Ronan 3 year Photo Shoot

I am finally posting Ronan's 3 year birthday pictures! We went out on a beautiful day to get some shots, and thankfully were able to get a few really cute ones. Let these go down in history though as the ONLY ones that he would even remotely cooperate for that day! Such is the personality of a three year old though, and we love him. Without this personality in our lives we would be so bored:) I thought they captured him very well for his 3 year old self, and for that they are priceless.

"I'm ignoring you mom, I want to look this way, and nothing you can say will change my mind!"

What a poser, so handsome...

The Black Sea

The Black Sea is the Northern Border of Turkey. It is huge and beautiful. It is also border to many other countries and thus a major shipping/cargo waterway. The only connection to the Mediterranean, etc. is through the Bosphorus Straight (aka the pride of Istanbul, and what divides the continents of Europe and Asia). It is about a 30 minute drive from our house, and we decided to head up there in November to take a gander. We were the only ones who apparently thought it was a good idea except for one guy on horseback riding through the waves and one more strolling couple! We essentially had the beach to ourselves and it was great! I must admit though, it was a tad chilly:) As you can see the boys were in great picture taking moods, but such is our life. Maybe once they are all a little older?? Anyway, we had picked up some bagels from the best bagel place we know about (actually pretty decent!) and had a nice little family lunch at the Black Sea. We hear that this beach in particular is JAMMED in the summer....we'll see if we feel like venturing here then, we haven't decided yet. Either way, it was a fun day and we enjoyed marking another "sea" off of our checklist! So far we have the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans done, and the Mediterranean, Marmara, and Black Seas marked off now! Next up -Agean here we come! Hello Ryan and Kes on the other side (well basically)!!

The Great Fall Catch-Up-the rest of our Falltivities

Ok, so indeed I got behind in blogging. That does not mean however, that we didn't have some fun things that for probably only my sake (since I do make this into a blog book for our family's adventures) that I am making myself catch up on here. These next few posts are going to come rapid fire-so hold onto your hats!

Aside from the main events of Ronan's birthday, Halloween and a broken nose we did enjoy some other great times together here in our new favorite city! We enjoyed breakfast on the Bosphorus with our awesome neighbors who led us through the ins and outs of a traditional Turkish breakfast. It was all delicious, and the views are unbeatable! Seriously! Also, this restaurant sits up just high enough that you can't see the cars that are directly below you on the shore road. So fabulous.

Everything was SO yummy, we had different kinds of Berek, some cheesy tomato egg dish, fresh fruits, the classic olives, tomato and cucumber salad, and then because it has been a little while since this outing I've completely forgotten the name of it-but this amazing stuff that is like a thick yogurt/cream type stuff with honey on it-sorry hard for me to describe-but SO tasty! We also enjoyed some fresh squeezed juices! Did you know about fresh squeezed Apple juice? It is in the cup in the picture below, had a great green color to it and was pretty frothy! Fun to drink for sure, if only Ronan hadn't GUZZLED the entire thing in one drink! That kid knows good juice when he gets it I guess!

These views were just amazing.

Next Adventure: Belgrade Forest

We finally also received our car!!! One of the first things we did was hop in the car and head out of the city. The Belgrade Forest is a huge preserve just north of the city, and so beautiful. We love all of the fabulous things the city has to offer, but every now and again it is nice to be a little bit separated from the 18 million people of the big city! It is actually a very short drive from where we live and along the way we get to pass the Uzun Kemer (Long Aquaduct) built in the 1500's. There is another one as well along the way also that they say dates from the 1100s.

We went in search of some Fall Foliage-we found a little but we've decided that maybe many of the trees are quite the right ones for the super vibrant colors...that's ok though, it was still fabulous and the boys loved getting to run wild!

Last but not Least (for this post anyway): Noah had a birthday!!

Daddy turned the big 32!!

I had bigger plans once again, but was not feeling that well that day so we ended up with some cupcakes and a few presents. I think it was a fun day still though, being that he actually enjoyed the presents we got for him this year! Sometimes, apparently I am not so stellar at giving him good gifts:) It is kind of a joke, but he was pleasantly surprised I think!

The Phillies were still in the playoffs as well for his Birthday so with all the creativity I could muster that day I did put some red pin-stripes on a few of the cupcakes for him!

The boys always enjoy helping to open any and every present, good job fellas you had great teamwork!

Well, that is enough for now...slowly inching forward, more to come soon.

Following in Daddy's Footsteps

So today we got a call from the school nurse. Porter had had a little accident, she had checked him out, and he was going to be ok...but she thought his nose might be broken and he was definitely an emotional mess. I talked to him on the phone and could barely understand a word he said, poor guy. The story was that it was windy outside and he was trying to go up some stairs. He didn't want the wind in his eyes, so he tried to go up the stairs with them closed. Obviously that didn't work out too well, and there you have it. A new lesson learned for Porter-always keep your eyes at least partially open when going up stairs:) So anyway, Noah took off work for a while (being that I am not up to driving yet in this city) and we headed out to pick him up. His school is a bit away from where we live, so by the time we actually got there he was seeming to do much better, and holding the ice pack by his nose. All involved though (well except Porter) thought it best to still take him to the doctor just incase to make a firm diagnosis and make sure there was no deviated septum or blood collecting, fractures, etc. As luck would have it, we were able to get right in with the pediatric Ear Nose and Throat doc at the hospital and he checked Porter out for us. He took some good pictures of the inside of Porter's nose, (thus prompting questions about what all the hairs were doing in his nose, and what their function was for the rest of the day) and they were able to see that everything is pretty ok, broken but not too serious. phew. there was enough trauma already and just getting him to look in his nose. I don't want to know what would happen if we had had to have it reset! We have a follow up at the end of the week, where he will check it again and Porter earned a tasty lollipop for his efforts. The big bummer of the situation though is that the doctor told us he has to stay home the rest of the week, so it won't get accidentally bumped or knocked again. Porter was SO excited to go back to school and see his friends after our vacation, I guess we'll have to fill this week with some fun Christmas activities to pass the time!

He put on a brave smile for me at the end, and luckily the tape seems to be covering most of the bruising for now so it won't freak him out too much when he looks in the mirror!

Anyway, so I guess it has begun...it was in his genes. Daddy has broken his nose 5 times! Let's hope this might be it for Porter.

Halloween

When we first took this job I was initially curious how celebrating some of our favorite American holidays (i.e. Halloween) would go. Turns out there was plenty to do, and the kids had a great time! All told, we attended the Consulate Halloween Bash, (where Ronan even made it into the video that they posted on the Consulate Facebook page), another little party at the Marine House where I scarfed down two REAL hot dogs on Wonder Bread buns-can you tell I thought they were tasty? Then there was a great little Church party that we accidentally missed, Porter had a Halloween party at school, and then our neighborhood had organized trick-or-treating! Now we didn't participate in everything, just because quite frankly I didn't have the energy but hopefully next year I will be back up to snuff and let the kids pack it in! (Luckily they are young though, and they didn't know that we had missed a few things:) Most of these pictures are from the Consulate Party, as I didn't get any pictures of the other two we participated in. I made them be a zoo keeper and elephant this year, to reuse the costume I made for Porter two years ago. I didn't order Porter's safari helmet in time, but he still looked pretty cute:) They had a fun little photo booth set up to take pics, and true to form these lovely ones are what we came away with!

sidebar: I did let Porter dress as Optimus Prime for his school party...I'm so mean making them coordinate when they are together!

They had lots of fun booths set up, including balloon stomp, bean bag toss, a spooky story time by the Consul General which was great, a haunted house, a cupcake walk, musical chairs...

they decorated treat bags, got to demolish a couple of pinatas, had face painting, pumpkin decorating and even a little pumpkin patch on the lawn for the kids to choose from. They also got loaded up with candy from desk to desk from the other people in Noah's office.

And last but not least, if you are a fan of the TV show Chuck, Noah went as Morgan, and his counterpart at work went as Ana Woo, she could pull it off much better than I ever could:)

Good times for sure, and we had plenty of candy to help us feel like we celebrated in style!

another slight freak out!

ok, I JUST realized...yes, I've had FSO friends talking about it for months....but somehow it has only now dawned on me that I need to do our Christmas cards, like THIS WEEK! Well, even better TODAY! I am a real, snail mail Christmas card girl and I haven't ordered any photos from Costco yet or made the cards!AAAhhh!! Luckily, I did bring the paper with me, but I better get going! With a 2-3 week turn around to get my photos, then put them in the cards and send them back I'll be pushing it! Throw in the fact that we will be gone most of the month- (yes, we have totally lucked out with some awesome time off for the next couple of weeks and we are headed to France next week till basically the end of November!!) and I'm burning daylight here....so just a head's up, for those of you regulars it will be coming. I apologize if they are late! Who knew November 2 would give me a Christmas Card Panic attack! Reminder for next year, have them done by August:)

life lately

So here's what's been going on around our house. We've had great fall festivities, birthdays, we got our car!, some awesome sightseeing, a sick mommy, an awesome time with fun friends visiting, doctor's appointments (Ronan had to get his impacted earwax removed:( poor guy- but did come away with a sweet puffy sparkly sticker that seriously must have had real glue or something on the back! I still have to get that gunk off of his shirt!) our first trip across the bridge to Asia, some traffic and a teeny tiny sideswipe, and some basic lack of motivation and energy creating probably the biggest pile of laundry to do ever! Throw in a bomb downtown yesterday, us then deciding not to go to Church because of proximity and it has kind of been and up and down all around sometimes normal, sometimes weird month! Am I the only one who has those sometimes? Anyway, so I'm hoping things get back to normal, I get back to blogging (yes, I will catch up soon I promise), I get caught up on laundry and that we can finally set off on our much anticipated vacation next week! I am really dying for some family time and delicious French food. So, although October was at times lackluster and not quite my original vision for the month, I am going to take the good press on (there was still plenty of awesome October) and get myself (and my house back together!) Now that I've put it out there maybe I will actually do it! Updates to come, sorry for the randomness. Sometimes you just need to write.