Lucia's 1st Birthday!!!

My baby turned one, and in a feat of determination she started officially walking the day before her birthday. She's also had two more front teeth come in, so she's looking far more like a toddler than a baby. My one year old Lucia is:

1. fearless. I put her at the bottom of the slide at the park thinking she'd just hang out, and before I could finish attending to Gabe she had climbed the stairs and was ready to throw herself down the slide. I sat her down and let her go and she LOVED it.
2. Opinionated. She is generally happy, but will let out a shreik only dolphins can understand if she wants something. Anyone have advice on how to make that stop?
3. Laughs a lot. really, she's a funny baby and one of my favotie things is to lay on the floor and tickle her and listen to her giggle.
4. Addicted to her blankie. When it's timeto go to bed I hand it to her and she snuggles her face in it, sooooooooo happy, pops her left thumb in her mouth and goes right to bed. She doesn't stay asleep great always, but she goes down easy.
5. Great eater. She'll eat almost anything, and eats a lot - more than Gabe most days. But she'll only drink milk if it's warm. And she loves to rub her food in her hair. If I was fanatical about her having clean hair I'd seriously have to bathe her after every meal.
6. She adores her mom, and the feeling is mutual.

We had a family party for her on her birthday and here is the pictoral evidence.
demolishing her cake. At least I removed her shirt first.

toddling around, loving all the people to give her attention.

Ready to blow out her candle, or just grab at it.

We played games that were all about Lucia. Since she loves to eat anything and everything off the floor, she had a race to see who could eat the most cheerios. I love that Lindsay has abandoned playing and is just shooting Matthew with a water gun as he attempts to compete, that Misty does it while holding a baby and that my dad is as into it as any of the kids.

eating baby food. Lucia is a great eater, of anything but baby food actually, but it worked for the game. racing in diapers full of lemons. It was difficult to determien a winner since all confessed to cheating.

The birthday girl and her papa.

Lucia and Kallie on her new horse.

Waiting for the party guests to arrive, in the 2 minutes that her headband lasted on her head.

So happy this girl is in our family!

My Roger

Mario plays in a tennis league, and Wednesday night after Lucia's birthday party (post coming soon when technical difficulties with photos are resolved) all the adults at the party transferred over to the tennis courts to cheer him on for the division championship. HE WON! Sexy and plays well, I'm ready for some endorsement deals!!!!!!!!

10-10-10

Sunday was my magic birthday. 10-10-10. That will never happen again. Crazy thought. It was also magically fabulous. My big day coincided with a trip I had to make to a work meeting on the east coast, so I stayed a few extra days to see all my wonderful girlfriends in DC.

Oh, and Ashley, Lindsay and Olive decided we needed to make it a super girls trip so they accompanied me. It was fabulous.
I flew home on my birthday day, and Mario had prepared an adorable little party with pink plates, pink napkins, pink balloons, pink suckers, and pink candles in a chocolate turtle cake. And in the not pink box was a new sewing machine. YEAH! (and my mom said he did it all himself!)

Lucia and I at the botanical gardens with the US capitol in the background.

In old town Alexandria where we only entered 4 stores but I still managed to spend too much money. We had to go to carriers because boutiques aren't made for strollers. I love Olive totally passed out from exhaustion.

Lucia and Olive hanging with Lindsay at Eastern Market while we waited for our crepes.

Marianne and I. I LOOOOOVE this lady. I want to be her when I grow up. Because I suck, I somehow missed getting pictures with Linsey, Emy, Holly and Catherine, other fantabulous girlfriends I saw on the trip. Man how I miss these girls in my everyday life.

Lindsay, Ashley, Noah, Marianne and Lucia outside DC cupcake.

As you can see, our weekend went something like this: talk, eat, talk, shop, talk, eat, talk, eat, talk, shop. Living abroad for so long one of the things I desperately missed were the interesting converstaions with my educated, witty, intelligent, thoughtful, insightful, politically up-to-date friends. This weekend was like water in the desert and I soaked up every bit of it.

A Place to Call Home

A major reason for my recent blogging absence has been the very very time consuming task of searching for a house. And the middle of September, we were FINALLY able to move into our own home!

Here are some of the before pictures.

master bedroom
the green space in front of our house and the community pool on the other side - serious highlights of this house.

entry way/living room

family room - finally a departure from that hideous peachy color in all the rest of the house!
Front of house.

We're super excited. It's not huge, or elegant, or anything overly exciting, but it's more than twice the size of our last house, and I have American shopping opportunities to fix it up.

Work-in-progress pictures coming soon.

The Last Days of Summer

I feel that the infrequent updates and lackluster writing are making my blog a little pathetic. I mean, my header doesn't even have a picture of my almost one-year-old daughter and claims I live in a country where I no longer reside. But since I fear other, more tedious forms of family record keeping, I am resolving to make this one a little more complete. So readers, if there are any of you left, I promist to improve.

Our last month has been essentially just an extension of what has been a vacation of sorts since we arrived to the US in July. No home to call our own and my ability to work remotely has allowed us to drift about. Abuela Susana came to Utah to wish her first grandchild to serve a mission farewell, so we spent quite a bit of time there with her. We also made a quick trip up to Eastern Idaho to visit my mom's side of the family. Here is our pictoral report.
In front of the Rexburg temple.

Gabe in the BYU-Idaho botanical gardens with his cousin.

With my fabulous cousin Kara and her adorable daughter. We had the BEST time with them.

Lucia getting her first taste of terere (cold mate).

When Erick got set apart. I stayed home with the two kids of questionable reverence and got berated by Gabewho was NOT HAPPY that he wasn't with all his cousins.

Spotting wildlife on Antelope Island.

Mario got to visit an old mission companion in Idaho - he reported Mario was in fact a good missionary.

Gabe and his great-grandma Pat gathering up the apples that blew off the tree to make apple crisp.

A super fun day at "This Is the Place" Park, where we learned about pioneer life.

Gabe loved to play the piano, and Joseph's trombone, and Ezra's trumpet, which one night when no one was watching he took out of the case, took on of the buttons off and dropped it down inside the horn, where it was finally located after hours of all adults on all fours searching the carpet...I think that was the point at which we over stayed our welcome...

fun times in the beautiful parks with cousins - Lucia and Janelle

Sandra, Susana and I making hundreds (literally) of empanadas for Erick's farewell gathering.

Gabe participating in soccer practice with the big boys. Privelege of being the coach's nephew...

In short, it was a great month, but I am excited to report that my next post will feature our new, permanent living quarters!

Joyous July

Well, we survived the move. After about 6 weeks here in the US, I'd have to say it all feels more like a strange vacation rather than a relocation. We're still with my parents while we search for a house - which means lots of extra help babysitting and someone to share cooking and other household necessities with. I kind of love it, and in some ways think I could co-habitate for quite some time! Lucia has had one intense ear infection that necessitated 2 trips to urgent care and sprouted two new teeth since we arrived. Like her brother, her eye teeth came in before he middle teeth so we have another vampire baby.

We've taken advantage of the virtual nature of my job, and the non-existent nature of Mario's to spend some time visiting Mario's brother and his family in Utah. It was a fantastic visit where we visited Hogle Zoo.

Went rafting in Lava Hot Springs and got seriously mauled by the river.

Visited with my wonderful friend Marianne and her family at the Gateway, where Gabe wasn't too sure about the water fountain.

Went to to the super fun South Bountiful recreation center where I got to visit with my BFF Jessica while our kids played in the water. (I'm terrible and don't have a picture of either of them)

We also enjoyed the beautiful outdoors and hiked Ensign Peak

as well as hiked to Timpanogos Caves.

It's a 3 mile hike and Gabe walked the whole thing! I was so pround of him.

Don't worry, without the stellar example of his cousins the following week he couldn't even walk through the mall for 20 minutes.

Now we're back to the heat, spending all day in the pool and looking for houses. But the quasi vacation life isn't so bad...

Joys of June

I am so insanely busy, that the only thing I can do is sit down and blog about our last month.
Elder Neil Anderson of the Quorum ofthe Twelve Apostles presided over our stake conference and we got to meet him and his lovely wife. It was a wonderful experience for all of us, but especially Mario who got to spend quite a bit of time meeting with him and was so impressed with his humble and kind spirit.

In a less spiritual reunion, I went to the concert of the Argentine heartthrob Axel with my friend Carolina and Florencia - my most wonderful babysitter/cleaner/helper ever.

It was in the ballroom of a hotel and there were maybe 1000 people there - very fun, relaxed concert full of screaming females.

In case: selling all our belongings, packing, making sure we have all the necessary birth certificates and documents, getting international apostilles for them, selling our car, going to a million doctors to make sure we're all healthy before we have no more insurance, trying to find a car and a place to live online, etc. etc. etc. weren't enough, Mario lost the keys to the car last weekend. Which necessitated breaking two windows, having the car towed, getting the keys replaced, then getting the windows replaced. Fun.

I'm a second child - there is no baby book or record of my firsts. I swore I would not do that to my children, yet my second child is suffering the same fate already. Lucia is now 8 months old. She's been crawling all over the place for a month now, and for the last couple of weeks pulling herself into standing on anything that will support her - usually my pants legs. Makes it difficult to get things done. She is still ridiculous about sleeping - hard to get her to nap, won't sleep through the night - but when she's awake for the most part she's happy and giggly and babbling and we all adore her to pieces. Oh - except that she completely hates her car seat and screams any time we are in the car. Nice.

Gabe has survived his first girlfriend and first breakup. For the last couple of months he has come home from school every day telling me about his friend Barbi (just in front of him in the picture). "Ma, Barbi es mi amiga" with a special smile on his face. He wants to go to Barbi's house, he wants her to come to our house, he's sad when she doesn't come to school. Then today, I asked him if he played with Barbi today and he told me: "No, parece que Barbi no fue mi amiga. Es amiga de Mattias y el es grande" (No, it seems that Barbi was not my friend, she is friends with Mattias and he is big). But he seemed not at all concerned or saddened by that. I tried no hold in my laughter until he could no longer see me.