"Be the change you want to see in the world" -Gandhi


Sunday, November 20, 2011

Seattle's Best


The month of October was an exciting time for our us, filled with lots of family fun and traveling.      Dana has been very busy at Cultural Vistas, he was flown to China for a work trip and visited Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou and Zhuhai for university recruitment purposes.  Out of his extensive previous travels, this was his first time to Asia, so it was quite an eye opening experience, certainly a very different pace of life then Africa! 

Before he left Maryland, we planned a family trip to a local Maryland farm to find Sophiya's very first Halloween pumpkin!  Halloween isn't really celebrated in South Africa, at least to the extent as it is here in the US, so this was all new for her!  She picked out her favorite pumpkin, we sipped on apple cider, visited the farm animals and went on a traditional hayride.  It was a lovely day together!

After saying goodbyes to Daddy as he embarked on his trip to the other side of the world, Sophiya and I flew five hours (so easy compared to a 30 hour trip!) to Seattle to visit his family.  With the exception of his parents, the last time the rest of his family saw Sophiya was about a year ago.  As you can imagine, the growth within this time is astounding!


We were lucky enough to be able to attend my beautiful sister-in-law's baby shower hosted by Dana's mother!  She is due any day now and looking forward to welcoming their little girl, Arabella, into the world.  Sophiya proved to be excellent entertainment for the afternoon, making all the ladies smile and laugh, helping her Auntie Krystal open presents and showing off her dancing skills in her pink tutu.  As you can see in the subsequent photos, she fully embraces the photo sessions with her biggest smiles and never fails to say "Cheese" when the camera is on her.


Dana comes from a family of boys, as one of three boys growing up, his eldest brother now has three boys and their cousins consist of two boys!  With the birth of Sophiya and now Arabella and our second girl on the way (name will remain a secret!), there is a new generation of females taking over and we are all so excited about all the new girl power!!  Sophiya thoroughly enjoys playing with her boy cousins, they are all so sweet and gentle with her.  She has gotten an introduction to the art of  "rough housing" and seems to have gotten the hang of it!



We took another trip to the pumpkin patch with Nana and Papa, another fun adventure for Sophiya.



Sophiya with her Great Grandma Michelle, who recently went in for open heart surgery and is now in recovery.  Sophiya helped as much as she could in the healing process to shed light on the situation and keep smiles on Grandma's face when we came to visit in the hospital.  It's amazing how empathetic a two year old can be, even though she may not fully comprehend the magnitude of the procedure, it was clear that she understood that she needed to be calm and gentle when visiting.


 Carving pumpkins with Nana, Papa and Uncle Bubba.  Yes, that's right, Uncle Bubba, somehow Mason was named Bubba by Sophiya and the name stuck! We get a kick out of it every time she calls out to him!


Sophiya making Auntie Chris and Uncle Kevin laugh with her cheese ball smiles.  Uncle Kevin promptly taught Sophiya all about racing on the patio, so she now poses in the track and field start position before taking off in a sprint.  A few days earlier, Sophiya, Auntie Chris and I took advantage of beautiful fall weather and visited the Woodland Park Zoo.  We had such a nice time, saw all kinds of animals and Sophiya was intrigued with all the sights and sounds. 


 Papa's pumpkin was a representation of Sophiya's infamous "Oh No" phrase.  This is a commonly used expression to respond to a bowl of mac n cheese that she has deliberately thrown on the floor, if she draws on herself with pen or if decides to dump a full container of water outside of the bathtub, all of course occurring when Mom's eyes were away for a second!


 Oh Halloween, what fun it is to be a parent now and experience it through your child's eyes!  It seems like a long time since we've actually celebrated or acknowledged Halloween, and this year we've done all the traditions and it feels so great!  We weren't quite sure how Sophiya would respond to the whole Halloween and trick or treating concept, but she sure caught on quickly.  She embodied the cutest little kitty cat, complete with whiskers and red nose and the perfect "Meow" to go along with it!  I got in the spirit and did myself up as a cat, just so she wasn't totally freaked out about us drawing on her face!


Once she realized that all she had to do was knock on someone's door, say "treat!" in the sweetest voice possible then a quick "thank you" after receiving a fair bit of candy and receive "ooos and ahhs" from my in law's normally trick or treater-less neighbors, there was no stopping her!  She would turn straight around and head to the next door for more.  Having Sophiya sampling a fair bit of this sugary goodness was something that Nana highly encouraged, thus the bucket eventually had to be well hidden to avoid a massive sugar induced melt down!


For the next few days after Halloween, Sophiya requested to wear her costume and have more makeup put on, smart little bugger wanted to go out and get more candy!!  What a wonderful time of year with the leaves changing in the Northwest and we were lucky to have some beautiful days (and of course the grey rainy ones too!) in the Northwest during our visit.  We look forward to returning during Christmas time, this time all together as a family.

Next American holiday introduction for Sophiya will be Thanksgiving at my parents' house in Minnesota!  We're leaving tomorrow and it sounds like there has been some snow, so another first for her!  It's wonderful to be able to spend so much time with everyone now that we are closer.  Sophiya loves to eat, so I'm sure Turkey Day will be another holiday she loves as well!