Change of address

This is just a quick note to let everybody know that our blog has been moved to a new address.

I really wanted a brand new look, one that was a lot less noisy, and much more organized. It's still a work in progress but for now, you can find us at:

www.boothfor4.wordpress.com

Thank you!

Cook with your kids

You know the last post I did about Audrey stealing the veggies off of my cutting board? Well, I was in the middle of whipping up a chicken pot pie for dinner and you know what Audrey's favorite thing to do is nowadays??

She LOVES helping in the kitchen!! Whether its helping mommy with dinner or helping daddy bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies, this little girl loves being right there, getting her little hands dirty and snacking on some veggies or cookie dough in the process.

Last night she really wanted to do it all, from putting the veggies in, to helping me brush the top of the pie with some egg, adding some pepper on the crust...all of it.

But you know what the best part of it all is?? She loved the end result and did such a great job eating it.

Nothing beats having a quiet dinner, with no briberies involved....haha

Audrey is snacking on some peas just before getting ready to put some in our chicken pot pie. Seems I cought her mid bite.=)

                                                  Here she is whisking the eggs

                  and brushing the crust with it before sprinkling a little parmesan cheese and a little pepper..yumm!

My little veggie lover

Anybody who knows this sweet little girl well enough, knows that she loves, loves her sweets. I've always said she must take after her grandma and her dad..no offense there. Just saying that they have a much bigger sweet tooth than I ever had.

So, you would think that she would go for just about anything sweet right??? That includes any fruit out there, right??
WRONG!!!
I can not believe that she is 3 1/2 yrs old and still I have to bribe her to get her to try any small piece of fruit and yet, she will steal a piece of celery or carrot, or even a handful of frozen peas while I am trying to cook dinner.

Strange??? I'll say... However, her love of vegetables makes me one proud mommy for sure.

Happy 1st of March

Every spring on March 1 people in the Republic of Moldova, along with their neighbors in Romania and elsewhere where Romanians and Aromanians live, celebrate Martisor (Mărțișor in Romanian). They celebrate the rebirth of life after the hard winter. On this day men offer to their beloved women flowers and martisors (the symbol of serenity and happiness).

The name Mărțișor is the diminutive of marț, the old folk name for March (Martie, in modern Romanian), and thus literally means "little March". It is also the folk name for this month.

Mărțișor, marţ and mărțiguș are all names for the red and white string from which a small decoration is tied, and which is offered by people on the 1st day of March. The string can also be black and white, or blue and white). Giving this talisman to people is an old custom, and it is believed that the one who wears the red and white string will be strong and healthy for the year to come. It is also a symbol of the coming spring. Usually, women wear it pinned to their clothes for the first 12 days of the month, until other spring celebrations, or until the bloom of certain fruit-trees. In some regions, a gold or silver coin is hanged from the string, which is worn around the neck. After wearing it for a certain period of time, they buy red wine and sweet cheese with the coin, according to a belief that their faces would remain beautiful and white as cheese, and rubicund as the red wine, for the entire year.

In modern times, and especially in urban areas, the Mărțișor lost most of its talisman properties and became more of a symbol of friendship or love, appreciation and respect. The black threads were replaced with red, but the delicate wool ropes are still a ‘cottage industry’ among people in the countryside, who comb out the wool, dye the floss, and twist it into thousands of tassels. 

My little fashionista

Well, after a pretty mellow weekend, trying to get everyone better, Audrey finally made it back to school today.
She had missed about 2 weeks of it and was rather disappointed that she hadn't seen her friends in such a long time.
She had a good first day back and loved seeing Ms. Kim whom she often refers to as being "cool"...it cracks me up.

Well, when we got home she decided that she wanted to "be like mommy", in her own words and took my scarf, put on a hat that she's been wearing quite a bit lately, threw on a pair of sunglasses and she started modelling for me.

Yes, Audrey you are definitely my little fashionista.

Soup night

These last couple of weeks it feels like at least one member of our family had fallen sick with one virus or another. At first it was the girls, then Eric and I got sick, then only a couple days after getting rid of one thing, Audrey got yet another virus, this one even worse then the first one.

Typically, we manage to stay pretty healthy during the winter period, but like I said, these last few weeks have been kinda rough.
So last night, I thought I'd cook a little soup for the family. Eric calls me the "Queen of Soups" and the girls are pretty good about eating them. Now, I dunno about being the queen of anything, but I did however grow up with soups being a main staple in our house growing up. My mom cooked  that at least 1-2 times a week so it's probably a good thing that I learned to cook it.
I had posted a picture of my soup on Facebook and a few of my friends asked for the recipe so here it goes:

Chicken Noodle Soup

1 whole chicken
2 carrots, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 celery rib, chopped
1/2 bell pepper ( any color) chopped
1 can of diced tomatoes
2 potatoes, chopped
1 small bunch of parsley
2 TBS chopped dill

I started by placing the whole chicken in a large pot and covered it with water. When the water comes to a boil, you're gonna see some foam forming at the top. I usually skim that a few times, which leaves me with a really nice clear soup. After a few minutes, drop all the veggies in the same pot as the chicken.

When the chicken is cooked, I pull it out and shred the meat off of it with a couple of forks. Last night, I used most of the chicken meat, except for one of the breasts, which I decided to keep and throw into a pot pie later.
 Season the soup with salt and pepper and add your egg noodles at the very end. When the noodles are also done, add a good handful of chopped parley and 2 TB dill.

P.S. If you wanted to give the soup even more flavor, you could cover the chicken with chicken broth or even stock. I just used water and it was still delicious.

Enjoy!!!

A special recognition for Maile

I am so glad I decided to check her backpack right after she got home from school ( sometimes I wait till later in the day) because as it turns out, this little princess of ours is getting an award tonight for showing RESPECT in class.

Her daddy and I are so proud of her and look forward to her special night, followed by a trip to Rubio's most likely...since it is her favorite place to eat.

Valentine's cards and crafts

Our card for lil Miss Audrey                                                               

Our card for lil miss Maile

One of Maile's present for her mommy...LOVE it!!!

Maile also got a box full of Valentine cards from her friends...and so did Audrey.

                                          Beautiful frame that Maile made at school.

                                                          The inside of the card

                                                                  And another one....

                              The inside shows the sign for " I love you" which we so often use in our household.

First time riding a bike

Sunday was also the day that both girls really rode a bike for the first time. I know..it sounds completely CRAZY. They are old enough to be able to do that, but neither of the girls really took an interest before and neither one of us was ready to invest in buying a bike without first seeing some real interest from the girls.

Audrey probably would've done it much sooner, but maybe she was just waiting on her big sis..=)

On Friday, we got a little notice from Maile's school saying there's going to be a bike rodeo coming up in March and I really wanted Maile to be able to participate and not just watch her friends having fun from the sidelines.
So with that in mind, we took the girls to Walmart and they each got some new bikes that they are now eager to ride every single day.

They say good things come to those who wait...

Our special Valentine

First, let me just say that in the 8 years, Eric and I have been married, Valentine's day has not been a favorite holiday in our household. Perhaps, because like so many other people out there, we think there really shouldn't be a self imposed day to show love and affection towards the people that matter in your life.
This year however was a bit different. Eric and I both agreed to make this a special day for the girls. There was so much focus on V Day at school that they were really looking forward to it....more then us.
With that in mind, Eric decided to take all 3 of his girls to one of our favorite places to eat...Roys. The girls hadn't been there in quite a while, but they absolutely love their FREE quesadilla and yummy ice cream Sunday.
We got there a bit early, and got to walk around the lake, the girls were mesmerized by all the torches surrounding the patio area, the temperature was superb, everything was absolutely perfect.
We ate outside and then ended the evening sipping coffee by the fireplace, while the girls were lounging on the couch next to us watching movies on our phones.
I really didn't think we were gonna do anything for Valentine's day this year, but yet I am so grateful for this beautiful day we got to spend together.
I know it's the little things that count, but in that moment I really just wanted time to stand still. If only..

Multi-cultural Night performance

This was just one of the 4 performances that the kids had that night. Ms Gleason, who had been looking forward to this night for such a long time unfortunately had to miss this. Her daughter had gone into labor the night before and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl the day of the show.
I'd say Maile did pretty good.=)

January update

Boy, where do I even start? 2011 has kicked off really strong...at least for us it seemed like it. Our calendar has probably never been so busy.
I keep thinking it's because the girls are getting so much older and are involved in so much more. So much of it too, involved trips to the doctor, dentist and whatnot..so maybe I'd just let some things go and now they are finally catching up to me.
Maile had her 4 yr old appointment this month ( like I said, I was way overdue for this one), but knowing she was due for 5 shots, I kept putting it off. I kept thinking..just one more day where I don't have to subject her to the pain...and just like that it turned into 6 months later.
She is growing beautifully and very much proportionate to her body. She is in the 70th-80th percentile for both weight and height. She weighs 41 lbs and measures close to 42 in.

Here she is showing mommy 3 out of the 5 shots she got that day.

A trip to her favorite place to eat ( Rubios) later that night made it all better and she reminded us that even if she wasn't "brave" ( she kept saying that because she had cried), she was now feeling better. 

Another appointment that was way overdue was the girls first visit to the dentist. A friend of mine recommended a really good pediatric dentist and it ended up being a good experience for both of them. Audrey ( as always) ended up being a bit braver then Maile and actually allowed the staff to get x-rays of her teeth. Maile decided she was gonna pass. Both of them are cavity free...thank goodness. As a result of our dentist visit, we ended up approaching the subject of Audrey sucking her thumb for the past 3 years. We received some bitter nail polish called Mavala Stop and put it to use that very night. This stuff is prescription strength and VERY bitter. We were told we might want to pick up some sugar free candy/lollipops and offer her if she were to put her thumb in her mouth.

Sure enough, she did...and we gave her the candy.
The next day, after her nap I asked Audrey how she did not sucking her thumb. Her response to me was: "I did good"..then after a second she says..."well maybe I sucked my thumb just a little...could I get a candy??"
Not really a surprise coming from little miss Audrey who LOVES sweets just as much as her daddy.
Well, 2 weeks later we are happy to say our little girls is NOT a thumb sucker anymore and boy are we soo proud of her.
I can tell she is also very proud of herself and almost feels like a bigger girl because of it.

January was also a month of VERY many celebrations. I think we must've had at least 4 birthdays, and of course our anniversary.

I was hoping February might be a bit slower in that regards, but oh no...our calendar has started to fill up already.

I told Eric a few days ago, that I just wanted a WHOLE week filled with nothing...He reminded me that it was impossible since we have 2 kids in school. I told him, I am ok with just the school activities but not much more..haha...We'll see how it goes. I don't mean to sound like I am complaining. To all of this craziness, there's also a huge sense of accomplishment. I really feel like I am being productive and taking care of my family in the best way I can. And for them, I am always grateful, no matter how busy life gets.

Celebrating 8 years of "US"

Every day I  feel really blessed and fortunate to be married to the man of my dreams. I became his wife 8 years ago, on a very cold, snowy winter day but our life together has been far from that. In my wildest dreams, I couldn't have guessed how much happiness he would bring me each and every single day....and believe me, I don't take that for granted. 

Thank you, dear Lord for my amazing husband and our 2 precious angels.

For those of you who maybe haven't read the full story of how Eric and I met, my sweet hubby wrote this note a couple years ago. I love it and still get teary eyed reading it...so here it is..I wanted to share.

How I met my wife Iulia. My true love, my true Valentine.

The other day a friend asked me how I met my wife. Simple question, right? For most people the answer is also pretty simple. However, that day, as I began to write the story to this friend whom I had dated just prior to meeting and marrying my first wife... I realized, I was typing no simple answer, but the words just came out soooo fast, so easily.

I LOVE telling this story! I've told it many times and feel much better telling it in person. But today, I wanted to at least share what I quickly wrote to that friend in response. Funny thing is, I felt like I had to begin with the gap of time between "Version 1.0" and when I met Iulia. It explains alot about how fast 10 years can be spent on something that isn't right, but is needed in order to find what is so clearly MEANT TO BE. Here is the letter picking up with the explanation of Version 1.0...

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hmmm.. short "fill-in-the-gaps" story on Version 1.0. You remember how we met in Atlanta (not to dig that up) and after 4 years of pursuit, we got engaged (surprise on the beach in Carmel) and married in '95 (Atlanta). The amazing honeymoon in Maui strangely uncovered major problems between us and after the Olympics (for which she worked behind the scenes on with IBM) in Sept. '96 we bought a house to solve a different set of problems and by Feb. '97 the solution to those problems was to kick me out of said house. By Feb '98 I appeared for our uncontested annulment (I call it a divorce) to see it all end with a pound of a gavel (taking 100% of the blame upon myself). By April of '99 I had left my job working for a great communications firm and packed it all up to live in Phoenix to be closer to Roger's kids (they moved to PHX in '93). I was a wreck, but his kids energized me in great ways. Basically it came down to the fact that I loved her (1.0) and she liked me enough to try and see if she would grow to love me. I don't wish ill will on her... but that was 9 years of trial and it tainted all the good memories of Atlanta that I have. Of course, all of that does not affect me now...

...because 4 years after the divorce... I met Iulia (sounds like Julia but with a soft J sound) online on the 4th of July, 2002. Yeah, online on a holiday morning, I was completely bored and just stumbled across her. I was doing a variety of online things back then and had finally begun dating real and virtual people right around then (Match.com and other services). We started talking (IM'ing actually) and 5 hours later, she went to bed (she lived in Bucharest Romania) and I went to watch fireworks with Roger's family in Tempe. It was love at first sight (video on yahoo was just starting up - 1 frame per second). She was taking her sister to the beach for a couple of weeks and she emailed me from an internet cafe on the beach, pretty much saying she really enjoyed meeting me and wanted to continue, blah blah blah... it was cute (note to self... I need to find and post this letter)! We continued from there and by early October, I hopped on a plane and landed in Romania (because she couldn't just get on a plane to fly to the States).

The story from here is better told in person (but I'll make a written attempt), because the first time we met was sort of a sliding doors moment (literally) as she was jumping up and down in a huge crowd waiting for the others off the plane (it was almost midnight). Our eyes met and as if in a movie, she forced her way to the end of the rope as I came out of customs and we had a HUGE embrace and very long kiss (I spun her around). From there... I stayed for 2 1/2 weeks (her mom and sister came to Bucharest from Barlad on a 6 hour train ride that first weekend) and then I returned again in Nov for 3 weeks for her birthday. On that trip, we traveled to her hometown to meet her dad and travel further into the remote countryside to visit her grandparents. By December, I returned AGAIN after Christmas knowing I was going to marry her (I had the ring) and with which I surprised her with on New Year's eve (video of the actual moment is on my profile). That was crazy and wild... but it gets crazier. By Jan. 24th we were married. Now, mind you, she didn't have her Visa approved yet.... and because of 9-11, the embassies no longer (as of Jan. 2002) had the authority to grant the visa to her. So, on Jan. 27th, I had to leave my wife and reapply in the states. That was heart wrenching! Two and a half months separated and it especially sucked because her laptop shorted out two weeks after I left (water was involved during a video session... cough ;). this left her having to walk in the ice and cold to find Internet cafes to chat with me. Nobody could fix the laptop.

A few days before the wedding. Our apartment building is down the street more on the right. This snow was what we had to deal with while going from building to building trying to get our wedding license and all the other stuff together.

I wasn't able to get back until April 9th... during which time we had to finish the visa process and do the embassy interview. Oh, did I mention the tickets home were scheduled for the day after the interview at the embassy.Cutting it close, yeah? Oh, and since the tickets were changed and international (paper), they had to be mailed... which only happend because NWA broke their policy after my dad got involved and found a sympathetic ticket agent. My brother then mailed the tickets to us using UPS and the tickets got lost in Slovenia the day before the interview. Miraculously, it all worked out... the interview went off and we were approved (even though the couple in front of us did NOT, being accused of a fake marriage), and the tickets arrived the evening before we were to return to the US (tickets in hand at 10:30pm that night flight left at 6:30am the next morning). No room for error and lucky for us, there were no more errors. That was May 9th, 2003.

During this time, I had been contracting with Pearson who had been my lone client after I resigned from the consulting firm I was working for from '99 to June of '02. The contracting gave me the extended time off between contracts that year and the flexibility to make the trip 4 times. By the time we got Iulia back to the states, I had exhausted my savings and wasn't quite sure what was going to happen next. Well, the next day, a certain project manager from Pearson called me and asked "what I was up to and if I was available to go to work". Uhmm yeah. The guy and his wife are now the girls godparents and our best friends.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So, there it is. I gush quite a bit about Iulia and people who knew me between 1991 and 2002 often tell me of the vast differences in me since meeting and marrying her. What a gift. This may be too much information for some on FB, not enough for others. The nice thing is I get to tell the story again and again and again to whoever wants to listen. I've often thought about collecting all of our chats from when we met and making a book out of it. I know I'd be interested... not so sure about the rest of the world =)

A little of this and a little of that

Wow, December is gone already?? Time for school/work again?? But we had soo much fun....
Don't you wish you could stop time sometimes? I know I sure wish I could've done that this holiday break. Having Eric and the girls all home for almost 3 weeks was fantastic!! I loved every minute of it. I loved playing as a family, laughing hard, cooking, entertaining, having family over...I loved all of it.

My mom and dad in law took their annual trip over and got to spend about a week with us, after spending some time with their other grandchildren in Vegas.
One thing is for sure and our girls agree, we all wish they lived closer. It was so nice having them with us, seeing them rediscover their granddaughters, seeing how much they have grown and changed.

Grandma reads the Nutcracker book at the girls request one of the first nights that she was here.

Maile and Audrey also loved playing with them and acting their favorite movies for anybody who wanted to be an audience.
We spend Christmas day with Roger, Lisa and her mom, Diane.
Maile's favorite Christmas present was a soft Rapunzel doll, a cuddly one as she calls it.

Audrey's favorite present...Jessie and Woody from the movie Toy Story. Initially Woody was supposed to be for Maile, but I guess we should've known better. No way was Maile gonna go for anything "un-princess" like. Ha! She has been in this "princessy" phase for the past 2-3 years at least and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
They have been playing with those toys a lot this past week and I love seeing their creativity and imagination come out. I know neither I, nor Eric will ever get tired of that.
Grandma's little hand knit bunnies were also a big hit, and caused Audrey to call her " the great artist of bunnies". I tell you, I don't know where she comes up with some of the things she says, but this little girl sure makes us all laugh. She is soo funny.