Happy 80th Birthday Grammi!

My Grammi celebrated her 80th birthday on August 23, 2011. We had a big party for her Saturday. All her kids came plus all her great grandkids! Pretty special. Lots of family and friends were there to celebrate 80 beautiful years. I made her a movie with pictures from her life including when she was growing up. This meant a lot of scanning and photo editing but it was well worth it. The movie will be something we can cherish always.

Happy Birthday Grammi! We love you!

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!