A Camera!

My grandfather has sent me a very nice digital camera. It is 14.1 megapixels, has a 3.5 inch touchscreen, films in HD (even video), and came with a 4gb sd card. Very nice.

We'll take some shots and upload them soon.

The return of photo uploads to our web albums!

Ta-dah!

I've been on break all week and I haven't written a blog post! Can you really blame me? It's break, and it's only a week.

Well we've tried to have as much fun as we could, but there's also been a lot of work. Alyssa has been composing continually as she would for school, or (for that matter) her career. I tried to study but I just couldn't bring myself to do it, and Alyssa encouraged me to just relax and take a break for once, so this was unproductive. I'll try to study a little this weekend to prep for classes on Monday.

Freya is just a complete blabbermouth. She never stops talking, especially in the car when she can see herself in the mirror. We took her off the antibiotics she was on for her ear infection and she seems to be much better now.

Odin's birthday party is coming up. Most of his friends have RSVP'd and we're really excited. He likes to talk to us about what life will be like up in Vancouver. (Side note; he's got a little crush on Amanda Tapping and he got really excited when he heard that she lives there.)

Alyssa and I just finished defeating 3 thai coconuts! It was an arduous task, wrought with peril and uncertainty. In the end, the first 2 proved valiant and worthy foes, but the third (after a quick look on YouTube for assistance) fell down before our mighty might. We took the water for some nice recipes later and all the meat went into a mixture to make wraps in our dehydrator.

Which reminds me. We broke down and bought an expensive dehydrator. (Like my use of "broke" and "expensive" in the same sentence? Eh?) We've been trying some Raw food ideas in an effort to change our diet and cooking style around a bit, and it's working. We'd dabbled before, but this time it's serious. Already on the menu have been sprouted legumes in salads with marinated vegetables, cheeses made out of ground macadamia nuts, and wraps made of flax and zucchini. We even made an awesome hummus out of sprouted garbanzo beans so that was raw as well. I made a marinade out of tamari, agave syrup, liquid hickory smoke, ginger, and garlic, and after some salmon strips had sat in that for 12 hours I dehydrated them into jerky. It's really good, can't stop eating it.

Other than that, we've been occupying ourselves with cleaning up a lot, trying to pack out a little, and thinning out what we own. We don't plan on taking much with us when we move, so a lot of our stuff has ended up in the garage for storage or sale. After looking at everything we're taking, it's all gonna fit in 1 truck, so that will make it a little easier.

We've looked at the wait lists and we've been told that we have an extremely high chance of getting into the student housing, which would be great. We'd live right on campus, and literally across the street from Odin's pre-school. We have to go up there by April 15th to sign the documents in person, so we had a scramble for our passports to get them rushed in time to go up. Ended up costing us an arm and a leg, but we had to do it so we could go up in time. So we'll be making a trip up to Vancouver around the middle of April.

Oh, and Alyssa keeps nudging me to say that I got a 4.0 (GPA) this Winter term, and I should be very proud of that. (I probably am.)

blogging!

I really think I need to write here more often. Also, a camera is forthcoming, so there will be more pictures. We had tons of pictures and videos of Odin when he was young, and not as many as Freya because our camera broke. There's a pretty good amount of them uploaded from our phones and in Facebook, but not so many videos and not as often.

I watched Freya open a door this morning for the first time. She figured out the knob and just went right through. All kinds of new trouble now. She's also got a double ear infection, apparently. She never complained about it at all! But now we're taking care of it, and she should be fine pretty soon.

Preparations are underway for our road trip to Vancouver next week. It's going to be really fun. We've got a list of all the places to see (to prep for moving, and to explore all the fun spots) and we're really excited to go.

We've also got Odin's birthday party coming up. Going to be your standard party at Bounce, which every kid in this town seems to do, but it'll be really fun.

Alyssa's been dealing with a slight health thing I wont go into, but we're seeing a doctor today and we think we might have already figured it out.

I have just one more essay to write by tomorrow morning, and then I'm in the clear for break. Time to get back to it I suppose.....

Words and babies

I'm sitting at the breakfast table with Freya while Odin and Alyssa sleep in a bit and I finally got Freya to say "orange" really well. I share oranges with her a lot, its a favorite snack of ours, and she always says apple so I never give it to her until she says orange. (I usually have to remind her what it is). Today she said it so clearly I just thought it was amazing. Her verbal skills have grown so quickly. For her age, it's really incredible that she can pronounce consonants at the ends of words, diphthongs, and string more than four words together in a sentence.

Yesterday evening we went to see Brandy and her new baby Marion in the hospital. It was okay for me to hold her, but Freya got way too jealous if Alyssa held her. It was really cute to watch.

Today is Sunday of Finals week. Last Friday my professor in Latin decided to do the final during the normal class time so we wouldn't have a final during finals week. It was a mixed blessing because we got to get it over with early, but it came early so there was way less time to study for a bigger test. I think I aced it, though. I have a Greek final on Tuesday and my take-home History final is due Friday morning. I haven't worked on the History final at all, even though he gave it to us more than a week ago to get started on, because I've been focusing on Latin and Greek. Apparently I had nothing to worry about; I aced the Latin final, and yesterday I started reviewing for Greek and found that I really just know all of it, so I can just focus on History. I have all week, so I'm sure I'll get it done in time.

Growth and movement

Alyssa and I have been pretty busy taking care of finals and other things for the end of the term, and we've also been looking at stuff in Vancouver. We've found a rice-based bakery (so we can eat gluten-free) near a grocery store that we think will suit our needs quite well. We're also looking around for places to live and what kinds of things there are to do in the city. We're actually going to drive up with Paula over spring break to scope the place out and explore for a couple of days.

We got word from a childcare facility on the campus up there that Odin can go Monday-Thursday from 1-3:30pm, so at least he'll have a good learning experience up there.

Freya is just non-stop talk lately. She has been able to end words in consonants and form 4-5 word sentences for a while now. She's getting really good at asking for what she wants, and is already really adept at saying No to things. She's also expressed some interest in potty training but we're not sure if we're ready to try yet, still a little too complex....