Friday, November 11, 2011

Of Course We Did


If you know Sina well at all then you probably can guess one of the things we did while in Salzburg.


That's right, the Sound of Music bus tour - all the famous sites, accompanied by tourist sing-a-longs and endless Sound of Music trivia. Funny thing, Sina already knew all of the trivia.




Let's be honest. I'd be more eager to admit publicly that I enjoy the movie but for one thing, and I think you all know what it is. The Haircut. Ted Turner used to take old movies and colorize them - can't he work some magic and swap Maria's hair out for something different? Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins looks great, I daresay even sexy. Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music? No need to fear for those vows of celibacy with that one. That being said, when your guide dresses up like this you can't help but enjoy the tour in spite of the Hair.




There were more dandelions...


And running through dandelions of course...

Our New Home???

Call it a premonition, serendipity, or just plain dumb luck, but we went to Salzburg, Austria from Germany for a few days. Ok, so we won't actually be living in Salzburg next year, but Vienna's less than four hours away by car, so we can visit often, right?? We loved it - the weather was perfect again, the town was perfect, Leslie picked the perfect hotel for us to stay in, and the restaurant at the hotel was perfect.


Ruby found a pet unicorn:


Sina found flowers:


And Gavin and I found the nicest McDonald's sign on the planet:


Did I mention the weather was perfect?


A dog trainer once told us that a tired dog is a good dog.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Ruby and Gavin Meet the Alps

These posts are a chronological mess, but I'm procrastinating the postings of our trip to India because there are WAY too many photos to choose from! So for now we'll jump ahead to our trip home from Sri Lanka back in April. We stopped in Frankfurt on the way home for a week and drove down to Southern Germany and to Salzburg in Austria. We used Barkley as the excuse - the poor boy is far too old to handle a 24-hour plane ride all in one shot these days, right?? So we dropped him off at a big dog hostel they have at the end of the runway in Frankfurt (the Germans do love their dogs, after all), and headed off through the countryside. The weather could not have been more perfect. We met up with our friends Dave, Leslie, and their son Max in Schwangau, right below the infamous Castle Neuschwanstein. The weather was beyond perfect, the scenery was about as different from Sri Lanka as you could get, and the dandelions were everywhere!




Before long it devolved into a sort of out of control photo-shoot/fairytale.






We went to dinner in nearby Fussen, where I ate a whole lot of pork...


...and Max, Gavin, and Ruby ate a whole lot of ice cream.


Gavin had an ice cream hangover the next morning.


Oh yeah, and there's a castle there too.




Huh? Sri Lanka who?

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Catching Up: The Zoo!

Time to catch up on a few posts! Back in February when we were still in Sri Lanka, Sina and I took the kids to Singapore for a long weekend. Besides all the other reasons to love Singapore (fantastic food, much cleaner than some South Asian island countries who shall remain nameless, fantastic food, great shopping, fantastic food, 7-Elevens about every half a block, more fantastic food, hot enough to justify buying a Coke slurpee every half a block...you get the picture...), they have a great, great zoo there.

For a little extra chicken feed they let you feed some of the animals there. Now I've fed a lot of animals in my lifetime, but mostly of the bovine and ovine variety. As much as I liked that, feeding these was much more fun.





I forget now how old these turtles were, but I believe it was older than all four of us put together!





But the best ones to feed were the manatees. Their mouths are one of the strangest things we had ever seen - kind of like a friendly, mouthy version of a porcupine.





The kangaroo exhibit claimed that early white explorers in Australia saw a kangaroo and asked a nearby Aborigine what it was. The guy replied "kangaroo", which in his language meant "I don't understand your question." :):):)

Singapore also has a great bird zoo!
(that also has fish ponds...)



They had a big enclosed space with lots of Lories, really noisy and colorful birds you could feed nectar to. Lots of fun...





...until you had six or seven of them fighting over you. I think Alfred Hitchcock may have had some experience with these maybe?



And they have a great night safari zoo - that's right, a night safari zoo that's only open after dark and has all sorts of nocturnal animals and low lighting so you can see all those animals that are sleeping when you usually go to the zoo. But too dark for photos. :)

Monday, October 24, 2011

Flying over the Hindu Kush

More video for Gavin and Ruby...flying over the Hindu Kush mountains on the way back to Kabul from Kunduz in the North.


Friday, October 21, 2011

More helicopters for Gavin


Just cause he loves them:





And here's what a fuel tanker looks like on fire from the air:


Friday, September 23, 2011

For Gavin and Ruby - Daddy's ride

Here's a little video for Ruby and Gavin to watch. I took it while on a trip in a helicopter this week. There were two helicopters - the one in the video, and the one that I'm in when I'm taking the video. Love, Papa!

Friday, September 2, 2011

It's a Girl!

Ruby and Gavin are pleased to introduce the newest addition to our family

CLEO! CLEO! CLEO!

And yes, we just might be a little crazy. But we love her!

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

To Ruby on her First Day of Kindergarten


Dear Ruby,
This morning was so much fun, wasn't it?
There are far too many ways to be profound and self reflective and to mourn the passing of your baby years, but I chose today to embrace the beauty of the moments. The beauty of you and Gavin wandering up to my room at 5:30am because Gavin wanted to snuggle with you, you didn't want to, so somehow all of us ended up in my double bed. The beauty of discovering the alarm hadn't gone off and rushing to make it to school on time with less than 15 minutes. The beauty of getting completely ready in six minutes flat, only to realize when I grabbed my phone to take the "First Day of School" photo for posterity that Gavin had changed the time on the alarm and we still had another hour before we had to leave.

The beauty of holding your hand while you got up the courage to stand in line and make new friends, again.

The beauty of picking you up and discovering not only do you love your teacher, but you'd already made a friend you could hardly say goodbye to! The beauty of understanding that sharing your day with you as a spectator and not as the stage director is a wonderfully satisfying evolution of our relationship.

I love you forever and always,
Mama