Happy (or not so happy) Fourth of July!!!

We hope everyone had a very Happy 4th of July. Ours was met with mixed emotions. Aidan was woken up to go out to dinner and threw an extremely dynamic temper tantrum. The kicking, screaming, rolling around on the floor, thrashing, smacking, and breath holding lasted 30 minutes. We finally broke out the camera to try and calm her down... if you remember the ballet recital photos, it worked then too. Eventually she mellowed out and we were able to go to a nice dinner together and enjoy the rest of the holiday. Unfortunately, we missed the fireworks show put on by the base because they did it on the 3rd instead. This disappointed Aidan and us, but at least we were together for this holiday.

As you can see, Jason is pretty excited. Aidan took this picture by herself.

Here she is still being angry with us.

Getting a little better when we said if she cheered up, we'd let her take some pictures too.

Much better here... not so much drama.

Cracking one of her cute grins.

Standing with her plants... She helped to plant them and she takes care of them everyday.

Here's a cute one. Her cosmos are in bloom and her giant sunflower is getting too big for it's pot.

She says that her arms itch... it looks more like she is asking if she stinks.

I just love her little crinkle-nosed smiles.

She still loves to play with her hair.

But now she is getting a little too windblown.

Trying to get the hair out of her face. I told her she should keep the hat on.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the photos... the next edition should be posted around the 2nd of August. Aidan's 3rd birthday party will be after Auntie Meredith gets here at the end of July. It is going to be a big affair. Thanks to all the people that helped to get things to us for the birthday. We appreciate your willingness to assist. Take care, and have a great summer! Until next time... Ciao!

A journey into the unknown...

This isn't as ominous as it sounds... I was just going to add on to the last post about our lost kite. After writing a letter (all in Italian), I drove over to the orange grove where the kite had last been sited. There were a few guys working in a field of clay and rocks. They told me I could go ahead and look in the grove, even though it belonged to someone else. Not really prepared for the trek, Aidan and I started off across the rough terrain. Me in my Tevas and Aidan in her sandals, we stumbled across the first field. The terrain between the orange trees wasn't much better. Aidan got scared of the plants on the ground and the occasional lizard that scurried around in front of us. I ended up having to carry her on my shoulders the majority of the way. Three groves later and probably close to 3/4 of a mile, we made it to the power lines that the kite had snagged on. I looked up and saw that a line was coming down from it at an angle like it was still attached to something. Barely able to see the white line of kite string, We followed it into the grove about fifteen trees back. There, underneath a tree, laid the butterfly kite we had lost. It was found in one piece with no damage whatsoever. I had to cut the string to free it, but We were able to bring it home. Aidan was very happy to find it, but more happy to make it back to the car and get away from the plants and trees of the orange grove. Thanks to the nice Italian men that were working that day, who didn't speak a word of English, but let us look for our lost kite. Thanks to the quarter of Italian I took at UW so I could get the gist of what they were saying. Thanks to the google translate that helped me get the right verb tenses for the letter I wrote. And thanks to the wind that stopped and didn't make the kite disappear forever.