Elizabeth gets some summer outfits

Grandma Linda has gone crazy again, this time buying Elizabeth five very cute summer outfits. We appreciated her lunacy so much that we decided to do a whole photo shoot. Enjoy.

Outfit 1: Summer wedding - A good dress for formal evenings ... perhaps on our Baltic cruises this summer.

Outfit 2: Floral chic - Whether at work or play, Elizabeth will be sure to turn heads in this little number.

Outfit 3: Spring Fling - Despite her baldness, Elizabeth manages to rock this outfit, complete with white capri pants and fashionable white crocs.

Outfit 4: The French sailor - No matter how confused this French sailor may be, she can still show you what cute looks like.Outfit 5: Pink and pockety - When you have too many things to carry or just need a place to store your doggy bath toys, this dress should do the trick.

And here are some dressing room out-takes.

Elizabeth's got the bedtime blues

Elizabeth puts pants on ... take 2

Elizabeth puts pants on by herself for the first time...which is great, except that it's a shirt

Late April pictures

These are just some pictures from around the house and around the neighborhood in late April.

Here we were at the Opelzoo ... about 30 minutes from us.

One of my personal favorites.... shot from outside my work.

This was the free local zoo, the Fasanerie, where children pick up rocks to throw at the animals.

Albania: Dirty and cheap, just like I like 'em

I wanted to share a few pictures and thoughts from my last trip to my favorite corner of Europe (the Balkans).

I've been wanting to go to Albania ever since I discovered a little about its history, including:

• The economy and government were felled by a Ponzi Scheme in the late 90s.


• It has a set of laws called the Kanun that include honor killings which, if followed, would leave no male of either warring family alive.


• The previous dictator (Hoxha) was friends with Stalin and decided in a moment of clarity that Stalin was kind of crazy, so he cut trade relations with the USSR in favor of China. That didn't work out, leaving mineral-rich Albania cut off from the world. Fearing that some Army might invade to get to the minerals and land, Hoxha had bomb-proof bunkers put up throughout the entire country, even on the beaches. Here's a picture of a few.
  

Generally, it was a good trip that illuminated to me how rich Westerners really are and how infrequently we realize it. Here's the basketball "court" at one of the schools we're renovating. (This is pre-renovation, in case you couldn't tell)

Here are a few novel insights I had while there. It was poor but oddly filled with Mercedeses (is that the right plural?).

It had mountains, but only small, round ones that from a plane probably look like very large, green bubble wrap.

It had a very industrialized and modern capital (as seen in picture above), but incredibly, incredibly poor hinterlands. Here are the roads we drove on.

More (work-related) pictures here: www.flickr.com/europedistrict

Saturday ... In the park

Easter weekend

Yes, yes, it's been a while since we've told you about our lives. But you really haven't missed much. Mostly, we've been sick. I've missed more work for sickness in the past month than I have in the previous four years. Thankfully, Kate and Elizabeth only got sick once in the time we've been back in Europe. Most likely, it was caused by the bad ganja at the Rasta Party we threw for Elizabeth.


Or maybe it was the Cheetos.

Really, though, it was this dude, Typhoid Phil, who is seen here with a completely empty stomach at an Easter Brunch at the Ramstein Officer's Club.

Elizabeth got the illness a few days later, but was a trooper through it all, having been fortifying herself all along on kisses.....

...and hugs....

from a new baby doll she got in her Easter Basket.

In addition to being very sweet recently, she's also been incredibly fun. She says "Mama" and "Dada" very well now, in addition to "Hi" and "Bah" (for "bye"). She's been very curious about things, pointing to them and saying "Dada?" while she waits for me to explain the thing she's pointing at. She giggles more. She laughs. She even smiles.

She even is wary of giant, overly happy rabbits. I guess she saw Donny Darko.

Here's a fun montage of the past couple weeks. Enjoy!

Snow central and back

If there is one word that summarizes our February trip to the States, it’s snow. It hampered both our entry into the country … (our flight to DC was cancelled, meaning we had to find an alternative destination, in this case NYC, and make it work) … and our flight out of the country (flights departing NYC were running an average of 5 hours and 42 minutes behind schedule. So I caught a bus).

It was the first time Elizabeth has played in more than a few inches of the white stuff.

Here she is attempting to brush off some canon balls so she can hone the skills she learned at the canon range in Portugal. For some reason, we love putting our daughter in front of military armaments of yesteryear.

We went so I could “cover down” for a colleague of mine in Brooklyn who had been (and still is) out sick. Other than being a great work opportunity for me, it was a wonderful chance to see family and friends (here's a picture of Elizabeth playing with our friends' son, Ethan, in Queens). It was also a fantastic prospect for getting our fill of the amazing cuisine from our home country.
Elizabeth enjoyed the cuisine too. Here she is now scooping sour cream into her mouth in front of a plate that was previously filled with Mexican food. This is actually on our first night in country and, to us, was like 1 a.m., which is why she looks stoned.

Thankfully, she got used to the time difference and the snow and had a good time playing outside ... just about every day. The snow was too high for her to walk around in, though, so she mostly looked out at the vastness of it, yearned to see more, and then, when it all became too much for her to fathom, laid down for a relaxing giggle.


When she couldn't go outside, she was coming up with ideas of how she could traverse the frozen fields and explore this new country. Eventually, she got the idea of putting a saddle on this great white beast and employing his height and speed to explore.

(Despite how it looks, the window doesn't look out to heaven. It was just very snowy and white outside.)

Here's Elizabeth's Oma getting distracted while reading her what appears to be a JC Penny's catalogue that sells both pantyhose and discounted trips to Bali.

It was a fun, long, and productive trip for all of us. And it made us miss living in the States.

The trip back was pretty hellish, with Elizabeth only sleeping for two hours and then crying for another hour while she wondered why she wasn't in her bed. But she adapted pretty quickly to the time here ... and to her old habits again, including putting on daddy's shirt and ripping the shift key off my keyboard. I think she wants to write the next blog. We'll see....