blue eyed girl in blue

first bike ride

yesterday was Abe's first bike ride with daddy & maggie. he LOVED it. this boy just loves life and loves to do things with his sister. Maggie was so happy to have a companion in the trailer with her. she did not want to get out and we had to slightly bribe her with her other favorite thing (going to buy bagels with daddy).
mojo did a few laps around the parking lot to get the kids warmed up....we see lots of rides in the park in our future!

9 months

hi! i'm Abraham! some people call me hammy. i'm 9 months old this month and i can do lots of things....

i'm super fast when it comes to "army crawling" and i am working on the real thing


i'm super passionate these days when maggie takes something out of my hands or if my mom takes something away that i am not suppose to have.

my mom cant believe she got so lucky as to have a kid with dimples

i explore the world through my mouth, even despite my mom's watchful eye.


i'm pretty much happy all the time.... well, except when its time to go to sleep.

i can clap! and i LOVE when my mom puts on the Supertones. i clap and hit the table i get so excited!

oh, and most importantly!!! I can say Da-da! and its adorable!!!

we love life!

little treasures

st. louis continues to throw up little treasures with each passing season. i cant tell you how much i love this city. we miss our life in east nashville but i definitely love this city more... which continues to be a pleasant surprise. the past few days have been in the 70s and it has been wonderful. today i took the kids to the botanical gardens. we held off going in the fall to experience it first in the springtime and it was beautiful! i know this will be a new spot for me and the kiddos to take picnics and enjoy all that spring has to offer. come visit us!

swingin'

a new favorite for little Abe.

making sugar

whenever maggie sees me cooking dinner or baking she says, "momma, you making sugar?"
seriously, what could be cuter than that? these pictures are from the fall when she first start exploring the kitchen with me.
i see a future here!

jambalaya!

i forgot to post this video from back in december. but its worth watching! jambalaya is a favorite dish around here and you'll see why!

scholar in the making

look daddy! i know the greek alphabet too!!

nomads

the "other" china

this month in national geographic there is an article called "the other china." it's an article about a place called JiuZhaiGou. it means "nine villages" and is located in the northern part of the sichuan province. we've been there; so i was excited that the article came at a time when china has been on my mind. the pictures below dont give the place justice and as a matter of fact, the pictures in N.G. dont give it justice either. the place is spectacular. and is filled with colors and legends and is truly another china.

maggie's version

tonight maggie wanted to sing patty cake. we've never really done that with her a ton and i think its been like a year since i've done it, so i am thinking she picked it up at school?
this is what she sang:
Patty cake Patty Cake
Be My man
Patty Cake Patty Cake
Be My Man
Roll Roll Roll
Pat Pat
Mark it with a beach!

priceless!

tiananmen square

here we are in the famous tiananmen square in beijing. y'all this picture of chairman mao is huge. like ridiculously big. the photos dont really do it justice. one thing i find fascinating about chinese culture is their resiliency as a people. they've been through a heck of a lot in the last 100 years (not to mentions the thousands of years before that...)
they continue to progress and change and despite the chains on them, move forward.

these two ladies were my teammates the year we lived there. both of them moved back there with spouses and stayed for years and years. one just came home. the other is still there. i couldnt find many good ones of all three of us because i guess we were always taking the pictures.
we ate together, studied together, helped each other, and even had to sleep in the same bed together! but let me tell you, we have NEVER laughed so much! if you ever have to live in a place that has rats chewing your shoes, slugs coming up your drain, or mildew down your walls-these are the gals to brave it with. those things never even bothered me because we had so much fun exploring this new world together.

moving on up!

this is maggie's first full day of "preschool!" i can't tell you how excited she (and I) am! her favorite thing is getting to carry her lunch box. even though abraham is sleeping right now and i am about to clean in silence (hooray!), i am a wee bit sad that we are already at this stage.
technically, we dont have to be at this stage but i know that they can teach and give her much more than i could at this point. she is learning like a weed and i think this will sprout a lot more in her. and she loves to say, "I go to Mount Calvary!"
love it!!! here she is last week right before we left for her first day! oh, and when we got there we met two little boys in her class and when their mommy introduced them maggie said, "come on guys! come on, lets go!" she is such a welcomer and kind hearted little one! she teaches us alot!

the arch

safari

somehow some africa pictures snuck in...and by the way, going on a safari is like nothing else in the world. seriously, its thrilling to be so close to big animals, wild animals.

cuter by the day

ah, india.

this is on the Ganges in Varanasi, India. To hindu's its one of the holiest places in the whole country. sometimes i cant even talk about the brief but powerful time I had in India. something deep inside me was stirred and i have never been able to shake it or be the same again. the things i saw, the smells, the people, the colors. the place is just overwhelming in every since of the word.

ten years

its been ten years(!!!!) since i taught in asia and got to explore a little. i took all my negatives and got them put on a cd so i could make a photo book on my mac. its taken a bit longer than i thought to get back there. but God had a path for me that included a wonderful husband and two adorable kids, so we'll see if we'll all end up there together. i sure hope so!
i'll be posting more pics as i go through them and relive some of those memories.
here is me and the Great Wall.

snow dayz

we've had lots of snow here folks. its powdery and brilliant white and amazing. i couldnt believe how happy i was to see it snowing & snowing & snowing.
my hubby is a bit eccentric and one of the lovable things he does it look at the weather around the world on a daily basis. he says its been snowing in moscow every day for weeks. i want to move there.
seriously, i have been on cloud nine with all the snow covering everything! i even had to dig my car out of the snow! so fun!
today it completely melted and now everything just looks dirty and wet and normal.
so, thought today would be a good day to post some reminders of the beauty we had!
our dear neighbor laura came over and wanted to take some shots of maggie in the snow (with her very deluxe camera...which i used for abe's shots down below). thanks laura! you are helping us keep our memories!


catching snowflakes

playmates: i cant wait til next year when they can build snowmen together!