Now that I am Thirty..

Now that I am officially thirty, I thought I would post a list of things I must do before I turn forty...but I couldn't come up with much for my next decade. My twenties were way fuller than I could have imagined - I got married, domesticated, had two kids (almost four), I have gotten to travel a ton, graduated from college, and am in graduate school to become an NP, which has always been my long term goal. Ten years ago I probably would have guessed that I would be living far, far away from Olympia and a MD - but my life so far has been way better than I could of guessed.
So in looking forward, I really don't know what to except. My one big goal is that we live abroad for at least one year, or somehow configure our lives so that we can spend one month travelling every year. There are lots of books I want to read, things I want to experience, but I am not to worried that I will come up with some way to make it exciting. If I lack excitiment in my thirties, I can just think long and hard that I will be the parent of four teenagers ten years from now. Yikes.

Birthday Party

Saturday evening was my thirtieth birthday party/adoption shower. It was really lovely and wonderful - we ate a lot of ice cream and cupcakes, chatted until late in the night and generally had a good time. Thanks to the great generosity of my friends and family we are now $1000 closer to paying for all our travel expenses and now have lots of clothes, linens and a very cool doll house for the girls. I feel very, very lucky to be surrounded by so many great people. Ariel also made a very close facsimile of my dream dining room table from Crate & Barrel - he took four hours, a $50 piece of plywood and made the beautiful table top that you see above - it sits on our old dining room table and can seat ten. I am still celebrating my rather self centered birthday countdown. Ar finished a big job today and I don't work, so tomorrow we are heading out to Westport to surf away the beautiful day.

For any of you looking for a film recommendation - we just finished watching The Long Way Round - Ewan Mcgregor and Charley Boorman made a documentary of their motorcycle trip across the world from London to New York - going East. It was fantastic - and would have been perfect, except their fondness for the F-word made it strictly late night viewing in our house.

Ikea Couch Real Cheap

Last week Ariel decided that he could no longer tolerate our half mangled Ikea couch. It did not stand up well to our children...since we have less than no money due to our adoption, he somehow had to come up with a new couch that cost very, very little - but was still better than what we have. This led us to Craig's list and a near miss of my dream couch; a red Pottery Barn sectional for 200$. We finally settled on this nice looking big sectional and rented a U-Haul to drive fifty miles to pick it up. After finding out that the rental truck wasn't really 20$, but in fact charged $.60/mile I wasn't super thrilled - I was pretty okay with our decrepit Ektorp.
After going through a seemilngly very long drive to get to the seller's house - I was not going to leave without a new couch. The good news is the couch is in good condition and is a very nice, high end big, comfy couch - the bad news is it is pretty ugly. It has a very weird grey/tan quilty pattern that doesn't match at all with what little aesthetic I have. Combine that with getting lost, almost running out of gas, stopping at a very sketchy gas station, and letting Isaac eat an entire bag of sugared gummy worms - and it made for a VERY memorable evening. But now our new, somewhat ugly, but still very nice couch sits monopolizing our living room. I figure at least I won't feel that bad as our children slowely destroy the couch over the next several years.
Anyone want an Ikea couch for real cheap? Must Pick Up.

Happy Father's Day!

I just wanted to say that this is my husband, who is one of the best fathers I have ever met. He gets his kids breakfast in the morning and sits down to watch cartoon with them....he puts them to bed every night after reading them a story...he spends seven hours baking them birthday cakes....he draws Big Wheel racing courses in our cul de sac and spends hours racing around with them. He is fun, and loving and wonderful. it is truly a pleasure to get to watch him be a great Dad.

We Love You and Thanks for being you! - Mary Ellen, Isaac, and Elias

June Birthdays

Ariel has a tradition of making really fantastic birthday cakes for the boys...June 7th was Elias's 3rd birthday and Ar made him a train cake. Everything you see on this train is completely edible - it even has candy tracks. Sorry the picture is to small to appreciate it fully - I am still not very good at this photo shop thing.






My birthday isn't until the 27th - but Ariel bought me this very snazzy wetsuit last time we went surfing. He didn't even tell me that it was all mine - I just thought that the surf shop had really upgraded it's rentals. Ariel is winning kudos left and right.

Isaac is done with kindergarten next week, and any day know we will learn our travel dates to Ethiopia. If you haven't already recieved an invite (and you live in Western Washington) my 30th birthday is now an adoption shower - and we would love for anyone we know to come!

Calgon, Take me Away

Since my to do list today includes writing a paper, studying for a test, putting away a pile of laundry so big it makes me want to cry, and convincing my lovely two year old son that peeing on our elderly dog is not even a little funny...I decided that what I really need to do is write a blog.

I picked up a Lonely Planet about Ethiopia and now have a much better idea of what to expect in our July trip to Addis Ababa. There are some neat sounding ethnological/historical museums, a giant outdoor market (the largest in Africa) with lots of pickpockets, yummy restaraunts, and thanks to Ethiopia being the place where coffee was first discovered and having been occupied by Italians - lots of great coffee shops. And it is not a malarial zone, which I am really, really grateful for since a previous round of antimalarial medication left me somewhat unhinged. Best of all, of course, Ethiopia is were our soon to be daughters are living. Since we have found out that we only need to be in Addis for five days, I have decided that Ariel and I will be spending 3 days in Paris on our 'layover'. This will our first and probably only vacation until our kids reach adulthood -so I am seizing the opportunity.

All this thinking about trips has got me making mental lists of trips I want to take as a family -and what better thing to do with a mental list than post it on the web??

• Take a train trip across Canada from Vancouver to Nova Scotia - with stops in Banff, Montreal and Toronto



• Taking our entire extended family to Saladita, Mexico for a few weeks, where we can surf this wave and speak spanish.



• Spending two weeks somewhere in Italy - maybe Cinque Terre, maybe a farm in Puglia


• A month long camping trip down the California Coast