Hello!

We have a lot of new photos and videos we want to post, but we just wanted to say quickly that we are transferring the hosting of ideajarinc.com to the same web hosting company that hosts Sergio's blog (lo-budge.com). This will allow us to have unlimited bandwidth and file storage, so we can put up tons of new photos and videos and audio files as we start on new projects.

In addition, since Blogger has stopped supporting FTP for blogging (which this site uses), and we want to continue using the nice template that Matchbox Creative designed for us, we are going to change from Blogger to Wordpress as our blogging format.

To sum up: You can still come to ideajarinc.com (the name will remain the same), but it may be off-line at times during the next week. When we have finished our changes, the site will be able to handle more information and will look better, too!

So all of those videos of Simone we have been hoarding (and Sergio's audio recordings of her) will now have a place to live.

The potty training thing is actually starting to happen. Simone has been interested in her potty for a little while, but in the past two days she has been sitting on it and trying to use it, which is pretty exciting for us. No big results yet, but I think she'll get it down pretty soon ...

Going back in time a little bit, I wanted to post some pictures from our recent trip to Albuquerque. We had a great time! The flight out was good, and although I was nervous to fly alone with Simone, and we had to go to Albuquerque by way of Chicago and St. Louis, we made it in one piece and she actually made it fun to travel and there weren't any mishaps. On the way back, not so good ... but we'll get to that later.

I stayed with my sister Elena for two nights on the west side of town, and her three boys Jojo, Christian, and Gaby were very good to Simone and she had fun playing with all of them. Every morning she would ask for "monkey munch" (her words for cereal, which I taught her and do not regret), and here she is having some with her cousins, along with a photo of her with her great grandma and my dad, her grandpa:



Her birthday party day arrived (a few days before her actual birthday), and we thought it would be fun to try curling her hair. She didn't mind the curlers being in her hair, but she did mind taking them out. They should have stayed in longer, but she still got a bit of a curl from the process (the picture below right has her great aunt Patsy, grandma and grandpa in it):



Then, it was time for cake! Several family members and some of my friends and my parents friends were able to attend the party. The other picture below is my aunt Patsy holding Simone while Patsy tries to figure out her digital camera and Simone practices smiling.




We ate at Sadie's restaurant the next day, and I finally got to eat a bunch of chips and salsa. They really do have the best salsa, and I bought two jars of it to bring home. I had a long list of New Mexican restaurants to eat at, and although I did not make it to as many as I would have liked, I was glad I went here (and The Frontier and Blake's and the Indian Cultural Center's restaurant). The kids got bored and headed over to the Ms. Pac-Man machine. If you know me at all, you know I love this video game and it warmed my heart to see her take an interest in the very best video game of all time (hands down). Although we hope she does not take an interest in other technical gadgets, TV, and games yet, but we know that's a pipe dream. I think if you replace the milk bottle on the tabletop console with a pint of beer, you could sum up a good chunk of my 20's:



Finally, there is this ad I saw on the side of the road for Blake's (who make the very best green chile cheese burgers), and it made me laugh since they just flipped over their usual mascot:



As most everyone knows by now, Simone threw up all over the Duke student who sat next to me half an hour into a four hour flight from Phoenix to Raleigh. Rather than give you all the gory details, suffice it to say it was an unpleasant experience but everybody on the plane was very nice about it all and we somehow survived. I used to have a fear of flying, but after that experience I fear nothing - the worst has already happened.

We had a great time and miss everybody back in Albuquerque! Happy 2nd birthday Simone! I will post all of these and other pictures to our online album soon, along with some videos, and then our next entry will show the other birthday party we had for her in Durham.

I'll let Sergio update about his trip to Albuquerque but with Simone's second birthday came great power: her first big girl bed. It was procured on a trip to the closest Ikea - 3 hours away - a day best not spoken of, as it involved 6 hours of driving, toddler tantrums, about 20 Swedish meatballs and too many Allen wrenches. But let's not dwell on it, let's view the happy result:

Labels: Simone