Tooth fairy

The tooth fairy visited for the first time tonight. Saw her running off with Ivor's tooth. She took the tooth and didn't leave anything behind so I had to remedy the situation by putting a few coins under his pillow. Let's see what the kid will do with the money. :)

Puppy love

I had to introduce to you this little, adorable critter that my sister and her kids adopted not so long ago. When the pooch joined the family she was a toothless little snowball, so tiny she still had to be bottle fed. Of course the puppy stage lasted extremely briefly and she grew by leaps and bounds within days it seemed.

Meet Lory.

Lory stayed with us for four days while my sister was out of town. She desperately tried to get us to fall in love with her by pooping and peeing her way through the living room and by chewing on everything in sight. While nobody can deny Lory extreme cuteness and endless energy, her little stay with us helped me remember while I so adore my (nearly) perfect cat.

My kitty is a soft, lovable, and above all clean creature that is happy to lounge around and sleep all day without any needs for potty breaks at 5:00am. She supervises my exercising efforts while perching on her cat tree and trying to catch the handle of the elliptical trainer and the she'll happily sit in my lap while we watch TV. She's next to me right now lounging away on one of her cat beds (she has quite a few sleeping spots) a few inches from my laptop. Go cat people! :)

Anniversary

Today marks exactly one year that we've boarded the plane in Atlanta and started our European adventure. Wow! What a hard, memorable and successful year it was.

New school

Ivor and Mia have just completed their second week at the new school. It's further out than the last one so we now have to worry about the daily traffic but hopefully it'll be worth it. We've joined a Montessori program. They have a small group of only 23 preschoolers. All other kids are grades 1-5. All together the school has some 100 or so students (I haven't seen updated numbers for this school year). Next year Ivor will start first grade there and hopefully Mia as well when she's big enough. So far things have been going very nicely and smoothly. The teachers are taking interest in the kids and asking us relevant questions. Their group is small; environment is nice. Almost sounds too good to be true. Ivor even has a little American buddy, Ian, in his group. Ian is also 6. Apparently his family moved to Zagreb from Texas. Ivor loves it because he has another bilingual friend in addition to his Canadian buddy, Daniel that we play with when we can. We also saw another family there that Chris met through the language classes. Their daughter is now in first grade. All in all, many new friends are being made.

Put on the jackets

Just last week it was quite hot. It was in the high 80s low 90s during the day and we all thought that it would be nice if it cooled off a little. A little, mind you, not a whole lot! Temperature plummeted over the course of past two days. This evening, I decided that it was officially cold enough to turn on the heat. So I've cranked up a couple of radiators to get the temperature up. Chris thinks its funny but I disagree. Today's high was 53 and low 47. To me temperature in the 40s is a sufficient reason for heating. I see that Birmingham is still balmy. I'll have to come by...