Happy Halloween!

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy Halloween!! Over the past week, we've enjoyed parties hosted by our housing complex and our church. Last night, Anabelle, the ladybug, had a blast at our ward "Trunk or Treat". Her great friend Aeryn even came along, dressed as a Panda.  As for Livy, we'd lost her mouse costume the other day, so she had to wear Anabelle's old cow costume... though she didn't seem to mind, and just loved the free food and person who dressed up as the bird "Kevin" from the movie "Up". Livy kept chasing them, signing "bird" and saying "tweet tweet". At the end she caught up with the bird and gave it a series of soft, gentle kisses. Maria, with envy said "She's never given ME kisses like that!"

Livy's first steps

A few times each week, I come home early from the lab so that Maria can go work out at the local YMCA. So the other day, Livy was super cranky after Maria left. I was trying to eat dinner and feel the girls, but Livy was going nuts in her seat, so I let her down. Of course, she started throwing a fit when I set her on the floor. After a few seconds I turned around, and to my surprise, Livy was up and walking over to us with a whiny little cry. Anyway, Anabelle and I spent the rest of the evening waiting for Maria to get back and helping Livy practice her walking.

Anabelle at work....

We love Anabelle soo much, but it's bittersweet to see her growing so fast... she's now quick to say "I am four AND A HALF!!" Her current favorites are dinosaurs, navigating pbskids.org and crafts. She especially loves the intersection: Caillou's dinosaur dig game at the pbs site, and making dinosaur crafts...

Livy at work...

We love our little Livy Bear. She's really mellow and is able to entertain herself rather well... So with what does she entertain herself? 

Anything she can get into... no drawer, purse, cupboard, or bathroom is safe from her little hands.... 

Happy Birthday Maria and Livy and Anabelle (sort of)

This past month we celebrated 3 special days... Maria and Livy both had their birthdays (XX years and 1 year) and Anabelle turned 4.5 years. To celebrate these special days, we took a trip to the happiest place on earth.

Anabelle had a blast since she's now 40.5 inches tall... thus, she was barely able to go on even the bigger rollercoasters.

Livy also had a great time despite the fact that she was strapped to my belly almost the whole day:

 Even on many of the rides...

I had a fun time taking Anabelle on rides I went on as a 4-year old:

(* note: I remember that the last ride I went on when I was 4 was Pirates of the Caribbean. While I remember enjoying it that time, I hadn't been on it since. Well, it terrified Anabelle this time, and I even found it disturbing. As I walked out, Maria and I were wondering what possessed my parents back in '84 to think it was a good ride to take a 4-year-old on. However, I should say that Livy loved it... she kept barking at the dogs that were hanging around the pirates.)

Well, except for scaring Anabelle on the Pirates ride, it was a great birthday! Happy birthday girls!

(P.S. Livy's birthday was actually a couple weeks later, so we celebrated again at home, with bit of cheese cake)

First day of school... year two

Anabelle started at her preschool again two weeks ago. On the left is the photo from her first day of school last year, and the right is from this year.... I have to say it's bittersweet seeing her growing up so fast.

What we did for our summer vacation...

We had an exciting summer vacation... a few things we did include:

Visiting the grandparents and Anabelle/Livy's cousin Victoria in DC. While there, the girls had lots of fun going to the zoo, the aquarium, and riding the merry-go-round with Mama Bear and Papa Bear. They were also very glad to spend time with their uncles and aunt. However, I almost had to fire Maria, since she forgot to take pictures during the entire 4 weeks out there.... :p Here's one of the few pictures she took:

Maria and the girls also visited the Tuttles, a family we knew in Israel (they moved to DC around the time we returned from Israel). Their daughter Rachel was like the big sister Anabelle never had, and was always so nice to Anabelle at church and when we visited their house occasionally... Anabelle still talks about Rachel occasionally when something reminds her of Rachel (e.g., two days ago Anabelle saw a photo booth and said "I've been in one of those before with my friend Rachel in Israel", and then tonight, while reading a book about hamsters, Anabelle told me about Rachel's gerbil).

It's a long story, but we spent about a month and a half in Provo, Utah. There Anabelle took some swimming lessons a local water park. At the end, her teacher took her on some of the water slides.

Anabelle and Livy got to go to a couple dinosaur museums. 

Where they learned a number of things, as follow:

1) Mommy likes dinosaurs:

2) One should be careful about standing behind large sauropods, since there is a lot of fiber in those leaves they eat:

3) You can design dinosaurs with two tails, but they take twice as much time to clean up after:

4) Even if you are excavating and find dino fossils, you still can't pull them up since they seem to be cemented to the museum floor:

5) It's more fun to excavate dinosaurs when they're in a block of chalk:

Over the summer we also attended the annual Llama Fest held at the Spanish Fork Hare Krishna Temple

And the girls went to Fish Lake, which is the lake where Grandma Fae used to go fishing in when she'd go on vacation with her family 50-60 years ago. While I stayed home and madly worked on my doctoral thesis proposal (due that weekend), they all went with Grandpa Mark, Grandma Fae, uncle Oleg, aunt Janalee, and her cousins Petya, Florentine, and Timok.

While these are only a sampling of the things we did, you can see, it was a good summer, packed with lots of fun. Though it's nice to finally be back in San Diego and getting back to normal life!

Saving it for daddy

We're currently out of town while Nate is busy working back at the lab. The other day we went out to eat and Anabelle got some Oreos. When she got down to last one, she said "I'm going to save this one for daddy!" I asked her if she was sure, since it will be a couple weeks before we see him again. She was adamant about her intent. So we got in the car to drive back, and she was carefully holding the cookie in her lap. After a little while, I looked back and saw a few nibbles on the edge of the cookie and a few crumbs on Anabelle's lips. I later looked back again and saw more little nibbles. So I laughed to myself and assured Anabelle that we would get Nate another cookie when we would see him again... Anabelle reluctantly commenced devouring the cookie... It was so sweet to see the pure love she has for Nate and the sacrifices she sincerely tries to make.

Zion trips

Over the past couple months we've had the opportunity to go to southern Utah a few times... naturally, we made it a point to hike a bit at Zion National Park. Once, we decided to hike the Narrows.. the water was nice and cool, but there was a lot of it...

We gave up after a couple miles and did a little floating back to the trailhead...

Another time, we went and hiked the emerald pools trail:

Anabelle wanted to do some water ballet on the way up the trail:

It ends up that the pools were not-so-emerald... more like amber:

After a long day of hiking, a nap is in order:

And any good botanist-in-training should immediately open her flower guide to review the flowers seen during the day with her monkey friend:

Missing child... found

We temporarily lost Anabelle... then I noticed that I'd accidentally rolled her up in the inflatable mattress

Our Russian Vacation

A couple weeks ago, we had a brief trip to Russia. Upon landing, we were introduced to the people and culture.

We were especially excited about the famous Russian ballet.

Actually, it was just International Day at Anabelle's school. Her classroom theme was Russia. Anabelle's teachers had taught them for for ~two weeks about Russia, about the matryoshka dolls, the ballet, Tchaikovsky, etc. Anabelle loved it, and all of the kids were very cute. This is Anabelle with her teachers.

And some friends

Which do you like better?

I recently discovered "Picnik" for my photo editing and spend a few minutes playing around with it, what do you think?

Happy Birthday!

This past week Anabelle got to go to two birthday parties at a local private park here in La Jolla. The first one was for a friend at school. After it, Anabelle excitedly told me "Daddy! Daddy! Guess what! I saw a real pirate today!"

Maria then said "Yeah! He was a great actor... he never broke out of his role throughout the whole party!" Anabelle then looked at us and said "He wasn't a real pirate?" Whoops....

Then a couple days later, Anabelle's school celebrated Israel's Birthday at the same private park. To celebrate it, they went out to fly kites. Needless to say, Anabelle had a blast!

Egyptian Adventure

After a visit to the San Diego Museum of Man a few weeks ago, Anabelle decided she wanted an Egyptian themed birthday party so she could pretend to be an anthropologist.

So Nathan baked a delicious pyramid cake, while I (with help from my friend Lori) whipped up some yummy-mummy cupcakes, and we had quite an adventure.



There were bursts of giggles and squeals as we cut the cake and the kids discovered "mummies" hidden inside the cake. They kept coming back for more "excavation" opportunities (it didn't hurt that the mummies tasted an awful lot like marshmallows).


The mummy cupcakes were quite a hit too!

There were about 12 servings from the cake and I made about 30+ cupcakes, and yet we had "O" left overs. Some of the kids, including Anabelle, looked ready for a nap after eating so much baked goodness.

Good thing there were lots of games prior to the sweet feast...

As part of the adventure the kids got to decipher hieroglyphics, dance like Egyptians, and practice the ancient art of mummification (no worries, everyone went home with their bowels intact).





Doesn't Dusty make a cute mummy?



In addition to playing anthropologists, all the kids also had a blast digging for dinosaur bones (which, as Anabelle pointed out, is really the job of a paleontologist). With shovels, sifters, and rakes at hand they tore up the "dig site." Of course any good anthro-paleontologist can't do without his/her trusted dust brush. All of the kids LOVED using the little brushes to dust off their wonderful findings.







I think the dinosaur dig was the high-point of the party. Just ask Seth, who proudly displayed his find for the site photographer.

No one wanted to see the day come to an end, but I guess that just means it was a successful birthday party. Even Livy was sad to say goodbye to all her new friends.

Thanks to everyone who made it all possible.