Gwen's birthday

Greetings! This week feels like it was quite a bit longer than it was. I asked Rus what happened this week, and when he started listing things off, I said, oh yeah, I guess that was this week, it seems like weeks ago.
Monday the kids had the day off from school, so we went up to the zoo. The baby orangutan was quite a show off, and very cute. She even waved at us.
Wednesday was Gwennie’s third birthday. She was very excited. Since she was turning three, the night before her birthday we left all of her baby bottles (which she was still insisting on using) out in a pretty gift bag for the Baba Fairy. (For those of you who haven’t heard of this distant relative of the Tooth Fairy, the Baba Fairy comes and takes all the bottles that a big girl doesn’t need anymore and leaves her a big girl present in it’s place. We had been telling Gwen for a couple of months that this would happen when she turned three, hoping she’d be ok with it. (Any of you who spent time around Gwen would know how attached to her “juice babas” she was.) So that morning, we were pretty pleased when she ran downstairs as soon as she woke up to see what the Baba Fairy had left her. She found a white coin scarf for bellydancing, just her size. So she immediately put on her tank top and white sparkly skirt, grabbed a veil and bellydanced her way into a great birthday. To her great credit she has not asked for a baba once since.
That evening we put up the Tinkerbell decorations that Gwen had picked out. We danced with balloons, ate fairy cake and ice cream and opened presents; thank you to all of you who were able to come. Saturday we all went to the dollar theater to see Madagascar 2 (which we all thought was just as funny, if not more so, than the original). After that we went to the toy store so Gwen could use her birthday money. She picked out a bag of tropical animal action figures, a larger sea turtle figure and a very soft white kitty. She loves her kitties! We are all very glad Gwen is part of our family, she makes us laugh our faces off every day; we love her.
Friday Rus had a job interview that seemed to go well. We won’t go into too much detail right now, but will keep you posted. Please continue to pray for us, we appreciate it.
Last night I sort stumbled onto the discovery that one of the Miss America Pageant contestants, Miss Montana in fact, was a bellydancer! She was using Raqs Sharqi (a more correct term for the dance, meaning dance of the East) as her talent for the competition. How cool is that?! So we actually watched the competition. She didn’t end up being one of the finalists : ( but it’s still cool. Bellydancers are everywhere now! Ha ha ha! (arm flexing pose) So anyways, Miss Montana Raqs!
Pictures: Gwen opening presents, MaryMegan, Laurelin, and Xander playing airplane, blowing out candles, on her new Big Wheels bike, dancing at the party.

They don't HAVE cages in zoos!

Last week, Gwen was engaged in one of her favorite pastimes-pretending to be a monkey. She declared loudly, "Monkeys run around in cages!" Xander, having absorbed some of the modern terms one learns working at a zoo, said, "Gwennie, they don't HAVE cages in zoos...they're have ENCLOSURES!"

All of this job searching seems to be bearing some fruit...I have an interview on Friday for a pretty good position, so keeep your fingers crossed. I've heard back from a couple of other places, so apparently I'm still in the running for those, too.

Our computer died again, a couple of times, since we last wrote, but we think it's here to stay...we hope, so maybe we'll get back to weekly posting. I was going to post some pictures from Christmas, but they may have been fried with all the backing up and restoring. If so, at least there's a copy on Mom and Dad's computer in California.

With Jon's extensive guidance, I was able to get my podcast up on my aquarimax website. It is only of interest to people who are interested in aquariums, but I just thought I'd mention it as it's something I've been wanting to do for a long time. It's even searchable on iTunes!

coming home

Hello all. We managed to arrive safely back in Utah. We left a day early in order to avoid the snow that was predicted all over Utah on the day we would have been driving in originally. The kids went back to school on Monday, Laurelin was thrilled, the boys were resigned. We had about a foot and a half of snow, so the kids have been enjoying sledding out in the park. Rus went sledding with them too, and even
sled down the hill standing up, surfer style. Yesterday Gwen went down on the sled all by herself, from the top of the hill even. When the sled stopped at the bottom she yelled out, “Babbo! I made it!”

For anyone that’s interested my dance class will be performing in a festival called Springfest, March 7th. (I don’t know what time we’ll be at yet.) It’s at the Utah state fairgrounds, $7 admission. You can get the info for it here, http://www.bellydancingbythia.com/page1.html

We have more pictures from our trip but our computer is holding them for ransom, and it is in the shop...again. grrrr. Soooo, when the naughty thing is at home again and functional we'll put up more pictures. The ones that are here are: Gwen in her pirate headband on New Year's Day, the moon being beautiful over the mountains, and the amazing fog outside our car window driving home from California.