An e-mail by any other name...

Left: Gwen blows out the candles on her "fishy cake" for her 2nd birthday last month.

Greetings, folks. In October, Kelly and I finally broke down and entered the world of cell phones, justified by the amount of traveling I would have to do for work. Now, we have decided to take a similar step, by transfering our once-weekly-now-somewhat--sporadic emails to the world of blogs. There were some of you who preferred to receive e-mails, but we can cater to those folks as well...all you have to do is click on the "subscribe to: Posts" link on the blog, and you will receive the new content on the blog whenever we post it. Those of you who would rather check the blog when the mood takes you can simply do that. It seems that this allows for the best of both worlds.

Gwen is trying to potty-train herself, alerting us and running to the bathroom when she gets the urge. She is sporadic, but is self-motivated...and as we all know, motivation is more than half the battle.


Laurelin hasn't been feeling well lately. On Valentine's Day, she said, "Oh, Grandma! It's so sad to be sick on Valentine's Day! I was looking so forward to it!"She's so hilarious with her vocabulary and the way she words things.


Xander has been enjoying the Droon books, among others, and has said several times recently, "Reading is my life!"


Isaac has been sick off and on for a while, but has made good use of the time, reading mountains of books.



Both Isaac and Xander have been boosting their schools' Read-a-thon numbers considerably.



Kelly and I had a very interesting date this past Friday. We had three destinations:







Destination #1: Tropical Fish Wholesalers in Draper. I had read about this place at http://www.utahaquatics.com/... and we decided it was worth a visit. It turns out that this shop holds 1000 aquariums, featuring fish from all over the world, many of which I had hitherto seen in only books or on the internet. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived, we had only fifteen minutes before closing time, so we rushed from tank to tank. Just to name a few, the highlights included the brilliantly colored Nothobrancius ranchovi and juveniles of the truly gargantuan tiger datnoid. We'll definitely be going back.


Destination #2: Omar's Living Cuisine, a raw food restaurant in Sugarhouse. I chose something called the Seaweed salad, which was delicious, very reminiscent of teriyaki. Kelly had a raw falafel with some spicy broccoli soup. She ate half of the soup before handing it off to me, not being as tolerant of spiciness, but enjoyed her food as well. For dessert, we shared a slice of raw chocolate mango pie with raspberry/blackberry sauce, which was marvelous. If you've never tried "Raw Food" (I don't mean the occasional fresh fruit or vegetable here), that would be the one to go for. Kelly has decided that we're going back for her birthday dessert.

Kelly can fill you in on

Destination #3:

We went to Thia's bellydance boutique (also in Salt Lake). I needed a black coin scarf for our performance in March, which I will give you the info for hereafter, for any interested parties. It was a lovely time...a whole store full of sparklies, and music and DVDs. The lady working at the store that night happened to be the moderator for the utah bellydancer yahoo email group that I'm on, so we had a nice chat, and I found an assuit scarf like I really liked, so all in all in was very nice.

Viktoriya's students are performing at Thia's Springfest March 1. It's at the Utah State Fairgrounds in SLC, and runs from 10am to 10pm. We should be performing at about 1pm, if you come to see us you'd probably want to be there by 12:30 just to be sure. It's $5 per person to get in. If you want to stay you'll see a variety of dancers, some beginning students, some better students, some professionals, some people who call themselves professionals but really shouldn't, some really good dancing and some people who have been dancing for 20 years but still can't execute a decent hip lift, but it's fun, and there will be vendors selling lovely sparklies and things, it's a good time. You can find more info at www.bellydancingbythia.com

well, have a lovely week all!