Anna - Version 5.0

Today, as of 12:51 am, is Anna's 5th birthday. I thought that, after being incommunicado for so long on the bloggosphere, today was a good day to start up again.

I know I say this with every birthday, but time moves at a pace that I cannot seem to keep up with. Anna is suddenly all grown up.

I want to say something profound and something meaningful, but I must admit that my brain is running on empty today. Elsa had a horrible night last night, and I didn't sleep much and I'm fighting a terrible cold. So, I'm just going to let these images from the day do the talking for me.

And, yes, I've completely caved with regard to those horrible Disney princess outfits. I stink. But, the girls LOVE them. They spend hours playing dress up with these silly outfits, and that equals lots of peace for me!

Oh hi, welcome back

Hello. Is anyone out there? I'm just dusting the cobwebs of this blog.

I don't really have a good reason for not posting for about two months. Just lazy, I guess.

To recap, we spent 5 weeks in Iceland. The girls has loads of fun. Here they are on a picnic:



We started the trip off by going to the north of Iceland to a family reunion. It was wonderful to see all of my cousins since I don't get a chance to see all of them so often. It was also great to drive to the north and see all of the beautiful scenery along the way. Once we got back to the cottage, Carlos arrived and stayed for two weeks. For the most part, we were really lazy, but we did do one adventurous thing -- climbed Mount Hekla (1450 m). Mount Hekla is a volcano, and we can see it from the cottage. The climb took 4 hours and was pretty hard, but very fun. The only disappointing thing was that by the time we got to the top fog had settled on the mountaintop and we could not see a thing once we got there. Oh well. Here we are on our way down from the top:


Tomorrow is a big day -- Anna's first day of school! She is beside herself with excitement (and so am I). I think the girls are very ready to go back to school.

Silence

It has been a busy day in our household. I had been upstairs doing some things when I realized that it was entirely too quiet downstairs where the girls were playing. I went downstairs fully expecting to find them knee deep in mischief. Instead, this is what I found:

Anna's at the end of the Rainbow

Today was Anna's last day of nursery school. Her school, called Rainbow, is a wonderful environment in which children are taught how much fun it can be to go to school and learn. Her teachers have been stellar, and I think Anna has really flourished in her two years at nursery school.

Here she is after school today.



Two years ago, here are Anna and Elsa on our way to Anna's first day at Rainbow.



Sigh.

How do we treat our children?

"Safety and security don't just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear."
"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children."
- Nelson Mandela

Truer words were never spoken. Nelson Mandela is a gem.

I saw these quotes on a photographer's website: Steve McCurry. Many of you are probably familiar with of one of his most famous images - the Afghani girl with the striking green/blue eyes who was on a National Geographic cover a number of years ago. It is worth checking the images on his website - they are incredible because the evoke so many different emotions all with one image (beauty, tragedy, heartbreak).

New fruit

Today Anna told me what her favorite fruits are: strawberries, cherries, blueberries and "africots". I'm taking it that she's discovered a new breed of African apricots and will be marketing them as "africots". Should I try and trademark this???

Eurovision

Last Saturday the BBC broadcast the finals of the Eurovision song contest. For those of you not familiar with this phenomenon, Eurovision is a pop song contest amongst European countries (with some random entrants like Israel, Armenia, Azerbaijan -- are the honorary Europeans?). Each country selects an artist and song to represent at the competition and then the winner is selected by votes cast by telephone. The thing is that people cannot vote for the contestant from their own country. So, what happens is that people vote for countries that they like, or for countries from which a number of people in the country come from (ie, German usually casts a large number of votes for Turkey). Nothing like a little geopolitics to go with your fluffy pop music. Russia won and all the neighboring countries voted for the Russian song.

What is so fantastic about this contest is the crazy variety of cheesy pop songs coupled with the snarky commentary from the BBC presenter. Some of the songs are awful, and some songs are done tongue in cheek. Spain's entry was one of the tongue in cheek variety.


Azerbaijan took themselves a little too seriously (this is so awful):


Latvia gave us a little Pirate Pop! Soooo cheesy:


Here's the BBC presenter for Eurovision:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/eurovision/index_aa.shtml

Pronunciation, addendum

I forgot to add this one. There is a very small play center near our house that the girls have been to a few times. The main reason they remember it well is that this play center hosts birthday parties, and several of Anna and Elsa's friends have had their parties there.

The play center is called the Lollipop Club. This name is proving to be quite a tongue-twister for Anna. She usually calls it the Plopliplop Glub, or some variation of that. Makes me laugh.

Pronunciation

Anna generally does not have problems pronouncing words, but there are a few that remain steadfast stumbling blocks.

Piano = pinatio (like a combo piano and patio)
Mozzarella = macarona (which makes me think of the Macarena - hey macarona!!)
Her close friend Kaitlyn is still known as "Cake-lyn".