Peas

Whenever I take the bag of peas out of my freezer and see that they have melted a little and then in the process of freezing again formed a hard solid block, I pound it against the counter to loosen them all up and in the background of my mind I hear my 8 month old daughter's laughter. When she was about eight months old I discovered that nothing in the whole wide world could make her laugh harder than when I pounded the bag of peas against the counter. Pounding a frozen bag of peas against the counter is one of my favorite things.

Going Home

We bought our plane tickets last night for all three of us to fly to Home at the end of August. I am very excited. We haven't really been home-sick much since we've been out here. I think it's because we have a phone plan that allows us to call home whenever we want, and we video chat regularly with family. But I am suddenly very excited to see family, and even more excited for Zariah to see family.

We still aren't sure what's going to happen next. I have spent hours and hours researching possibilities, and one in particular; finding a job in Taiwan teaching English, but nothing is certain yet. Yes, that's what all the big mysterious research was about. I know it's kind of a let down. It wouldn't be if I could say, "We're moving to Taiwan!". But I can't, so sorry. Everything is still up in the air. There is a company we have applied for and they said they want to hire us, but it may be a couple of months before they can match us up with a position. We have continued to apply for other positions in Taiwan as well as positions closer to Brent's chosen field. I'll keep you posted.

I am still without a computer most of the time, so my posts will continue to be sporadic.

Picture Catch Up

Zariah turned three quite some time ago. We had a Dora picnic at the park across the street. She didn't get to blow out any candles because the wind was so incredibly strong, but it was still fun.

We were able to arrange a web cam "party" with one at least one set of grandparents. They got to help sing happy birthday and watch her blow out the candles, eat cake and open a few presents. That was really neat.
One of her presents was a little ceramic fairy with paint. When she was done I told her to go look in the mirror so she could see the paint on her cheek. When she saw it, she got a big smile on her face and started laughing. It was three days before we could get her to let us wash the paint off. I guess I wasn't very motivated, it was just so cute that she liked it so much.
Brent's sister was in London with her husband and his family. I know I already told you about this, but I promised I'd post pics. So this one is on the balcony of the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square.
Guess.

Bath.
Roman Baths exterior.

Some friends of ours took us to a place called Portmeirion. We started off in the town, then moved down to the beach.


Then took a walk through the woods.
Then we hiked up a little way to a Temple with an amazing view of the village, beach and mountains beyond that.
I love that moss grows on EVERYTHING here.

We found a stump with a bunch of coins stuck into it like this. So we decided to add a few.
Our wonderful friend shown here. Took some amazing photographs of our day out. WAY better than what you see here. She put a few up on her blog, and I'm sorry, but if you're reading this, you have to go see it. She has two shots at the end of her post of my daughter that I can't get enough of.
We've been to Wales several times by now and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves each time, but this time was it, we officially fell in love. I very rarely buy souvenirs, but I just had to. They are so cool with the Welsh on it and the dragon from their flag.
One last thing. These aren't very good pictures, but I just had to share. A few of Zariah's friends were visiting.
John was trying to blow up a balloon. His mother and I couldn't stop laughing, just look at his face! This picture doesn't do it justice, it was so funny.

Corn Tortillas

My research is currently at a stand still, but I still haven't had much time to blog since our second computer decided it didn't want to work anymore. Brent is in the process of writing his dissertation and has the computer with him at school every day from 8-5. I finally have a few minutes of alone time with our laptop. So here are a few things I've been wanting to write about.

First, corn tortillas. A few months ago, I was in the grocery store, walking down the international aisle toward the tortillas. As I came closer I noticed a new package on the shelf and my heart fluttered. It said "Corn Tortillas"! I knew it would only be a matter of time. From the sound of it, most Brits love what they've had of Mexican food and are dying for more. I snapped up the package to get a closer look and my heart sank. These were not corn tortillas. After staring at them for a few moments, I felt myself erupt in laughter. They were flour tortillas with flecks of corn meal cooked into them! Not long after, my lovely parents sent me some real corn tortillas, and I decided to do a side-by-side comparison. So here you are.





Sorry I don't have an extreme close up so you can see the cornmeal specks, but these are funny enough. Corn and Flour tortillas are so distinctly different in look, texture and taste, it was just so amusing to me that they were attempting to pass one off as the other with a little handful of cornmeal.

Well I've run out of time, so I guess that's it for now. Ta ta.