Hyrulians

Back to BC

2012-01-02T14:56:00.000-08:00

Well, we had a fun trip. I'm sitting on the train with the kids right now and it's taking off for home. The conductor seated us early so we could get on and get a nice table seat before the train started getting really crowded, so that was nice.

We went up to Portland last Thursday and stayed with Mom, Mark, and Jake. It was really nice being at their place because they're so laid back and we all just kinda hung out. They live across the street from a mall so there was lots to walk around and see, and a nice play area for the kids. Alyssa left early Friday morning to head back home and get things ready and get a little time for her work. I had the kids but it wasn't so bad. Freya actually did really well at night, I was surprised. Hopefully this whole weekend will have helped serve to wean her from nursing so much.

I got to enjoy some of Mom's delicious cooking, which was nice. We mostly just hung out and talked and that sort of thing; nice, easy end to our trip. It's a shame we had to leave so early, but I think we were all getting a little restless and I'd like to spend some time at home before the new school term starts up.

We had a lot of fun on this trip. Didn't quite get to see everybody and do everything, but we still got a lot out of it. And there's always more trips. Hopefully some relatives will get their passports so they can come visit us..... (hint hint)

The trip

2011-12-26T21:13:00.000-08:00

We're still having a lot of fun in Eugene. We've almost seen everything we came here to see, but there's still a few people to visit.

It's been a little complicated because both of the kids got really sick. Freya actually had to go to the hospital twice. Nothing extremely serious, just bad enough that she needed help from the doctors. We've spent the last couple days staying with a friend, and then we're going back to Paula's for two nights and then staying in Portland for a few nights. We've actually changed our plans a bit because, so now we'll leave earlier. Alyssa is actually going to go up a few days before me to get the house ready and prepare for the upcoming term.

The kids already got to open some holiday presents, and we're opening yet more on Wednesday when more family come to visit.

Back in the US...

2011-12-20T23:17:00.000-08:00

We made it down here last Thursday and we've been having some vacation and visiting! We got in to Eugene Thursday night and we're staying with Paula. We've already seen a few friends and a bit of Eugene, but there's still a lot more to do and we're also going to be staying over in Salem and Portland.

Odin is really have a great time because he gets to go to Unity School again. He was set to spend the night at Armstrong's house tonight but he ended up coughing a lot and just seemed really sick so we're giving him a day or two to recover. He was really beat up about it, and just cried himself to sleep, but he needs the rest and he'll understand tomorrow. Freya hasn't really gotten to go do anything yet, but she has fun with Grandma anyway, doing lots of shopping and such.

We're just trying to relax and enjoy ourselves, while getting to see some of the people we miss and enjoy the holidays.

Teaching!

2011-12-06T00:24:00.001-08:00

Alyssa had her last day of school on Friday, and now she's just wrapping up projects by deadlines to finish out her first term. We're all glad it's over, we can finally explore this city and get in some vacation time!

Oh! More great news! Alyssa applied to teach a class at UO this summer and she was approved! So long as she gets enough students enrolled, they are going to pay her to teach a class for four weeks over the summer! It's really exciting, and she's so happy to get a fun teaching opportunity/experience.

Freya is still trying to get her molars through. It's been almost a month now, and it is making sleep hard to come by. She's starting to get a lot better with her potty training though, so that's good news.

Odin keeps going to skate lessons, but he's still a little timid. Now that Alyssa is off and we have some free time, we were thinking of taking him to some free skate hours to get a little extra practice in.

Alyssa and I have finally found some like-minded individuals close to our age who seem eager to hang out. It's nice to know some people in this city; we haven't really had anyone to socialize with.

Update!

2011-11-25T21:56:00.001-08:00

I know, I know, I haven't posted in a while. Not a whole lot new has happened, so we've mostly just been chugging along.

Odin's hockey lessons are going well, though he always feigns being tired and doesn't get really in to it. Part of that is because Freya does have a habit of waking him up earlier in the morning than he wants to be up, but I think some of it is also that he's timid. We're probably going to take him to a free-skate time at the rink this weekend to get some extra practice in. One night I was wandering around with the kids and we walked in to the rink (they keep it open to everyone unless there's a for-paying-ticketholders-only game going on) and there happened to be some kind of free or exhibition game so we got to watch that. It was fun, and I think it'll make Odin want to practice a little more.

It snowed here a couple days ago! It stuck around for a day or so and then started to melt. Pretty cool. It's actually been really cold here. And the days are almost nights. I mean, the Sun does come up, but it's always behind a gray wall of clouds and it sets again around 4 or 5pm. It's a little depressing, actually, but there is a blue-sky day here and there.

(I'm pretty sure this is the first time Freya has seen snow....)

We're really excited for vacation. Alyssa's last week starts on Monday, and after that we're in the clear (except for a few projects she'll have to finish). We're going to spend a couple weeks hanging out and exploring the city we live in (now that we'll have the time) and traveling around to see what there is here. We're thinking about joining a car co-op so we can have some wheels.

In the middle of December and through the end of the year, we'll be heading down to Oregon! This trip will be fun because of the length. Normally, we're only visiting for a few days so it's hard to do all the things we want to do and see all the people. This time, we'll have as much leisure as we want, and even a little kid-free time thanks to Grandma and Zaideh! We miss all our old stomping grounds a lot, and we're excited to do some tax-free shopping and bring back some favourite products to the land of the CND (ie: there is a serious lack of Trader Joe's here).

Skating!!

2011-11-10T10:57:00.001-08:00

Odin on ice!!!

2011-11-03T10:36:00.001-07:00

Ice skating today!

2011-11-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

Odin's first ice skating lesson is today. It's a class that builds kids up to the hockey lessons if they haven't ever been on the ice before. I'm really excited. Alyssa will be going out on the ice with him, and Freya and I will watch and take pictures.

We had a pretty fun Halloween. Odin ran in to some of his friends from school so we got to walk around with them. Trick-or-treating in a family housing neighbourhood is really fun because there's just so many kids out, and all the townhouses and apartments around here are designed like little villages with brick/cobble roads, so it's all nice and enclosed and you can just let the kids run around and look at all the decorations.

We've all been passing an illness around. Odin and Alyssa had it, with a fever and sore throat, and now Freya's got it. She can barely swallow and there are little white sores in her mouth. She's really suffering. So far I've just gotten a light cough, lucky there. Freya keeps crying and saying "I want my owie to go away!" She says she has marbles in her mouth, which is cute, but it means she's in pain....

Fun day, but Odin is sick

2011-10-29T22:35:00.000-07:00

Today started pretty fun. We headed out to Broadway (which is a lot like Hawthorne in Portland) to do some exploring and a little shopping, and we started with a hair cut for Odin. It was at this great place called Melonheads where they work with children only, and the kids get to sit in cool chairs that are race cars and air planes and motorcycles. Odin chose Thomas the Tank Engine. They even gave Freya a French braid for free...

We walked around a bit, bought some new clothes for the kids and used some of Freya's birthday money to get her a few things, then walked around some more and headed home for snacks.

When we got home, we all had a couch party to watch some movies, and we noticed that Odin felt really warm. He had a pretty high temperature. He basically crashed around 4 or so and we let him sleep until about 6. We woke him up again for a couple hours and put him to bed at 8, he's just so tired. You know Odin is sick when he sits still and is quiet.

I think he'll be fine by the middle of the day tomorrow, but he was feeling really bad tonight. Poor guy. We're all getting it though; Alyssa and I are coughing pretty bad, and we've all had runny noses.

Freya is fine, I think because she's the one who brought it home. Here's a picture of her video-chatting with Grandma:

Kerplunk!

2011-10-19T20:40:00.000-07:00

Freya finally went #2 in the toilet! Earlier today she had to go, and she was standing in a room by herself like she always does, but she had underwear on. I convinced her (finally) that if she sat on the toilet like Odin, it wouldn't mess up her undies, so she did it. Nothing happened (Freya usually has several false alarms before she's finally ready, even stretching over a couple days), but later today she really had to go, and I caught her just as she was really pushing and put her on the toilet. She didn't like it at first, but when she got off and saw it in there, just like when Odin does it, she really thought that was cool. Then she started to go a little more and asked if she could sit back down on it, so I helped her and she finished.

She was really excited about it, and thought it was so cool to flush the toilet on her own. We're finally getin there!

Yay! Pictures

2011-10-11T23:15:00.000-07:00

Real quick; I've uploaded the pictures I've taken so far with my new phone. There's some new ones in the old Jul - Sep '11 album, and a new Oct - Dec '11 album. Enjoy!

Oct - Dec '11

From Oct - Dec '11

From Jul - Sep '11

Happy Birthday to Freya!

2011-10-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

Freya is 2 years old today!!!!!

Not a baby anymore. Oh man, I can't believe she's two!! I remember feeling similar when Odin turned two.... She's so big now, and she talks so much that she hasn't seemed much like a baby anyway. But she's still the baby of the family, so....

It's been a fun birthday for Freya. Grandma is in town so she got to be here for the festivities. We took the kids out for some fun in the Kitsilano neighbourhood, which feels a lot like Hawthorne in SE Portland. There's a lot of shops and eateries, tons of fun places to look in to and buy stuff. We went to a huge costume shop, a toy store, a great Thai food cafe, clothing stores, all kinds of stuff. We just spent a few hours walkin' up and down the street.

We all came home and had cake and singing, followed by presents. Zaideh and Nana phoned in to sing with us, and we had a great time.

We've given up on potty training in favour of weening (bad to do both at the same time). Freya nurses like she's 3 months old (sometimes), so we're cutting back. Today she got to in the morning, once in the afternoon, and right before bed, and she did fine. We'll see how it goes, give her more food (maybe she'll eat more of it since she's nursing less) and gradually eliminate more of the nursings until she's gone. Not sure what the night-time plan is.

We found Odin some ice skates, too. We were ad a re-sale shop and they had one pair and they were Odin's exact size! We just need to find him some gear and he can start his hockey lessons. He also got some great new sneakers that look like Star Wars Stormtroopers and they light up in the visors.

I've been taking tons of pictures, and Grandma Paula has more, so I'll be uploading a ton of them soon. I've got thousands of pictures in our albums, and I've found even more that I haven't uploaded. All the originals are stored in tons of different locations on my computer, and I want to re-upload everything because I can keep the original sizes and tag all the people in them. It's a huge project, but this weekend is Thanksgiving so we have extra time off, and I might try to tackle at least part of it....

I know, I know

2011-09-25T00:53:00.000-07:00

... it's been a while since my last post. I have no excuses.

We did end up going to Eugene last weekend. It was fun; we got to see some people, do a few fun Eugene-only stuff, get some tax/free shopping in, etc. We had to help Dad pack, and we ended up getting a lot done, so that was good.

We've seen a little bit of regression of behaviour since the trip. With Odin, I suspect it is because he had the chance to see how much he is now missing from the only life he knew before. With Freya, it's probably because she had a bad cold for a while. Both of them are acting out and being disobedient (Odin more) and Freya is having lots of trouble getting through the night without waking up to eat a lot.

Odin did get the chance to stay overnight at Armstrongs house in Eugene, though. That was good for him. He had a lot of fun. Freya stayed every night at Grandma's house, which was great for her because she got to have fun and hang out (and great for us because we got to sleep!).

Alyssa's classes have been going well. Keeps her busy. She's now marking assignments from the class she assists. She's discovering that the opportunities for work and performance here are abundant, so she is (of course) signing up for every project that calls for works. It's a typical Alyssa thing, but she somehow manages to pull it all off. I helped her edit her Masters' Thesis research proposal today, and let me tell you, it's a good one!

I've slacked off in my own studies quite a bit, so this week I'm kicking my butt back in to shape and getting back to it. I'll also be in a German class every Thursday starting this week. What happened to the French lessons? Linda and I found it hard to find reliable times to meet, and we sort of lost contact with each other, so that just kinda dropped off.

All in all, we're having a great time. We definitely miss some things we were reminded of in Eugene, but it's going well here. :)

It begins!

2011-09-06T16:10:00.000-07:00

A lot has been going on around here. Freya just a day or two ago finished getting her 2-year molars, or at least I think so since she isn't complaining as much. They aren't all the way through, but they must be about done. Odin has been sounding out letters to read words, and he's actually pretty good at it! He also can't wait to start his hockey and French lessons.

Alyssa spent most of today in an orientation for her teaching duties. She is apparently part of a union, with benefits and such, and she is really excited to begin.

The weather has been very warm around here, and we're enjoying as much of the sun as we can before the season changes. I spend most of my time just hanging out with the kids, so we hit a lot of parks and forest trails and such.

We'll be taking a trip down to Eugene next week. Mostly we'll be helping Dad pack up his things for his move to Salem, but we'll also see some of our favourite people and places. Should be fun.

Training

2011-08-30T23:20:00.000-07:00

Freya is almost ready to get out of diapers! Ok, that may be jumping the gun a little bit, but she's getting there. We've done the same thing we did with Odin; no pants or diaper when in the house, so she knows what happens when she pees. Now she's getting to the point of being able to know when she's about to, and she'll run to the bathroom. She's peed all over herself while standing at the toilet a few times (trying to mimic Odin), but today she finally sat on her own little potty and did it because she had gone in there to keep Odin company while we went #2. She doesn't like to get underwear wet (she's been insisting on wearing Odin's all the time) so we're going to take her underwear shopping when we get our money to help finish training her (also what we did for Odin).

Alyssa's been preparing to start school on Monday. I'm really excited to see how it turns out, and what her teaching gig is like.

We continue to work with Odin on spelling and reading. He can read a few simple words (some from memory, sure, but some new ones he figures out on his own), and he'll follow along with spelling something if it's not too long and he doesn't have something else to do. He's also taken to playing Super Mario, the first one on the NES. He's not bad at it; he can almost beat the first level.

I've been taking the French lessons with a tutor, but I'm not really enthusiastic about it, so I'm going to stop. We've found a community-ed class for German that I'm going to enroll in instead. I really can't wait for that. I've been a little hard on myself lately for not studying or translating or doing any work, but Alyssa convinced me that I should just take a damned vacation already, so I am.

Almost ready!

2011-08-18T10:10:00.000-07:00

Alyssa's first year of Grad school starts in about a fortnight. She'll go to some orientation for her teaching assistantship, take her entrance exams, and begin in the first week of September! She's been studying her butt of since we got up here, and I know she'll do great.

Odin's school will also be starting. We have an appointment on the 7th to meet his teachers, and then we spend the first week going to school with him based on their adjustment schedule, to help ease kids in to their new school. (Odin will just jump right in and never look back, but not every kid is like that.) We're also going to sign him up for hockey lessons, and a French class. I'm learning French with a woman from Paris whom I'm helping with her English, so hopefully I'll be able to keep up with Odin and we can try to talk to each other en Français.

Freya is getting more and more talkative. She can form sentences, and understands a few tenses and even participles. We're trying to potty-train her right now, with slow but reasonable success. We're also trying to get her to eat more solid food and nurse less. It's slow, but we'll get there.

I've been subjecting the kids to music whenever I hang out with them (cleaning the house together, playing in a room while Mommy studies, etc.) and it is interesting to see what they like. They love The Beatles and a lot of Elton John. The like most rock like AC/DC, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and heavy metal like The Black Mages and Metallica.

Oh, almost forgot! We have internet at home now! That's how I'm posting this. It's somewhat limited compared to the US, but still more than enough for us. So we can make internet calls now (voice or video) and check our email for messages and such.

We've found a pretty cool way to get groceries. They deliver them to your house, either as you order them, or on a weekly/bi-weekly/monthly schedule. You can tell them what things you want in your Standing Order (some items are discounted when added to a standing order), and which ones you want to come each week, or each month, or what have you, based on how fast you think you'll use it up and how often you'll need more. Our favourite thing about it, though, is the Harvest Box. The harvest box is a selection of produce that they make for you. They give you a long list (really long, it's got produce on it I've never heard of) and you select on there which ones you like or don't like, how often you'd like to see them when they're available, and what priority you want them in (in case there's something you want more than another thing even when they're both available). Then you just set a price limit (they help you estimate how much you need to spend to feed your family size 5 servings of fruit and vegetables per week), and they bring you one with each delivery. They let you see it first so you can make adjustments, but basically it makes a selection for you and just gets delivered.

As soon as we get our money, we're going to try it out. It's a lot easier to sit together on the computer and carefully select what we want (or need for the meal plans) based on our funds than it is to try and figure it out in the middle of the grocery store with two kids who really don't want to sit in the stroller.

Visits and milestones

2011-08-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

Paula and Kellie came up for a few days! We had a lot of fun taking them around to enjoy our new area. We didn't actually see much of Vancouver (mostly we stayed in the college area, since transportation was a little bit of an issue), but the point was that we all got to see each other. They were very helpful in getting us food; they brought tons of groceries from Eugene with the money we'd left them, and lots more when they got up here, plus they took us out to eat a lot. We saw the sights and walked around quite a bit. We took them to our favourite areas near by and even marched them down to the clothing optional beach. The weather is perfect on the beach every day we go and the water is warm enough to swim in. I've never swam in an ocean (too cold in Oregon) so that was pretty fun. The kids were born to be at the beach, they had a great time. I have a lot of pictures to upload, but haven't yet, so hopefully those will be up soon. (Maybe after I complete this post.)

Freya has been really in to drawing lately; it's all she ever wants to do. Her and Odin draw together in their room a lot, it's really cute. She's started walking up to me, blinking cutely, and then saying "Daddy, can I? Please?" whenever she wants something. The first time she did it I almost died, and I looked over at Alyssa and told her I'd need to start saving up now for a pony and a car if I wanted to stay ahead of the game.

Odin has always been really kinetic, so with all the free time and play space, he's taken to riding his bike, going to the park a lot, and endlessly building structures with his toys. He's also started to learn how to write a few letters (just "A" and "B" so far), and I think he can read a few words he knows.

We're looking in to how we can make trips to Eugene and Portland for visits. We've found out that we can rent a car for just about the same price as the train, or maybe a little more, but the benefit is that we can leave at our convenience and the trip would be much shorter, plus we'd have a car to drive around whenever we visit.

We'll probably get an internet connection in the house soon, right after we work out all the details. It will have limited bandwidth, but we can still communicate at least.

I'll work on getting those photos uploaded. If you still don't have the link, here it is: http://picasaweb.google.com/spunkytofu

Community

2011-07-29T13:23:00.000-07:00

We're still having a ball up here. Last Saturday we went with a bunch of other families in our community to the Nitobe Memorial Gardens. Its a Japanese garden which is just beautiful, and we get in for free! I have pictures but I can't upload them yet. We had a blast, the place is amazing. I'm going to make trips back there to meditate. Later that day I took the kids to some robot racing, which was really fun. There's just tons of stuff to do here, and most of it is free and the kids love it!

The whole week has mostly been about hanging out and enjoying ourselves. We've been trying to stretch our groceries out a bit, and cook in some new ways. We've walked around to see more of the area. We've decided on some favourite places to frequent. Its really nice here.

Alyssa is still hard at studying, trying to get ready for her coming year of being a grad student and a teacher (and her entrance exams, to boot). I've started a language exchange with someone from Paris. She is teaching me French while I help her with her English. We've met once, and I think we're meeting again today.

The kids are just great. They love to play; its so easy to take them to a park for for a hike in the woods. We live a stone's throw from Pacific Spirit Regional Park, which is a forest 3 or 4 times the size of UBC campus (for those of you who don't know, UBC is about 3 or 4 times the size of UO campus). We've barely scratched the surface of its trails. (And we expect to find several Stargate SG-1 shooting locations!)

Wednesday night Alyssa went to the Distant Worlds concert that I got her tickets for. It was a stroke of luck that they were coming to Vancouver when we'd be here, and we payed extra for her ticket so she could actually meet Nobuo Uematsu and Arnie Roth! We have a picture of that as well, but I didn't bring the right computer with me to upload the photos, so another time. She said it was the opportunity of a lifetime, so I'm glad we were able to send her.

Tomorrow night, Paula and Kellie get in to town to visit us! They'll stay with us that night since they get in so late, and be here for 4 or 5 days. It'll be really fun to hang out with them and show them the area. And the kids can't wait to see Grandma. :)

We finally got doctors up here. See them in the second week of August, which is not too long a wait for first appointments. The insurance pays for everything, so we can get dental, massages, acupuncture, I can get my foot looked at, and we can come in as often as we need. Plus, the hospital where all these doctors are is a half-kilometer walk up the road from us.

Well, I took advantage of Freya falling asleep on our walk to sit and write this. Better get back home. :)

Fun in the sun!

2011-07-21T12:50:00.001-07:00

I suspect that my updates will be farther between but greater in length, owing to the lack of internet in our home.

We are having a great time here. There's been a few bumps as we get used to what things cost, but it'll work out. The weather has been a little strange; rainy but warm for a few days, and now plenty of sun, but I hear that is happening elsewhere as well so I don't chalk it up to the region just yet. We do get some nice hot, sunny days, and we've taken to adventures outside to enjoy them.

There's so many free community events going on in our neighborhood to take the kids to go play. It's really amazing what there is. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we take Freya (and sometimes Odin) to a massive play date in a multipurpose room about twice the size of a basketball court. There's toys everywhere, play houses, cars to ride in, and they do a snack, book reading, singing, and other such things. We signed Odin up for a free class every Tuesday in the same room where he does guided arts and crafts. Last week (the first week) he came home with a fridge magnet of him and one of Freya, plus a 5x7 wooden photo frame which he had painted himself. This week he made masks for himself and Freya. (We got some pictures of that, but I haven't uploaded them yet.) Today Alyssa is taking Odin for some quality time to a Biodiversity museum since she gets in free as a student and he does as a child. (There's actually a ton of museums and attractions to within walking distance which are free for all of us except me until I become a student as well, so entertainment is really easy.) He's been excited about it all week, I gave Alyssa the camera.

We've found a lot of our favourite little places to hang out or go eat, such as forest trails, parks, walks in gardens, and the like. One of the kids' favourite treats is Tim Bits, which are small boxes of a few donut-holes from Vancouver's version of a Dutch Bros, called Tim Horton's. There's a lot of really cool looking restaurants around here for any kind of food we could want at any meal, so it's going to take us a long time to try them all.

Lately Freya loves to draw. She gets paper and a pen whenever she can and draws all over it, then comes to us and says "Look what I draw!" or some other proud exclamation. We're working on her table manners and trying to start the potty training.

Odin also likes to draw, but he's been focusing on building and imaginary play with all his toys now that he has plenty of room to play in the house. It's actually surprising how much space we have, when you stop to look around at it all.

Alyssa and I have been experimenting with new ways to cook on a smaller budget. We're making a lot of raw recipes, because it's easy to get cheap produce here and it tends to make a lot, plus there's no part of anything that goes to waste; excess or un-used parts of food can be used in another recipe. In fact, last night we made our own almond milk (way cheaper to make it with almonds than to buy it) and today we are using the leftover pulp to make an almond bread, so we spent way less on something that made tons more food, twice.

Alyssa's been hard at the studying for her first year. I'm really excited for her; she gets to teach a class and work in a really nice, new lab. One thing that killed us about her old lab was that she only had it at certain times so she had to go no matter what was going on at home, and it was really far away. Her new lab is a 5 minute walk from here, and it's open 24 hours without scheduling, so she can go one night she feels like it, and the next night she doesn't have to if the kids are staying up late, or something. It's going to be really different.

I'm trying to use my year off to catch up on some studies. I promised myself I wouldn't worry about it until we were all settled (which would give me a few weeks to relax), but we are now and I'm trying to motivate myself to get back in the saddle. So far with no success, but I'll get my act together. :)

We still have to find doctors for all four of us, but it looks like our insurance is going to come in in a day or so, so we can get whatever treatment we need. We still need to get Alyssa's Social Insurance Number so she can get paid for working, but after that, there's no red-tape to take care of, so we can just relax and enjoy ourselves.

It's so nice here being able to live in a nice area, with lots of community around, and plenty of fun and free things within walking distance for us all to have a fun day. Just a couple days ago we found the beach. It was about a 10 story hike down some wooden stairs (which was murder coming back up) through a beautiful forest, and the beach was perfect. There's hardly any wind (because it's in a bay, though still ocean water), and the water is about as warm as a public pool so swimming is super easy. I swam in the Umpqua and it was colder.

Well, that will do for now. Alyssa is at the museum with Odin and I'm out for a walk with Freya, so I think we'll go. I thought it would be a long post.

Eh?

2011-07-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

In short, all is well in the land of the CND.

In long;

We got in on the train at about 11:30 - 40 minutes late thanks to some errant freight trains. Customs took a while because we had so much luggage (we were moving, after all). They didn't really search us at all, but we had to go to immigration to get documents for the kids, which took until about 1am or so. We got a taxi home and put the kids in bed. Unfortunately, poor Odin woke up in the middle of the night in his new bed and had no idea what had happened (he had fallen asleep in the taxi) and I found him clawing at the front door and screaming for Mommy and Daddy in the middle of the night. (He's was fine the next night.)

We love our new apartment. The kids have a huge room with plenty of floor space to play, and we bought them some great furniture which is working out great. Our room is pretty small, but very simple (all we need is a bed and a dresser, we have nothing else in it) so it's nice. The kitchen is good, we have lots of closet space and a huge laundry room for storage. The dining room has a linoleum floor - thank Zeus! We don't have to worry about spills! It's quite big and fits our bookcases in it with plenty of room to walk around the table (the kids even drive around it in cars they can sit on and push around). The living room is absolutely huge, and we have more windows than walls. There's room for all our furniture (which looks stylish and is amazing, thanks to Mom's generosity and Ikea) and still plenty of floor space and room to stretch or dance around the apartment. We also have a nice deck which views one of the many parks/playgrounds around here, though right now it's filled with cardboard boxes that need to be torn down. (See also the short video tour I shot of our place.)

We've spent most of our first few days getting acclimated to the new surroundings. We've found all the local spots we love. There's a giant grocery store a little under a kilometer walk south of us, along with a sushi place, a coffee house, and all kinds of other stuff like a mini metropolis. A little while further is the UBC farm which has a Farmer's market every Saturday (did that today). Just north of us a few blocks is another grocery store. Add that to the main grocery store we bus to down the road, and we have three of them. It works out well because each one is good for different products and seasonal items, so we can always get things at the cheapest price around by going to the right one at the right time. There are also numerous convenient stores, restaurants and eateries, and attractions within blocks of us. (Yesterday alone on one walk, we passed by a pizza place, sushi shop, Indian curry house, bubble tea house, and four others, all in the same general area.)

Right now we're trying to work out some of the more important details, like where to take the kids for a pediatrician, which bank we should sign up with, and how to get on the Canadian tax system (apparently we're entitled to an annual check just for living here, even though we've only been here a few days, because we pay sales tax like everybody else).

There are tons of parks near by for the kids, lots of fun to be had walking around campus, the UBC Hockey Rink (for the Thunderbirds) is across the street from us (I promised Odin I'd take him to a game), and we even have a forest a block away with hiking trails:

From Jul - Sep '11

The air is great here, the people are so nice, the buses work great, there's lots to see, it's amazing. Prices are a bit high depending on what you're buying, but you get used to it, and there are other trade-offs to make it worth it. We're discovering just how much we love it here, and we're all really happy about it.

I put a ton of new pictures in the Apr - Jun '11 album, as well as a lot in the new Jul - Sep '11 album, including some videos. Enjoy!

Go Canucks Go!

2011-07-02T22:43:00.000-07:00

Well we did it; we moved up to Canada. Mostly. Right now I'm writing this blog while riding the train back to Eugene to get the kids, and we'll all head back up there on the 6th.

It was an eventful trip. We got the moving truck with no problem, and loaded it up Tuesday night. Getting on the road Wednesday morning was easy, and we headed to Portland to meet Mom at Ikea. Unfortunately, the GPS we were using couldn't keep up with how weird Portland's streets are and we got lost for almost half an hour. We spent more time in Ikea than we thought, but it was a truly magical place and we ended up with a lot of nice stuff. Thank you Mom very much for buying half the stuff, we had expected to do it all on our own.

The Ikea stuff went right in to the back of the truck and we rushed off. Traffic around Tacoma, Seattle, and Everett was just plain stupid. How can that many people need to be going somewhere at the same time? But we made it through. No problems at the border, except that the Canadian officer was surprised when we answered the "Do you have any guns?" question with a "No."

We got to our apartment complex a little later than planned, so we didn't have time to unload much of anything (they ask you not to do any moving after 10pm for the quiet hours). We brought up most of the Ikea furniture because we figured we could stay up late putting it together but instead passed out on the floor for the night. Thursday morning I found my new favourite breakfast place (a restaurant called The Pendulum in the SUB - student union building - which serves delicious food and plays blues and jazz all day) and we went back home to bring up as many loads of boxes as we could.

Moving all that in was hard. We have to pull the truck in the Don't Park Here zone temporarily, unload enough stuff to fit the elevator, unlock the building door and move it all to the elevator, call it to the lobby and lock in (the management gave us the key), load it up, bring it to the third floor, lock it again, move it to the 3rd floor lobby, then go prop open another door down an impossibly long hallway and bring stuff from the 3rd floor lobby to our front door, than prop open our front door and bring it all in the apartment. It worked a lot faster and easier than it sounds, but it was a lot of work. We also took a quick trip to our grocery store for food and to get acclimated to the trip and the metric system with shopping for food (also the price differences).

Most of Thursday and all of Friday were spent setting the house in order since we were leaving Saturday at the butt-crack of dawn (not really) and wanted to have it all done before the, kids got there. I'm really happy to say that we got it all finished and I'm really amazed at our apartment. Everything in it is stuff we picked ourselves to be just the way we want, right down to the silverware, dishes, towels, everything. That's never happened to us before; we've usually had to accept what donations friends and family gave us as we went along and never had too much surplus income to get new, nice things. This time our family was overly generous and we sold more than half of what we previously owned so now we have a wonderful apartment that looks like it's from one of the Ikea showrooms.

It's a great apartment; lots of space, more windows than walls, very nice construction and design, just charming. I'll be doing a little video tour of it later for the family that wants to see who might not be visiting too soon.

Today was a little less lucky. We've spent a lot more money than we meant to trying to overcome the various obstacles. We started out a tiny bit later than planned, but ended up with no trouble getting through the border. The USA border officer broke my luggage, but I managed to fix it. Still, he could have just asked me to open it rather than break it open. We ran in to a huge traffic stop due to construction that seemed rather pointless as we passed by, so we ended up so late that we had to spend extra money to change our train tickets. We got to Seattle and had to make a stop at that Ikea because we'd bought lamps we didn't need (how could we know without first seeing the apartment?) and pick up a few pieces to furniture we'd already started but missed one or two items for. That didn't really set us back, but getting the truck back before the train was so close that we had to pay extra and get a taxi instead of walking from the truck drop-off to the train station. Also, gassing the damned thing cost almost as much as renting it. Sheesh.

So now we're on the train, about 40 minutes from Eugene (even though we should have been here 2 hours ago) and hopefully we can get some rest and finally see our kids! It was interesting not having them around, and really helpful for getting the apartment done (I don't think we would have been able to do it at all if we'd had them up there with us), but we really missed them and can't wait to see them.

Now we just hang out in Eugene for a few days seeing friends and family, and then it's the train ride back home for us.

On our way

2011-06-28T23:47:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in a mostly empty room. Outside is a moving truck packed and ready to go. Our kids are safely and happily tucked away at Grandma's house. We need only wake up, get dressed, grab our backpacks and get in the truck, and it's off we go (after a brief stop for Dutch Bros one last time).

The plan is still to head to Ikea in Portland first. Mom is going to show us around while we snack on waffles, and we'll load what we buy into the truck and head home. We're going to set up, see the sights, and come back for the kids and be in town for a few days.

Here we go!

T minus 1 week

2011-06-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

A week from right now Alyssa and I will be going through Portland on our way to our new place in Vancouver, BC! It's crazy to think about, but, as one of Alyssa's favourite professors would say; "This is really happening!"

It's funny that I tend to have sparse posts during the school term because I am so busy with work, and sparser without school because I am even busier being lazy. I figured it was about time, so here goes. In no particular chronological order:

We did end up getting new shots for Odin. He needs do re-do his MMR, Pertussis, and Pneumococcal, but we opted to skip the last one and first one and just get the pertussis in the 5-year booster he would have gotten anyway, which was just one shot and included a re-vac for Polio since they weren't sure if he needed that again. It had tetanus in it so it hurt him a lot more than usual, but he took it like a champ.

Freya has been exploding with language. She understands all kinds of idioms and she's stringing together longer sentences. She recently expressed an interest in colors so we're teaching those to her right now, and she's getting them really fast. Everybody we meet asks us how old she is and is surprised when we tell them, they always say that she seems a lot older than she is. (Go us for advanced kids!)

Odin has been into Optimus Prime lately. We bought him a transforming action figure that he can almost get on his own (just needs my help with the last step). He's really liking riding his bike, which is good because that's how we'll be getting him to his school. Odin is going to have hockey lessons at the UBC arena (the same ice the T-birds play on!) and he's really excited aboot that. I've been wanting to get back in to hockey for years so I may join him (there's even parent-child hockey time on the rink). Speaking of which, right now the kids are obsessed with this video.

We got the kids a bunk bed that they are really excited about. Whenever we see it in the store, they both crawl in (Odin on the top, Freya in the bottom) and they said they really want to sleep that way. We've had them both sleeping in our room the past few nights (since the kids room is mostly packed-up) and they see to do well together.

Most of our place is packed up. There's just about an hour or two of work left, and then we're ready to go except for the stuff we need out until the last second. Its exciting and scary being this close to going. We look at expire dates on food and think that we wont be here, and we can see weather projections out 10 days and know what the weather will be like where we're going. We discovered that Alyssa gets a discount as a TA on one of the better phone plans up there, so we can get our phones for a little cheaper. Alyssa and I are going to spend our 2 or 3 days up there trying to wrap up loose ends like that before we go back for the kids. Have to get a bank account, find a cell phone plan, learn the neighborhood, stuff like that.

We sold our car to our friends Brandy and Jon. We needed the rent money and they needed to transport their two kids from where they live now. We were sad to see it go, but we started out living together without a car, and we knew we wouldn't be able to have on in Vancouver, so we're adjusting. We've been walking and bussing around this week without problems, it's just like old times.

Oh yeah, Alyssa and I had a good graduation. Mine was a little more pleasant owing to the venue, but both were fun and exciting. My professor said some very nice things about me, and Alyssa graduated cum laude which is nice for her. We both still forget some times that we have college degrees. Alyssa gets to register for her classes today, and she's scheduling an orientation with her professors for instructions on the class she'll be teaching. All so exciting!

I should get going and make breakfast for the kids. Our plans today are to finish packing our stuff so there's nothing left to do, run an errand or two, and enjoy the rest of the week with catching up on some favorite hobbies before we stir up a bunch of dust with moving. I've been taking lots of pictures with our new camera and I'll upload them soon. I also plan to take pictures of our new apartment (possibly a video tour so our parents and kids can see it), and some of the neighborhood, so look for that.

Breather

2011-06-07T15:04:00.000-07:00

Well, I have just a moment right now, so here's a nice little update.

In the middle of finals week right now, and all has gone well. I had Greek at 10:15 and Latin at 3:15 on Monday, but my Greek professor allowed us to take the final Friday at 10:15 since he had another one then for his other class. That really saved me; I was able to study Latin over the weekend without having to cram in a bunch of Greek as well. Pretty sure I aced the Latin final, and I spent the last few nights typing away with bloodshot eyes to get the essays done for History today. Now I just have Greek but it's not 'til Friday so I have plenty of time to study with nothing else to prepare for.

That will be my last final for a little over a year until grad school. It's strange walking away from this without signing up for classes in the next term. We've always been in classes, even summer, so there's been no break. Now there's a nice breather moment.

Speaking of grad school, we got an email just today that Alyssa was chosen for a Graduate Teaching Assistant-ship! She'll make about $255 per week for 16 weeks when the term starts, only working 9 hours each week! It's really going to help our financial situation up there. I'm sure it will be hard, but she's really excited. She has orientation classes for how to be a TA and Grad student at the same time in September, just as the term is starting.

We took the kids to the pediatrician for one final check-up before we leave the country. In short, everything is amazing, as always. Dr. Dzubay is always impressed with how healthy and advanced our kids are. They're both growing great, developing well, and are really healthy. We have to take Odin to get his blood drawn to find out which vaccinations they screwed up so they can give him new ones, but that's all.

That's all for now. Time to study some Greek....

We don't feed our kids

2011-05-26T15:53:00.000-07:00

Or at least that's how they act lately. They never stop asking for more food, and when we leave them with our parents they tell us "all they did the whole time was eat!" Maybe they're both about to hit a growth spurt or something. Odin does look a little taller, and Freya has just exploded with her verbal skills lately....

Yesterday Alyssa had a piece premiered at the OCF, and it was her last one state-side until a choral work in November (for which we will come down to visit and view). The school year is basically over for her, since she now has no deadlines or assignments to speak of. For me, it's about to get interesting, as I have several finals, some of them on the same day as others.

The next few weeks will be interesting. There will be the flurry of finishing the school term, then there will be no obligations on our time other than getting the house cleaned and packed up, and then Alyssa's dad will finally be coming to visit just before we leave.

The Move

2011-05-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

We've figured out how it's all going to go down.

We reserved a Penske truck for the 29th of June. This was the cheapest option. Most rental trucks would cost $600 or more, and most freight or shipping options at least twice that. Taking "luggage" on the train was extremely limited due to the border crossing. We called Penske on a suggestion and we were able to get a 16ft truck for only $250, so we can move more of our stuff. We'll also save money on re-furnishing the new place since we'll be able to take some of the bigger items, like beds and the dining room table.

So the plan right now is to leave the kids with Paula and Zaideh for a couple days. We'll grab the truck the morning of Wednesday the 29th and load it up super fast. On our way up we'll make a quick stop in Portland at IKEA since their stuff is cheaper than the IKEA in Vancouver (and tax free!). The drive to Vancouver will take about 8 hours with the border check, or maybe as much as 10 depending on traffic and how much we stop. We'll unload everything and completely set-up the apartment (so there's nothing left to do) the next day and the following day (after one more night's rest) we'll drive back to Seattle and return the truck. Then we'll take the train down (this will probably be Friday or Saturday) to Eugene to hang out a bit before heading back to Portland to see some family for a day or two. Then it's just the final one-way strait-shot train to Vancouver, and a taxi to our new home!

Garage Sale

2011-05-12T10:54:00.000-07:00

We've been going through all the stuff we plan on not taking with us when we move, and oh man is it a lot of stuff. We've laid out half the furniture, all the clothes, toys, electronics, books, etc. It more than fills the garage. I don't know how we accumulated so much crap! Either way, it's a ton of stuff, and it's all really nice, not just your standard "I-want-to-get-rid-of-this-crap" garage sale stuff but actual good stuff people would want. We're gonna try to have it tomorrow and through the weekend, but it looks like there's going to be rain. There's still a lot to get together before tomorrow, so we'll see how it goes.

We got a call yesterday from Peacehealth to tell us about the vaccines that Odin had. Apparently there was a possibility that they were not properly refrigerated and therefore ineffective. They offered to take a blood test to see what he still needed and give him what else he needed, and then tried to push some new ones on us. They also accidentally admitted that they had given him a shot we refused, which was really upsetting. With all the side effects of vaccines, we were careful to pick only the ones he really needed, and it's possible that some of his current health issues (like some mild behavior stuff or his food allergies) started with that vaccine we didn't want.

We've all been sharing a cold and now I finally have it. Caused a few small set-backs in the homework department, but otherwise okay so far.

A Place to Live!

2011-05-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

Well, it worked. On Friday we got an email offering us a place and we said we'd take it! It's student housing that has been "converted" from the faculty housing so it's in a nice location and it's a little bigger. It also has a washer and dryer in the unit (which only that building has) so we don't have to worry about that. It's on the third floor with huge windows and a big balcony. It comes to about $1350/month (which is really good for that area), but what's really awesome is that that amount also covers our heat, electricity, water, etc., so everything is in that one price! It means we have to move a month ahead of schedule, and pay for a month of the apartment that we wont fully be there, but it's better than waiting and probably not getting a place at all.

We've been going over our resources and figured that we actually will have enough money for three months of living until Alyssa gets her first cheque from school. We need to pay the deposit and first month up-front, which we will have, just not yet, so we've been scrambling to get it together by the due date on Monday. Luckily, our parents have voiced their willingness to contribute.

It was a nice wrap-up to an odd day. Murphy's law seemed to be in effect. Keys were lost, food forgotten, phone dead, meeting times not remembered properly. Nothing serious, and it all came together in the end, but it was just rattling for a little while.

Anyway, we're really excited to have a nice place in an area we like for a really good price. We can't wait to get back up there (and neither can the kids!).

We spent yesterday just enjoying a little bit of free time (Dad is out of town so we have the run of the place). The rest of today will be about buckling down on some homework and studying for tests and performances.

Middle of the term

2011-05-05T15:48:00.000-07:00

Well I suppose I've been neglecting my blogging duties, but I've been busy. We all have.

The piece which Alyssa was commissioned to write for the former Dean of the Music Department was premiered at this seasons' FMO concert this last weekend. It was really nice, and well received.

I've been storming through the schoolwork, mostly. With Alyssa's commission out of the way, and her Gamelan concert soon to be over (in a week or so, I think) her work level has been lowered a bit. Mine has only gone up lately, so she's been able to help out with that a lot.

We've been trying to put some time into getting our stuff ready to move. Lots of stuff is being sold or put into storage. All of our furniture is going to be sold and we'll just make an IKEA run once we're in Vancouver. I've already listed our car for sale, and we're trying to thin-out what we own so there's less to bring with. We decided on moving with Amtrak, so the less, the better. We can pay just slightly extra on our tickets to have up to 16 checked bags, so we'll just manage as many of our boxes as possible. Paula (and Kellie, I think) are coming with, so they'll rent a truck while we're up there and just help us bring it home from the train station. If we catch the strait-shot from Portland it should be pretty easy, we just have to get all our stuff to Portland, and then get it all on the train fast enough at 8am when the train is ready to leave. Still, it'll all cost way less than any of our other options.

So things are starting to wrap up. Odin had his last gymnastics class at Bounce today, he's in his last month of school, I'm in my last term, Alyssa just did her last FMO concert.... We're going to try to hit all our favorite places in town one last time. And we're taking pictures and video's of everything so our kids can see the place they grew up and all the hang-outs they crawled around as babies.

We emailed the housing department and had them change our availability from July to June. This means we'll have to pay another month of rent, and go up early, but it also puts us way higher on the list since most people check August or September. We're checking voicemail regularly, hoping to have gotten that call that says we got a place to live.

I should get back to the translating. More on this story as it develops.

Trip to Vancouver!

2011-04-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

Well, we're back from our journey to Vancouver, BC. We sure had a great time.

It was an early call; 5:30am train ride up to Seattle. The kids behaved so well, you wouldn't believe me if I described it. We had a peaceful journey up there, though (as expected) we had a little bit of an issue with food. In Seattle, we had to run to our bus because the train was a little late, but we got on. That ride was pretty difficult. Odin passed out for the first half of it, so that made things easier, but Freya was really loud and active. Not in a bad way, just a bit to handle is such a small space. At least on the train we were able to walk around a lot. The bus was delayed a bit for an accident, but we got there okay. Crossing the border was no big deal, either. They stopped us to ask a bunch of questions because there were 5 of us traveling together, reminded us to sign our passports next time, and sent us on our way.

Figuring out the busses in the city to get to the hotel was interesting. It's a really busy and complicated place, like Portland, but was no trouble. It was hard getting all our luggage to the hotel, but we made it eventually. Everybody relaxed for a bit and Alyssa and I walked around to check out the campus as everything was closing. The air in Vancouver is so nice (it's not in the Valley of Sickness, like Eugene), it's like breathing at the beach. And the water is so much nicer to drink.

The next day we took off to check out Odin's new school. We met the teachers and toured the place and learned that he's going to have a great time. We also looked around the neighborhood we'll likely be living (same one the school is in) and decided we really like it (though, sadly, I didn't get a lot of shots of that neighborhood). Spent some more time wandering around campus. The campus is really set off to the west a ways from the main part of the city, but there's so much development around it that it's almost like a separate city to itself. We'll have everything close to us except the grocery store, which we discovered is only one bus away.

The grocery store was pretty amazing. It's just like Market of Choice, so we'll be able to find everything we need. It's got a gluten-free bakery, and the deli has so many vegetarian/vegan stuff it's incredible. Also, almost none of the alternative diet stuff (like gluten/dairy free) has soy in it (unlike here) so we don't have to check labels nearly as much. (I guess Canadians wouldn't tolerate something like Monsanto.) There are some price discrepancies, but we'll manage.

The next day we walked around campus forever, it seemed, looking at all the nice gardens and great views. There were two places on campus we wanted to see; the Japanese Gardens and the Museum of Anthropology. We ran into the MoA so we did that, and boy was it a good idea. There's a ton of pictures in the new album online, but it wasn't even half of the stuff there. I was in historian/archaeologist bliss. I highly recommend it to anyone coming to Vancouver, BC, and if you visit us we'd be happy to take you because it never gets old (pun intended).

The last day was mostly about exploring a bit more, and getting to know the place. We really didn't want to leave. The bus ride down wasn't really a problem, and customs was just as easy (though you do notice how much more paranoid the US is when you go through), and the train ride was uneventful. We got in to Eugene at about 11:30pm and went home and to bed. First thing I did this morning was get up and upload the pictures (linked below) and write this post.

Vancouver is so nice. The people are really kind (they get up off the bus and move out of the way if you have kids, rather than just sitting in place and waiting for the bus driver to yell at them) and they just want to help you and make you feel welcome. The whole place is nice, actually; they don't have things like "Don't do this!" and "Stop doing that!" but they have things like "Remember to be courteous" and "Don't act like you're the only one on the bus" (rather than "No loud music! Sit quietly! No feet on the seat!"). Everything is in English and French, and there are more than 70 languages spoken there so you hear a lot of accents and funny conversations. Everybody has a relaxed attitude (even the college students); nobody is rushing anywhere, nobody gets mad at bus delays or bad traffic, shops open late and close early (which is sometimes annoying, but not too bad), nobody cares if you're taking a long time in line, nobody yells at us for having loud kids or letting them play to happily in public. We really liked it there, and, sad to say, as soon as we got to Eugene all we could talk about was how much we couldn't wait to get back to Vancouver, BC.

We had a really great time, and I'm sure we're going to have a great time living there (lonely as it may start out.)

Here's the link to the album of the pictures from the trip: Vancouver, BC. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of them with us actually in them (I got a little crazy with the camera and never posed for any). There's some of our room, some of the landscape and buildings on campus, and some of the attractions. There's some good ones of the MoA. Paula took a lot with her iPhone and when I get those from her, I'll add more to the album.

In other news, I uploaded a few more shots and vids to new Apr - Jun '11 album (and moved a few mis-placed ones there as well) so enjoy.

Epic Birthday!

2011-04-03T20:16:00.000-07:00

Odin turned 4 today! Holy crap! We sure did have a blast today. The party was at Bounce Gymnastics and Odin and all his friends just ran the place down! Even Freya had her share of fun (see video at end). There were gluten-dairy-soy-sugar free cupcakes, and tons of presents. All the photos are up in the Jan - Mar '11 album, but here are some of my favorites:

From Jan - Mar '11

Pictures!!!11!!!

2011-04-02T11:57:00.000-07:00

Hey, look at that. I finally uploaded some new pictures to the web albums. The new Jan - Mar '11 album has some photos I took in the last few days with the camera my grandfather sent me. I used to put videos on our YouTube channel, but the Picasa web albums that I like to use now supports video so they're all in there now.

Freya's hair (as you might be able to tell from the pictures) has gotten really long, and almost completely blocks her vision, so we've been trying to get her to wear hair-ties of some kind or another. She's gotten really verbose, and she always wants privacy when she's going to the bathroom.

Odin's birthday is tomorrow! 4 years old, and still nothing can stop him. Right now, since the weather is getting a little better, we're trying to convince him to be okay with short-sleeved shirts (which he's barely worn since he was old enough to decide on his own).

We finally got our passports in the mail, so we're heading up to Canada for a few days in the middle of April. We're gonna check out the city and look into what life will be like up there.

The first week of Spring term is over. It's presenting some challenges and some pleasures, but it's working. Technically I finished my degree last term, but I'm still in classes this term. My degree audit says "completed" but I'm still around. I apparently made the Dean's List last term (4.0 GPA and 15+ credits) which is interesting, but not exciting since I don't know the significance.

Alyssa has been commissioned for a work by the former Dean of the Music School for her class on music in culture. She's says she's going to have a lot of fun with it, and she's even getting paid! It's a rush job, but it will be fun.

A Camera!

2011-03-29T16:08:00.001-07:00

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!

2011-03-25T22:14:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-03-17T12:33:00.001-07:00

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

2011-03-13T08:57:00.001-07:00

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

2011-03-09T19:46:00.000-08:00

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....

Oh Canada! (yep!)

2011-02-25T20:45:00.000-08:00

Alyssa emailed the director to accept the program and inform them of her intent to attend, meanwhile I sent off the applications for housing and child care. So we're going to Vancouver, BC for school for 2-3 years.

There's so much to figure out. The housing isn't too bad; we just wait to hear from them and in the meantime look in to other apartments around the city. Childcare is the same, either we get it through the school or another private place. But there's tons of other stuff. Do we need our car and should we bother bringing it? Where will the grocery stores be? How do we get medical care? Will we be able to work or will there be a student visa issue? How are we going to afford moving all our stuff up there? Will our phones work or do we need new wireless carriers for Canada? What are the laws/rights like up there? It's a lot to figure out. We're taking it one step at a time, but there's a lot to do.

Odin and Freya have both had some kind of eye thing going on. They got really red and a little pussy but the doctors didn't think it was pink-eye, just some kind of infection or irritation. Gone now, but weird.

We've all been sharing illness, and now I've finally got it (though nowhere near as bad as they all had it). This term of school is starting to wrap up so we're focusing on studies.

Speaking of which, time to get back to it....

(Seems like all I ever do, doesn't it?)

Oh Canada! (eh?)

2011-02-20T10:20:00.001-08:00

A few days ago (I think) the Director of the Music Department at UBC called Alyssa to say they'd love to have her! It's really exciting news because that is the school she wanted to go to the most, and it is in a place we'd love to live (Vancouver, BC). We've been talking about it all week and we're 95% decided to go! They're also giving Alyssa a scholarship so our expenses will be way down, and she might be making some extra money being a teaching assistant for some of their classes. The plan is for her to go for three years (normally it'd be two but she might extend that by adding an additional area of interest, necessitating more classes), I wont be in classes the first year (didn't apply on time) but the last two years I'd like to be in their Mediterranean Archaeology program, so we'd both finish at the same time. We'll see how it all works out! Still have to apply for housing, child care, etc. Lots to take care of first.

Freya's favorite word is "No" right now. She learned how to use it and now uses it so often she sometimes says No when she means Yes. She's also finally over her cold, and back to her old self again.

Odin woke up this morning and started throwing up. No idea why, he's just been lying in bed all morning, which is very unlike him. I feel bad for the guy. He still seems to be suffering.

Alyssa is at a birthday party with Freya right now, and I'm taking care of Odin. I should start studying for some tests I have on Monday....

Sick

2011-02-13T19:51:00.000-08:00

Posts are pretty far apart lately, aren't they?

An illness has been going around the house. Right now Odin seems to be over it, and Alyssa has finally hit the downhill slope, but Freya is warm enough to heat a room. Miraculously, I still haven't caught anything, despite everyone else being sick twice, but maybe I just jinxed myself....

It dawned on me that we have way more pictures and videos of Odin when he was a baby than Freya. This is mostly because we've not had a camera in ages. So I'm finally gonna get ours fixed or just buy a new one this week.

We're still waiting to hear about all the Grad schools Alyssa applied to, but it will probably be quite a bit longer. I've been working on one of my mid-term assignments most of the weekend, and I'm a little behind in my other classes as a result, but I have the rest of the night to pick it up, right? I may have found a couple of grad programs I'm interested in, so I'll have to look into those.

Right now, we're feeling the pain of having to drive to school a lot, especially now that next term's schedule has been released and it's really not being nice to us. Will have to do something about that. When we move for grad school, we're only willing to live less than a mile from the campus so we can just walk everywhere....

Look! An update!

2011-02-06T12:51:00.001-08:00

That's right, I have a second to sit down and type something up. Well, really, I don't, but Alyssa asked me to and I figured why not.

Freya's vocabulary has been rising off the charts lately. A lot of the time there are discernable english words, but sometimes it's still just Freya-speak. She's been taking a dance class which has been enjoyable. I haven't been to it, but Alyssa takes her while I'm in class and she likes to do some of the dance moves at home. She's been having some trouble with her teeth lately, it seems like a new one comes in every time a painful one is just about done. Hopefully they'll all be in soon.

Odin is still in swim lessons and having a fun time. We haven't been in a while because he missed a week when he was sick, but his instructor says he'll be swimming on his own soon. We took his crib down because he decided he didn't like it after all and changed back to his big bed. He seems to be liking it a lot more (he slept on it for months before, but we had to move him to the crib for some reason this last few months). He's been having some behavioral issues, but we've pinned it down to structure and diet, so we think we'll have it under control in a matter of days.

Alyssa's been more prolific than ever lately (regarding compositions) and her professors seem very impressed. I'm sure she'll put some of them up on her website soon enough, they need some final polishing. She got an email from the director of the music department at one of the grad schools she applied to saying that they were very impressed with her application and just needed a little more information to be considered for scholarship. We're trying to take care of the paperwork, and we'll see what they finally say. Other than that, she's been pretty busy watching the kids while I'm in class, and taking classes of her own. We recently switched which days Odin is in class to balance things out a little better.

Right now I'm looking around at post-bacc programs and grad options. I may just end up taking some classes at the school Alyssa picks, and maybe they'll let me in to the post-bacc. I have extra classes keeping me busy this term, and next term wont be a cake-walk either, but it's good for me. I should probably get a little work done right now.

Oh, and we got a bike trailer and took it for a test-run yesterday. We did about 10 miles (I pulled 80lbs of kid and trailer, I'm tired) and discovered that the only difficulty was the kids needing entertainment (like books and such in the trailer with them). The weather is only going to get better, so this is our new fitness activity. We've even planned out the route to school and we're going to spend the next few weeks building up the endurance for that distance, which will also cut out some car use.

That's all for now, I should get to some homework or something.

crickets

2011-01-31T07:48:00.000-08:00

A testament to how busy we are; I've not posted in almost a month.

Don't worry, we're all still here. Normal programming to resume shortly (I think).

What a week

2011-01-07T20:25:00.000-08:00

Our schedule feels really hectic, but at the same time pretty relaxed. My classes aren't too bad to manage, and I even added an extra class beyond normal full-time credits, but one of them wasn't scheduled until the email our professor sent this evening so the dust still hasn't settled! We've also signed Freya up for dance classes, and Odin has gymnastics and swimming, so we keep pretty busy around here.

Alyssa is enjoying her classes. She frequently mentions that she feels strange having homework but not being required do finish all of it on time. The extra class I added has me translating Latin, Greek, and Old Norse this term - still waiting to see if I can keep up....

Been in a lot of dental pain lately. It's a long story, but the short version is the crappy state-provided dental messed something up, I ended up in pain forever, they couldn't help me, and I paid a buttload of money to another, reputable dentist to fix me, which he could only do half of today because of how messed up it was and half will have to wait for later. I hope the pain is manageable until I see him in a week and a half.

Now it is time for homework. This weekend promises to be fun, with family visiting and visiting family.

1 week left!

2010-12-26T21:32:00.000-08:00

Counting down our last week of vacation until school starts!

The Holidays were very fun for us. Random presents arrived and were opened earlier at various times in the week or so leading up to the bigger days. The kids made out like bandits, way more than I expected, and it was all good fun. Yesterday we did a Christmas dinner at Paula's with friends and family. We've taken many a cold walk outside to look at lights, and several excursions to the mall and such places to see decorations and merriment in the air.

Odin's sleeping has gotten a little better. The coin thing is working a bit more, and we're able to figure out what's bothering him some times. We occasionally let him sleep in our bed if he comes in the middle of the night, which is not really good for him developmentally (I guess), but we all sleep better. It even makes him sleep in, so he gets way more rest than usual. (He comes in our bed and sleeps 'til 8-ish, instead of getting himself up at 6:30-7 and being wide awake because he was afraid in his room.)

Freya is running now. And saying all kinds of things. She can say please, thank you, welcome, yes, that, boob, food, up, uh-oh, and all kinds of stuff. Her communication is really impressive; she can tell you what she wants, which thing she wants, if she likes something, etc. She's still eating a lot during the night, but we're starting to pump her full of way more solids to help. We've also noticed that she likes to be naked at night sometimes. Seems to be more comfortable. She even wants to have no diaper some of the time. We've noticed the covers aren't quite big enough; they sometimes leak, she can't walk very well, and they just seem to be uncomfortable. We're gonna shop for some new ones tomorrow.

Alyssa and I spent part of tonight looking at grad schools and post-bacc programs. She did well in her GRE and has selected four schools to send the scores to. I've found a post-bacc program at one of them that I'd be able to do, and another has requirements for their MA that I match, so I might be able to just go on and do that.

We'll be up in Portland next weekend seeing family, and spending this week just relaxing and getting a thing or two done and wrapped up before school.

Break

2010-12-21T15:28:00.001-08:00

Winter break has gone pretty well for us. Mostly we've all just been hanging out. There's been a few projects we've caught up on, but mostly it's been relaxation.

Alyssa has her GRE test tomorrow, so she's studying for that like frantic. I know she'll do fine, and afterwards she'll really be on vacation.

Odin is still having a lot of trouble at night. We took him to his pediatrician and she gave us some answers. We've tried a tactic where we give Odin three nickels at bed time and he can pay us with one if he needs to get out of bed, including the middle of the night. If he makes it 'til morning with any nickels left over, he gets to save them in his bank towards getting a toy. It worked for a few nights, but now it has backfired on us and he thinks he can get more nickels out of his bank. He's scared to death and refuses to sleep. We're still looking for answers.

Freya is running around and talking like crazy. She never stops eating either, and the chocolate obsession is in full swing. She's finally over her cough, felt like it took forever.

Gifts have been leaking in from various relatives, so the kids have gotten to open a present or two. I like it this way; we get toys and such in strides, so there's cool stuff to play with in small amounts for a good while, rather than one big hoard on one day which wears off quickly.

Vacation

2010-12-12T09:20:00.000-08:00

A week in to Winter Break and we're still relaxed. Mission successful so far.

Mostly we've just been hanging out at the house and taking trips out into the world, seeing things we don't see during the normal school term, like the mall, downtown, and parks and such.

We found a cute piano for Freya, made by a German company, and she absolutely loves it. We'll give it to her for the holidays. She's got two new molars now, so that explains the recent crankiness and lack of sleep. Poor girl.

Odin is still having trouble sleeping at night. He's too scared to go to bed and we always wake up with him in our bed, and he seems constantly tired. We're looking into it.

Alyssa managed to be approved for CEP (continuing education program), which means that she can take classes at the UO even though she has graduated (though we have to pay for it ourselves, rather than get financial aid). This is cool because she'll still get to study under Kyr and Stolet, and have access to the really awesome FMO studio to continue working on projects.

I've signed up for a class on Old Norse. A germanic studies professor I had last year for a class on Scandinavian Epic is trying to get his department to support him. Few universities teach Old Norse, and I was apparently on a list of students he held in esteem, so he emailed me and asked if I'd like to help. If he can get enough students, the department will make it a regular course. I already have a full class load, but I thought it'd be really fun (if irrelevant to my current degree anyway), so I signed up.

Another one bites the dust

2010-12-06T16:00:00.000-08:00

Well, that's it, another term is over. I'm out of my last final right now and Alyssa will be out of hers any moment now. For me, it's nice to have all my finals on Monday because it's like getting an extra week of vacation. For Alyssa, this was her last undergraduate final. She'll graduate as soon as her professors grade her final work and clear her degree! I'm so proud of her; it's amazing what she's done, especially considering all the challenges she's faced over the last few years.

We're going to spend break doing the things we never do; relax, hang out, nothing. Break means more time with our kids (who suffer constantly at the expense of our classes - Alyssa wouldn't say so, but that's how I sometimes feel), more walks outside, less car use, less stress, more fun. Alyssa will have to take a GRE and apply to some graduate schools (which she'll have no problem getting into, according to her professors apparently), and I'll be reviewing Latin and Greek to prepare for the next term, but other than that, should be pretty laid back.

We're going to start Odin in a gymnastics class, and he's also asked to have more swim lessons so I think we'll be setting that up as well. He seems taller all of a sudden, which would explain the unending hunger lately. Freya has a bad cough at the moment, and she seems to be getting bigger as well. I think she's working on some teeth, but I can't tell for sure yet.

Non-traditional holiday

2010-11-27T10:17:00.000-08:00

For Thanksgiving, we made tacos for lunch, sushi (home-made) for dinner, and Roman donuts for desert. We had cultural cuisines which should not be anywhere near Thanksgiving, but it was really fun. It was really fun to make the sushi, and Dad was surprisingly enthusiastic.

Jake is in town, so the kids have been hanging out with him quite a bit. It's fun having him here.

Alyssa and I have spent the last few nights watching Rome instead of doing our homework, so I'm thinking that's what today is going to be mostly about.

Much to say

2010-11-19T17:55:00.000-08:00

For one big thing, Alyssa took her Exit Exam, the Brown Book earlier this week. It's a very large test consisting of 100 terms she must define verbatim from a list of 350, all of which have paragraph definitions or longer. (The final word count on the study list was almost 9,000!) We haven't gotten the score back yet, but I'm sure she passed with flying colors.

I had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled out almost 2 weeks ago. It took a really long time to eat solid food and not be in pain, but I got through it in the end.

Odin has ben having trouble sleeping, we think. He tells us every night about how scared he is. Also the house creaks a lot and he says that scares him all the time. His behavior hasn't been the best lately and we figured that it might be from not sleeping. I found him in his room sitting awake one night and I have no idea how long he was up. We also wake up sometimes to find him in our bed with us, he must be coming in when he wakes up scared.

Freya never stops moving or eating. She also has a lot more words now and can express herself really well. Right now her favorite thing is drawing, she'll sit at the table for an hour with crayons and just have a great time.

I'm working on getting some professors to agree to be my advisory committee for an honors thesis. I'd have to write a small thesis paper and be approved, and then I get to graduate with honors. Rounding up the right professors has proved difficult, but I'm almost there.

Right now we're just trying to finish out the term and figure out how we'll survive the next one. Money is going to be tight on account of Alyssa not getting a financial aid check, but we're thinking about taking out a private student loan. I got way less this year than we normally get, and the federal government wont give me any more so we have to make up the difference with private banks.

Over Winter break I'll be teaching Latin to Alyssa and two other friends of hers, all composers in the Music department. It's funny because Professor Nicols offered $40k to any student who'd learn Latin, and nobody out of 150 said yes, but I have 3 composers with full schedules and extra rehearsals and such who all want to learn.

1 Year Check-up for Freya!

2010-11-03T22:25:00.001-07:00

Took Freya for her 1 year check-up and all is going well. She is very healthy and growing great, and surprises the doctors in her ability and intelligence.

Her stats: Height 28" (10%); Weight 22lbs 1.8oz (55%); Head ~18" (85%).

I remember when she was so tiny she fit in my forearm. Now she's walking all over the place, talking about everything, and demanding chocolate.

Did I mention the chocolate yet? She knows what it is, and I mean knows. She knows if something is chocolate, even if it's in a wrapper she's never seen before, and she wants it precious, bad. It's really funny. Sometime I'll have to catch her on video when I'm holding it in front of her, and then let her chomp right into it too, it's really funny....

Halloween!

2010-10-31T23:21:00.000-07:00

We really had a blast. Odin walked all over the place, and Freya figured out what was going on really fast. The only sad thing is that Odin told us he wanted to go around with a bunch of friends. (He kept seeing large groups of kids and wanted someone else to go with.)

Some shots of the kids in their costumes:

From Oct - Dec '10

Birthday pictures!

2010-10-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

Finally got around to them. The Oct - Dec '10 album only had 2 videos of Freya in it, until now that is! I uploaded a bunch of shots and here are my favorites:

From Oct - Dec '10

Pumpkin patch

2010-10-23T22:19:00.000-07:00

Today we took the kids to a pumpkin patch just down the road. It has a big area filled with hay for everyone to crawl and jump around, with soft spots for doing high jumps and little tunnels for someone Odin's size to crawl through. There's also a hay ride which is really fun. The driving is a little crazy and goes super fast, it's like a roller coaster, but so fun. And they give you tons of mini-pumpkins to throw at dozens of scare-crows as you ride by. The ride is so fast that it's really hard to hit them, but it's really fun trying. Odin had a blast, Freya just chewed on one of the little pumpkins for a while.

Sickness

2010-10-17T23:08:00.000-07:00

It has been an interesting week. It started out okay, but we all started getting sick by the middle of the week. Odin threw up 4 times in 2 hours one night and we ended up with it over the weekend, so we've all just been lying around trying to get better.

Birthday Party!

2010-10-09T21:11:00.000-07:00

We did Freya's birthday party today! We decorated Dad's place with a bunch of streamers and balloons and put a slideshow on his huge tv of a ton of pictures of Freya at various ages. Family and Friends came over and we all had pizza and cake and wished Freya a happy birthday. It was really fun to just hang out with everyone and do something relaxed, which I think Freya really liked. She got several fun presents and got to play with a lot of people. I have many photo's to add but I'm just not going to do it at the moment. Soon!

Birthday!

2010-10-07T21:56:00.000-07:00

Freya is one year old today! It's crazy to think, but it's really happened....

We mostly spent the day as a family and did things we wanted to do without letting our responsibilities get in the way. We got a small piece of tiramisu to share and gave Freya a little celebration.

From Oct - Dec '10

I still have trouble believing that she's already 1!

No camera, but....

2010-10-06T18:44:00.000-07:00

I'm really sad that we haven't had a video camera to capture all the great family moments. I've just been so busy I forgot to go get it repaired. But I suddenly realized that sometimes I could use the laptop so I got this:

Freya stuffing a bunch of blueberries in her mouth:

From Oct - Dec '10

Oh,

2010-10-03T07:41:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention in that last post;

We also put Freya in with Odin last night. They slept in the same room! Going to bed worked fine, but Freya woke up crying after a couple hours and we had to bring her bed back in with us in the middle of the night. Oh well, not ready yet, try again later....

Progress

2010-10-03T07:33:00.001-07:00

This has been an interesting week.

Alyssa and I are enjoying our classes. The subjects are fun and the teachers are good. But what has really made a difference is not having kids with us. Odin has been in school now, but Freya is also with Brandy during the day. I had a few worries about this initially, but she's taken to it really well and we actually get to be students! We can be on campus without holding or pushing a kid around, and we don't have to restrict ourselves to studying in those particular rooms on campus which are good fore parents and acceptable for small children to be loud in.

Freya's also been a lot more talkative lately. I suspect it has to do a lot with being at Brandy's. June is pretty talkative, and probably talks to Freya a lot because she's so interested in her, whereas Odin doesn't actually talk to Freya as much as he just plays with or near here.

Odin has been having some trouble with bedtime lately. He's sometimes scared of things or doesn't like his bed, and recently he's asked a few times for his old crib. Last night we brought it over from our old apartment with the last load and put it in their room for him. He slept in it last night just fine, and we think he liked it better. It's weird, and I'm not sure why he asked for that, but that's how it is now. His full we'd gotten him earlier is now in storage, I bet he'll want to go back to it in a few weeks or a couple months.

Friday night I was at our old place until 1:30am making tons of trips up and down those three flights of stairs trying to get all our stuff out and clean the place. It was really difficult but I finally got it done ad now we've turned in our keys. Goodbye to the old place.

I better go wake up Alyssa, she has lab time this morning......

School!

2010-09-26T21:30:00.000-07:00

It's that time again. Fall term is going to begin tomorrow and we'll be in the thick of things once more. The line-up for this term is Greek, Latin, and Classical Mythology for me, and Electronic Music, Composition, A/V Project, and History for Alyssa, plus an extra C++ class.

Brandy is going to watch Freya for us, so we'll have some time on campus to just be students because Odin will be in class as well. We're excited for classes to begin.

We haven't quite nailed down the grad-school thing all the way yet. I might wait a year before I apply, not sure though, we'll see. We haven't moved out of our old apartment entirely, which is unfortunate because our last day is Friday and we'll be pretty busy with school. Will manage some how. :)

Right now, we're spending some time cleaning up the house so it's nice before things get busy.

School for all

2010-09-11T16:48:00.000-07:00

Well, the move to Dad's has gone alright. We finally got all settled with all our stuff put away and the house clean (thanks in part to Sam who cleans it every week). There's still a lot to do at our old place, but none of it involves bringing stuff here - it's all cleaning and taking stuff to storage that we wont use here - so we're relaxing for a week or so to study and we'll take care of our old place when it's closer to our actual move-out day.

Odin's school year started on Tuesday. Unfortunately, his birthday is outside the cut-off point so a lot of his friends moved up to the Ladybug class while he stayed in the Caterpillar class. Some of his Panda friends have moved into the Caterpillar class, however, so he's got some new and old faces. He really misses Armstrong especially. Armstrong asked me if I was taking Odin to his house after school one day when I picked Odin up. I had to tell him no and he looked really sad. We've arranged a play-date for them tomorrow at Armstrong's place.

We're still studying away. Finally finding time to look at our work is helping, the term ahead doesn't seem as bad as it did a week ago when we were busy with moving. We're also doing more research on Grad schools. USCB is the top choice right now, and UW after that, so we're working hard. I've got a lot to do in the coming year to make myself a more appealing applicant for their requirements, so we'll see how it goes. We've also bought a great book for GRE prep and I'm actually more excited than terrified to take the test.

Poor Freya has a huge scrape down her nose and forehead from being pushed by a yet-unidentified big brother.... toughens her up I suppose. She and Alyssa also have the same cold, making them both pretty tired.

It's nice having the park so close because we can let Odin play for as long as he likes. Freya loves the swing and likes to walk around and sit on the merry-go-round.

Did I mention Odin wasn't napping already? We learned a few days ago that Odin hadn't been napping at school for a couple weeks. None of his teachers told us because Odin always flew out of the school so fast when we picked him up. He's never reliably napped on days we had him home, so this lack of sleep kinda explains a few things. We've since tried getting him to bed earlier to increase his total sleep per day. Sometimes he goes down early enough and sometimes he doesn't, but I think when he does get the extra rest, it helps enough.

We're just taking it one day at a time for now.

Moving (again)

2010-09-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

We're moving back in with my Dad. There's a lot of reasons for this, and we think we've made the right decision.

Finances is a big part of it. We wont be getting financial aid for Alyssa from school after Fall term because she'll have graduated and mine will stop when I graduate in the Winter or Spring. If we move in with Dad, he lets us live mostly free so we save money for the 9-months to a year that we're here waiting for Grad school to start. We can use that money for all the moving and move-in expenses we'll need to pay in whichever city we have to go to.

Also, the kids behave a lot better here. Odin gets energy out in his room or the backyard, and it's not so cramped here that Freya can't crawl around without being bowled over by Odin. Plus, there's a park about a 5-minute walk from the place and we take Odin there almost every day.

We like it here much better, too. Dad has a huge couch which is totally comfy (we've only ever had a futon) and tons of space, a big kitchen, and the whole place is well-ventilated and well-lit (something our apartment never was). We're more comfortable. Also, while we're here we get to help Dad eat healthier and he helps buy more food, so we all win. Plus, it's on the ground floor, no more 3-story climb (not that it was too bad, but after a while, it gets hard to do it with 2 kids).

Other than that, not much is new. We're still studying hard for our tests and classes in Fall term. Searching for grad schools is a continuing project. Etc., lah-dee dah, blah blah, yadda yadda.

Tons of news!

2010-08-25T16:23:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I've put photos online because our camera broke since our last beach trip. I've got a few now so this will have to do.

From July - Sept '10

Odin playing with his friend Armstrong, from school.

From July - Sept '10

Freya with Maya (Rachel's daughter).

My cousin Rachel and her husband Kevin brought Maya, their daughter, down to Eugene and saw us for a few hours. They played together at our house and it was really cute. Odin was really good to both kids.

Freya had her shots today. She took 'em like a champ and all day she's been energetic and smily so go figure that one out. She's also walking now! She can make it a pretty fair distance but she loves to take off and run, which is too fast yet so she trips a lot. I'll get it on video when I can solve our camera situation. I got Odin walking the second time he ever did it so I hope I can find a good video soon. There might be one on Alyssa's phone and I just have to copy it, so I'll look into that later tonight.

Odin is doing well. He seems taller somehow..... He gets smarter every day, too. We're going to start trying to get him to read soon.

We did another phonebook delivery job this summer. Torture, as usual, but the extra cash will help. Now we're both just studying for our future classes and tests and hoping all goes well. School search is still going, University of Washington (Seattle) is looking good at the moment.

We're just enjoying our summer and movin' along....

Bowling!

2010-08-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

We've had a fun weekend. Yesterday we helped Jason and Emily move some stuff around so they could get new furniture in their place, and we got to hang out with them which was really nice since we barely saw them during our classes. Emily gave us a Raw Foods cookbook and we've been making everything we can think of; almond cheese, pumpkin breakfast pie with pecan crust, macadamia nut ricotta, etc. Most of it requires a dehydrator so we got one of those and we're gonna try to make some salmon jerky soon.

Today we met Emily (different one), Ryder, and Kim for bowling! It was really fun. The kids used this ramp-like thing that they set the balls on and then push instead of throwing, they actually got over 60 points each! Totally fun for Odin too.

We've put Odin's crib back together with one piece missing so there's an opening. It's pushed up next to our bed. Freya doesn't sleep in her own bed, and she keeps us awake all night, so this is a middle ground. If she's on her own, she doesn't wake up as much (maybe once or twice a night) but we can never get her to her pack-and-play. With the crib right next to our bed, we can just slide her over after she falls asleep, and she's in her own little bed but still near enough to us to sense that we're there. We're trying it tonight, hope we get some sleep!

Fun and growth

2010-08-11T21:12:00.000-07:00

Freya is almost walking. Her record is 4 steps without falling afterwards and every day she tries several times. She also has a few words and she's finally started saying "mama" pretty clearly. Since she's not sick and not getting any teeth and we've got no homework to worry about (after Friday) which is a collection of criteria which have never all been true at the same time, we're going back to helping her learn how to sleep in her own bed.

Odin's been having fun. He had a play-date at Armstrong's house on Monday and he gets to go to school with June because we're taking her until her mom gets a new bike.

Alyssa and I have our final exams on Friday, then we're free for the summer (except for my Greek lessons). It'll be nice having some vacation, and we're excited for our Fall term classes. We also just settled some paperwork with the U of O about our financial aid and we'll have a bit of money to help live.

For now, we're making a list of all the cool stuff we're going to do with our free time. When Alyssa gets her sight running, I'll be sure to link it here.

I've also got a lot of pictures to upload so I'm sure I'll put that on my to-do list for the summer. :)

Walking!

2010-08-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

That's right, we caught Freya walking for the first time today! She's been able to get to standing without holding anything for quite a while, and she was actually pretty frustrated the past few days because she wants to walk so bad. Today she managed two steps, then stabilized herself, and then sat back down. Not much, but she's on her way. Unfortunately all our camera's are broken so I'm trying to secure a temporary one before she really gets going. We also noticed she can get right up stairs when she wants. (Even up to Odin's bed, which is waist level for an adult!)

She had a check-up today. Came in at 27.5" (30%) and 20lbs 15.8oz (75%) and was in great health according to the doctor.

Freya has her own words for stuff, which you learn when you spend enough time around her. Her communication is really impressive. She also knows how to clap and will do so when you start singing the right songs. She can high five when prompted, and knows how to click her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

As for the rest of us, Odin is doing fine as well. He's just started being home with us on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's cheaper for the child care costs, but it's also really fun because it's like having extra weekend days with him in the middle of the week. We think he's headed for a growth-spurt soon as well.

Alyssa has Mastitis again, bad fever and general icky-ness going on, but she's getting through it. Summer classes are almost out for both of us, so all we'll have is my Greek lessons. Alyssa is trying to finish up her portfolio and websites so she can be applying for positions. She actually just submitted her resume for the senior sound engineer at 343 Industries, part of Microsoft working on a Halo game project! We'll see how that pans out. She says that, even if it doesn't, it's still nice to try and it's better to be rejected for something huge than to apply for something small and feel like you didn't try.

I still have some pictures (such as those from a beach trip or two) that I've been ~~lazy~~ busy about getting uploaded, but soon enough....

To sleep, perchance to sleep.

2010-07-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

Last night was the second night we tried to put Freya in her own bed. She doesn't like it, of course but once she gets down she has a chance to sleep pretty good for at least a few hours. Last night we went to check on her and she was sitting silently alone and awake so we felt bad and brought her in bed, but the night before it worked for about 4 or 5 hours, so it's only going to get better. Freya cut herself a mighty gusher this evening so we're going to let her sleep with us tonight out of pity.

We spent a night of the weekend in Florence with Paula. It was really cold on the beach but we had fun in Old Town and the place we stayed was really great. It's such an easy trip out there and we took the kids to a fun-land kinda place to ride an amusement train.

My last class I have to physically attend for the summer got out a week ago so I haven't been actually going to anything except my Greek lessons. It has made our schedule a bit easier, but the studying is still pretty intense.

Freya has 6 teeth now, and she can get to standing from sitting without pulling herself up on an object. She's trying to walk and it's going to be any day now. Odin learns new words every day, it seems, and he continually amazes us with what he's able to figure out.

Feverish?

2010-07-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

Poor Freya has had a high fever (averaging 102.5 constantly) for the last couple days. No other symptoms yet, just making her moody.....

Lincoln City!

2010-07-13T07:37:00.001-07:00

We spent a night at Lincoln City over the weekend at the Historic Anchor Inn which is an amazing place to stay. Much fun was had playing on the beach and seeing the sights. Also the air there is much better, we just want to live out there. Mom and the Portland crew came out so we hung out with them for a bit and just let the kids have some fun. That's where Odin really needs to be; an unlimited, open area for him to have unbridled fun. Me too.

Summer classes have been interesting but hard. We're working our butts off but it will pay off eventually. Freya's been getting her fifth tooth lately and Odin is in swim classes through his school.

Speaking of which, we dropped down his hours as of August and through the rest of the year. We pulled him from Tuesdays and Thursdays so he only goes MWF. It'll be easier on our budget, but more importantly he'll get some time to stay home with us instead of being left somewhere every day. We'll see how it goes. Over the summer it'll be great, in Fall term..... we'll see, but I think it'll work fine.

Oh, and I'll get those pics up when I can.

Room switch and TV!

2010-07-04T12:35:00.000-07:00

A few days ago we spent a day or two switching our room with the kids'. We really like the change. There's now a sink/vanity in the kids' room which is good for brushing teeth and taking care of diapers, and there's much more floor space for playing and only one window so less danger of falling. We have a lot less space but it's fine because we don't need floor space and we have a lot less furniture than they do (and a lack of tendency to leave toys everywhere). Odin also has his own full-size bed (just like adults!) which he just loves because he sleeps on one at Grandma Paula's all the time. He picked out his own orange sheets and comforter set and he really sleeps well on the new bed.

We also finally got ourselves an HDTV. It's only 23" but we don't need more size, just more clarity so we can play our games. It's actually an inch taller than our old tv but since it's also widescreen all our shows feel bigger. It's been really nice, we can finally play Lost Odyssey, Halo, Blue Dragon, and Eternal Sonata (Eternal Sonata was reviewed as a reason to buy an HDTV on it's own, and unworthy of play without one).

Today we're having a BBQ at Grandma Paula's with some friends and then off to Zaideh's (once it gets dark) to set off some fireworks!

School and Car trouble

2010-06-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

It's been an eventful week or two so far. Alyssa and I have been hard at our classes, trying to keep up. They aren't hard, just require a lot of work. I'm getting private lessons in Attic Greek at a rushed pace, which is interesting and fun, but very challenging. My tutor thinks I'm doing well.

Alyssa is working on her website. There isn't much there, but we've got it up and running and she's attempting to build it in her spare time.

Our car nearly died this week. It started overheating and a friend fixed it for us. There were numerous problems which I can't recall, but the bottom line is that if we hadn't given it to him when we did we wouldn't have a car anymore. He also offered to let us bring it back whenever it needed something else, since he has access to parts and lots of machinery.

We've also been debating our schedule for the fall and what Odin's schooling will be like. More on that story as it develops.

Ear infection

2010-06-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

Freya's fever had gone away this week but came back last night. We were worried about a secondary infection so we took her in to discover an ear infection. Poor kid. She's also got tooth 5 and 6 coming in, so she goes from new tooth to fever to cough to new tooth to fever back again to more teeth. Just suffering all around.

Happy Fathers' Day!

2010-06-20T21:04:00.000-07:00

On Friday Odin had me at his school to enjoy a lunch and activity party with him and his class. It was fun playing around with the kids and eating at the tables with them. He made me a gift and then we took him home early. I like to think that Fathers' Day is a day to praise me as a dad, but mostly it's a day for me to celebrate that I get to be one.

I finished my 9-5 every-day-for-a-week class after lunch. It was a tough class, but very rewarding. I start normal summer-term classes on Monday, and so does Alyssa.

The kids have been sick all weekend. Freya's fever got up to 103 during the day and they both had a bad cough, but we made it through and, thankfully, they're both back to normal this evening. Alyssa caught a little of it but seems better, and I think I dodged it (not sure how that happened) but we'll see.

My Fathers' Day gift was to sleep in until almost 11, something I don't get too often. Alyssa also tried to make me some breakfast but didn't have as many hands as she needed so she couldn't make everything she wanted. Still, it was really nice of her. We've spent the weekend going for walks and watching our favorite show, Stargate SG-1 all weekend (since we only had the weekend, with my 0-week class and our other classes starting on Monday keeping us busy), so that's how we spent most of today.

We also built all our new furniture all weekend. We've been upset at the state of our apartment for a while now (cheap bedspreads, no couch, mismatched furniture which doesn't hold everything, it all just looks like a mess) but Alyssa scored $500-$600 worth of furniture for about $200 on Friday so I put it all together and we spent a good amount of time doing Spring Cleaning and re-arranging everything. Now we have nice stuff and it all matches so it looks like someone actually lives here.

We decided to stay here in Eugene, at least until next June, rather than leaving in the next few months. It allows me to bring my GPA up with classes before we head to grad schools. California is still the plan, but we'll see.

Updates

2010-06-16T16:05:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, but I have a moment, so here goes.

We did manage to get to get through finals, barely. However, we spent the weekend helping other people and on Monday I started a 9a-5p class for one week, which has really been draining us. (I'm actually there right now, we're reviewing for the quiz in 20 minutes and I feel confident I'm good.) It has me reading for 3-4 hours each night, with home quizzes and a final project to spend time preparing and research as well. It's been especially hard on Alyssa who has to watch both kids for me to work, but it's not much longer.

Next week we're both in regular, 2-hours-each-day classes for Summer term. I'll also be getting private lessons in Attic Greek from a graduate student here, so that will be fun. For now, we're just chugging along, trying to finish.

First hair cut!

2010-06-09T08:25:00.001-07:00

That's right, we finally did it! Odin's hair was dredding up too much so we had to cut a little off because we could never comb it. We left the curls (like he asked us to), just took a little off the ends. There's also a bunch of other great pics and vids in the Apr - Jun '10 album!

From Apr - Jun '10

Whew

2010-06-08T08:31:00.000-07:00

We made it. The school year is over and we're only a little dead. I have one more final on Friday in Latin, but I have all week to study for it. Yesterday I finished everything else and this morning Alyssa is in her last final, which isn't actually a test, just turning in the work she finished last night and this morning. We are in summer session classes, but those will be fun and there will be more free time and less work.

We've switched Odin's schedule so he's there a few less hours each week since we have more free time. It's already helped him because he finally gets to sleep in, and we can tell he feels a lot better. We let him stay home today for fun, but we're thinking about also taking him out every Friday for a month or two to see if he likes it (plus, that would make it easier to go places on the weekend, and also reduce his tuition down to half-time).

Freya is crawling all over the place, you can't stop her. She can also climb up on to anything and is really fast. Two teeth on the bottom in the middle keep shining at me, I wonder when she'll get more.

We're looking forward to summer for sure. More free time, better weather (why is it still rainy in June?), fun classes.

Alyssa will be graduating at the end of Fall term, and so will I if I can test out of a class I need which is only offered in the winter. It's really exciting. Grad schools near San Francisco on the list, but we're still keeping our eyes open.

Freya grows

2010-05-26T21:00:00.000-07:00

Just quickly;

The doctor appointment went well yesterday. Dr. Dzubay said she sees nothing wrong and that Freya is doing amazingly. She was 66 inches tall (25th percentile) and 19.2 pounds (75th percentile).

Things moving along

2010-05-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

All is well with us for the most part. Sleep deprivation and the approaching finals week are both starting to take their toll on us. We even tried putting Freya in her crib last night to no avail. She has her 6-month check-up (a little late, I know) today so we'll see what Dr. Dzubay says.

Alyssa has been interested in Mills college lately, for her graduate work. As a result of it's proximity and extremely interesting and appealing program, I've been investigating UC Berkely as well. We're both pretty excited, we'll see how that goes.

We thankfully got a kid-free night last night for about an hour or so; I had arranged our kids to be divided amongst the local grandparents for the purposes of having a respite to enjoy Alyssa's birthday with each other. It's only the 3rd time we've been kid-free since Freya was born, and the first of those 3 that we were home and not at some event that required our attention. We enjoyed it as thoroughly as we could, and both grandparents reported good behavior (which means I'm gong to repeat this as much as possible).

As I have been accustomed to say at the end of posts, I must now return to my homework from the brief vacation I had allowed myself as a reward for the hard work I'd been doing.

C'est la vie.

Which reminds me of the new slogan I've coined for us.... "Hodie patimur cras celebrabimus."

Movin' along

2010-05-20T21:24:00.000-07:00

Lately Freya's favorite thing to do is stand up at things. She gets really mad if we just sit her down to play, she wants to stand. When she does tolerate being on the floor, she just moves right along. Not quite at a full crawl yet, but she's still pretty fast.

We've sorta switched gears with how we discipline/instruct Odin. We more often tell us what we want or what we don't like and ask him to stop. We're also making it really clear what the outcome of his behavior will be before he even does anything so that he knows and we don't just suddenly punish him for something he had no idea was bad. It's started working a bit, I expect we'll see more progress in a few weeks.

Good news for the Summer, for me anyway. I'll be in one class in week 0 from 9am to 6pm but it'll be only a week and it's super fun, and then one for the first third of Summer for 2 hours a day, and then I actually get to have a summer off for once because I don't have any more classes until Fall. Alyssa's classes keep her a bit more busy, but they shouldn't be hard. In the Fall she'll have her last classes and graduate at the end of Fall, I'm really excited for her. She's also going to have her professional musician website up in a few weeks. I'll be sure to add a link.

That's all for now, just wanted to add a quick blurb. Back to writing my paper on the sex lives of Roman emperors as discussed by Suetonius.

Cutest baby EVAR!!!!

2010-05-10T19:46:00.000-07:00

Title says it all.

More pix in Apr - Jun '10 folder.

More Teeth

2010-05-09T16:48:00.001-07:00

Freya appears to be cutting her second tooth. Very exciting. This one doesn't seem to hurt her as much. She's also really good at pulling herself up onto stuff and standing at it while holding on. They grow so fast, it's crazy.

Last night we were all treated to Alyssa's performance with Brandon at the FMO concert. It went really well. I look forward to the next one.

We may have bought a full size bed for Odin to move in to. He seems to sleep on one better when he stays at Grandma Paula's house, so we're going to let him try it here and see how it goes.

Tooth!

2010-05-05T22:22:00.000-07:00

Freya finally got her first tooth out!

We noticed it just now. She's been cranky about it all week and tonight she was chewing on a frozen toy and that must've helped her get it through the gums. She's been in a better mood the last hour or so and it's because that tooth is out now!!!!

Moving!

2010-05-05T20:50:00.000-07:00

We noticed Freya is almost ready to be pulling herself onto furniture and things. She's trying to do it all the time, and she can get to standing, she just can't get too much of a grip.

Today we finished with the last session of her massage class. It went well, and it's fun being able to connect with her through massage (which is something we've done with Odin as well).

School is keeping us busy. Alyssa's concert on Saturday went well, and she has another one this Saturday in which she is actually performing. I'm excited to hear it because I've been seeing/hearing the progress as she's been working on it all this term and last.

I've contacted a tutor about re-starting ancient Greek to prep for 300 level in the Fall. It she says yes, it will be very hard but very rewarding.

Have a mid-term to study for. Will try to get more pictures up soon.

Allergy!

2010-04-27T18:07:00.001-07:00

I just got a call from Dr. Wilson who confirmed Odin's allergies to soy, wheat, and likely dairy. We've already been keeping him off soy and dairy but wheat is going to be a bit of a stretch. Odin's school is already doing all three and we'll just have to be really good about it for the next 5-6 weeks until his follow-up appointment.

Pictures and Fun

2010-04-25T08:19:00.001-07:00

I've finally uploaded the photos and videos we've had collecting dust. A few were added to the Jan - Mar '10 album and a new album Apr - Jun '10 for the next quarter.

Apr - Jun '10

Freya is almost crawling perfectly, but either way she can get across our living room in a few minutes with the right motivation. She gets cuter and cuter all the time as this picture proves:

From Drop Box

That shot is from a new album called "drop box" which is where photos end up if I email them mobiley (which is the only way I can do photos on the go from my phone, since my phone isn't very cool. (I've also got BeenUp2, but nobody seems to look at that so I started adding to Picasa.)

Last night Alyssa and I had our second night out with neither of our kids (the first being her FMO concert a little while ago). We went to see Play! A Video Game Concert at the Hult Center. It was really cool, and Jeremy Soule was in the audience and seems to think it went well. Jake watched Odin and put him in bed for us. Brandon had Freya, who apparently was inconsolable for quite a while, to the point that some of his neighbors called the police! Either way, when we got there he had things well under control, I just hope she didn't scare him from watching her again!

Odin is getting up on his own around 6:30 or 7 every day, so we haven't been able to sleep in on weekends. We'll be trying wool curtains to keep the sun out and see if that works.

Alyssa and I are still working hard in school. Her 4 concerts will all be coming up soon and she's really been slamming herself to be ready.

Freya really moving

2010-04-18T19:04:00.000-07:00

Freya is definitely moving. It's kinda like a crawl because she pushes off with her legs but she's only sometimes up on her knees. This is a little earlier than Odin was because he creeped so much, but only a month or two early.

Soon she'll be asking me for my credit card and the keys to the car.....

3-year check-up

2010-04-15T21:19:00.000-07:00

Odin went in for his 3-year check-up with Dr. Dzubay today, who told us that he seemed fine in all respects and is doing well. He is 32.2lbs (50th percentile) and 35.25" tall (7th percentile) but his growth charts are cut-straight and normal.

It's sometimes scary for me to think that I have a 3-year-old and a 6-month-old. We've come a really long way, worked hard, and haven't fallen astray yet.

Odin's party

2010-04-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

We had some friends of Odin's over for his party today at Grandma Paula's house. We did activities like bowling, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, and tag and Monster Hunt. It was loads of fun. Guests brought some fun dishes and we made a rice-lentil mix which the adults ate, but the kids were busy with the fruit. Brandy's friend Erica made a soy and dairy free cake for Odin which was just incredible. We sure wore all the kids out, and with the exception of one slight accident, they all had tons of fun!

Parent-Teacher Meeting

2010-04-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday some of Odin's teachers met with us to talk about him. In short, he's doing extremely well, is very smart and able to do all they would expect and more, and seems to be getting along rather well. They all have a great time with him and didn't mention any problems. They laugh when they talk about him and we're glad he's got such a great thing going on at that school.

In other news, Freya's been sitting up to play, and she can stand when holding on to the edge of something. She's not quite rolling yet, but occasionally there's a bit of movement from one side to the other. She can stand on her hands and knees, but she doesn't go anywhere yet. Right now we've taken her off solid foods because it's giving her intestinal stress. Probably because we fed her too much too fast. But she wanted to eat everything in sight! She takes so well to food and she wanted everything she looked at, so we just went with it. Probably too much at once though.

Week 2 has started for us and we're starting to feel the full swing of things. Alyssa still only needs to compose this term, but she has a lot going on. Two concerts, some recording sessions, finals, a recital..... there's a lot on her plate. For me, it's the age-old battle of balancing the work-load from each class. I'm in a particularly advanced seminar course right now which requires the reading of articles which are only available through reserve at the library. This means I have to actually be at the library to read (rather than the convenience of being at home, or anywhere else with a checked out or purchased book) and it's proving difficult to find the right times (both when and amount).

Fortunately, one of my classmates is willing to study Latin with me every day before class starts, so I'm about to head there right now.....

Happy Birthday Odin!

2010-04-04T09:43:00.001-07:00

A little late, but we were up late last night so this morning is good enough.

Yesterday Odin turned 3 years old! It's hard to imagine it's been that long already.

Zaideh, Paula, and Melanie were here. We all had dinner and cake, and Odin opened some presents. I took lots of pictures and those will be up soon. We spent the day doing fun stuff, and last Thursday he got more stuff because the Roseburg family came down and took Odin to Red Robin (he's been talking about their fries ever since).

It's just really amazing to think that we've been parents for 3 years.....

News news news

2010-03-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

The Good

This term has started off really well. Our schedule allows Alyssa and I to alternate days of sleeping in while the other takes Odin to school where he is early enough for breakfast. We both have ample study time, and a large portion of it is actually being at home so we're able to work there, nap, relax, or go for a walk. (Read: maintain our sanity.) Odin seems to have gotten down a good bed-time routine (with the exception of some nights) which is giving him a bit more sleep, and he's surprisingly cooperative in the mornings (with the exception of some mornings).

Additionally, our classes seem to be going a little easier on us. Alyssa has nothing to do but compose all term, and I only need to keep up with my readings and translations which are much more friendly than last term. We get out by 2pm every day and grab Odin so there is more at-home time and we are doing nice meals and giving Odin, as well as ourselves, a good structure every day. It's working out well so far and we hope this term will be relatively stress-free, especially compared to last term, which was probably the worst in the history of our education.

The Bad

I've discovered I have even more allergens than I thought, and it's forcing me off of yet more foods I love. I'm trying to switch to the Eat to Live policy, rather than the Live to Eat, but it's a slow transition. Odin is also crossing more foods off his list, but we'll save that for.....

The Ugly

Odin can not have dairy, soy, or wheat, and it seriously cramps what he's able to eat at school. They are facilitating his dietary needs just fine, but he isn't adjusting very well. It's not that he has a problem staying away from the foods; he'll even insist he can't eat something because it has an allergen as an ingredient. The problem is how much it's stressing him out. His teachers told us he didn't have a good time when he could only eat a PBJ (they didn't have him off wheat yet) while the rest of the class got to eat cheesy potato salad. Anyway, we're working on it as best we can. I'm sure it will be better for him in the long run.

Photos

2010-03-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

Finally got those pix up in the Jan - Mar '10 album. Some random shots and vids, and then stuff from our hike up Mt. Pisgah and our trip to the Raptor Center.

Finally! An update!

2010-03-20T23:00:00.001-07:00

Well there's just so much to say. A lot has happened and, sadly, I won't be able to provide exact dates, but I'll talk about it all.

In no particular order......

Odin has been moved from the Panda room (2yrs) to the Caterpillar room (3-4yrs) on Mondays and Fridays to transition to being there full time when he turns 3 in a couple weeks. (No, we don't have the birthday plans yet. I'll post them here when we do.) He's really loving it, especially since his best friends Armstrong and June were moved up to that class a few weeks ago. The Caterpillar teachers tell us he does well and has a great time. The Panda teachers miss him.

Odin had some blood drawn for an allergy test. The results aren't in yet but we've taken him off dairy and soy per the doctor's orders for the time being. He's supposed to be off wheat as well but two was hard enough. He took to it rather well; he understands when there is soy or cow milk in something and wont ask for it, even if it's a favorite food. He had the occasional break-down or tantrum at first, and we think it was just stress about the food change combined with stress from how busy we got. More on that later.

Freya has been talking up a storm. She can clearly refer to me as Da-da and call for me. She calls Odin bu-buh (brother) and we're working on ma-ma.

I've been collecting some photos and videos so those will go up later tonight as well.

We're finally on spring break. It took quite a lot of work but we did it.

Alyssa's piece was performed in FMO with great success, and the composition she worked on all term was played well (according to her, I wasn't able to be there). I ended up staying up late every night of finals week working on a ten-page research paper, which turned out rather well (with huge thanks to Alyssa and Jason for helping me make edits). I'm confident that I did well, and I actually passed a second-year Latin class. (Vergil is fun, but rough. Damned poetic license....)

Today we enjoyed our first day off hiking up Mt. Pisgah with Melanie. Odin hasn't been hiking before and it's been years since my ankle felt good enough to manage. We had tons of fun. Lots of pictures and such. Wore us out....

Melanie is Dennis' (Alyssa's dad) partner and she's been staying with us for about a week or so now. She left Iowa (where they live) to stay with a friend in San Diego and came up to us after that to see the sights and check out U of O for her masters work after graduation. Thanks in large part to our subtle efforts, she fell in love with the place and is now trying to convince Dennis and James (her son) to move out here as well. We really hope they do (Alyssa hasn't seen her dad in more than a decade and I've never met him), and we're all having lots of fun out here.

I feel like there's a lot more to say, but for now that will do. I'll get working on those pictures and upload them.

One more thing; we did get a land line in our home, though it's almost useless since we have such adequate cell-phones. My number is 541-357-7436 and that will ring both my cell and our land line, so if anybody wants to drop us a line, use that! Cheers!

Long story short

2010-03-09T22:20:00.000-08:00

It's the last week of school and we're swamped, so I can't say much. What I can say is what I'll talk about in more detail later.

Odin was tested for food allergies. Freya is talking (have some good videos to post). Alyssa has had great performances lately. And nothing of note has happened to me.

Cheers!

On a Roll!

2010-03-04T21:46:00.001-08:00

With all the moving Freya has been doing, it sure took her a long time
to roll. She finally did just now from front to back. Yay!

--
Sent from my mobile device

Stats and growth

2010-02-22T19:13:00.001-08:00

I finally found the paper with Freya's stats from her appointment; 23.5 inches height (25th %), 15lbs 11oz (85th %). Growing well.

Yesterday she had solid food for the first time. Alyssa gave her some plums and she loved it! Today she had squash and we're learning that she is way less picky than Odin was. We're going to try some cereal and other such things but we're really happy about it. She's also creeping, so Alyssa claims, but I haven't seen it yet. She can almost sit up on her own and she never stops smiling and talking.

We're going to try letting her without her diaper a lot so she can learn to roll. We think the size of the cloth diaper is what's preventing her from doing it, and another mom we know who also uses cloth diapers said it was the same for her daughter.

Freya's growth and us being sick

2010-02-13T20:03:00.001-08:00

I forgot to mention that on Tuesday Freya had her 4-month check-up and was declared "doing great" which seems to be the words used most by Dr. Dzubay whenever we visit. I don't have her stats on me so I'll add those later, but Freya is thinning out a little though still pretty big, and seems to be developing fine.

In other news, we've all been sick. It started with Odin getting bronchial-something which turned into double ear infection (one in each ear), then Freya got that and we did after. Alyssa's worsened into pneumonia for which she took antibiotics. The antibiotics made her have some serious issues due to an allergy and she's off them now, pursuing homeopathic detox treatment. My cough (the only symptom I'd had) was getting really better until yesterday when it suddenly got worse and now I keep coughing and I can't talk because my throat hurts too much. (Ask Jake, I just called him and he told me to shut up and drink some tea.)

Other than that, things have been pretty quiet. Alyssa and I are searching for Grad schools. California is the most likely candidate. Mills for her and USCB followed by Standford for me. That is, if we can get in. But we're still looking around.

Freya sick

2010-02-04T15:09:00.001-08:00

Poor Freya has a double ear infection! She didn't even tell us! She'd gotten our cough and we took her to the doctor and he told us after looking in her ears. She wasn't whining, crying, or anything. Just her usual happy self! At least we caught it in time.

She also weighs 15lbs 8.3oz which is pretty big. We asked if her weight was okay (meaning high enogh) and he said "I'm looking at her thighs and I'm not too worried."

She seems a lot better now though.

Vids

2010-01-26T12:30:00.001-08:00

I just put 7 new videos in the Jan - Mar '10 album, Freya laughing and such, as promised. Enjoy!

Laughter!

2010-01-25T11:26:00.001-08:00

We finally got Freya to laugh this weekend!

Well, we didn't; Odin did, several times. We can't get her to, but she sure smiles a whole lot. (Don't worry; we caught it all on tape several times, I'll upload it later.) It was a nice weekend for us; we spent Saturday enjoying the sun downtown and eating out and shopping and what not. Sunday was a bit more work but also some hanging out with friends for a bit and watching the movies we rented.

Odin's current favorite movie; Disney's The Jungle Book (animated, from the 70s).

Alyssa is working hard on her compositions and will probably have a piece in this term's FMO concert. Her work load is so drastically reduced this term (all she ever has to do is compose) which is nice because of how huge mine got. Right now I'm supposed to be translating book 2 of Vergil's Aeneid so I better get back to it....

Hyrulians

Back to BC

The trip

Back in the US...

Teaching!

Update!

Skating!!

Odin on ice!!!

Ice skating today!

Fun day, but Odin is sick

Kerplunk!

Yay! Pictures

Happy Birthday to Freya!

I know, I know

It begins!

Training

Almost ready!

Visits and milestones

Community

Fun in the sun!

Eh?

Go Canucks Go!

On our way

T minus 1 week

Breather

We don't feed our kids

The Move

Garage Sale

A Place to Live!

Middle of the term

Trip to Vancouver!

Epic Birthday!

Pictures!!!11!!!

A Camera!

Ta-dah!

blogging!

Words and babies

Growth and movement

Oh Canada! (yep!)

Oh Canada! (eh?)

Sick

Look! An update!

*crickets*

What a week

1 week left!

Break

Vacation

Another one bites the dust

Non-traditional holiday

Much to say

1 Year Check-up for Freya!

Halloween!

Birthday pictures!

Pumpkin patch

Sickness

Birthday Party!

Birthday!

No camera, but....

Oh,

Progress

School!

School for all

Moving (again)

Tons of news!

Bowling!

Fun and growth

Walking!

To sleep, perchance to sleep.

Feverish?

Lincoln City!

Room switch and TV!

School and Car trouble

Ear infection

Happy Fathers' Day!

Updates

First hair cut!

Whew

Freya grows

Things moving along

Movin' along

crickets