Peepo

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.