December Events

I'm sure you'll all agree that December was a busy month! Well it flew past here and now it's January already. Happy New Year everyone!

We had a lovely month - my awesome cousin Catriona and equally awesome sister Ali both visited and Ali stayed for Christmas.

Gingerbread houses were constructed by Ali and Fiona...

Christmas photos in cute matching dresses were attempted, with partial success, but they never made it into christmas cards...

We performed a dramatic enactment of How the Grinch Stole Christmas in the annual Hamer talent show. There were many other spectacular talents on show this year too... here's 10 minutes of the most impressive talent showing you've seen.

Santa Claus stopped by and brought Fiona the backpack she wrote to him to ask for. She had what she described as "the best day ever" opening presents from all the kind and generous friends and family we have. Adele had fun too but was a little overwhelmed.

Adele had a big assessment at Shriners, which is an amazing hospital for children specializing in (among other things) orthopaedics. We are lucky enough to live very close by and they provide services for free to people who do not have insurance or whose insurance doesn't cover the treatment they need. She's been diagnosed as having mild cerebral palsy which almost exclusively affects her left leg, and we're going to be doing physical therapy there two times a week in addition to the PT we do once every 2 weeks through the Minneapolis schools early intervention program. There's no reason she won't learn to walk, it'll just take a while, but all the extra PT will be great.

We headed to the U.P. for New Year and stayed in a log cabin in the woods with some friends.

Minneapolis has been eerily warm and almost totally snow-less so far this winter, so Fiona was very excited to stomp around in the snow up there.

Adele doesn't like to wear her mittens so didn't last long but enjoyed rolling around in it and observing for a while.

We had a great time hanging out with friends, and Fiona and Adele loved making two new friends of their own.

Today (and I did initially plan to just write about this before feeling a need to summarize the whole month) Fiona requested that I paint her fingernails (for the first time). She noticed a girl in her class at daycare had hers painted and asked me to do hers for her. She asked for red, which, luckily, is one of the two nail polish colours I own (the other being clear) so I painted them for her. I'm guessing that this is only the beginning of many requests for things she'd like because her friends have them...

She was so happy she kept bouncing around and it was very hard to get a picture in focus!

So that's the excitement for today. And who knows what tomorrow might bring!

Lazy Vegetarian: Day 28

Breakfast. I hauled myself out of bed around 5am to finish up packing for our trip. There was no time for toast, no time for coffee, just go, go, go. I had a granola bar in the car because I was hungry!

We dropped off the dog and then we were on the road. We stopped at McDonalds for some breakfast and coffee as the sun was coming up and I had an egg mcmuffin (no bacon). At first he tried to give me no egg, but luckily after some back and forth the one that came out was baconless. It was still pretty gross though. The hash brown was good but Adele ate that. The mocha machine was not working and I ended up with regular coffee which I doctored with 4 sugars and 4 creamers and was still not good. SEE? THIS is why I eat the same thing every morning! I can't handle a disappointing breakfast!

Sunrise...

For lunch we spotted an Indian Buffet when we stopped for gas just past Madison. Fiona had just woken up and it was the perfect time to stop. And it was delicious. Mmmmm vegetable korma.

Car snack! Chili cheese fritos.

We made it through the tolls and traffic and under the scary old bridges...

And arrived at the apartment we're staying in, which is lovely, and our friends Ian, Olivia and Carole arrived a little after that, then Ben's friend Matt met up with us for dinner... turns out there's a great place round the corner for Chicago Pizza!! It was very dark inside...

Dinner: Chicago pizza!

I know, you can't see it. This is what it looked like (from wikipedia). I'm actually not sure exactly which kind of Chicago pizza it was, but it was delicious.

Ohhhh yum. Roll on breakfast!!

Lazy Vegetarian: Day 13

Breakfast: A single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man's hat.

Not really. Latte and cinnamon sugar butter toast.

Today's mug is from New York. In 2004 (when we still lived in MI) Ben and I were flying to Aberdeen for Christmas. Our flight was scheduled to leave on December 23rd in the late afternoon, and (being the cheapest possible flight) had two connections, one somewhere in the US and another one in London, arriving in Aberdeen in the morning of the 24th (Christmas Eve). We made it to our first connection but the flight to London was cancelled for some weather related reason. They had to book us on a whole bunch of different flights and we ended up having to fly to Newark then from there to Glasgow, but the flight to Newark didn't leave until the next morning. So we had to sleep in the airport.

We arrived at Newark early in the morning on the 24th and had to wait about 12 hours for our next flight to leave. So we decided it would be a good time to take the bus into New York City for a few hours. We figured out which bus we needed and set off. Once we got there we walked around a bit and ate some really fantastic New York pizza from a (presumably authentic) pizza place.

We also stopped at a gift shop to get a mug to commemorate our adventure. Of course I was so paranoid about missing our next flight that we headed back pretty quickly and spent many, many more hours sitting in the airport.

Our flight left that night and arrived in Scotland the next morning. Unfortunately since it was now Christmas Day Aberdeen airport was CLOSED and we had to fly into Glasgow which is about a 3 hour drive away. My Dad kindly drove down well before the crack of dawn and picked us up. Here's a picture of dawn cracking as we drove home.

At the time it was a huge pain, but after traveling with little kids it puts the whole thing in a much less awful light. I think if the same thing had happened with the girls in tow we might have just not gone!

Back to today!

This morning we got together with our friends and ate some treats. I forgot to take a picture so I drew this in paint.

I know you can tell immediately what those items are, but just in case, I had a slice of banana nut bread (left) and a piece of blondie (right). Yum.

Lunch: Fiona requested mac and cheese so that's what we had.

Snack: A single plum, for real this time.

Dinner: Pesto tortellini with peas and broccoli in basil pesto cream sauce. Spinach salad. Half a little roll.

Ben sent me a picture of his dinner last night since we ate different things. He ate at his parents house because they were watching the girls while I went to my meeting and his Mum made a delicious vegetarian stir fry...

I'm sad that I missed it! His Mum is a great cook and has been making a lot of different vegetarian foods recently. I'm looking forward to swapping some recipes with her. Well, really I'm looking forward to having her cook more stuff when I visit!

Dream Vacation

This week we're taking a dream vacation in the Wisconsin Dells!

We boarded the dog (well, dropped him off with Emily's fabulous dog sitting service), locked the door, and rolled down interstate 94. These will be the best days of our lives. We can tell.

Here are some of the things we saw along the way!

First we completely filled the car with stuff. Check out that packing job!

We headed out only an hour and a half behind schedule. Once the girls fell asleep we stopped to pick up some lunch on the go.

I don't know if there is a Hardees in MN, I don't remember seeing one before so it was pretty exciting to stop here. I've never had a charbroiled thickburger, and I also did not have one today because I don't eat meat, but I like the way it sounds!!

Fiona woke up a little later and was excited to eat a cookie.

Then we had a leg stretch...

We knew we were in Wisconsin because of all the cheese signs...

And the truck that's a gas station sign. I get excited every time I see this!

Then we got stuck behind this crazy truck. It had a huge load of pipes that was seriously tilting over and looked like it was held together with duct tape and hope. I was convinced that at any second it was all going to topple over.



Luckily we made it past in one piece and then we were almost there! And then 20 minutes later we were there! We're spending the week with My Uncle Michael and Aunty Julia, and my cousins James, Chris and Catherine. Fiona has become Catherine's biggest fan already and they spent a long time hiding together this evening. Cousins are the best! :-)

The weather looks a little dismal, but it's going to be a wonderful week!

A random assortment...

I've been sorting through months and months of photos tonight trying to get caught up with some of the backlog and upload some to flickr, and came across some funny ones. I don't have much to blog about right now, so here's a random selection of stuff...

Taken with Ben's old phone after the girls both finally crashed on our flight to Amsterdam (en route to Scotland)... see, it is possible to fit four people into two economy sized airline seats!

This one is from a trip to Ikea we took just after Adele came home. She's barely two months old and probably weighs about 6lbs. I had forgotten how tiny she was curled up in the wrap - I just look like a pregnant women with a misshapen tummy and an odd sense of style!

This one is from a recent trip to the Zoo. The tiger was pacing back and forth in front of the glass and it was really incredible to see him up so close. Fiona, however, had no idea this was anything special. Tigers are pretty old hat to her now I guess...

This last one is from an evening we spent at Cathy and Erik's house. They were putting their kids to bed and we were getting ready to go when Fiona wandered off. We tracked her down snuggled up with her cousin...

Well, that's all for now. I'd better get back to spring cleaning. Granny is visiting my parents right now and I need to have up to date pictures on flickr ready for her to look at :-)

Five years ago today...

Five years ago we were here:

No, not Paris! HERE!!

We were there to do a little gambling...

Although I stuck to this... I can't count fast enough under pressure to play with real people... it's very stressful!

We were there to enjoy the sun...

And spend time with some friends...

And sample some seriously huge margaritas!

But mostly we were there to do this...

Yep, 5 years ago today Ben and I were married. A lot was different back then. We has less two less children and a car with only two seats. We were able to stay up past 10pm without getting cranky. Ben looked a lot younger (not me though, I obviously still have a youthful 22 year old face ;-). Now the combined number of seats in cars is 11, total children = 2. Plus a dog. We spend a lot more on diapers, and showering every day has become an unanticipated challenge. Sleep is shorter, patience is tested, and our lives are so full up with joy and laughter and love that I never imagined back then.

Happy Anniversary Super Love! I am so happy we got married way back then and love the life we have together that it has led to!

All about Ali

Some of you have met my sister Alison. Some of you may even be related to her. This post is for her.

(She's in the middle)

Alison was born on April 17th 1988. She's 21 right now and is 5 years younger than me. I don't really remember her being born, or being a baby, but I remember we used to play with Barbies and our dolls house a lot when she was older. Here's a fun fact about Ali... none of my barbies could ever wear shoes. Why? Not because we lost them, but because Ali chewed all of their feet off.

Despite this, I loved having a little sister. I also have two brothers, and we needed to present a united front to keep them in check. She was also useful in that she'd run to the shop next door and buy me twixes. In that way having a little sister was way more useful than having a husband because she was much more willing to run to the shop for me :-)

Ali has always been brave. She decided that she wanted to do something exciting before starting university and went to Argentina to teach english for a few months. She had all kinds of adventures there, including losing a shoe on a bus and having to hop around when she reached her destination until she found a shoe shop.

And you'd have to be brave to leave the house looking like this...

She's also kind and generous. She is a great Auntie. She works very hard and is very clever. In a few years she will be a doctor.

As part of her journey towards becoming a doctor Alison is going to Nepal. She's going in April with H.E.L.P. Scotland Society, an Aberdeen University organization. While they are there they will be working with PSD Nepal helping in rural healthcare centers. In the time before she leaves, she has also been working with a team to raise money for two rural health camps which will provide healthcare to those who currently have absolutely no access to healthcare.

(This is a school) (picture source)

One of the requirements Ali needs to meet before going is to raise a certain amount of money to donate to these health camps, and THAT is why I am telling you all about this. If you'd like to make a contribution to help provide health care to people in Nepal you can do so through paypal using Ali's email address: alison.a.law.06 (at) aberdeen.ac.uk (replace the word "at" with @ to email her, I wrote it like that to try to cut down on spam to her).

If you send her something, thank you for your generosity! Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed this blog all about my little sister.

Yep, I guess they'll let anyone be a doctor these days ;-)