Happy Day!

Look who made it to the Midwest!

For months I have been anxiously awaiting two monumental arrivals. While I am still waiting on a certain someone's arrival into the world (any day now...so people keep assuring me), the other BIG arrival finally happened this weekend! Mami and Papi Zakisauce made it to Minnesota! Through a major assist from my awesome brother, they were able to make the journey safely and relatively easily. (Thanks awesome brother!)

Minneapolis delivered on a lovely today which gave us an opportunity for a nice walk to the Farmer's Market and a quick tour of the neighborhood before awesome brother had to hop on a plane back to the West Coast. 

Now that Mami and Papi have made it here, I gave Tiny Long permission to arrive this week...wishful thinking...

Don't Break the Baby.

It's a perfect day outside! 72 degrees, nice breeze, and sunny skies. Of course, that means that I am currently obsessing about what it's going to be like in the Winter.

We know it gets really, ridiculously cold here in Minneapolis. Factor in the latest prediction from the Farmer's Almanac that it's going to be a particularly rough winter for us this year and I'm not so sure Abuelo and Abuelita are going to want to extend their stay very long.

I've spent the last hour researching the internet in one window and browsing Amazon in another window to figure out what I should be adding to my baby shopping list. How on earth do you "winterproof" a newborn who is unable to regulate their own temperature? I hear/read layers...super-warm car seat cover...hats...but is that enough for a Minnesota-rough winter? Also, is pajamas + sleep sack enough for baby not to be cold at night when he can't use blankets? Will it be too hot?

As California natives, Man Boo and I are totally ill-prepared for our first Minnesota winter as parents. Help us Mid-Western and East Coast friends...advice requested!

The big silver-lining here is that we recently insulated our main floor (no more frost on the inside of the front door!) and the presence of tiny human means that Man Boo will allow me to turn the thermostat up past 55 degrees. I made sure he heard the nurse when she said that newborns need room temperatures between 65 and 72.

Maximum Cuteness.

About this time, everyone has written about their year -- reflecting on the highs and lows.  I have so much to catch up on, I'd rather just share some of the memories from the past week.

Starting with these two...

Can you believe how much they have grown??  Can you believe how beautiful they are???  The picture cannot capture how smart, sweet, and hilarious they are so just trust me when I say they are pretty incredible 6 year-olds.

Of course, we capture a lot of video during our holiday with the family.  Unfortunately, we haven't been able to edit it together yet -- stay tuned.

In California, we were busy with our families, eating good food, enjoying our gifts, and sharing quality time with our loved ones.  We even had time to take a quick trip to Big Bear for some skiing!  

We headed back in to "chilly" Minneapolis last night and woke up bright and early to pick up little Clyde.

Our little service dog-in-training has been a great addition to our household so far.  He's super-smart -- he already gets that outside is for potty and has consistently gone within 10 seconds of us taking him out.  The frigid cold air may have something to do with that, though. We also hear that he already sleeps through the night.  Time will tell.

He doesn't quite seem to get how dog beds are supposed to work yet, but I'll chalk it up to first day fatigue.

Happy New Year everyone...

Last Month, Tonight.

I'm so out of practice with this blog thing.  Here's a quick recap of the last month...

Los Angeles.  When we left off, I was in LA doing work during the day and spending quality time with my parents at night.  We even made a trip to Las Vegas over the weekend for a mini-vacation and to take advantage of a free room with a Las Vegas-y view.

Thanksgiving.  After a quick trip back to Minneapolis, I hopped back on a plane for LA again...this time for Thanksgiving festivities.  Managed to pull off a pretty tasty Thanksgiving together with the whole family.  Man Boo came through with the brave and skilled lowering of the turkey into blazing hot oil...

...and 56 minutes later we had a delicious spread.

As usual, it was great to be with family.  Of course, we played a Calvinball-esque version of ping pong.  Needless to say, Man Boo lost 318 to 0.

Got older and baked a lot.  Flew through Minneapolis to get to Boston for work the next day and celebrated another year of life.  Never mind that I totally forgot how old I was turning.  That's what happens once you pass thirty...Upon coming back home I immediately set out to BAKE for our annual holiday/birthday party the next day.  I think I made enough cookies.

Clockwise from left: glazed lemon cookies, sweet and spicy nuts, chocolate crinkle cookies, and peanut butter blossoms.  I should note that this is not even half of the cookies I baked.  Jamie insisted that I bake 142 peanut butter blossoms because apparently every single person at our party would want one or two.  That, folks, is how much I love my husband.

Work, work, work.  Throughout all this has been some really busy work time.  Still loving the job, but it's sort of kicking my butt these days.  After weekly travel for the last month and a half, I really enjoyed my first full weekend at home and am looking forward to my first full week here too.  Minneapolis has been accommodating by giving us some 50 degree weather.  

Next post: PUPPY UPDATE!!

Edinburgh to Inverness.

I learned quite a bit on this trip, including: 1) Scotland has some pretty fantastic landscapes and 2) after a day of driving/hiking/walking/etc. it is pretty hard to find time to update a blog.  With regard to number one, I tried to take pictures of these landscapes to share.  And for number two, I opted to just wait until we got back to the States.

As shown in the pictures in the last post, we had a great time in Edinburgh.  Since we were only there for a day and a half, there was much left unexplored.  Still, I felt like we got to know the city pretty well just by walking through the town and visiting those key spots that all tourists hit their first time to Edinburgh: Edinburgh Castle, the Royal Mile, the National Museum.  We took a stroll through Greyfriar's Kirkyard, and through the Meadows.  Ate good food and spent some time working on our Scottish accents.

We also got to try the "national"soda of Scotland: Irn Bru.  We were left a can to sample by the gracious host of the apartment we rented in Edinburgh and Jamie was the first guinea pig...despite the questionable warnings on the label.

Despite it's bright orange color, it tasted exactly like Inca Kola.  Apparently, "national" sodas need to taste like bubble gum.

We said goodbye to Edinburgh on Tuesday morning and started on our journey north.  We piled into our rented Vauxhall and Jamie's expert driving (on the right-side of the car, on the left-side of the road) took us to our first stop in Auchtermuchty.

While it was definitely off the beaten track, it was a must for us because it gave a chance to learn more about Jamie's roots.  We stopped at the burgh's cemetery and found a few of his ancestors and visited the town square.  It was lovely.

We also learned a little bit about the how scheduling a medical procedure works in a town of 1500 people (or so).  Not sure if they use the word "surgery" the same way we do, but for the purpose of this picture, I'd like to think so...

Continuing our drive up towards Inverness, we stopped at the Highland Folk Museum which is highly recommended.  It's free, educational, and on a beautiful day it's hard to top.

Our next stop was Urquhart Castle, which I totally loved.  I was literally running around, snapping photos of the ruins and of Loch Ness, and chattering about how much I loved it to anyone who would listen.  You should read about its history -- it's fascinating!

We ended our drive in Inverness, got some good food, and walked along the River Ness.  All in all, a busy, but pretty much perfect day.

Happy Father's Day.

Because it deserves its own post, I'm double-posting today.  I want to wish a Happy Father's Day to all of the fathers in my life.

Of course, first and foremost to my own father who taught me about love, compassion, generosity, loyalty, and the importance of family.  To this day, there is no one who's advice and wisdom I value more.  Thank you, dad.

To my brother who has been an incredible father to his two little girls.  While I always knew that he had hogged all of the math skills in our gene pool, it is clear now that he also got the lion's share of the patience and parenting prowess.

To my father-in-law, who has known me for going on half my lifetime now and who has made me feel like part of his family from the get-go.

So, even though I'm halfway across the country from my favorite fathers today, I hope that my virtual hugs can make it over there.

The Move (Part 2).

I had every intention of following up with another post much sooner than I did!  Hopefully, I will still be able to have some kind of coherent narrative despite writing about something that happened a couple weeks back.  Still, I definitely want to capture it here -- just to remember this milestone some years down the road.

Jamie and I left DC in our big yellow truck filled with all of our worldly possessions.  Or should I say: we attempted to leave DC.  The city seemed to be conspiring against us and blocked our path out with road closings or vertical clearances.  In the end, the extra 45 minutes of driving through the city was actually a nice way to say goodbye to the city that had been our home for nearly a decade.  We said goodbye to the monuments and memorials, marveled at the sheer number of Harleys in town for the rally, and slowly lumbered our way away from the city.

Originally, Jamie and I had planned on splitting up driving responsibilities -- that is, until I saw the sheer size of the truck.  22 feet long + a trailer for our Prius.  It was terrifying to even sit in it while it was in motion, much less be responsible for the well-being of the people inside it and the other cars.  Jamie drove that whole thing to Minneapolis.

That truck went through a LOT of gas.  The first fill-up was something like $120.  Not long enough after, we stopped for our second tank.  We were pretty pleased that it was an even $100 to fill it up.  What are the chances!  we thought smugly to ourselves.  Then, on another gas stop, we hit exactly $100 again.  Pleased as punch that we hit it again -- it softened the blow that we were going to spend over $700 in gas by the time we were through.

It wasn't until we hit $100 the third time that we realized that it wasn't a coincidence: the gas station capped the charge at $100.  That makes sense. It also meant that we were stopping for gas much more frequently than we needed to.  D'oh.

Still, we made it to our destination after 18+ hours of driving, plenty of gas stops, some caffeinated drinks, a Home Depot stop for a new lock, and the the fastest motel stay ever.

Here is the moment our big, yellow truck first crossed the Minnesotan border.  We had some hired college guys meet us on the other end and they unloaded our truck at super-speeds.  By the next day, this is how our new (temporary) home looked:

It felt like home pretty quickly over here.  (The cats agreed).

                        

                                                                              

The Move (Part 1).

It has been an eventful week but we are emerging from the other end of it as Minnesotans.  It was a pretty bumpy ride though (literally and figuratively).

Through this move I learned quite a few things:

1) Always check your flight information as soon as you get to the airport.
Jamie attempted to fly to DC on Friday evening after work.  His flight was scheduled to make it in around 12:50am.  Sadly, that late hour turned out to be much earlier than he actually ended up making it into town.  Perhaps it was the fact that he wasn't traveling with me, but he took a much more laxed approach (I tend to be a bit of a worry-wart).  This meant that upon arriving to the airport early, he grabbed dinner before checking the gate information for his flight.  (Edited to add: Jamie wanted to make sure I let you all know that we had checked his flight status on the way to the airport and it was on-time -- lulling him into a false sense of security)  By the time he arrived at his gate, he learned that the flight was delayed an hour and a half and that they had been calling him to board an earlier flight direct to DC.

This turned out to be the first of many bumps in the road.

Jamie figured that with the delay he would miss his connection and would therefore be stuck in Chicago.  Instead, he booked a flight to Newark (the only other flight going to the East Coast) and I rented a car for him online.  This would get him to DC around 4am.

We later learned that the flight from Chicago was also delayed and he would have made his connection and gotten in a few hours earlier.  Sad times.

2) We are leaving behind some pretty generous people in DC.
Working off of only a few hours of sleep, we got started packing and loading our house bright and early Saturday morning.  Our friend, Leah, had been graciously holding a ton of our stuff in her extra bedroom and Scott agreed to meet us there.  We were joined for some seriously heavy lifting/packing by Dan, Garth and Andrea, Katie and Matt, and Dave and Tracy.  Needless to say, we could not have gotten it all done without all those extra hands and big hearts.

Scott actually was with us for a marathon-esque 16 hours.  (We got a little loopy around dinner time.)

That crazy amount of devotion and lifting/packing/organizing more than makes up for his part in the next bump in the road...

3) Never ever leave the key in the lock.
Around 1am we put the last items in the truck.  The sound of that door sliding down was music to our ears.  The latch closing was even sweeter.  We awaited the satisfying click of the padlock...but it never came.  Rewind several hours earlier when Scott told us casually that he left the key in the lock so that we wouldn't lose it in the chaos.  Strange, I thought, did he mean the house key?  Sadly, that question was answered when we didn't get the satisfying click.  In the time since that the key was left in the lock, the sliding door had been opened and closed a few times, breaking the key off in the lock in the process.

We were stuck, at 1am, with no way of locking our truck with all of our worldly possessions contained inside, in the middle of the District of Columbia, and no means of purchasing another lock that would fit our truck.

We hit the internet looking for solutions, we WD-40'd and banged that lock, we broke out the needle-nose pliers.  No luck.  Instead we just had to laugh at how ludicrous the situation was after so many hours of labor.  To me, it was the perfect way to end our time in DC with Scott.  Scott who -- let's be honest -- is the hardest part about leaving DC.

Jamie and I pushed our air mattress up against the open window so that we could hear if someone opened the truck and took turns getting out of bed to check on it throughout the night before our 7am departure.  In the end the truck was fine and the next day, Jamie and I hopped into our GIANT moving truck and set off for Minnesota.  We learned a few more lessons along the way...but I'll save them for the next post.

It's a weird perspective, but this is Jamie's last time walking down our steps...

Hot Minute.

So it's been a hot minute since I posted.  While I don't really have enough time right now to actually give this blog the attention it deserves, I do want to get back into regular updates.

This is especially important because today this appeared outside our home.

Man Boo and I are moving away from our home of the last 9 years.  It's sad, it's scary, and I am worried that I will not find the same kind of friendships that I found here in D.C.  That said, it is also exciting, full of hope, and I am so grateful to be sharing this next chapter of our lives with the man I am sharing it with.  I hope to stay connected to the friends I have made in this great city

I will be updating some of the happenings from the past (almost) year soon.  Of course, I will be starting with  updates about the BIG MOVE.  But for now...I just have this.

Lima.

Yup.  Man Boo and I went to Lima, Peru.

It had been 7 years since we last went to Peru and it is incredible how much has changed.  The economy there has been doing great and it is reflected in how clean the streets are, the free WiFi in the parks, how many restaurants have sprung up, and how many more cars are on the road.  Apparently, Lima has more Pinkberries than Los Angeles...go figure.  And I'm sure the American Pinkberries don't sell Lucuma froyo.

Of course, Jamie and I had changed too.  The last time we came to Peru, my dad cornered him in a bar (I was not invited) and had the whole "what are your intentions with my daughter?" talk.  A few months later we were engaged.  Needless to say, I have fond memories of our last visit.

This time, we only had a week to spend, so we stayed in Lima.  And had a blast.  Here are a bunch of pictues (in no particular order)...