and watch the wind surfers.

This picture needs some explaining. Anya has been getting around lately by rolling. She is a total pro at this, and if left for only a few minutes she can be at the other side of the apartment, she moves very quickly and can get anywhere she wants especially places where she knows I don't want her. Next to our TV I have a kitchen chair set up in a feeble attempt of keeping her away from the cords connecting everything. She loves the playstation controllers and our guitar hero stuff. Anyway, she knows how to get herself under the chair and behind the TV without a problem now so it really doesn't work. The other day she was doing her thing and one minute she was next to the chair lying on the floor pounding on the wall like a drum and then two second later she was attempting to pull herself up onto the chair. It was quite scary as before I actually took this picture she was almost standing up with her hands on top of the seat. We have stopped the rolling behind the TV, we know have pillows all the way around the TV stand as well as under the chair. I know that this will not stop her for long, but for now she just rolls into the pillows and then moves on to something else.

Attempts to move

2008-01-24T11:13:00.000-08:00

My baby is trying her hardest to move around. She wants to be able to reach all of her toys without assistance as well as being an independent woman. She loves to stand as well, but crawling is her main venture at this moment. She has mastered moving from a sitting position to on her tummy without face planting or any injury whatsoever which makes me happy because now I don't have to watch her all the time (our floors are really hard!). She also pulls her knees up and rocks back and forth a lot. She can even inch her knees forward but has not yet figured out that she needs to move her arms as well to actually move forward. Luckily she can do tons of movement on her own just by pushing backwards and twisting around but hopefully soon we will have a crawler.

Home

2008-01-19T10:59:00.000-08:00

We finally arrived back home in Wales after a month of being away. It was great to visit the home land but it is now wonderful to be back in our flat. Since being home we have been on a super crazy schedule. Anya's sleeping pattern is super messed up- she thinks that she should be awake from 2 am until 6 am. I suppose we should not be too mad about this since she has been such an amazing sleeper up until this point in her life but it is getting really annoying. She is happy to be home though, she and I went to a relief society dinner last night and she was really happy to be back in the center of attention. Anyway- here are a bunch of pictures from our time in Windsor and since we got home.

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This is Anya after our belated Christmas dinner in Windsor with some of Adam's family. I took my cracker hat and taped it so that it fit on Anya's head.

As I was unpacking, I would throw all of Anya's new toys at her lap. She ended up with a giant pile of toys to play with.

My Anya and Adam love to watch tv together.

We bought a high chair for Anya today. She normally loves to sit in them in restaurants but she is apparently a little small for this one.

By the way, I got a new lap top for Christmas so I am trying to sell my old one. It is a i book G4 with a warranty until September. It has Microsoft Office as well as photoshop elements 4.0 and is in really good shape. Anyone interested can email me or my mom, it is actually at her house right now.

Christmas cuteness/ new sweater

2007-12-29T19:25:00.000-08:00

With Christmas over I figured that it was time to post some Christmas pictures. Anya really enjoyed opening presents and playing with new toys. She has mastered sitting straight by her self which she is really proud of.

This is by younger brother Parker and his girlfriend Christy, cute eh?

I have recently taken up knitting, and I have just completed my second project this cute little coat for Anya. It is the exact color of her eyes, and looks super cute on her, I am very pleased with it, so much so that I am now working on a little dress for her.

Pre-Christmas

2007-12-27T08:44:00.000-08:00

This post is late I know- but when visiting family it is hard to find time to post. We flew to Detroit last monday, the 17th on the way Anya got to take a picture with Santa in the Phily airport. It was really hot in the airport so we had to strip her down to her onesie, hence the no clothing in the photo.

Upon arriving in Vegas at my parents house, Anya immediatly underwent a haircut. She did not enjoy the restraint that was required so the section we needed to cut does not look great. She had a couple of sections on the back of her head that grew really long and looked funny.

Anya had lots of fun hanging out with my brothers that came up for a couple of days. Here she is with Parker, cute huh?

Going Home for Christmas

2007-12-15T13:55:00.000-08:00

We are leaving on monday morning to spend a month in north America. We will be splitting our time between my family in Vegas and Adam's family in Windsor. There will be lots of plane rides and people for Anya to smile at but it should be fun. We are really excited about Mexican food, Windsor pizza, shwarma, and a steak from Carabbas just to name a few. As we are leaving soon, I have spent the last few days preparing baked goods for christmas presents. I made my carmels for the relief society in our Branch and sent some with Adam to school and I made a whole bunch of no kneed bread for various friends at school and in the Branch. They look pretty cute with bows around them, I am including a container of honey butter with each one. Hopefully everyone loves them.

These pictures are just a few of Anya having fun in her jumper. She loves, loves, loves to jump. We will be bringing it with us to north America so those of you who see us will actually get to watch the fun.

Flight of the Conchords

2007-12-15T04:16:00.000-08:00

Hey Folks,

If you enjoy dead-pan humor akin to the Office and to a certain extent Arrested Development, then check this show out on HBO. It is the only thing that I YOUTUBE or watch regularly in this hot-bed of ridiculous bureaucracy.

Adam

Wiggles

2007-12-12T01:30:00.000-08:00

Anya is a super wiggly girl at night. Her arms flare all over the place and her little legs are always kicking while she is sleeping. Pajamas are becoming problematic because she will often pull her legs up out of the pj legs and the they will get stuck in the middle, so she looks like a little ball of Anya. She fixed this problem last night. This is how we found her this morning.

Her legs were pushed through the holes between the snaps, but the snaps were not undone. it looked uncomfortable to me but she didn't seem to mind.

Denmark

2007-12-06T03:17:00.000-08:00

The three of us traveled to Odense Denmark last thursday. Adam had a conference that he wanted to attend, and the conference paid for his trip so we decided to make a family trip of it. It was actually fun, apart for the immense amount of travel time we put in just to get there. As you all know, we live way out in the middle of no where in Wales, to get to London we have to take a five hour train ride. To get to Denmark we then flew from London and then we had to take a bus and another train to actually get to the city we were traveling to. Needless to say, it was way too much travel time for a three day trip. Denmark is nice though, I was really suprised by the amount of people riding bikes. There were bikes everywhere, tons and tons of them, and nice bike lanes on every road. Also, oddly enough, nobody seemed to lock their bikes. There were entire parking lots full of bikes with only a few locked up. It was amazing. I really wish we could ride bikes here in Aber but there are way way too many hills and the streets are sooooo small and people drive way to fast, it would be super dangerous. I didn't take any picture while there. I did have my camera but as Adam was in meetings almost the entire time I didn't really have anyone to take pictures of, unless I attempted to sit Anya in random locations by herself and snap a shot of her. I decided that this would not be the safest option, so no pictures were taken. However, my mom has requested some updated shots of our little ham so here are a few.

This is how Anya watches me make dinner most nights. She really wants to be a part of the cooking process but is not very helpfull she she tries to put her hands in what ever I am making. Also, you should notice that she has become a thumb sucker. It is really cute and quite helpfull. I can now put her down for a nap by herself and she will fall asleep on her own. Yea!

Anyanka is such a ham. She love to have tons of attention from everyone around her, and she will totally entertain them all. We had a whole bunch of Adams fellow masters students over last night. For three hours she was passed from person to person playing with everyone. She was in heaven, smiling and laughing and playing with everyone. It's really funny to watch her

Jumpin around!

2007-11-23T05:47:00.000-08:00

We decided the Miss Anya needed some more entertainment so that she doesen't have to sit around like this all the time.

Althought she does love to catch her toes (they are rarely out of tights or footed PJ's) she needed a little more movement than scooting on the floor provides. Along comes the fantastic door bouncer. Now Anya loves to jump, and jump, and jump. She twists and turns and jumps away, and loves every minute of it. Yea for the bouncer!

Anya recieved her first package this week. She loved playing with the packaging. After opening she discovered a little yellow knitted sweater and bohemian hat. Thanks Grandma!

The Giant Post!

2007-11-06T08:10:00.000-08:00

We have had quite an exciting week. We bought a car. The original plan was that we were going to go the year without a car. Aber is a pretty small town so it is very easy to walk every where. We walk to school, church, and the grocery stores. It has been a pain sometimes, since I seem to have to go the the store everyday because I can not carry too much home at a time and the larger grocery is about a mile away. But is has worked out just fine. So why did we buy a car? This last weekend was stake conference. Our stake center is about 2 hours away and there is no way to take a train there. Well, you probably could take a train but it would take like 6 hours, the Welsh infrastructure is not so good. We wante to make a weekend of fun so we began looking into renting a car. Then we saw a little car for sale in our apartment parking lot. It is a 97' honda civic, yes the same car that we own at home, but this one is a two door hatchback with the steering wheel on the wrong side. We did some research in to owning a car here and then decided that it would be worth the money to buy the car. This way we can make little weekend trips around the country, and I can go to the good yarn shop in the town 10 miles away. It was a little trick figuring out how to drive on the left side of the road, and little skinny roads that people drive way too fast on but having a car has been great so far. Lots of the branch members live outside of town so now we can drive to their houses.

Anyway, I have lots of photos from the last week, so - here we go- these ones are from last week. Miss Anya playing her computer game. She not only loves to play the game, but she like to sit on our laps while we are looking at stuff on the internet.

Some cute photos of Anya, with her hair pulled up, and sliding down on the couch.

As you can see, Anya has become quite a ham, she actually poses for the camera. This next one is to show how curly her hair is when it is wet. Her hair is the same texture as mine and is just as straight when it dries, but is does bring alot attention from strangers. Everywhere we go people stop to look at her and talk to her, especially since it is now coming in blond and she looks like she has gotten highlights.

Over the weekend we went to Swansea for stake confrence. At a restraunt we put Anya in a booster seat, she thought that she was pretty cool sitting up all the way like a big girl.

One of the really cool things about living in the UK is that there are beautiful castle ruins all over the place. This one was in the middle of Swansea, but while we were driving around we saw tons of them right in the middle of normal neighborhoods.

Monday was a holiday here in the UK, Guy Fawkes night or bon fire night. Everyone gets together and lights big fires and lights fireworks. Our branch met at our friends farm. It is really pretty. They bought this old farm and are in the process of converting the old farm house into their house. Then they are going to convert the other buildings into vacation cottages that they will rent out. They also have lots of farm land that they will eventually have sheep on.

They lit a giant bonfire made out of the old floor joists from the house. Hot dogs were eaten, treats were had, and lots of fun all around.

No Knead Bread

2007-10-25T08:42:00.000-07:00

So I thought that I would try my had at bread making. There has been a no knead bread recipe that has been really popular in the food blog community, although it originally came from a New York Times article. I have been wanting to make this bread for al long time but I lacked the essential pot that can go in the oven since we have been without our stuff for so long. I found a cheap pot here the other day so..... The bread is really yummy, and moist. Perfect for a big spread of yummy honey butter. You should all try making it. Next time I want to make some homemade butter to put on it, cream here is really cheap.

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

My turn

2007-10-24T03:37:00.000-07:00

Shan tagged me so, my turn- here goes

The rules are...A. List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
B. Tag seven people to do the same.
C. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag "whoever wants to do it"

1- I am a feminist. I know that was hard to guess since that is what my degree is in but I quite enjoy feminist discussions, and reading various pieces of feminist literature. I focus most of my readings on women’s movement across borders for jobs, such as nannies and maids. Although I do partake in the bloggernaccle (Mormon feminist blogs) on a regular basis.
2- I love, love, love, love food blogs. Just check out my favorite spots on the side bar. I usually go tastespotting first and spend way too much time looking at various foodies creations, then usually try to find a recipe that I can create. Every month a group of baking blogs have a competition, who can make the best of a certain recipe. I am always really excited when I have already mastered the item they are creating, such as the crepe cake they made in the summer. I also really would like to learn to photograph food like some of the bloggers. My pictures of my food never turn out anywhere near as good.
3- I would love to learn how to do way too many forms of art. I want to be a great photographer. I want to learn how to blow glass, and make glass beads. I would love to know how to work with various metals, and make jewelry. Also I would love to be able to make amazing ceramics. Actually I want to be perfect at all of these crafts and have a huge studio in my home where I had all of the equipment needed to do these projects on my own. I know that this will never happen and I am going to be stuck taking classes at arts centers, but I would also love to be perfect at these.
4- I love to quilt, bug surprise eh? It is actually on of my favorite things in life. I love to design quilts and piece them together. Going to the fabric store and touching all the fabric and looking at the great vast amounts of quilting fabrics get me really excited. If only I had a machine quilting machine so that I could finish the quilts myself in a timely manner.
5- I really enjoy cooking for people. I love finding recipes and planning menus and making favorite recipes for people. This is why being married to Adam is ideal. I cook a huge dinner for a party and Adam does all of the talking. It works out perfect! Along with this, I would love to someday have my dream kitchen. A really big kitchen with all the gadgets that I dream of and so many different place settings that they fill their own pantry.
6- I ran a marathon 5 ½ years ago. It was one of the most fulfilling things I have ever done, next to natural childbirth and my mission. The feeling I had after finishing running those 26 miles was amazing. I really want to do another one, hopefully at the end of this year!
7- I really enjoy moving to different countries (don’t tell Adam). There is always a huge hassle in getting everything set up, with no credit histories and not knowing correct word for things. But there is something really exciting about learning about different cultures, language, and customs. There are great people to meet everywhere, and you can pretty much find a friend anywhere you go. I know that we have only moved to English speaking developed countries so far, but I have found something that I love in every place we have lived. I am really excited to see where we go next.

There you go-- and I tag--
Adam
Jack
Holly
Daphne
Darcia
Liz
Meagan

Not all these people have blogs but I figure emal and facebook would work too.

Rolling baby!

2007-10-24T02:53:00.000-07:00

Little Miss Anyanka has become a crazy rolling baby. The second we put her down she starts to roll over, I barely had time to take these pictures of her in action. So has become necessary to baby proof the living room. She now rolls onto her tummy and scoots herself up to her toys, then yells at me because the toy doesn't do anything and she is still unable to make them do stuff. It is pretty funny.

Anyanka also really likes to talk to her dad. During the day, she will talk to me a little bit but as soon as Adam comes home from school she starts talking to him like a crazy person. Most of the time it sounds like she is telling him all the mean things I did to her during the day. Eventually they start to have a yelling match, with Anya yelling and then Adam imitating her which only makes her mad so she yells louder. Very funny.

New Hat

2007-10-17T10:51:00.001-07:00

Aberystwyth is the smallest town I have ever lived in. And not only is it a very small town, like 25,000 people including 10,000 students, but there are no big towns anywhere nearby. In fact, Aberystwyth is the largest town in the area. Because the town is so small, the church here is really small. Our branch meets in a school, and has about 30-45 people who come regularly. That number is including us and the two families of 6 that moved in the same time as us. Even though the branch is really small, the Relief Society sisters get together every wednesday for enrichment. Everyone brings what every they are working on, or just come to chat. So, the old ladies that are in the branch have been attempting to teach me to knit. Today I finish my first project, a little white hat for Anya- I started this hat while I was in Ottawa with Adam's aunt Karen, but I needed alot more help to get it finished. But she sure looks super cute in it. Next I am going to make a little hooded sweatshirt for her. By the way, whie I have been writing this post, Anya has been laying on the floor in front of me and she has completely turned herself in a 360 degree circle and just rolled from her back to her tummy- yea! That was a first.

Baby hair

2007-10-13T09:28:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when you don't comb a babies hair while it is wet.

And Miss Anya holding herself up-

1 Week

2007-09-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

Well friends, we have been in Aberystwyth for 1 week and much has been accomplished. We arrived here 11 days before Adam's school starts mainly because Adam had a bunch of meetings at the university, but we also wanted to get ourselves organized. We have spent the week acquiring money from the school, opening bank accounts, getting cell phones, internet and our appartment. These items may sound easy, but in a foreign country it proves more difficult than imagined. When we moved to Canada I benefitted from Adams first hand knoweledge of the ways of Canada, however with this move neither one of us has that knoweledge. We have been successfull. We even have our apartment half way organized if you can believe it. Here are a couple of pictures of Anya from the week.

These photos were taken after we had story time one morning. Anya loves us to read her stories, she becomes completly enthralled with the pictures.

We have devised a new sleeping position for miss Anya. She tends to not fall asleep because she wiggles too much, and then when she does fall asleep she wakes herself up from wiggling. Soooo, we wrap her tight in a blanket and then she can't move. It works perfect.

Anya is also desperately trying to sit herself up. When we set her in the corner of the sectional like this picture, I set her slightly slumped over and she tries so hard to pull up.

Aberystwyth

2007-09-22T11:18:00.000-07:00

We have arrived! It has taken a few days of intense traveling but finally we have an apartment and are not homeless any longer. Our travels began on Wednesday as we began waiting in for our flight in Detroit. We left Windsor quite early, knowing that we would have to wait at the US border as the assesseded our ability to enter the country. After about an hour wait for the border guard we made our way to the Detroit airport. We then somehow got our eminence amount of baggage to the checkin counter and made our way through security and to our gate.

Once we arrived in Manchester we had to wait for a taxi cab to take us to our hotel. I actually did not know if we would be able to fit all of our stuff into one cab, but somehow we made it.

We bought a baby computer program for Anya and she really enjoyed sitting on the bed in our hotel in Manchester and playing the game with her feet.

Aberystwyth is a cost town with a really pretty beach- Both yesterday and today we spent the walking around the town checking stuff out. Miss Anya enjoyed her time in her stroller, all fuzzy and warm.

Our apartment is up on one of the hills, with a really great view of the town and the ocean.

So far we are really enjoying it here and we are totally excited for the coming year. Stay tuned for many more pictures of Aberystwyth and other European locations.

Numbers

2007-09-13T06:35:00.000-07:00

Goodmorning Baby!

So, my baby really likes numbers. She was born on July 7, 2007. On September 11 we went in for her two month check up and she weighed 11 lbs 11oz. Crazy huh? By the way she also was measured 23 1/2 inches- so she is still a little above average, but healthy, healthy. Anyway, I thought you might like some new pictures of our little monkey. The green pj pictures were taken this morning right after she woke up. She is always really happy in the morning, and super smilley.

These ones were taken last weekend. Adam's aunt Karen knitted this super cute dress.

Blessing day!

2007-09-03T14:28:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, we are now back in Canada. We had Anya’s blessing here in Ottawa at our old ward. Most of Adam’s family was able to attend which was great. On Saturday we went down town and walked around looking at the sights. We were able to get some great shots of Anya

Getting ready for church

On Sunday, after church we all went to the experimental farm to take some family pictures.

And some cute flower pictures

And visiting with her cousins Katie and Michael

My baby doesn't like waking up.

2007-07-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

Yup. It is really hard to wake Anya up. I literally poke and prod and try to tickle her awake, and it will generally take me a good 10 minutes to realize success.

She gets a little cranky- more like frustrated actually. It's as if she is saying, "Dad, stop being such a little bastard and let me sleep!"

Then she calms down and is fine. But it does take a while, for sure.

The big weight gain.

2007-07-25T22:22:00.000-07:00

We took Anya to the doctor yesterday for her two week checkup. Remember that when she was born she weighed 8 lbs 12 oz. At three days old she weighed 8 lbs 3 oz, a little bit of a loss but that is normal. Well yesterday she weighed 9 lbs 8 oz! Yea, and I was worried that she was not getting enough breast milk, ha! Everything went well at the doctor, Anya is super healthy and he told us how much he liked the movie Sicko- odd that that came up but he knew we are Canadian so he wanted to talk about it. Anyway-- do you like Anya's hair do- I figured since she has so much hair and it sticks up anyway, I might as well mold it in a particular direction. Cute eh?

The double bath day.

2007-07-22T22:51:00.000-07:00

Little Miss Anya had to have two baths today. Why two baths? Well, this morning Adam was changing her diaper and she decided to poo all over the changing table, then after that she decided to pee as well. Since she was covered with yucky we gave her a nice bath before church. Then in the evening as I was changing her, she decided to first poo all over the changing table, then throw up a whole bunch of milk, and finally pee all over. This called for immediate bathing as well, hence two baths. It's a good thing she likes baths!

Grandma and Grandpa come a visiting

2007-07-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

Anya is two weeks old today!!!

Grandma and Grandpa Pinette came to visit Anya this week, and of what fun we had. Grandma came down on tuesday and we all went shopping and on outings everyday. We also set up elaborate photo shoots of baby Anya, here are a couple of our best shots...

Today Anya had her first bath with the help of Grandma and Grandpa and boy did she love it!

Later on, Anya took a nap with Grandpa

I'd say it was a pretty good trip. Anya had lots of fun with Grandma and Grandpa, and my house got cleaned, yeah!