I love spending time with my family

This past week hasn't been too eventful, which I am actually really thankful for. Last week was spring break for Faith Academy, which means two things. One, I haven't had soccer for 13 days and two, with so many people in our condo building connected to Faith it has been fairly quiet around the condos. That has left Daniel and I plenty of time to hang out with JoAnn and to watch basketball. (Okay, Daniel really is the one watching most of the basketball, but I have been paying attention to the scores since I filled out a couple brackets this year.) It also has left me plenty of time to go to Starbucks. I am not really a big coffee drinker, but I love to go, sit and talk. Plus when my favorite drink only costs about $3 for the largest size, it makes for a pretty cheap time out. I think I ended up going 4 times in 5 days. Anyway, this is my couch potatoe Daniel watching some basketball. Apparently waking up early to watch the NCAA tournament every morning wasn't enough basketball for him this weekend, so he caught quite a few NBA and PBA games on TV too.

This picture is from lunch today. She was eating and all of the sudden looked at me and put her arms in the air like this. I couldn't figure out what she was doing or why until all of the sudden it hit me that I had music playing and the song "Your Love is Strong" came on. I think Daniel must flex when he dances to this song with her. I'm not really sure, but she kept doing it whenever the song said "strong". It was pretty cute.


Okay, this story is a little longer. I just think this is a funny picture to have taken in the Philippines, as if it ever gets cold enough here to wrap up in a blanket. Really, I decided to take my almost two weeks off from soccer and try to potty train Jo. I know it seems really early, but she goes crazy every time I try to change her diaper and I got tired of her screaming no matter what I did. (And tired of paying for the diapers that I was forcing her to wear). So, I let her run around the house without a diaper and encouraged her to use the potty instead. Really, I didn't expect her to catch on too quick since she is still pretty young, but she actually does pretty well now. I definitely would not say that she is potty trained by any means, but she knows what to do. It's more of a question of wether she is willing to do it. Anyway, back to the picture. Since she figured out that she can run around without a diaper if she goes to the potty, she loves to not just go around without a diaper, but without any clothes. I really wouldn't care except our entire back wall in our appartment is made completely of windows and at night anyone can look in and that just sort of seems creepy to me to have anyone be able to see my daughter running around naked. So the other night she absolutely refused to put any clothes on, but would watch her cartoon with the blanket wrapped around her. Go figure.

Dancing Queen

Sometimes it's funny what kids pick up on. When we moved into our apartment it came furnished and the couch that we got with this place was probably the most uncomfortable couch I have ever sat on. So at some point we ended up starting this thing where at night when we wanted to watch TV we would bring a spare mattress in and lay it on the floor. We recently bought a new couch, but have continued to lay on the mattress at night. Probably more out of habit than anything else. Now the first thing JoAnn does when she sees one of us grab the mattress is run to our bedroom and bring a pillow off our bed to the mattress. Then she usually lays down on the pillow before anyone else has a chance to. It is so cute to see her coming around the corner with a pillow that is larger than she is in one hand and her bottle in the other. This picture is from a couple nights ago after she got the pillow for us.


Notice the crutches is the background of the picture? What happened? I tried to run. Evidently that wasn't such a good idea. With soccer season in full swing, I have been trying to get out on the field and do some of the stuff with the girls and it usually takes about one long sprint before I feel like I am about to fall over. So I decided to try to run before practices in order to try to get in better shape. Like maybe I could do two sprints instead of one. Anyway, I got to the end of the first mile I was trying to run and I realized two things. One, my lungs felt really good as if I could run forever. Then the second thing hit me...I could barely move my leg without extreme pain. Somewhere along the way I had pulled a ligament in my hip. So now I have been stuck with those crutches for the last week. The crutches themselves aren't really that bad. A week or two doesn't seem so awful after the 6 weeks I spent on them in college after I broke my leg. It's the part where I can't pick JoAnn up and walk with her that makes things a little difficult. Luckily, I have a great husband that has been so wonderful in helping me do so much. Seriously, sometimes I think he has more patience than any person I have ever met.

On a different note this video is one of my favorite videos of JoAnn. She has been really into dancing lately and has come up with a new move that Daniel has referred to as the "rooster dance." I think it is pretty cute.

Talking up a storm

Lately JoAnn has been talking a ton and picking up new words just about everyday. Since we live so far away from family, every few days I try to go through pictures of everyone and have her point out different people. So far the only ones she has consistently been able to point out every time are my parents and Daniel's parents and recently she has been repeating me when I say "Grandma" and "Grandpa" and "Lola" (tagalog for grandma). I have been meaning to get a video of it for a while now, but soccer started and I have been coaching for the last couple weeks so my to do list is getting a little long. Anyway, I finally got it on video this morning so here it is...




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In addition here are a few pictures from the last couple weeks...

I am not sure why she did this, but she was playing in her room the other day and came out with this on her head. It is a piece of the giant puzzle floor mat we have in her room.


This is from last week when we went out to eat with Mylene, her daughter Yannah, and her mother Tita. Mylene was one of the first Filipina women I met. She worked for us for a couple years and unfortunately now that she doesn't work for us, I don't see her as much as I would like. So in an attempt to spend some more time together we took them out to eat the other night. We went to a Chinese restaurant and when we asked them if they like Chinese food, they all said they had never tried it before. I don't know why, but that seemed really strange to me. Maybe it is because there are so many "Filipino" foods that I would actually consider Chinese. Anyway, they loved it and we had a good time catching up with them.