Happy Birthday Isaac!

April 13-April 20, 2008
Monday, Monday. I’m really going to miss the gym we have here called the MAC (Memorial Athletic Club). It saves my sanity to be able to go there and leave the kids for an hour in the nursery while I go “work out” Actually sometimes I just zone out on the couch or read a book or make a phone call. Basically its just nice to have a break from the kids.
Eloisa and “Levis”—My neighbors nanny asked me why we game our son such a strange name like “Levis como la ropa”
On Isaac’s birthday eve, our neighbor Claire came over to play with Isaac since she wouldn’t be able to make it to the birthday fiesta on Wednesday. Isaac insisted on dancing to the Elephant song and the Lion Hunt song repeatedly in the backyard. Luckily Claire humored him and Isaac was in heaven. Levi played along too and he only collided with Isaac once during the Elephant song.
For Isaac’s birthday on Wednesday I basically made it easy on myself by having a fiesta at the same time as playgroup and did a joint celebration for Rocco and Zachary as well. We got a dozen balloons at Randalls and Isaac and Levi absolutely loved running around the house with the balloons. It was also the first time in a while that Isaac didn’t insist on “setting free” all of the balloons.
Isaac wanted cupcakes with pink frosting and brownies with m&m’s for his birthday treats. He even blew on his candle (with a little help), but it was heartening to see that he wasn’t completely terrified of the flame on the birthday candle.
Marti came on Wednesday so she was here for Isaac’s birthday party and Isaac was pretty pumped that his grandma came all the way from Utah for his dia especial.
Early Thursday morning James and I left on an airplane to Philadelphia and Marti stayed in Houston to take care of the kids—she deserves a million gold stars for helping us out like that. It would have been very difficult to do the Wharton welcome weekend with the kids.
Philadelphia thoughts—my first impressions of the city were that it looked cold and very industrialized but that was just driving in from the airport. Once we got to town, I was very impressed with the historical beauty that you see in all of the downtown area. There are some amazing buildings and old colonial style town homes. They spilt James and I into two different groups for the orientation workshops We thought it was pretty weird at first but then it turned out to be a huge blessing because I met a cool couple in my group that we might not have met otherwise and they’re the one’s that told us about the building where we ended up leasing an apartment. It’s a new building that wasn’t even in the housing guide—well new in the sense that it’s a renovated building—it used to be the board of education building. We love the openness of the apartments, the huge windows, and most of all—wood (albeit pergo) floors!!