A.J. Makes His Official Endorsement

In the spirit of the election season, A.J. has finally decided who he will endorse.

After much study and research of the issues, A.J. has decided to endorse Joe "The Plumber".

B-day tagging;)

I got tagged again and this time I'm going to use the opportunity to make Hans uncomfortable:) He had a B-day a few weeks ago and he was hard again for presents, even didn't want a b-day cake just cinnamon buns (with a candle:(). So we had a " Star Wars" theme b-day, all of us wore a SW t-shirt and I promised Hans that I'll watch all the movies with him (never watched all of them). So because of the pretty lame day, I'll answer the questions for Hans and we will see if I really know my husband ;)

THE FIVE for Hans

10 years ago I:
1.was still in high school
2.played soccer
3.enjoyed choir
4.getting ready for college
5.didn't have a clue I'll marry someone from a foreign country;)

5 things on today's "to do" list

this is a tough one because it's 8 pm and not much left from the day. I'll try

1.Get A.J. to bed
2.watch sports stuff on TV
3.write some work related emails
4.get some reading done
5.sleep

5 snacks I enjoy:

1.goldfish
2.hot tamales
3.Swedish fish
4.chips
5.bowl with cereal and cold milk

5 things I would do if I were a millionaire:

1.pay off student loans
2.buy a different house
3.retire from work
4.travel
5.buy season tickets for Manchester United

5 places I have lived:

1.Arizona
2.New Hampshire
3.Utah
4.Bulgaria
5.Washington (state)

5 jobs I have had:

1.lawyer
2.legal clerk
3.work in a computer lab
4.language instructor
5.soccer coach for his dad

I'm tagging everyone who wants to play. You just need to copy the questions and answer them.

I admit that I got a little help from him...

Here is when I got tagged.

Phoenix Botanical Gardens

I was supposed to write this post a few weeks ago when my sister was here and we went to visit the Botanical Gardens.

There is not a lot you can do in the summer in Arizona, we were pretty bored after 5 days of shopping so we decided to go and see the famous garden. It was very nice with a lot of cactuses and other fauna. There were some other attractions too but everything was out of season.

We arived at 11 am and it was already 106 F (41-42C) and there was almost no one there. We were brave so we walked around for an hour but had to leave before all of us got heat strocks. AJ was quiet in his stoller and just turned red.

Hans and I are going back to the garden for a wedding in few weeks, so hopefully we will see more.

Things....

I have been thinking to go private on this blog. Not that something happened probably just a paranoia but it has been lately on my mind and I have decided to do it at least for a few weeks/months.

It will be available just for our family and close friends. I want to apologize to the rest of you but it feels like the right thing at the moment.

I also created a new blog that is about all the things I like and I'm interested in. Mostly interior design, of course hair stuff, TV shows, books and etc...

I will try to updated it regularly.

I have been tagged again, so the next post will be about that or about someone who has a b-day this week;)

P.S. I'm going private Oct 1. Mark your calendars.

I'm back :)

Hi everyone!

Today I finished the last book of the Twilight series. I became obsessed (as most who read the books) since last Monday, when a friend of mine let me borrow the first book.

For those that are not familiar with Stephenie Meyer's work - it is a well written story about humans, vampires, werewolves, love and action.

I just can't stop reading it. Hans had to make a late run on Tuesday night to get the rest of the books. It became little an obsession of mine but I was able to remember to feed A.J...sometimes :)

Now it's over and I was pretty sad but I just found out that there is one more book in the process of writing from the other main character's point of view. You see I'm so good and I try to not spoil the story for the one's that haven't read the books yet.

Now I'm waiting for the movie in November...

P.S. Suzy, to answer your question, I think it's a little bit too much the forth book for 12-14 year olds, even parts from the first one. But "our" kids probably don't see it the way we do...I'm just glad that it happened after the main characters got married, some good values there...

P.P.S. Hans, thanks for our date. It was fun to be out again just the two of us and to have a good time no matter what we do.

Stephanie Meyers, can you tell me where my wife is?

Everyone that we know that is female recently has talked about the vampire books. It was debated at the family reunion and on the blogs. This last Monday, a friend finally let Iva borrow the first book. It is now Thursday night and she only has a few pages left in the second book. In her second language. Pretty impressive. I once read the Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe in Bulgarian and it took me a quite a while. She is killing these books.

Of course I am happy for her and happy to see she is having a good time. There's nothing like finding a book that you can't put down. I remember when the sixth Harry Potter came out and I had a flight that day. As I entered the plane and walked down the aisle, over half of the passengers were reading the same book. I had a tough time not reading the last book when it first came out because it was only four days before two bar exams. Back to my point, I am glad she is having fun and I am sure that she looks forward to discussing the details with the female readers of this blog.

Anniversary Update - Warning: May contain reference to spicy food

If you had the chance to read our last post about out anniversary, you would know that it was a rough day. Fortunately we did have a chance to go out last Friday while Dari watched AJ for us.

I had been telling Iva about this Mexican restaurant that I have gone to with colleagues from work and we never really made the effort to go there. It is seriously the best Mexican food that I've had. So I took Iva there for dinner and afterwords, she told me that it was the best she'd had as well.


The restaurant is called Guadalajara's and is located in the ghetto part of Phoenix, but when you go inside the atmosphere is not too bad. It's nothing fancy, but when everyone inside is Mexican, you know that it is pretty authentic. It's on Central Ave. and I-10.

After eating dinner, we went to get ice cream from Sonic and went up to one of the lower hills on South Mountain to look at the city lights. At some of the picnic tables, a live mariachi(?) band was performing for a large family so we enjoyed the music while watching the the sunset. Iva noticed that all the Mexican men were wearing cowboy hats and thought it was pretty funny.


We had a good time. It was the first time that we've both been away from AJ like that since he was a newborn so it was strange, but we had a great time that made up for the lame day on the 27th.

6th Anniversary

Wednesday was our 6th Anniversary of our first/communist marriage. Iva's sister is in town and offered to watch AJ so we could go out and do something fun. It was not, to say the least, a good day.



I was already covering one colleague at work as he was out on vacation. On top of that, my boss took an emergency day off and had to cover for her. Finally, my assistant took the day off so I had triple the work. It was one of those days where I had a case that went bad and a client was upset at us (not my fault). Iva was tired from AJ as he was starting to get sick again.


That afternoon, I finally left but pretty stressed out due to the escalated case load at work. We decided that we would all go out, I would drop Iva and Dari off at Target while I took AJ to an urgent care pediatrician. It took three hours to see a doctor. At 10:30 AJ was diagnosed with two ear infections and bordeline strep. I don't recommend Good Night Pediatrician to anyone. It was so late that Iva and Dari were waiting outside a dark Target and all pharmacies were closed.

Fortunately we went out Friday night and had a good time, but Wednesday was a pretty rough day for everyone.

(Special shout out to the Turkish Fly on Iva's left shoulder in the first picture. Though your life was short, oh four winged one, you have joined the halls of immortality which many of your colleagues have never achieved. If we had photoshop, you would probably be forgotten).

Family Reunion

This is Hans covering for Iva again. She is not feeling well and neither am I, but we just got back from our family reunion in Island Park, Idaho and I wanted to post a few pix. Below is a pic of the Tetons that I took while driving from Jackson, WY to Island Park while returning from Denver (long story). We spent a day in Yellowstone and saw the major attractions: My grandpa was a land developer at Henry's Lake near West Yellowstone. While he sold our family cabin some years ago, we have a family tradition of carving our names into trees up in the mountains that only our family knows how to reach. We found family names in the aspen trees all the way back to 1977 and all family members carved their names once again: We also had a family night around the fire where my brother and sister decided to be funny and sing the blues.



Here are some other family pix:

The new Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera is one of my favorite movies. Today we were listening to the soundtrack and A.J. got caught up in the music and started to sing.

He is also learning some new dance moves, video of that coming soon

Accessorize correctly

Lately A.J. has been into fashion:)

O.K. not exactly and his dad hopes that he never will, but he loves my jewelry and to wrap around his neck scarfs or anything. And don't forget the sunglasses at least two pairs at a time.

with cape:

yellow is in (and food around the mouth:):

stripes are cool:

Hat for the Summer:

And all time classic - newspaper hat and a pacifier (pants are not necessary;):

Catching up

I have been slacking a lot lately. I want to blame my iron deficiency for making me so tired, but mostly it's the lack of organization skills and the limbo we are in right know not knowing if we are moving or not.

Hmm, where to start?

1. I miss already my family and friends from Bulgaria. This is probably one of the things that I miss is to have them live close by, so we can see each other often.
I'll post some more pictures from Bulgaria soon, I promise:)

2. Here it is so hot and humid for the last week or so. We had a few big storms and a few fires in the area right before that.

3. We went to the Museum of Science and it was fun.

4. Fourth of July we stayed at home. It felt good just to be lazy and play Wii with our friend Matt. I'm getting better at bowling and pretty soon I'll have more points than Hans (I wish).

5. A.J. is eating only normal food and drinks real milk. He is addicted to oatmeal and blueberries. So happy about it! He loves our community pool.

6. A.J. is getting to a stage that he wants to eat by himself. These leave me with a lot of messes to clean after every feeding and piles of laundry.

7. I spent a lot of time looking for a new home on the East Coast. I try to be positive and do not compare our house with the houses out there.

I need a vacation:)

Bulgarian Friends

Last night I wrote a very long post and I published it but today I change my mind and I just delete it.
Anyway, while we were in Bulgaria A.J. made so much new friends. It was great to see my friends and A.J. to had a chance to become friend with them and their kids.
Irena
Irena and Petya are actually my sister's friends from school, but over the years they became very good friends if mine too. Irena still lives in Pleven and Petya lives in Belfast, IR. She has a little boy-Shei and he is so cute.


Shei, Petya and A.J.
Tsveti is married to Hans' good friend Tyson and this is the first time I saw her since she got married.

Tsveti
I know Natalia probably for almost 10 years. She came back from the Czech Republic and it was great to be able to see her and her little boy Joe. She also has two older kids Dani and Koki...what can I say, her kids really love me:)

Koki, Joe, Natalia and A.J.

Kisses:)
Lucy used to be married to my cousin. Things didn't work out between the two of them but we still keep in touch. She is an amazing person and A.J was in love with her and his cousins- Tedi and Stasy.

Lusi and A.J.

Tedi, Stasy and A.J.
Natalia was my sister's roommate from college and I really love her. She is one of the coolest people I know. She was expecting her second boy (he was born on June 25). Her older son Alex and A.J. played so well together.

Nati, Alex and A.J.


I had a great time with all of my friends and I already miss them a lot.

Airplanes, airports...

The first time I got on the plane in 1996, it was one crazy flight from Sofia to Johannesburg. Since that time I never complained about different airlines and airports, most important for me is to get to my destination safe.

Things changed when I had a child. A.J.'s first flight was when he was only 3 weeks old. He has been flying domestic a lot and he did pretty well.

After this trip these are my personal thoughts on airlines and airports:
1. United Airlines - try to avoid them with infants and toddlers - they didn't have any special seat belts for little kids. We bought A.J. a separate seat, but he was so insecure, I had to hold him for most of the flight (I didn't take a car seat with me). He will just come out from the seat belt. There was not any special baby food, you have to call in advance for it. Baby bassinets are so tiny, up to 6 months I believe.

2. Frankfurt Airport - big airport, you need more layover time. If you are flying to Bulgaria:) do not buy any liquids (water, coke etc) after the security check. There is a second one before I got on my plane and I had to throw away a very expensive water bottle (close to $10).
If you flying along with a infant be prepared - the bathrooms are a nightmare - had to go through 2 doors to get to the actual toilets and they are so tiny, that I had to leave A.J. in the stroller outside.

3. Austirian Airlines- very helpful. This time we had a car seat, they made sure that it is approved one and safe for a child to fly and they had baby food, no need to call in advance. Very impressed with the crew.

4. Vienna Airport - pretty close and fast to get to the next gate at least this time:)

5. Washington DC airport - on the way over the gate was right across the one I arrived.

On the way back was a diffrent story. I guess I was the "lucky" one to get there when it is so busy. There were about 300 people waiting for their luggage and to go through security and did I mention that there was not enough luggage carts. It was a nightmare for us and on top of that one of my suitcases zipper broke. I had to find someone to help me and to secure the bag so it can make the next flight, while I had A.J. in the stroller, carseat, 3 bags and a backpack. It took me 2 hours from the time the plane landed until I got to my gate (not a close one either).

Flying with a one year old - packing less is better. A.J. was still on baby food, so I had a small can of formula, a few bottles, a few toys and books for him, lot's of binkies and a blanket. I packed in 3 separate ziplog bags jars with food, spoon and a disposable bib, was much easier. I think that is enough.

Someone recomended to take an extra shirt for myself, well I did on my way to Bulgaria, I changed in Frankfurt and 10 minutes later A.J. managed to get food on my clean shirt. Maybe an extra onesie for the kid is o.k.

A.J. did pretty well on the planes. On our way over he did great from PHX to DC, DC to Frankfurt he slept most of the time (it was night time for us). A.J. wanted to walk a lot on the flight from Vienna to DC, but he slept the whole time from DC to PHX and took nice nap from Sofia to Vienna.

While writing all about this it feels like a big dream. A.J. and I need a long break before we would like to get on a plane again.