Saturday we went to the park to get some photos taken for the new blog header (coming soon!) After some walking, the photos and watching dogs run around, we headed to the swing set. Even though Belén is not quite big enough to fully fill out the swing, it did not prevent her from having a grand ole time swinging back and forth.

Now that the mercury is not consistently dipping below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, our cat, Ozzie is once again banished to the front step. The outside exile started after he sprayed in the computer room and then peed in Belén’s room while I was still on maternity leave. Our hearts turned cold towards our long-time feline friend when he acted out in such a fragrant manner.

Do not be fooled…this is not a baking or cooking blog. I am definitely not a cook even though I occaionally try. I do enjoy baking from time to time, but mostly for the end result. So, when the end result turns out so tasty, I feel compelled to share.

This past weekend, I made two delicious desserts. The first was for a dinner with some friends at our house. I made this French Silk Pie recipe at the recommendation of my sister.

One of the guy’s on my team at work had a birthday on Monday so I made this carrot cake which has over 2000 positive reviews on allrecipes.com

Even after nearly six months back at work, by 5 o’clock, I still feel so anxious to exit the premises and go squeeze my baby, I can hardly stand it. I cannot think of how to accurately articulate the feeling that overcomes me around this time every day. I guess the two situations I can most compare it to would be the excitement and longing of young love and the anxious feeling when your partner is about to return from an extended trip.

Today seems like just some other day to us right now, but I look at this picture of Belén with Obama in the background and I wonder if it will ever be a picture that Belén will be proud to display. Is Obama going to be one of those truly great presidents we all think back to in worse times or will his popularity fizzle out like so many others with his incredibly difficult job? Maybe Belén will be a political persona someday and this picture will exemplify that she was passionate about politics from a young age. Or maybe, it is just number 21,349 of the cute pictures of our daugther.

Long story short. I met my sister’s friend’s friend at a restaurant/bar at least six months ago. He thought I looked familiar and made the connection that we went to school together at some point. Facebook, reconnecting people who never knew they needed to be reconnected served as a medium for long lost dude from my first grade class posted our class photo to my sister. Small, internetedly connected world!

It was a “rest” run this weekend of only one and half hours of running. Next weekend is two hours forty minutes so we were thrilled that it was not next weekend yet. It is funny though because the “rest” runs always seem to feel harder than the long runs. There must be some psychological reason for that but I am not quite sure what it is.

If I do say so myself, I think it is a pretty good bribe.

I plan to have the details on the contest up by the end of this month which I guess means the end of this week.

Keep your dials tuned to this blog.

That baby of ours is crawling…and the aunties are not at all excited about it…

Even after giving my sister THREE of the cutest pairs I bought while living in Shanghai, I still have a couple of pairs of shoes that are so small my feet hurt by noon. I wore them today and by this evening I thought I would need to give both pairs to Anna as well…until I started cleaning out my gmail account and found this video.