Here We Go

It's taken us about a month to settle in, so now Chris and I are starting to venture out and discover Quito.

Our first taste was a night tour of the Centro Historico district, which is basically downtown Quito.

It's incredibly beautiful. And a bit sketchy for tourists. Our tour company actually hired local police officers to follow our group. The crime here isn't violent, but there are plenty of purse snatchings, etc., especially after dark. And it's dark here by 6:30 every night. but with night views like this.. I'm not complaining.

Quito

On June 15th, we packed up everything we owned and jumped off the deep end. We left our cozy home in our cozy suburb of DC, hopped a looong flight
and moved to the center of the earth-- Quito, Ecuador. And while I have yet to venture out with our camera for safety reasons, I can tell you this much.. we love it here. Sure, the crime is rampant and they don't refrigerate their eggs or their milk, but we couldn't be happier. For the first two months, we stayed at the Swissotel. It was comparable to any nice American hotel. The views from our Suite were awesome.
The kids are doing pretty well with the transition. We'll stay here until we can move into our house. Right now, we hang out at the hotel most days, it's better that way until we learn the city a bit more. We have a few toys from home, so we just play "chef" and "doctor" to our heart's content.

Hoarders

Sometimes when I look around our house, a wave of panic starts to roll in. For months, we've made trips to Costco, Target and the grocery store.. trying to stockpile everything we may or may not able to buy or have shipped to Quito.

We've got everything from two years' worth of baby wipes to two years' supply of Spaghetti sauce. So, we know our babies' butts will be clean and we won't starve to death.

Thanks, Stephanie, for making the trek down from NYC to help me make lists and organize. Mostly I just needed someone to witness the chaos and reassure me that I'm not crazy.

Look Ma, No Pedals!

We bought Elise a Balance Bike for her birthday. The concept seemed to make sense. Why make your kid learn to ride a bike by abruptly pulling off the training wheels and then watching her fall down and get all scraped up? If she learned to balance FIRST, then riding a two-wheeled bike would be easy. Elise was really excited at first, but her joy soon wore off when she realized it would take her months to learn how to ride this thing.

Big Girl

On June 2nd, our Elise turned 3. With a week or so to go before the big move to Ecuador, we wanted to do something that was a) memorable for her and b) easy for us to clean.

The answer was the spray ground at Fairfax Corner.

We love this little spot. It's so fun to watch the kids squeal with delight when the fountains shoot up!





What a great way to say good-bye to our NoVa friends!

Lazy Days of Summer

One of things we'll miss most about Northern Virginia is how comfortable it is. We are 8 miles from DC and all it has to offer.. yet we can always nestle back into our quiet little neighborhood. One of the annual rites of summer for us has been McLean Day. It's like those small town fairs we used to go as kids. The kiddie rides are free, red and blue balloons are flying from every stroller and the food is really, really good.


This year we went with friends and it was even better. Elise's BFF, Gwynne, and her dad met us there. Gwynne's mama was on bed rest, expecting twins, so walking the hot fairgrounds was not an option.


weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Spring Fling

We finally did it. After four years in DC, we finally saw the Cherry Blossoms! We lured our favorite photographer up here and took her on a wild ride through the city, trying to find the most photogenic spots.

We started at a historic home near Georgetown called Dumbarton Oaks. We found some Cherry Blossoms here, but the star of the show was the plum trees and their gorgeous purplish blossoms.




Then we moved mountains (and police barricades) to get over to the Tidal Basin before the sun set. We made it with about 30 minutes to spare. Way worth the potential jail time.

Fast Forward

I'll spare you my thousand excuses for not keeping up with this blog. I keep thinking "when I 'such and such' THEN I'll have time to post. Well, life just keeps speeding along and, somehow, things don't settle down, they only speed up.

So, here is a renewed effort to post. If not for the few loyal friends and family who have stuck with me on this blog, but for my own personal record of life as I know it.

Field of Dreams

Fall has always been my favorite time of year. So, a few weeks after Christian was born I felt the itch to get out and try and capture a few memories.

After a long search, we found a wonderful photographer, Susan Driggers. The only catch.. she lived well over an hour away. But, we loved her work, so we packed everyone up and headed to a random field near Fredricksburg, VA.

We didn't know what to expect, especially with a new baby and a two-year old without a nap.. but in the end, Susan worked her magic and we were so happy to have these photos.

Oh Baby!

Since my last post waaay back in 2010, our family has seen a lot of major changes. The most notable, and precious, was the addition of baby Christian.

This little guy arrived three weeks early, but still managed to tip the scales at over 8lbs. This was our first time going through the "traditional" birthing process, so it was completely different than our experience with Elise, who was an emergency C-section that took all of two hours. This time around the fun started at 32 weeks when I was put on bedrest because I started dilating early.

We followed that up with three, separate, false-alarm trips to Labor and Delivery and then, finally, on Sunday, October 17th, the contractions from hell kicked in.. and we were off. Many, many, many hours later (it was all a blur) I heard my little guy cry for the first time... and then we were four.

Spring in DC

We've had our house in DC for three years now, but we haven't really *lived in DC for three years. And, while we've been away, we always seem to miss DC's most famous season.. the Cherry Blossoms. This year, we were determined to see the beautiful pink bursts. We decided to go out the last weekend of the festival. Big mistake-- not a single cherry blossom left standing! But, we did land smack dab in the middle of tulip season!


DC has some great arboretums, too. Elise loves her horticulture!

Setting Sail

Our long, nasty winter wore us down, so we decided to take a 10-day cruise through the Caribbean. We sailed through about six different islands. We found a great deal on a family suite, so we had this awesome balcony to take it all in!

My mom loves to travel and she'd never been on a cruise, so she sailed with us. The islands were beautiful. St. Lucia was one of our favorites. It didn't feel as touristy and we had a great guide who drove us deep into the island.

Elise loved this African museum.

But not as much as she loved the beach.

All the beaches were this beautiful, white sand and turquoise water.

We had a great day in Barbados. We had a really elaborate lunch at the beautiful Sandy Lane resort. It's apparently popular among the rich and famous.. and two year old girls.

We started and ended our trip in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This was probably our favorite stop. The old part of San Juan has a very European feel.

Let It Snow!

January brought two major snowstorms to DC. In one week, we got over four feet of snow, pretty much unheard of for this area. It was eery. The entire city shut down for a week. Here's what our grocery store looked like for several days. Totally surreal!



It's going to be a long winter.

OK, maybe it won't be so bad.