Owen's First Day

Owen had his first day of school recently. He goes on twice a week and starts Spanish class today. He loves being at school after the initial hiding from his teachers game in the morning. Here's pictures from me making him pose before the first day. You can see he's silly and thinks his mom over-did the photo taking. =)

Spidey won

Yes Spiderman won the battle last night.

Spidey = 1; Mommy = 0 with a corneal abrasion + emergency eye doctor visit + contact bandage

How did all this come about you ask? It's a pretty short tale of the battle. I was reading Owen his bedtime story as he sat in my lap. Spidey went in for the kill as Owen was playing with him. Total accident but ouch!! My eye doctor was on-call and met us at the office. He put a numbing drop in my eye which also makes any abrasion glow. Nathan could see it from across the room. After a little doctoring up, we were done and I could open my eye again. It'll be better in a few days. Owen has been super sweet understanding something happened and wanting to kiss my booboo and take me to the eye doctor. However, I 'm not challenging Spiderman again.

A Glamorous Way to Fly - Viva Europa Journal

Monday, August 8, 2011

We got to the airport early but not too early. The lines were long but not too long. My ticket got bumped up to First-Class for the first leg of the trip. All I can say is WOW! First-Class is exactly that. It was like flying from the comfort of your favorite recliner... but better. You get waited on hand and foot. "Would you like more wine?" "The chicken salad or turkey club?" "Warm towel?" Flying that way can be very addicting! Personal TV with tons of movies, automated chair with foot rest and lumbar support. When Nathan showed me the lumbar support button, my exact words were, "Oh, I'm in love."

Sadly leg 2 was in economy. And worse... alone. Nathan was in a "Sleeping Pod" which probably blows First-Class out of the water. Battleship sunk.

Newark > A bit longer than expected
After circling Newark for 30 minutes (so I was told because I fell asleep), we headed to the gate board. Flight departure delayed 2 hours and a gate change. So we strolled around and headed to the President's Club which was another first for me. On that note... side detour to the '2011 Firsts for Krista':

1. No employer
2. Wedding invitation design
3. Travel with 2 kids out of the state
4. PRK eye surgery
5. 99.9% chance of moving to Angola (This is another adventure that deserves detailed journaling!)
6. Vacation to Europe with my honey!

Needless to say it's been a big year. Back to the story... President's Club - much calmer and quieter setting to pass our flight delay time. And the chairs are so much better that the terrible gate chairs. Oh and free snacks and drinks.

Nathan and I found a good spot and decided to check our flight status again. Delayed again another 2 hours! Ugh! Our 2 hour layover turned into a 6 hour layover. Hence the abundant amount of time to journal about our trip thus far. We filled the time with a few activities. A game of iPad Monopoly. Damn the Baseball Glove! He wiped Nathan and me out! Next we hit the book store. Pretty quick trip with a purchase of some magazines. I perused the kids section. barely 24 hours away from my babies and I miss them terribly.

Next we went on the hunt for food. while airports have an abundance of options, it still seems hard to decide where to eat. The fast food joints were automatically knocked off the list. I can slip off the healthy train and indulge in some greasy fries and burger. But Nathan stays on track. I think we walked through the entire airport and road every moving walkway before we ended up at the 1st place we checked out. We still had a long flight delay so why not sit down to a good meal. What we didn't know was that it would take 20 minutes to get our drinks and aver an hour for our food. Piping hot plates with dry, mediocre steaks. The sustenance filled our bellies but it was way over-priced. The worst part was our waitress hardly helped us. The water guy ended up serving us 90% of everything. Nathan was pretty unhappy with the service.

So what do you do? Head to Starbucks and get him a coffee. That automatically sends him to his happy place. Back to the President's Club to wait and write.

Back to reality

As most of you  know, Nathan and I went on a 2 week European vacation. We are now back home and so happy to be with the kids. Two weeks is a long time away and a long time for Chacha and Jido to keep up with a 1-year old and 3-year old! During our vacation I journaled about our adventures. I'm going to start slowly posting it with pictures.

Happy 3rd Birthday Owen!

August 11th is a very special day! Our Owen turned 3! We celebrated his birthday early so we could have family and friends over. It was all dragon themed like the movie How to Train a Dragon. Owen had so much opening presents, playing with everyone, eating cake and watching How to Train a Dragon. Owen is an amazing, smart, loving boy and we love him so much! I can't believe it's already been 3 years.

Owen with Toothless and his Toothless cake

Uncle Lee and Owen share August 11th so this picture is special (left). Plus godfathers always make front row seating better! Owen received several dragons as gifts. He held the dragons in the air for at least the first 30 minutes of the movie because they "had to fly". So cute!

a memorable day

Wednesday this week was quite memorable. Krista had PRK eye surgery which means in a few weeks she'll have 20/20 or better vision without corrective lens. This is huge for her since she has worn glasses or contacts since the 1st grade. Her eyes are hurting a lot and it's hard to see, but she's a trooper and will get through this tough spell to Monday when she gets the contact bandages off. But I can tell her vision is already better Very exciting!

The bigger reason that makes July 27, 2011 memorable is my grandma, Seto passed away. Emilia Tueme Mery had an amazing, long life and was an incredible woman. She is finally reunited with her husband who passed when my dad was 18 and her youngest son Russell who passed in 1999 to a drug overdose. Seto was a very inspirational and old school woman. The one thing she always expressed was her love, no matter what you were doing or how old you were she would love on you the only way Seto knew how, with caring, loyal, loving words and hugs. It's sad that as we grow we don't get to see our family members as much as we did when we were young. I remember going to San Antonio almost every Sunday to visit with her. I will miss her dearly, but I am so thankful that she was able to meet Krista, Riley and Owen. Monday will be a sad day for us at the funeral service, but knowing that she is in heaven with Jido makes everything seem just a little bit better.

We love you Seto! Forever!

1st Big Family Vacation

The whole family packed up last week and headed off to Portland, Oregon and then to Astoria for my cousin's wedding. Getting all of us packed was exhausting and we hadn't even made to the airport yet! But I have to say, Nathan and I navigated the security and terminals pretty dang well with the 2 kids in tow. Our cute kids get us lots of attention as we seem to attract other parents with young kids. This also has the opposite affect.... like when we got to our Astoria hotel. We got off the elevator with an older gentleman who, with a thankful and relieved sigh said, "Oh good!" as we headed the opposite way down the hall to our room. Gotta say - don't blame him after some of the tantrums Owen threw. 

Overall the kids were marvelous! Being out of their normal environment took it's toll on them and us. Several teary nights of "I want to go home," and "I want my blue bed." (That was a particularly bad night. Poor Owen.) 

The Astoria Column was pretty cool. 164 steps all the way to the top where you can see all of Astoria and the river. Unfortunately visibility was poor the day we went up and it was rainy, but it was an adventure nonetheless. Owen's grumpy face in the picture was because of an airplane. They sell little wood airplanes for people to toss off the top of the column. Really cool! Of course until your 2-year old tosses it and then freaks out that someone is going to take it before we can get down and pick it up..... But we got a quick family shot at the top.

The four of us ventured out in the rain for a walk (partly because a 2-year old locked up in a 1 bedroom hotel room is not ideal... ever...). We found an historic boat donated to be shown off on the Cannery Pier. So of course we tossed Owen in!

 And for the main event! Every day prior to the wedding was rainy, chilly and cloudy. But Wedding Day was perfect! I'm pretty sure my Aunt Chris (the bride's mom who passed a few years back) had a hand in the beautiful day for her daughter. Kim looked stunning! The new Curry's are so happy, in love, and all together wonderful!

First dance <3

This one cracks me up! My sweet niece Kara squats down to talk to Riley. She is 6 months to the day older than Riley. They are really sweet together. My brother Lee got a precious one of them holding hands at the reception. Great friends!

Cape Disappointment isn't too far north from Astoria, so we hit the road. We got to hike threw one of the state parks to the lighthouse. Along the way, we stopped to check out several banana slugs. One innocent snail fell victim to my destructive son.... it was slimy, so he stomped on it.... not once... but several times to teach that poor snail not to be so slimy. Yikes! But he enjoyed being an adventure!

Dead Man's Cove - It was like we were explorers
and found a hidden place never seen before. Really cool!

Awesome giant tree

We had an awesome cousin night! The 1st cousins are Michelle, Jenn, Lee, Cody, and me (and Kim! But it was the rehearsal dinner night.) From there, we've grown and added Courtney, Brett, Joshua, Benjamin, Connor, Owen, Kara, Riley and Emma! And our spouses!! So amazing. Gramma and Grampa must be so proud looking down on the beautiful lives that started with them so long ago. 

Uncle Dave's crew stayed in Long beach, WA. So after dinner, we took a walk on the beach. Very different from the beaches we are used to in Texas. Riley stayed in the house since it was pretty chilly and rainy.

 You are probably noticing that Nathan isn't in many of these photographs and that's cause he isn't. He was the master behind the lens. He has been working hard to learn more about our fancy camera to utilize its capabilities. This photo shows how good he is getting! This is a beautiful sunset in Astoria of the huge bridge and the river. To the far left is the Pacific Ocean.

More great photos taken by Nathan. He captured some sweet moments of the kids and me. We were at Cannon Beach, OR. This was Riley's 1st time on the beach. The sand was lots of fun to dig in! The town was super cute. My mom remembers going there as a little girl and getting salt water taffy from Bruce's. It was still there with the same yummy taffy. Pretty awesome that we got to go there and her grandson got to share the candy and new memory.