Where the heck is Bulgaria?

Hello everyone. Frank again. Sorry, no stories of mighty hunters and bug eating this time. Beth thought it might be a good idea to write up a quick little entry on my recent trip to Bulgaria and put some pictures up. I spent a week in Sofia, Bulgaria for a work conference. Yes, I did get out of the hotel a little bit. I managed to take a quick walk downtown with a colleague who had been to Sofia before so we could get some lunch/dinner. We walked a couple of miles downtown and saw some sights along the way.

I was able to find a few familiar things (like a McDonalds), but everything else felt very eastern European. (Being cultured now, I can tell the difference between Eastern and Western European architecture.) There were a lot of building-block style buildings that were most likely built by the Soviets in the 50's and 60's. There were also a significant number of buildings which were meant to be ornate and imposing.

One thing I have learned from this trip is that I am much better at puzzling out what something means when I can at least recognize the letters. I have several photos of buildings where I could not even tell you what the words sound like, let alone what they mean. For all I know, I spent a good chunk of time admiring the structure of the "Ministry of Waste Disposal".

am glad I took the opportunity to see the city when I did, the next day saw significant snowfall on Sofia and I decided to spend the rest of the time in the nice warm hotel room.

Oh, and for any fellow geeks out there. I saw Kevin Sorbo eating breakfast at the hotel. It was awesome. (sorry, I didn't have my camera with me)

Can you guess where Bulgaria is? Check out this map.

On Tuesdays

A couple months back I joined a group called Brussels Childbirth Trust. It's an English-speaking organization for anyone raising children here, and they run lots of kids activities, including playgroups every day of the week. Zach's age group (called "Bumps and Babies") meets on Tuesday afternoons, and we started going after I realized that the place is just down the street. It only takes us about 10 minutes to walk up there.

This week was the last meeting before the holiday break, so we had a little party. The kids got gifts (a bath toy) and we sang a few songs. Mainly the babies just sit there (ahhh, those were the days!) and the toddlers dig around in the toy buckets or cling to mom. Zachary is almost always more interested in getting ahold of cups of tea, cell phones, and diaper bags than any of the toys. And he is the biggest, but not the oldest, of the kids we've met so far. I try to keep him from taking toys away from others, but it doesn't always work. This is me showing him how the camera works...we took some pics of his shoes and then aimed for a self portrait:

It's pretty cold now, so we really have to bundle up to walk up to the playgroup. And many times we stop at the grocery store afterward because it is only a little farther up the street. Zach almost always falls asleep soon after we leave, and sometimes even sleeps through the grocery store, the trip home, and up to an hour after we get home. Hey, if he's out I don't move him!

Oh, and this also happened on Tuesday, but earlier in the morning. Tried on some new clothes from Grandma-very cute! When I wasn't looking, Zach reached onto my desk (a spot I thought was safe, of course) and pulled down a whole big mug of coffee on himself and the rug. And it wasn't hot, because I get side-tracked and never get a chance to sit and drink it while it is, but it made a heck of a mess. He had to get a bath.

But I washed the onesie and it's all good...he wore the whole outfit the next day:

Perfect fit, see Grandma?

Zachary's Big Day

Last Thursday was a good day. Not very relaxing, but is Thanksgiving ever relaxing if you are the one(s) cooking? Add on a first birthday celebration, and you've got one tired little family.

The birthday boy is awake!


It's time for cake!


Total destruction of the cake did not happen (sorry to disappoint!), and the little that did occur happened over about 10-15 minutes. I pretty much had to tear the cake up myself before he dug around in it, and then the lazy little guy just wanted me to feed it to him. We have most of it on video for posterity of course, but it wouldn't make for a good blog video...here are the photo highlights:

This and That

Scenes from the past few weeks:

We gave Zachary his birthday gift early...to buy us a few minutes of peace one evening. He plays with it some, but he still prefers to get on our laps and bang on our computers.


A couple of shots from the NATO Bazaar, in the UK area, of course. The fish 'n' chips were really good. All the countries had booths to sell national goods and food items. The USA sold handmade baskets and lots of candies-apparently the rest of the world loves Reeses and Pixie Sticks too.

Zach and I have been under the weather lately, but we've been staying inside and enjoying watching the weather outside...

We love kiwi.

And I finally got some more videos up! This one is hilarious!


And this is just a snippet of our increasingly mobile guy:

Catching you up on...oh, not a whole lot

Yeah, this last week or so hasn’t been too terribly exciting. I am enjoying a new bookshelf from IKEA (we needed more baby-can’t-reach-YET shelves), and we raked the leaves from our yard, which was much needed. But our time lately has just been full of feeding, changing, and chasing our little rascal of a baby. Man, can he eat! And he’s using a sippy cup part of the time now, with watered-down apple juice. Frank and I are really going to have to start sitting at the dining table to eat, because when we are on the couch Zach comes and tries to steal our food, no matter what it is. Oh, and he is starting to stand for a few seconds on his own, usually when his attention shifts and he doesn’t realize he’s let go. With that, and him essentially walking while pushing the highchair and kitchen chairs, real walking can’t be far off. Though if it happens in the next six weeks we may keep it a secret from some of you ;)

I took this photo a few weeks ago and just decided to make it my desktop. He’s really adorable when he’s just gotten up from a nap.

And in case any of you were worried about our sanity, we've been able to get caught up on just about all of our favorite American television shows. Oh, yeah!

What does a monkey say?

Happy Halloween, everybody!
(or possibly, "Mama, get me out of this!)

Officially less than a month...

...until our little Zachary turns 1! We haven't weighed him lately, so I'll have to get back to you on that one, but he is getting into everything now. Cabinets, bookshelves, the trash, behind the tv, and he even went into the downstairs bathroom this morning and turned on the heater. Ahhhhh! You know what I want for Christmas? The ability to sit and drink a cup of coffee before it gets cold!

There's definitely a reason they are so darn cute...

A short baby update

Tooth #2 is coming in right next to #1.

A belated happy anniversary to us

We are feeling so proud that we actually got out and did something to celebrate our wedding anniversary (8!), instead of using the time to sleep or veg on the couch. Frank took off work last Friday, and we took Zach to daycare so we could have a few hours to ourselves. We hopped on the metro and visited the famed Brussels Atomium (yeah, we hadn't heard of it either), which turned out to be kinda cool. It was constructed for the World Fair in 1958 and was designed by Andre Waterkeyn to represent an iron crystal, magnified 165 billion times. You can go up inside of it.

It was something to do, and an excuse to play around with the camera, although the metro ride there and back took longer than anything else. We did stop off downtown for some lunch...at a Chi Chi's. We couldn't resist the call of Tex Mex and were okay with it because we weren't expecting much. Just a nice day out for the two of us.

Have I mentioned that I'm taking a photography class?

Oh, what a sweet face!

This photo was taken while practicing for an online beginner photography class I'm taking at Jessica Sprague's website. In the past month I have learned about shutter speed, aperture, manual mode, metering, lighting, white balance, ISO, focus, and I've gotten so much advice about equipment, etc. I've really gotten to know my camera--I know what almost all the buttons do now!

The only editing I did on this photo was to adjust the white balance in Photoshop. The light in the kitchen was perfect, and I'm loving the 50 mm f/1.8 lens. Can you see his little tooth?

Time for another tour

Well, I said I was going to find time for this today, no matter what it took, and because it is getting late there won't be a lot of detailed descriptions. But that's the beauty of photos, isn't it? So to those of you who have been dying to see our place with all our stuff in it--here it is! And someday when I look back at this blog entry I will be glad I documented the place where we live.

Let's start upstairs...
This is our bedroom.

The bathroom is right across from our room.

I finally cleaned the guest bedroom, which is also where some of our clothes and stuff reside.


Zach's room is just the right size...

Now we go downstairs...
The kitchen. If you notice the tigger (a placemat) near the bottom, that is Zach's shelf of toys, which are cookie tins and silicone cake pans :) Anything to try to keep him out of the trash and recycling.

I don't think you could consider this a man"cave" since there is an abundance of light. But it's a pretty sweet office. And there is a bathroom too. I'm sure there are times when Frank wishes he was down in the basement though.

Now the living room/playroom/dining room/Beth's creative space...

Well, hope you enjoyed the tour. Goodnight!

The mamas and the dadas

Exciting news from today: our couch arrived :) Early, before the sun was even up. As I'm sure future photos will show, it is a sofa-bed, so even more room for those of you making the trip sometime.

I finally got these videos up. Typical Zachary lately. Enjoy!

Despite Frank's pleading

I found his baby photos and scanned them. What do you think about any resemblance?