Winnipeg

Florida was great and all, but having been back in the US for almost a month, I just couldn't stand it.
Well, actually, there was a rather sudden family event that drew Tovina and me up to Canada. Its nice to see family but we will deeply miss our cousin Ari.

Aunt Noreen!

One of the joys of visiting Florida is not only do we get to see people that I knew for 9 years, Aunt Noreen lives there too! T was not really in the mood for photos, but here are a couple shots that show us together.

Katherine and Tovina

Made it home but pretty darn tired. In place of words, here are some shots of Tovina and her new friend Katherine. (Katherine is just 2 months older)

Katherine is the only person I know who wanted to puch more than T wanted to swing. Amazing endurance!

And here are the 2 princesses all dressed up!

And back again

We're back in Atlanta and prepping to be in Ohio tomorrow. It was wonderful seeing family and friends but it really showed us that we need to get down to Melbourne more often. I guess once every 4 years is just not enough.

Beach!

The first day in Florida we took Tovina to the ocean. The waves and sand were both overwhelming for her at first. To protect her from both, she started off on Daddy's shoulders.

Then progress was made and she enjoyed the little pool of water that was left over from the previous high tide. She also lucked out by having Laura there to hold her hand.

T has not quite made it to beach bunny status, but she did have some pretty good things to say about the experience and discovered that some splashing can be fun. (To put your mind at ease, 60 SPF sunblock was applied 30 minutes before her 50 minutes of sun exposure and no burns or even hint of tanning took place on the pale one.)

Made it to Florida

We've made it to Florida! Its great being down here and we are really looking forward to seeing more people.

But earlier today we were still in Atlanta. Why? Because that's where Mari lives!

And Tovina loves Aunt Mari.

Half way there

We made it to Mari's last night and are getting ready to move on to Florida. Very nice having a stop over point almost exactly half way.
Tovina remembered Mari which made aunt Mari pretty darn happy.
As well as visiting Mari, I also was able to visit my old Mazda Miata and even made a bagel run this morning with the top down... ahhhh. For a moment I even tried to work out how to take the 2-seater convertible rather than the mini-van for the rest of the trip. (In case you are wondering, the math did not in fact work out.)

Cooking (updated)

When we first started blogging from China we talked a lot about food and cooking. Then we had Tovina and the whole cooking thing became less prominent. Since moving back State side, we have been cooking more but we never seem to talk about it. To address this, here is what we ate tonight: Curried Butternut Squash and Cauliflower Soup with garlic flat bread.
It was quite yummy and relatively straight forward.
We will definitely be making the bread again!

After T was done eating, the adults were still sitting around the table. To distract her from trying to get us to walk around with her, we asked her to go cook us eggs and soup at her play kitchen. She was happy to oblige though Sheila's eggs were hard boiled instead of fried. Guess T isn't ready to be a short order cook yet - maybe next week.

Oh, speaking of weeks, we're heading down to Florida tomorrow. If we haven't gotten a hold of you yet then drop us a note.

*6/18/2009 Added link to soup recipe. Sorry I forgot to include that.

Hot Socks

To put your minds at rest, let me assure you that Tovina had a great time at day care yesterday. In fact, she didn't even notice when Michael left (there was this really cool toy cell phone..), let alone when we came back for her (there was this fun ball that was great for kicking see..) The report was that she did fine, enjoyed herself, ate much of her food and drank a cup of milk (she won't do that at home), played with the other kids by the end of her day, and in general we have no fear of taking her tomorrow. This report was particularly encouraging because T was in a grouchy and whiny mood before she went into the office. We figured that if today went well, then pretty much any day ought to go well.

In other news, Tovina has developed an affinity for Frank's hot sauce which can likely be attributed to her father's influence. Today she asked for it by name and when we didn't understand what 'aw saws' meant, she tried to use sign language to help us out. We haven't learned the sign for hot sauce but she did her best by using 'socks'. Socks, sauce, whatever. (The sign we are referring to is placing the pointer finger of each hand next to each other and sliding them back and forth. You can see her do it at the end of the following video.)

Day care

Tovina is trying out part time daycare starting today. Here she is all ready to go. (The plastic fried eggs stayed home though the blue pacifier went with her.)