Fall Fun

Just a few quick photos of our fall evening fun in the backyard. Trying to enjoy this nice weather before we're forced into hibernation. And don't worry about the photo of Agustín "throwing" Emilia; all the necessary safety precautions are always taken (and the naked body flying through the air is Gunther, the well-worn, much-loved Cabbage Patch doll that was once mine and now hers, not another small child).

I turned in my written preliminary examination last week, which is a great relief. Yay!!! Now it's just classes, teaching, and on to the next hoop to jump through.

Agustín the futbol star and his biggest fan

Washington Visit

For my 30th birthday (which was at the end of June), my mom offered to take me on a trip. For numerous reasons, not the least of which because I was already leaving Agustín and Emilia for two-and-a-half weeks this summer, I chose to make it a long-weekend visit to my brother Devin in DC. I’d never been to DC, if you can believe it, so it was nice to see some of the iconic sights. And even more fun to see Devin and his girlfriend Noelle, and get a glimpse into their life on the east coast.

One of Devin’s jobs is as a bike tour guide, so he hooked us up with some free bike rentals, showed us around and shared lots of interesting tour guide lore. My favorite of the memorials was FDR’s (a bit off the beaten tourist track, but not far with bikes), shown in the photo above.

We were able to meet up with a friend of mine from the area, who I’d met earlier in the summer at SIIC. Above we’re all enjoying some music in the park before enjoying an amazing Asian-fusion dinner.
Here we are just before a morning of kayaking on the Potomac River.

August Update

Finally uploading the August photos and sitting down to write an update. I can’t believe I’m back to classes tomorrow and summer is officially over. Although I’ve spent a huge chunk of time since returning from SIIC in July writing my written preliminary examination (one of the many hoops you must jump through when pursuing a PhD), we also had plenty of time for fun. I think I’ll tell the story mostly through photos (and it will probably take more than one post).

Earlier this month we went to a kids luau hosted by the city. The photo above is of Emilia with a few of her buddies at the luau. Here’s another of our family on the same bench, and Emilia and papa playing in the grass.



Uncle Devin gave us this soccer (we—including Emilia—prefer the word ‘futbol’) net as a gift. It’s already been the source of much family fun. Thanks, Devin!

Babysitting Nelly (Yaya and Gampa’s dog). Emilia always wants to hug her; Nelly is not amused.

Ice cream at the pool. “Big pool, big pool!” Emilia always says.

“Big spoon, big spoon!” is another favorite phrase, as Emilia seems to think she’s outgrown the toddler spoons. I must admit though, she handles a full-sized spoon rather well for someone who is not yet two.

We all enjoyed watching the Olympics together in the evenings. Our favorites included swimming (“big pool, big pool!”) and gymnastics. Emilia loves jumping, and the first time she saw gymnastics, they were doing the floor routine, so I told her she was going to see jumpy girls. Well, “jumpy girl” is now one of her favorite games. She always wanted to see “big pool” or “jumpy girls.” We found her sport when one day diving came on and she yelled, “Big pool! Jumpy girls!”

Lastly, Agustín and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary this weekend. My parents took Emilia and we spent a whole day together, just the two of us. We didn’t do anything particularly extravagant, but it was very nice and rare for us to spend that much time together, alone without Emilia, and, perhaps more importantly, without trying to do anything more than just relax and enjoy each other’s company.

Now it’s back to school for me tomorrow. Where did the summer go?

That’s all for now, but I’ll post an update about my trip to Washington DC (to visit my brother Devin) soon.