Ben, Em, Diana, and Helen

Here are a bunch of pics from our trip to Bali.  We had a wonderful time, and I managed to get a few good pics of the girls, mostly at snack times!  The first picture is from the week before our vacation when D just disappeared into her room at noon.  She had been quiet for a little too long so I barged in to investigate and discovered that she’d made a little nap nest, complete with the hydration system from my hiking backpack.  She was FAST asleep.  Will try to add text to go with photos at some point, but most are self-explanatory for now…

Here are some pictures, and a video of our costume fun this week.  Diana was excited to try on her bee costume again, and Helen was a champ about wearing it to the kids’ party on Saturday.  Diana’s Princess Leia costume was a bit too big, so maybe for next year.  In the meantime she was happy to dress up as Pebbles Flintstone.  Her styrofoam bone broke on the way to the party, but oh well.  I made a pumpkin cake (vanilla cake, chocolate frosting and marzipan top) to celebrate with friends on Sunday, and the kids (probably Helen) decorated our heater with crayons.  Good times!

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Here are a few quick pics from the last few weeks. I don’t remember what the girls were snacking on in the first picture, but Diana really wanted to eat with Helen and share food, so they sat there happily snacking away for while. Helen has been growing and starting to wear clothes in bigger sizes, so she and Diana helped me go through some boxes to find new clothes for her. Her favorite thing was this plaid shirt that was Uncle Matt’s when he was a baby. Diana helped me make chocolate chip cookies, and got her first real taste of cookie dough – needless to say she loved it. The spoon lasted her a good 5 minutes as she savored every bite. It’s birthday party season here, and Diana got to go to a “Princess Barbie”-themed party (ack!) where all the guests had to dress up as a princess, and featured an adult in blonde wig and poufy pink dress dressed-up as Barbie. (The next birthday party was Hawaiian dress code.) I took some perverse pleasure in the fact that we didn’t have a “princess” dress for her, but Diana was very happy dressed up in her pink Mandarin collar dress. Diana and Helen sometimes play very well together, and it was wonderful to see them reading together on a Saturday morning. We also snapped this photo of Play-Doh-time just before Helen ate some and Diana lost patience with Helen’s interest in “her” snowman. Oh well.

In the past month we’ve been able to celebrate our babies turning 1 and 3 years old – amazing! Helen’s birthday was pretty low key, and Diana had a little trouble accepting that the presents weren’t for her, but she was very happy to get to help me make strawberry shortcake. We’ve also been preparing for Halloween –Diana will be a little Princess Leia (she let me style her hair, but also wanted to try on the “wig” that came with her outfit), and Helen will go as the bee that Diana rocked for the previous two years. Helen is also a bit on the small side, but she’s already wearing shoes that Diana didn’t fit into until 1 ½.

Diana’s birthday party was a bit success. We had the café down the street cater the food and make the Dora cake. I tried my first high-altitude cake recipe, and cranked out this Care Bear cake. All the kids had fun, and Diana was a gracious hostess. It helped that she had practice on Thursday opening presents and smiling for the camera! Both girls have been happy playing together lately, and especially love having bath time together. They love playing with the magnetic fishing game that Diana got from Aunt Nanny, although Helen still thinks it should work on ALL bath toys. Oh well.

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We’ve been a pretty normal family the last few weeks. Feeding kids, building forts and playing dress up. The girls are fun to have around (almost all of the time) and it’s very cute when they actually play nicely together. It doesn’t happen very often since they both suffer from “poor impulse control”!

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Although we didn’t take many pictures of our trip to Vermont and Australia, we had a wonderful time, and enjoyed seeing lots of family.  We had a little Easter brunch and Diana loved hunting for eggs, and was very happy that I let her have most of the chocolate in her basket.  Helen got all dressed up in a dress for the first time, and didn’t seem to mind too much.  Diana did a lot of reading in Vermont, and loved snuggling up with grandparents or Aunt Nanny and reading.  She also loved getting to wear as little clothes as possible as often as possible.  We took a little day trip up to the Montshire Museum of Science, and Diana especially loved the real fox fur that she got to carry around, and the leaf cutter ant box.  I could have watched the ants all day!  Both girls loved the sunny weather that we had for most of the trip, and getting to run around in a grassy lawn that wasn’t soggy.  Helen loved eating her first blades of grass, and several times I caught Diana helping her get more fistfuls.  Diana also got to use a t-ball set, and get pretty good as swinging, although she’s a little ways away from being able to follow through with the other rules of the game.

It was great to see Matt and Lisa in Australia, and even greater to have their help on the plane.  Both girls did surprisingly well on the long flight, but it was nice to be on good ol’ terra cotta and see daddy in Cairns.  We spent most of our time at the lagoon pool playing in the water and sand, but we did take a daytrip out to the reef where we also took a semi-submersible ride.  Both girls loved seeing the fish, especially Helen who squeaked the whole time.  It was a great trip, and we had so much fun that we didn’t take many pictures, but here are the best we have.  Enjoy!

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Well, after being home for a few weeks, I finally managed to set aside some time (three hours in all!), to select, edit and upload these pictures of our trip to Morocco. We were lucky to be travelling at a slow time, so we didn’t have to show up to the helipad at an ungodly hour (Its school vacation time now, and the weather hasn’t permitted any chopper flights for 4 days – the natives are getting restless. Folks are showing up for the first-come-first-served flights at 4am, and still being assigned to the 5th flight).

Both girls travelled well on all of the flights from Timika to Jakarta, Dubai, and Casablanca; although since so much time has passed, it feels like it went a lot more smoothly than it probably did. We spent two uneventful days in Casablanca where the most excitement we had was realizing that we had lost Betsy somewhere along the way. We didn’t even take out the camera until the train ride to Fes, where Diana took a nap after a total melt down. Going through all the pictures of this trip, I realized we have a lot of Diana sleeping. I think it’s just because we were so busy every time she was awake!

We checked into our Riad in Fes, and Diana instantly made friends with the statue by the fireplace and named her Banjolina. Don’t know where she got that from, but Diana was very attentive to her needs, feeding her and giving her drinks of water as necessary…

During our trip we toured a number of derelict mansions, sitting there waiting for foreign investors to come in and turn them into luxury hotels. The places were amazing, with beautiful tile work and huge carved doors. It got us thinking about if WE could ever be those “foreign investors.” The multi-million dollar price tags were a bit daunting, but not as much as the thought of the cost of renovation – both places had at least one collapsed ceiling, and several residents of the animal variety (cats, chickens, etc).

We stayed on the outskirts of the Medina (old part of the city) in Fes, which is notoriously maze-like. Upon asking the maitre d’hotel how to get to the main city gate and being told to just keep turning left until we got there, we decided to hire a guide for our second day. Our guide took us to some of the main attractions in Fes, including the amazing leather tanneries. The smell was overwhelming, but it was a beautiful sight to behold, and we were told many times that we could order anything we wanted custom made and delivered to our door the next day. We also stopped to peek in at the oldest university in the world, where a friendly fez salesmen enabled this photo, and I snapped one of my favorite photos of the trip. Something about the sheep’s hide on the plastic deck chair gets me every time.

The weather in Fes was beautiful, and we spent many afternoons on the rooftop during and after Helen’s 4 o’clock nap. Diana spent most of these at shirtless and running around gleefully in the afternoon breeze.

After our tour on the first day, I feel proud to say that we walked through the medina daily (if not several times a day) and never got so lost that we had to get help (except for when we tried to get back to one specific shop near the tanneries). Having a map was mostly useless, but we would get to a familiar souk, or market square, and then wind our way through the narrow streets until we got to where we wanted to go. All this time we had to be careful to avoid the donkeys and horses carrying goods through the streets, sometimes at quite a fast pace. Diana loves seeing the donkeys and crying our “Donk!!!” whenever we saw one, just to make me laugh.

One of our day trips was to the ruins of Volubilis, which according to Wikipedia “features the best preserved Roman ruins in this part of northern Africa.” Our definition of “well-preserved” must be pretty uptight since we were distressed to see the beautiful mosaics sitting fully exposed to the elements, and without even good signage to tell us what they were, but oh well. The photos on Wikipedia show a lot more color than we saw – but perhaps someone had just splashed some water on the tiles, as we saw a French-speaking tour guide do so he could describe the colors that were once obvious. Both girls withstood the glaring sun quite well, and no one got sun-burned. Diana particularly liked standing on the bases of columns and practicing her ballet.

Leaving Volubilis we stopped at the road-side stand of an artifacts dealer who was selling some rare, ancient artifacts from the area, including resin and rhinestone rings, coins from way back in the 20th century, and these fossils. Ben didn’t ask how much they were, but I think he regrets not getting one.

That was our trip in a nutshell. Now to find pictures of our time in Vermont and Australia…. Hopefully I’ll be able to get those up before Christmas!  I was hoping to get the photos inserted in with the text, but now I’m too tired, so you’ll have to figure it out as you go.  Sorry!

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Here’s some pictures from around the house lately…  As you can see, Helen really enjoys her bathtime, and it has helped a bit with establishing a calming bedtime routine for her.  She still doesn’t really like bedtime, but we’re working on it.

Diana wanted to help us make lasagna last weekend, and she happened to be mostly naked with a headlamp around her neck at the time.  Couldn’t resist taking a picture.  She still needs to take a food safety course however since she sneezed all over the lasagna, but at least she enjoyed eating it!  Helen can sit up on her own, but still loves being in her exer-saucer and watching Diana run around.  Still not crawling, but she can spin herself around on her stomach, and is starting to be able to push herself backwards.  Since Tati loves holding her so much, she doesn’t get quite as much tummy time as Diana did at this age!  Her first tooth is starting to show up under her bottom gum as well, but it hasn’t seemed to effect her eating – she eats about 3 tubs of baby food a day, plus two or three servings of rice cereal.  I think she’ll be Diana’s size in about 6 months!

Diana has been into art projects this week, so we have done ink and stamps, ink and footprints, drawing, coloring, and a plaster mold of her and Helen’s hands.  Fine arts seem to be in Diana’s future – she’s also been very interested in dance, and we checked a book out of the library about ballet.  She has been doing arabesques ever since!  Enjoy the pictures, and look forward to seeing many of you soon!

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Here are the pics and a video….  Text descriptions of pictures coming soon! 🙂

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Diana really enjoyed a video clip from the movie “I love you man!” featuring the band Rush, so we put on the Moving Pictures album, and this was the result.  She put on the headband herself, and the shoelace accessory.  Enjoy!

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Well, it’s true what everyone says, that the second child doesn’t get as much as the first.  With Diana we got pictures of her in every “My First ____” bib and outfit.  Helen’s lucky if she gets a picture in Diana’s hand-me-downs, and even though we still have Diana’s Valentine bib, we forgot to put it on Helen and get a picture.  Oh well, there’s always next year…

Here are some recent pictures of both girls.  As you can see, Helen loves her exer-saucer and Johnny-jump-up, and knows how to mug for the camera.  She loves when Diana stands next to her and jumps, shouting “jumping, jumping, jumping.”  Diana loves her pink sunglasses we got from Bali, and is starting to want to dress herself, hence often having mismatched outfits.

The last three pics are from a day when Helen woke up from her nap before Diana and got some rare uncontested one-on-two time with mom and dad.  Her cheeks are starting to fill out more, like D’s, but she’s got a look of her own!

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And a video to help illustrate Diana making Helen laugh…

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