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...