Carnaval

Carnaval here in Leuven is celebrated 2 weeks later than everywhere else. Who knows why? And people don't dress up like they do in other places. The school kids wear a very homemade (read thrown together 5 min before leaving the house) costume to school one day and that's about it.

The city library had a great carousel that Uxue and her friend Mathilda took a ride on.

Here are some images from the city parade. We had been previously warned that it wasn't worth the time, but we were surprised to say the least!

Uxue's First Birthday!

Happy Birthday Uxue!
Zorionak Uxue!
Felicidades Uxue!

After lots of back and forth, and almost backing out entirely because I was sick, I made a Chocolate Buttermilk Cake with Vanilla Cream Frosting! Warning (this is for you Betsy...) it was a 'granola' cake. Not a lot of sugar, butter, etc and it had whole grain flour and other healthy things in it! But no fear, it was actually really tasty!

Gorka and I requested no gifts since she's only a year old and doesn't really get it anyway. She did, however, get some gifts when we arrived to Vitoria since Gorka's family doesn't see her everyday. Maybe it was they're way of getting around the no birthday presents thing.

Ft Wayne/Thanksgiving

Uxue and I went to Fort Wayne for Thanksgiving and had a great trip. The flights went surprisingly uneventful! Going she crawled up and down the aisles and coming back she slept the entire flight! Chicago is a good airport to have a long layover with kids as they have a great play area. We spent 2 hours there! Jet-lag on the way back to Belgium was definitely the hardest part... although I always struggle with that.

Mom's visit - I mean Grandma!

Busy Months!!!

Uxue is now 7 1/2 months old! I believe the last post was when she was almost 3 months old. We've been sooo busy. As anyone with children (or who has had children) knows. I have started most of the posts so I will finish them in the next week and post them!

Quick version of the past few months:
-Visited Gorka's family in Vitoria, Uxue's first plane ride
-Planned to go to Morroco for two weeks but were grounded by the Icelandic ash cloud. So we took a car ride through France and went to visit Gorka's family instead.
-Went to the beach. Uxue was very scared of the waves.
-Has been on way too many international flights for a baby under 1 year old.

Uxuki now:

• "Eating"
• Rolling over everywhere
• Sitting more or less on her own
• Crawls
• Ocasionally pulls herself to a standing position
• Has 5 teeth as of today

The Beach

Off we go to Girona!

We took a weekend getaway to the beach in Girona, Spain. We met with some friends, Rob & Anne, and had an EXCELLENT time.

They brought Uxue this fabulous outfit, fitted with sunglasses and everything! It was great against the sun and the wind! And she's sooo cute!

Sadly, Uxue wasn't thrilled with the waves. Actually she was terrified of them. We would get her close to the water and she would start screaming and grabbing at us desperately. We tried several times on Day 1. Finally on Day 2, we bought a small inflatable pool and filled it will the water from the ocean.

She absolutely loved it. I'm not sure how good it was for her kidneys since she was thrilled licking the salt off her face!

The weather was perfect for the beach! Hot, hot, hot! It was way too hot for me. It seems that Uxuki got her dad's tolerance for heat because she wasn't bothered a bit while I went home and recovered from heat stroke for a few days. Uxuki did however get eaten by mosquitoes. I guess she is just too sweet.

Open Farm Days

There's a great weekend event here in the francophone part of Belgium, Open Farm Days. An entire weekend to visit all sorts of farms. To be honest I was way more interested than Uxue!

Apparently, the organic hens here in Belgium only get the best to eat! Croissants and "Pain au chocolat" or chocolate filled croissants! Too funny! Actually they probably get the day old stuff for free from the local bakery!

At a different farm, we were able to get close to the animals. Uxue met a sheep, but truly wasn't very interested! I think the sheep was more interested than Uxuki.