Wow its been a long time

Um yeah, so I had a baby and stuff and suddenly found out how hard it was to type one handed. So that is the main reason I have not updated this blog. By a strange twist of fate I woke up early today before both of the girls and instead of doing something responsible like cleaning the sticky spots off my floor I decided to update my blog.

A quick update on our lives. Bella is turning three on Friday. She is so excited about her birthday she keeps singing the happy birthday song to herself and talking about the pinata she is going to have. How does a three year old know about pinatas you may ask? One of her favorite shows right now is the old Disney show "Saludos Amigos/ Three Caballeros". She asks for it by name and loves to samba around the house wearing only her white tutu that auntie gave her. It is kind of a fun show for us as it has several cartoons based in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. She likes the little one about the little airplane named Pedro. She calls him Pedo which makes papi cringe. (I'll let all the non Spanish speakers google that one to see why). She tends to be an obstinate little stink at times but we love her and her funny personality.

Our new addition born early October is Tali. (Again like Bella not her real name but to protect the innocents from the Internets it will work). She is an adorable, rolly polly little 4 month old. She is getting very cute and smiley and is fascinated by her big sister. Seriously she will just sit and watch Bella's antics and copy her laugh. She can turn over from back to front and front to back and with her strong legs she will scoot along face first. (Usually towards things like the edge of the bed). We were somewhat hoping for a calm one for number two but it looks like Tali will be up and moving and into things even quicker than Bella. Oh well.

I went back to work, again part time shortly after Tali's arrival. We have been blessed with a fantastic babysitter who is wonderfully flexible with my sometimes sporadic schedule. I am really liking my job and where I am at professionally right now. I have had some fun opportunities to make formal presentations on Dementia in the last couple months and have really enjoyed it. (I got a fruit flower arrangement as a thank you for one of my presentations yesterday, which was kind of fun and made my day). I am also starting to see a few more private counseling patients. We moved to a new physician office space that is more convenient for patients and a lot nicer looking but unfortunately quite a bit smaller. My coworkers have been stressed with the move. My office is now a nook in a hallway next to the lab table where they run urine samples. Okay, that makes it sound somewhat worse than it is, but I still find it kind of funny. I have other spaces that I share to see patients and such.

As for the Blue Prince, he is slogging along making the final push to finish his last semester of school. Its amazing how fast the four years have gone. (Speaking of which we celebrated our four year wedding anniversary last week too). He hates winter here working up in the cold in the mountains. It has caused him some serious issues with bursitis and other pain in his knees. Due to that we may be looking at making a move to warmer climes down south in the next year or so after he gets his journeyman licence. Of course there would have to be work down south as well, which is another complicating factor. Nothing is decided, and it is mostly fantasizing for the time being.

We all enjoyed the trip back to Uruguay in December to visit family. It was a long trip and somewhat overwhelming with two little ones but an adventure to say the least. If I ever again get the motivation to post I'll try and put on some pictures. The family dynamic with my husband's family tends to be difficult at times but it was lovely to see everyone and especially watch Bella interact with her cousins. It is amazing to me how they all look so much alike.

I am hearing some major rustling from the ranks so I guess it is back to being a mom for now. Hopefully my next post will not be so long in the future.

Casa Pueblo

I realize that I haven't posted many pictures of our Uruguay trip and in looking through them I came across our photos of a little side trip we took to Casa Pueblo, the workshop/home/museum of Carlos Paez Villaro.

Carlos Villaro is a world renowned Uruguayan artist primarily known for his public mural work in many countries. He is probably in his 80's now and has an incredibly long career as a painter, sculptor, architect and a Ceramic artist. His work is influenced by the art of Picasso and in his world travels he worked for a time with Picasso. Another factoid: Carlos's son was one of the Uruguayan rugby players that survived the plane crash in the Andes that the movie Alive was based on.

The home at Casa Pueblo is an amazing work of art and architecture perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The views are incredible. We found out later that a portion of the complex is actually hotel now as well. Next time we go to Uruguay we will have to find out the cost, it may be worth the splurge to stay in such a beautiful setting.

While at the museum I purchased a book that contains some of the colorful animal prints that Carlos has done through the years. Someday when I get organized I hope to frame some and put them up in Bella's room as a happy, colorful addition. My Dad and Kathy having more resources than us decided to purchase a numbered print of one of the artist's paintings of the house at Casa Pueblo. They were in the gift shop debating over two, one signed but with a slight rip and the other unsigned. When the worker at the gift-shop sensed that it was important to them to have a signed print, she asked for them to write down their names and wait for her to go into the workshop area for a moment. She returned a few minutes latter with the numbered print that they wanted signed with a personal inscription from the artist. Apparently Casa Pueblo is still Carlos's working studio and he just happened to be in residence that day and willingly took a moment to sign the print. The cynical possibility is that the gift-shop worker just took it in the back and signed it herself to make a sell but we prefer to believe the first option. Either way it makes for a good story.

Anyway here are some of the other pictures we took of our little group at Casa Pueblo. If you want to see the rest of our Uruguay pictures I have downloaded them to my Flickr account and you can see them by clicking the link on the left of this page. My step-mom Kathy should have some great pictures as well but we have yet to see those (hint, hint). Enjoy:

Found in Uruguay

This is likely to be a semi-short post but I did want to put up some pictures and let everyone know we are home safely from our South American Adventure. We had a great trip, with many ups and downs which I may or may not get into later... but anyway here are a couple of lovely finds:

My baby's Curls:

We have always taken it as a genetic destiny that this child would have curly hair but apparently Bella's curls only appear in the presence of humidity. Or maybe it's a genetic switch that's only flipped on when she touches Uruguayan soil. Anyway, they were lovely and I am missing them already.

The Origin of the Blue Prince's Nose:

This is my husband's paternal Grandmother posing first with Bella and afterwards with my husband, and Bella's cousin Francisco. (I think the cousins definatly look alike). She is a fantastic woman and she got so exited to see us, though she kept exclaiming about how fat I had gotten and kept asking me what I had eaten to get so fat. It was so funny and hard to get offended when she said it with such love and humor as she was giving me hugs.

Carolina:

Standing next to me in the orange shirt is a young woman named Carolina. When I was serving as a missionary I taught her the gospel. She was 14 years old at the time. It was such a lovely surprise to visit my husbands home ward and to find her there actively participating in the ward. She is now married and has a daughter of her own (way to make me feel old) and she and her husband are making plans to be sealed in the temple soon.

One of the most beautiful views in the world:

This was the view from our hotel room in Piriapolis and it wasn't even a particularly well or specially situated room. This is the view you get from most of the town, beautiful sea views bumping up to lovely green hills and mountains in the background. My husband teases me about how much I like this place. I admit it is an ongoing fantasy of mine to one day buy a house or build on a plot of land in this area. Maybe one day...

First Post

So I have been threatening for several weeks to actually start this blog and following my initial miss-start where I got all frustrated trying to get creative personalizing the blog with a cool header and such (way beyond my limited computer publishing skills), I decided that cool looking or not, I wanted to give it a try, so here we are.

Some may ask "What's with the funky title"? In reality it makes slightly more sense in Spanish but only slightly. For those who know me, you will be aware that my husband is from Uruguay (a small South American country near Brazil and Argentina) (no not in Africa and no not the land locked one in the jungle, that's Paraguay). Anyway when my husband and I were beginning our long distance dating thing he would often tease me asking if I had found my Principe Azul, (Blue Prince) which in English would be more like White knight or Prince Charming. As things progressed there was a time when I let him know that he was the only Blue Prince even in the running and he has been the only one for me ever since. So there you have the Blue Prince in our story.


As for the Orange Sock.... During my first visit back to Uruguay to see if there really would be any real life connection between myself and aforementioned Blue Prince, I had the opportunity to go to church in a ward where I had been a missionary for 7 months. While greeting everyone in the traditional Uruguayan style (one by one, a kiss to the cheek and heaven forbid if you miss someone) I ran into a older gentleman friend of mine asking if I had returned to find my "Media Naranja". I, having never heard the phrase before, could not comprehend what an Orange Sock had to do with anything. I found out latter that "Media Naranja" is a term meaning your soul mate or other half. Technically "Media Naranja" is best translated as Half an Orange but in my defense to all my Mexican Spanish speaking friends, in Uruguay socks are called medias. (Contrary to what one of my MTC Spanish teachers believed and made a huge deal over when it came up on our vocabulary list, but that is a story for another time).


I decided not to take the name Half an Orange because that was the name of one of the first blogs I started reading several years ago, unfortunately now defunct. It was the bilingual blog of a woman who was married to an American and serving as a diplomat for Peru in China with her husband and two small children, cool premise huh, I miss it.


So I guess you can say for this blog's sake I will be the Orange Sock and my husband the Blue Prince. We also have a little one, known here as Princess Bella, who is the real reason for most people to be visiting this blog. As you will see in forthcoming pictures she is incredibly beautiful and in order to protect her from kidnappers and paparazzi we shall attempt to protect her privacy. Anyway welcome to my blog:)