Happy New Year 2013!

Wishing you all a happy new year!  Bang on a kitchen pot and make some noise!...there's a whole new year ahead of us!

What a Pleasure to Meet you Bruno and Eric!

Felipe is all smiles holding his two nephews, Bruno and Eric.


Me and Eric, enjoying a quiet moment.


Proud papa, Sergi, giving bruno his 6:00pm snack.

Felipe and I had the great pleasure to meet our two newborn nephews for the first time this morning after we arrived to Barcelona.  These two little guys are super cute, and very sweet.  We can't wait to see them grow!  But for now we'll take all the cuddle time we can get with them.  More photos to come (most probably!) and pictures with the proud mama soon too :)

So Long El Paso, See you Later Gracie!

At the bowling alley with Mom.


By the Transmountail Pass in El Paso, TX.

I have had a great time with my mom and sisters in El Paso and Ruidoso. Grace is leaving soon for Afghanistan, and we all were very fortunate to spend some quality time together. It will be many months before we see grace again in person, but we're looking forward to many emails, Skype calls, and letters.

We love you Grace, and we wish you the best of luck and hope that you stay safe throughout your deployment :)

Scenic Drive in El Paso

Yesterday we took a beautiful jaunt along Scenic Drive in El Paso during sunset/dusk.  It was a really amazing view of the city, and beyond that the Mexican border.  I had a bit of fun climbing among the rocks to get some pictures of the cacti - I've never really been to a desert before, so it's cool to see the desert flora.

Four Years Later...

It's been four years today since Dad passed away.  I still miss him a lot - some moments hurt more than others.  The loss of a parent doesn't feel so raw after a bit of time passes.  But I wouldn't mind hearing his voice again, calling me on the other side of the phone "Hey, Azniv!"  Or sitting down to another game of backgammon with him...

Just a reminder to love your family - and to enjoy the time that you have with them. Especially through out the year, and not just during the holidays.

Christmas by the Fires

We're celebrating Christmas tonight together, as Grace will be deploying to Afghanistan on the 18th.  Mom, Mariam and I arrived to El Paso late last night, and today we drove to Ruidoso, New Mexico to stay at a cabin.  The cabin is older, in a vintage kind of way, and there was the smell of fires burning in the air.  We set up a fire in the fireplace, and decided to add a few videos fireplaces too (see the six on the mantle!).

It's nice to have the time together, and we'll be enjoying what little bit more we have before Grace heads out.  If you want her address while she'll be in Afghanistan, just send me a note or leave a comment.

Enjoy your holidays!  Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Cannon Beach Weekend Part 2: Family Time

 
At the Sleepy Monk Coffee shop in Cannon Beach.

The second weekend in September Grace was finishing up her leave from base.  She had spent some time in Seattle with Mariam, and mom had flown out to Seattle again to visit Grace as well.  Lucky for me, I had enough airline miles to get a ticket to fly out to the west coast for a brief four day weekend with my mom and sisters.  We knew that there was a good chance that this would be the last time all four of us could be together before grace deploys, so it was important for me to be able to join them. 

I flew out on a thursday night after work, and arrived to Portland OR around 11:00pm.  Mariam and Grace picked me up from the airport and we drove the last couple of hours to the coast.  I was almost deliriously tired by the time we got there, but it was such a terrific ride!  We drove along a winding, two lane highway, with massive pine trees lining each side of the road.  And if you looked up to the sky above the trees, all you could see was an amazing blanket of stars in the dark night.  The sort of thing I crave and miss sometimes while living in the city.

We kept the weekend pretty leisurely.  We got up on Friday, not too early, and had coffee and a bite to eat for breakfast from a coffee shop near our hotel room, and then took a walk along the beach and into the town.  


Mmmm, espresso.  (Eda - I think you would like it here!)


The Wayfarer.


Mom, Grace and Mariam walking along the mist covered beach in the morning.


Grace acting like a dork of course!




The mist was very heavy, but cleared up later in the afternoon. 


Around the tidal pool.


Around the tidal pool.


There were all sorts of birds around Haystack Rock, and then around the rocks in the tidal pool there were all sorts of living creatures, including these sea urchins (I think that's what they were - if you are reading this and know that they are something else, let me know!).


Mariam and Grace examining a "severed finger", that actually turned out to be something more innocuous and ocean related....

Later in the evening we returned to the beach to build a bonfire and roast marshmallows.  It was something Mar and I had talked about on our first visit to Cannon Beach back in July.  We stocked up at the store on goodies to eat (and drink!) and got a bundle of wood and some fire starters (seriously a good thing we got this!). 


It took some time to get the fire going, mainly on account of the wind...and it came down to us tearing up the cardboard graham cracker box to keep the flame long enough for lighting the fire starter.  But we got it going and it was terrific!





Grace innocently enjoying her delicious s'more, meanwhile in the background....

An eager seagull, who we had nicknamed pickles earlier in the day, was lurking - waiting for Grace to spare a morsel of s'more...

I think pickles eventually gave up on us giving him any food...and eventually left us alone.






It was a perfect evening.  The beach was cool, chilly and damp, but the fire was warm and the company was awesome.  We're lucky to have had such a terrific time to hang out together.

Saturday we walked around the small city a bit more, stopping in some of the stores that we had missed the day before, and then we packed up and headed out to return to Seattle.  On the way back we hit up every antique store  and thrift store we came across, and  I do mean EVERY one of them! 

This was one of the cooler ones.

And then of course, given that blackberries are ALL OVER the place in Oregon and Washington, I was really wanting to stop for pie.  Mariam remembered a great roadside diner/rest stop and so we pulled in there and all of us ordered some pie.





We made it back to Seattle in the late evening, and ordered chinese food for dinner and just spent the night goofing around Mariam's apartment.  It was so nice to have that weekend time with my mom and sisters.  We were all sad that Mom and I had to leave the next day (mom in the morning, me in the afternoon), but we had so much fun that we said we would have to make Cannon Beach happen more regularly.

A Cool Night for a Cool View

Gracie in front of Rockefeller Center.

Yesterday was Grace's last day in the city before heading back to El Paso, and the awesomeness that is Fort Bliss.  So we went out for dinner (Chinese) and then headed over to Rockefeller Center to go to the Top of the Rock.  The view of the skyline was crisp, and we enjoyed looking out on the city's buildings all lit up.


NYC Skyline looking south from the Top of the Rock.

Gosh I had a fun time with Grace, and I was sad to see her go this morning (at 4:30am!).  Later this year, just around Christmas, she's going to deploy to Afghanistan and serve there as a member of a Female Engagement Team.  I'm very proud of her, and what she's going to do to serve our country, but at the same time scared because she is after all "going to war".  I know she's a strong woman, and has a good team, other good service members working alongside her.  I'm sure she will be fine, and will come back 10 months from now and visit us again in NYC - and we'll be celebrating her sucessfull tour of duty....

Thanks Gracieface for coming to visit! and thanks for all you are going to be doing on your epic journey to come!

Election Night Electricity

Rockefeller Plaza decked out for Election Night




Prometheus statue at Rockefeller Center Plaza


Brian Williams reporting live.

Yesterday Felipe, Grace and I went to Rockefeller Center for a visit to the Top of the Rock on Grace's last night, and got to see the whole plaza decked out for the election tonight.  It's neat to see the pomp and circumstance surrounding election night!

My earliest election memory is seeing lawn signs for the presidential race in 1988 - of course really I think I remember it because I remember thinking how funny the name Dukakis was (I was seven year old, okay? ;) ).  And the memory of joining my dad while he placed his vote in the small theater at my elementary school.  How cool was it to see the booth, with the big levered handles to mark the ballot.  It made me excited to vote in my first election in 2000, and although there are moments where I sometimes feel disillusioned with the whole political process, I try not to let that get to me - God willing I have another 50-60 years of voting in political elections....

But before I get ahead of myself, I voted this evening after work, stopping in at Fiorello LaGuardia High School to cast my vote, and did not have to wait more than 15 minutes.  I've heard a lot of stories about people waiting one or two hours in line to vote, and I don't doubt it.  I haven't voted many times in my life, this is only my fourth presidential election, but I do recall waiting well over two hours to vote in the Kerry/Bush election of 2004, at the student center on my college campus.  And I remember then being able to feel the excitement, the electricity in the air - people were engaged, people were motivated to participate in their civic duty.  I imagine, and hope, that the people who had to wait in long lines today could feel that same electricity and excitement.

It's exciting to see the results coming in, and nerve wracking!  I am sure that everyone out there wants what they believe to be the best for this country, and I hope that all the officials elected this evening remember that they are serving the public...and that it's important to serve the whole country in all it's best interests, including working together with the opposing party.  We all want America to be a great country...let's work together the next four years and beyond to make sure it is that way.

Goofing Around with Grace

A little piggy back ride for my little sister. 


Playing leg guitar...but really it looks a bit more like tickle torture.


Skip, skip, skip to my Lou...


And a nice normal looking picture of the two of us. 

Thanks to Felipe for taking all the fun photographs, I think he had as much fun watching us be weird and goofy as we had fun doing it.  More photos of graces visit are yet to come.

Happy Halloween!!!

Felipe and Grace at work.

Grace arrived this afternoon!  Only a day late too!  We had originally planned a fun pumpkin carving party - unfortunately the hurricane got in the way of making that possible.  We ended up cancelling the party per se - but kept up the pumpkin carving anyway...just the three of us.  We ordered pizza and popped the original Vincent Price version of "The House on Haunted Hill" while we planned our pumpkin designs. 


I decided to go with a rat...inspired by our dear friend Mr. Ratolino.




Grace went with a Batman theme.


Felipe went with a crazy face pumpkin. 


The finished pumpkins! Really pleased how they turned out.  We've roasted the seeds, which are now cooling on the kitchen counter and then decided to watch another movie...

The Shining!




Overall a terrific Halloween, albeit a quieter one than we had planned.  I'm so happy to have Grace in town for a visit.  She was asking what to do tomorrow with her day, and to be honest...I can't think of too many things that will be open or available to do tomorrow in Manhattan.  Well, we have lunch together to look forward to!  More posts to come soon!