We're back!

No excuses for not posting, just LAZY and busy with summer! Here are pictures from the family reunion we had the first week of July. We had so much fun, aside from the 1-day plague that most of the kids got! I love getting to know my siblings as adults - our relationships are so different now from when we were growing up. Refreshingly, there's no fighting over clothes, or death threats with the vacuum cleaner (remember that Heidi?:)), or arguing over the bathroom. Instead, we've all grown to be really good friends, and I genuinely like the people that my sisters and brother have become. And those who have partners have chosen so well! Seems like all the spouses (and those soon to be, we hope) fit in so well.

So enough of the gushing, here are the pictures. These first ones are from our little hike to the twelve-headed monster cave that, alas, was not to be! The playground and walk through the trees was fun, though!

The girl cousins playing restaurant.

I love this picture of Dylan and Chloe!


At the Zoo...

Hippos are my favorite.


It's so hard to get everbody looking in the right direction!


I can't quite figure out what's going on with Max's pants in the background!

Blog-A-Thon

Bad, BAD Wendy for not keeping up again. I am ashamed. Here’s a quickie update of the events in our world over the last month:

Notice anything different about me?

One afternoon last month Zoya declared that she wanted to get her ears pierced. She’d mentioned it before, and after filling her in on how much it was going to hurt she was still determined, so we went off to the mall and got her poked. She LOVES her new look, and the primping has already begun (can’t WAIT till those teen years!). The picture doesn’t capture the earrings very well…she kept wanting to face the camera and I couldn’t get a good angle.

Spring Break in La Push

The Washington coast, with its stormy waters and rocky shores has become a favorite of ours for short getaways. For the second year in a row we headed to the quiet little enclave of La Push to spend a few days during spring break. La Push is a resort on the Quileute Native American Reservation that offers a quiet, gorgeous environment to relax in (and as a matter of principle, I like the fact that the money we spend there goes to the entire community rather than padding some CEO’s already plump pockets [oh brother, not another Wendy soapbox moment! My apologies.]). Our friend Mary joined us, and despite the fact that it rained the ENTIRE TIME (and when I say “entire,” I mean that it didn’t stop, to our knowledge, for even a few seconds!), we had a fabulous time.

These are pictures taken from the front porch of our cabin (used the zoom function – the water really isn’t that close).

This picture gives you an idea of what the rain was like. The turbulence in the puddle is caused by rain alone.

Mary and Zoya braved the elements to get a closer peak at the waves.

As you can see from the pictures, playing outside was not really an option, so we had to keep busy inside. Normally the kids (and Movakel and I, for that matter) would have gone CRAZY being cooped up for that long, but we didn’t seem to have any problem relaxing and finding things to do.

We slept. A LOT.

We played charades: Zoya’s a bear, Dylan’s a banana.

Mary is a street vendor in Mexico City selling tortillas (it was getting pretty brutal toward the end of the game)

The kids danced.

We cut Movakel’s hair (FINALLY! I like it so much better short. His students were calling him “Einstein.”)

And we slept some more…

Zoya did a little jig on the porch for us

We cooked Mexican breakfast under the watchful eye of, and directions from Mary (she is an AMAZING cook – one of those people who just throws stuff in a pan without a recipe and it comes out perfect).

And we slept some more (poor Movakel is recovering from many quarters of teaching 4-6 classes on 2 different campuses).

When it was time to head home, we had to drive through what used to be the driveway of the resort, but due to the rain (did I say it rained A LOT?), was “Lake La Push.”

Birthday Party and Visit with Family

My friend Amanda’s kids both had birthdays this month, so she threw a joint party. We drove down to Centralia for the event and had so much fun! It was great to see ‘Manda and her family – the boys are getting so big and are as cute as ever. Owen turned 4 and Miles is 1.

Here’s Miles with a GREAT giggle!

Owen gettin’ some love from his Gwamma.

So Paula (grandma) lives in Idaho, and to differentiate between his two grandmas, they started referring to Paula as “Gwamma Idaho,” which proved difficult for a very young Owen to say. He (and the rest of us now) calls her “Gwamma ‘Ho.” That just cracks me UP!

Miles with his cake. He doesn’t quite know what to do yet.

Owen blowing his candles out. That’s his girlfriend in the background.

After the birthday party we stopped in Tumwater to visit with Uncle Don and Aunt Alice (and Swede, of course).

Don took the kids for a ride (or two or three) on the riding lawn mower while Alice and I chatted.

Zoya played the drums…

…and Dylan got eaten by the monster pillow.

It was great to have a chance to visit with Don and Alice. I hope we can make more trips down there in the future!

Well, that’s about the extent of it. Until next month…

Dylan the Math Whiz, Zoya's Nasal Fixation

Whew! The end of the quarter has arrived, and now that I'm finished with finals I can post a few updates.

First of all, Dylan was one of a small handful of kids to represent his school at the district-wide Math Olympiad Competition. Every year the top math students from each grade (grades 4-8) form groups and meet once a week to work math problems, and it all leads up to the big competition day in March. They meet with all the other Math Olympians from other schools in the district and spend a day doing lots and lots of math problems in their groups and individually. This was Dylan's first year actually competing, and he did a really great job, placing 9th among all the other 4th graders in the district (there were probably 60 or so 4th graders total). I'm so glad he's excited about math, and actually enjoys doing it. He was also honored with a "Butch Award" at school yesterday (Butch is the school mascot, and Butch awards are handed out to students in recognition of various good deeds and accomplishments) for his work in math.

And now for the latest in Zoya's world...she is growing so much, and is so FUNNY! She has a nasal fixation thing going on that I think might be hereditary (I was quite fond of putting things up my nose as a child - for me it was the silky lining of my blanket. Oh, and packing peanuts - that was fun!). For whatever reason she seems to get comfort from sucking on her pacifier while simultaneously shoving the ribbon from around Rosie's (her teddy bear) neck up her nose. On occasion she'll totally freak out because she has boogies on Rosie's "zipper" (her word for "ribbon") - go figure! So a couple of weeks ago at precisely 5:05pm (because she just COULDN'T do it before the Dr.'s office closed) she started screaming bloody murder, scratching at her nose, crying that "it hurts, it hurts!" It scared me to death because she was so panicked. I tried to calm her down and asked her if she put anything up her nose. She insisted that she hadn't, so I tried looking up there using a flashlight, but couldn't see anything. In the mean time, her right nostril was turning red and looking slightly enlarged, and her right eye was BRIGHT red and gushing tears like the Bitterroot River with spring run-off (that was for you Stevensville MT natives). She was still screaming inconsolably and I was getting a little panicked myself, so I asked her again if she put anything up there. She finally 'fessed up and said she put "the fire" up her nose. After another 10 minutes of trying to figure out what THAT was, I determined that she had put a wood pellet from the pellet stove up there. For those of you who don't know what those are, here's a picture: perfect size for a 3 year-old's nose holes!

Wood pellets are simply compressed sawdust, that, when wet (whether with water or mucus secretions), EXPAND. ALOT. And even better, they are filled with teeny tiny sharp little splinters that, I'm sure, feel GREAT on the sensitive lining of a nostril.

Unfortunately, Movakel was up at Steven's Pass snowboarding with the SCC snowboarding club, and Dylan couldn't seem to hold the flashlight still while I tried to operate with tweezers, so I had to call my friend Mary over to help with the operation. We tried tweezers and saline flushes, and NOTHING was getting that thing out - she really must have used some force when she stuffed it up! After a couple of hours of very traumatic attempts at dislodging the pellet, it finally occurred to us that she was old enough to BLOW her nose. So for the next FOUR DAYS, Zoya was blowing big chunks of mushy sawdust before we finally got her all cleaned out. It was a very difficult and painful lesson to learn, and now she will spontaneously launch into a lecture to anyone who will listen about how we don't put ANYTHING, especially pellets up our noses, detailing the gruesome consequences of such actions.

Needless to say, it was an experience we will not soon forget.

Movin' on up!

Dylan had his first Tae Kwon Do belt test today, and we are SO PROUD of him! He worked really hard and did such a great job, and was so confident and did everything perfectly...he's now a big YELLOW belt! It's amazing to watch him grow up so much. He's never really lacked confidence, but every day when he comes back from Tae Kwon Do practice, he walks a little taller and acts a little more mature. I think it's so great for his self esteem, and he really has excelled. If I haven't said it before, we are very, very proud of his hard work and dedication. Way to go Dyl! Here are the pictures:

Getting ready

Nice form!

It's official!

Dylan with Master Han

Showing off his new color

And of course, Zoya had to show her stuff too! She did really well - she learns everything from watching Dylan's class every day. She can't wait until she turns 4 and can take real classes!