You say potato, Elizabeth says meh

Today was a big day in our little girl's life; Elizabeth ventured into the world of solid food consumption. We initiated her with sweet potatoes and she had mixed feelings about them.

At first she was excited, but then she got a little overwhelmed by the whole swallowing concept. I'm sure the blinding camera flashes and the exclamations of four doting grandparents didn't help much. We'll see how she feels about sweet potatoes tomorrow.

Also Elizabeth is now the proud owner of two teeth. Fortunately she made it through the teething process without too much fuss. She's a little trooper.

Elizabeth's six-month birthday

Hello, faithful blog fans. Just a quick update to note for historical reasons that, no, we didn't forget Elizabeth's six-month birthday. Here's proof of the commemoration:

And here's a blurry picture of her first tooth. No, despite all the vomiting, this isn't a tic-tac.

I have to go now to call the Tooth Fairy and set up a payment plan.

Istanbul, Turkey, 2009; A Time Forgotten, Or: Babies First Turkish Delight

Guest Contributor: Keyvan (pronounced, "Leh-bas, eh-toe, dahr-be-yahr")

Before starting this blog entry, allow me to first thank Justin and Kate for bestowing upon me the chore of writing the blog for this trip. I loved meeting everyone and buying their friendship.

What a trip, what a trip! This trip marked a first of many sorts for all of the travelers involved. This was the first time that Kate, Elizabeth, and I had to deal with Justin's incessant place dropping. The guy is ridiculous, you can't have a conversation with him without hearing him tell you about all the places he's visited. We get it ... you've traveled everywhere and done everything. I love being country and you can't change me.

The trip could be broken into three parts: 1.) Arrival, 2.) the middle part, 3.) Departure.

1.) Arrival

We flew Lufthansa airlines into Istanbul and boy was the food good! Frankly, this was my favorite portion of the trip because they gave you a German candy bar with your meal. Delicious! Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of this, but trust me, Germans know their chocolate!

After arriving, we grabbed a cab and Justin began bothering his baby (Kate, being used to his abuse, attempted to draw my attention away, so as "not to cause a scene.")










We stayed at the Big Apple Hostel (my first hostel). The Big Apple hostel (BAH, as they preferred to call it) far exceeded my expectations. My only knowledge of hostels derived from the movie, "Hostel." The main difference being you got your own shower! The rest of the experience is pretty similar to the film.

Turkey is a muslim-majority country with a secular government or so I've heard. Coming from America this provides a bizarre, post-apocalyptic vision of the world with muslim prayers sang throughout the city everyday, every 24/5 hours a day. However, in the words of Zain, "No." Staying in the "Old World" portion of the city you would expect we would hear and perhaps to a smaller degree witness prayers or movement to a mosque for prayers, but we noticed no such occurances. The only evidence of actual prayers was captured on our first night in Istanbul, through a fence.


Our first, full day in Istanbul consisted of sight-seeing around the "Old World" section of Istanbul; visiting the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, venturing off into the Bazaar and finally eating dinner near the BAH.

The morning began with breakfast, complimentary of the BAH. Although quite simple, it was wonderful. We had options of feta cheese, hard-boiled eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, black olives, bread (lots of it) and butter and a sour cherry spread. After filling ourselves up, we walked to the Blue Mosque (BAH is next door to this holy shrine). Upon arriving, to our great fear, we noticed a local dog had apparently enjoyed what appeared to be the same bread we had for breakfast, however, this poor pup didn't seem to have the energy we had. Perhaps a chilling vision of things to come.



Justin and Kate wanted a picture with the Blue Mosque - they wouldn't stop.


The Blue Mosque is enormous in size and tiled with ornate blue tiles. Warning: History Lesson - There are 6 minarets at the Blue Mosque and at some point this was considered contraversial (although the Adana in Turkey also has 6 minarets). This was contraversial because the Kabbeh in Mecca (the holiest site in all of Islam) used to have 6 spires and the sultan was considered presumptous for matching the Kabbeh's number of minarets. To overcome this historical beef, the sultan paid for a 7th minaret at the Kabbeh and all was settled.

Inside the exterior walls of the Blue Mosque, you find a large courtyard. Shortly after entering the courtyard a small earthquake struck Istanbul - you can notice this on the video clip.





Entering the mosque itself required one to remove their shoes and for muslim women to cover their heads with a scarf. Kate looks like a gypsy in this clip.





We did witness baby adoration, in particular, adoration of Elizabeth. Interestingly enough, there was a moratoriam on babies approximately 20 years ago in Turkey and as a result, the Turks are unfamiliar with the appearance of a baby and thus awe-struck. It was cute at first and quickly became a hinderance on our ability to make good time throughout the city.

Italy: Three dense gents with no pretense

Amidst the verdant Tuscan hills, our adventure started.

Actually, it started just a few hours before that in the Frankfurt Hahn airport where I asked Phil if he could eat every last bite of a large dutyfree Toblerone on the flight to Italy. He said he could. So, being the juveniles that we are, I bought one for him and made it an official dare. Here’s that champ now – too overzealous to even unwrap the chocolate and honey happiness.
Pisa:
Finally, Tuscany. We landed in Pisa saddened by the fact that Phil only finished half the Toblerone because he didn’t want to go into diabetic shock on the plane. I thought that would have been fun to watch. He did not.

Once on terra firma, we wasted no time getting to our ultimate destination. Seeing this guy.
Oh that’s me, brightening the day by being the butt of an embarrassing butt joke. I was posing like a kitty because I wanted Keyvan to angle the camera so the Tower appeared to be lodged straight in my bum. (Did I already use the word juvenile?) The funny part (not to me of course) was that Keyvan always “almost had it,” forcing me to hold that pose for the better part of five minutes while locals and tourists alike walked slowly by and actually started to gather in a semicircle to watch I believe.

The sun also brightened the day and made it easy to see that Keyvan was actually, creatively, amazingly supporting the Leaning Tower with nothing but his head. What a guy.Florence:
A short train ride and a few Toblerone pieces later we were in the most beautiful of Italian renaissance cities. The city had some of the world’s most famous art, architecture, gelato, and piazzas. It also had what seemed to us an exceeding amount of gallantry and class. Too bad we didn’t have any.
Here’s me with a neo-Nazi haircut the barber thought I asked for.
Here’s Keyvan scratching an itch Mona Lisa had. I'm apparently smiling at Keyvan's elbow.
And here’s Phil doing god knows what inappropriateness to this perfectly harmless and helpless hunka mozzarella.
To further display our lack of class, we became best friends with a trashcan. And brought a bottle of vodka with us everywhere we went.
Luckily, we were able to regain some refinement by eating at one of the best and most famous restaurants in the city: Il Latini: A place where Phil ate so much he hasd to go to bed at 8 p.m.
Rome:
Our adventure that seemed to more and more revolve around Phil eating things took us to Rome, a place rich in culture and history but downright ghetto-welfare in terms of food. It was so bad, in fact, that Keyvan had some sort of violent, shuddering convulsion in front of almost every monument in the city.
One saving grace was the gelato, which gave us a violent shuddering and altogether pleasant convulsion of a different type. Multiple times. Oh
We saw all the traditional sights and I’ll save you the time of my proving it. Instead, here are more pictures of Keyvan losing it.

What happened to all those trips you guys took?

I am messing with the chronological ordering of this blog by posting this entry. We owe you two posts (one on Istanbul and one on Italy), but I am impatient of waiting for their authors to get cracking. So, here is a bit of what's been going on around here . . . dinner-time hijinks, attempts at "manual" vibrato, toe-jam sampling, and strawberry-hat modeling. 

Here Justin thinks Elizabeth looks like an old bitty sitting on a bench saying something like "Good heavens. When is that darned bus going to come? I guess I'll have to have one of those hard candies I keep in my purse."

Oh the horror - I HAD to go to Croatia for work

Unlike most of my boondoggley work trips which take me to such unappetizing places as Azerbaijan, Bosnia, and scabies-infested Macedonia, this last one was a pleasant surprise: Zadar, Croatia.

Yes, the Army was paying me to go to an Adriatic paradise filled with warm beaches, beautiful old Dalmatian cities, great coffee, cheap food, and, something severely lacking in Germany, the sun.

The respite was, of course, marred by the occassional hour or two of actual work. But for the most part, it was a fun-in-the-sun trip that Kate absolutely hates me for.

Here's a video I made for work about it: http://www.nau.usace.army.mil/releases/view.php?video=usacecroatia