Missing You!

Okay, as par for the course, let's begin with some of my remaining pictures of Ellie Dear.

Can you find camouflage Ellie?

I was delighted to discover a few months back that an old college suitemate, Jaime Miller, was living with his family on a coffee farm in Nicaragua. I was even more excited when he said he could stop by Athens to drop off a shipment of green coffee beans, and when Bob Klein offered to lend me a roaster. Unfortunately, I believe those pictures are on a camera in Oregon at the moment, but I do have a picture of me roasting a batch of the beans.

Green coffee beans led me to reminisce about another green snack that I used to love so much when I lived out with the Ramers in New Jersey... toasted kale. I finally got around to making some the other day and it was delicious!

Last weekend, Mike (in my math ed program) and his wife Lee threw a birthday party for their daughter Lucy. 

Lee brought quite the creative flair to the party!

Derek (also in my math ed program) just brought flair.

Elisabeth (also in the math ed program) with her fiancee Der**k (not sure how to spell it).

One more week until the ladies return from Oregon. The house has felt so quiet and, although I appreciated the time to catch up on work, I'm definitely excited to see them again. Soon after they come back, JooYeon's mom will return to South Korea and JooYeon's sister and kids will come out here to Athens for a bit. So we'll go from 1 person to 6 in a matter of hours; the Korean family culture is an excellent fit for my travel personality - I like the constant changes in the living environment. I'm really anticipating Tae Geom (my 2-yr-old nephew) because we'll be able to study Korean together... I don't get exposed much to Korean animal sounds when I talk with JooYeon, so this will gear me up for reading to Ellie. I've also started attending a Korean language class on Sundays together with my youth group kids - as Ellie gets closer and closer to speaking age, I want to be more and more ready to converse naturally in Korean. Right now the gap is pretty drastic between how much I can understand in a one-on-one with Joo and how little I can understand of a random Korean conversation among adults when I try to listen in.

Ellie's Men

Although Ellie is currently out traveling a bit, I still have a backstock of photos from the last month and a half, so I'll make a quick update.

 Ellie appears to be getting more confident with every day, especially in her favorite play arenas.

Her sitting down pose is a bit more awkward (she kind of looks like me trying to dance; I remember my dance teacher in Korea constantly telling me, "relax your shoulders, Daniel").

And of course she still loves time with her grandparents (yes, Mom made it into this post despite the blogpost title).

We took Ellie to her first indoor playground after the farmer's market one day. She seemed to love the shiny animals.

My ToorN two RitE (by Elli3)

Sometimes Grandpa reads to me...

...but now and then he gets it wrong, so I have to step in and take control.

I enjoy my daily walks with Mommy and Daddy, but I really hope I inherited Mommy's fashion sense instead of Daddy's (although on this particular walk, I humored Daddy by letting him dress me like him)

Sometimes Daddy falls asleep while walking, so I steer the ship for awhile.

If I pull his left finger, he turns left. Right finger means right. If I pull both, his tongue comes out!

Uh, hey dad? Here in the instructions it says that you're not supposed to leave me unattended.

Just try to take it from me; I dare you.

You and me, kid. Us little ones gotta stick together.

Reflecting back on another eventful day...

Ellie's first photography session

We had an amazing opportunity recently to have a photograph session with our friends and professional photographers Drew and Laura Castle (see their blog at http://www.castlephotographie.com/). It was good for several reasons:

1. They were laidback, allowing us to be natural (see above photo).

2. They were creative, seeing shot opportunities I never would have considered.

3. They brought Roxie, the only person who was able to make Ellie smile during these photos :)

4. Most of their shots came from candid situations as we were just spending time together.

5. Our current camera's screen is being slowly taken over by an alien blob that prevents looking at the pictures (I'd take a picture of it, but that'd be harder than licking my own elbow).

That said, I think this is certainly a blog post where the pictures speak for themselves, so I'll be quiet now.