Elizabeth got her front tooth on the left side, finally.  Oddly, she wasn’t super cranky, only a small lack of appetite and a lack of wanting to take long naps.  Other than that, we didn’t even know she was teething! 

We called Nanny today.  We plug in the phone and start to dial and Elizabeth goes nuts saying “nananana” and then the second the call connects — she won’t say a word.  She ALWAYS does this and it’s very annoying.  Maybe when Nanny comes to visit, she’ll be able to hear some real talking.

  To answer everyone’s question — NO it is not green. 

The last Saturday in September is Swiss Days. The people who settled Santa Clara were Swiss, so they have this celebration every year. Paul, Elizabeth & I made it to the parade and walked around the booths and had lunch. Pictures are on Paul’s computer and he will add those:
Paul Here- I haven’t edited the pics, I have just uploaded them all as a gallery item right now, so you can see them all, including Darth Vader (who wasn’t very tall, we did wonder if he needed some platform shoes). I will see if I can edit them and make them a bit clearer when i get 2 minutes spare.

Captain Nelson (Daniel) came over last night and gave us his official assessment of our backyard, as burn season is only going for about another 5 weeks.  

Afterwards, we (Paul, Jessica, Daniel & I) sat outside under the gazebo and chatting while the kids picked weeds and brought them to us as gifts. 

Tonight, Paul & I are going to start doing even more in the back.  I had pulled some weeds, but only about 20% of what is out there.   While dinner is cooking, we’ll go do about 15 minutes more, and then start the burning process next weekend probably.   If we spend about 15-20 minutes every day, we should get it all cleared up fairly soon.

We have a dry erase board on our fridge, and every Thursday and Friday, I start to add jobs to the board for the weekend. 

We woke up Saturday morning to the sound of the neighbors mowing their lawns.   Of course we like to sleep in a little on the weekend, but the neighbors weren’t so kind.  We took that as a sign to get out of bed and get to work.  We cleared off our patio and swept and washed everything, so we’re all ready for the fall.  Now dinner can be served outside!

The lawn got mowed & trimmed and even raked a little.  The inside of the house got tidied a little, but we spent most of the weekend outside.  It’s nice & cool in the upper 80 to low 90’s right now.   We did manage to replace the light fixture in the bathroom this weekend, too.

Currently we are getting the weeds in the back ready to be burned.  We should have that mostly done by next weekend, we hope. 

Well a Resident Alien is what they said!

Following on from Kathys last post..

Monday morning we got up and went to “Elizabeth’s tea room” which was a 10 minute walk from our hotel. After all the walking at the zoo that 10 minutes just served to remind me how old, unfit and overweight I am.

Elizabeth’s tea room was really nice, we had sausage rolls, curried vegetable pasty, trifle, a cake and some fruit (well Kathy had the fruit), I was carrying Elizabeth round showing her things like the Big Ben tea pot they had and pictures of the queen. Both Kathy and I were thinking that when mum retires we can fool her into coming over for a month or two and put her to work making sausage rolls by the million!

Elizabeth Loved Trifle

We also went into the English shop which is next door, I bought some branston pickle and a tin of custard (not to be eaten together) we also bought some chocolate. I never thought I would enjoy a double decker so much. While in the English shop we got talking to the lady who manages the shop and a Scottish lady who was in there shopping, the shop manager was telling us how it was likely they would send me home for 3 months because I overstayed my visa etc etc. Basically it was enough to scare the crap out of Kathy and the thought of spending October, November and December in the UK wearing shorts and T-shirts (which is pretty much all I own now) didn’t do much for me either.

The immigration interview was at 1.30 and they told us to be there early, but no earlier than 12.45. Luckily enough my wife is in charge of getting me places so we left the hotel early and it is just as well, the on ramp to the freeway/motorway was closed for construction so we had to go all round the town to get on to the road. As anyone who knows me will attest to , if it was down to me we would probably still be driving round!

It is just as well that we were early as they called us in at about 1.15, the first words the lady doing the interview said were

“You applied for parole documents to go home for a holiday, you wont need them”

My first thought was that they were sending me home for the 3 months, and the women in the English shop was right. The lady doing the interview must have heard my deep breath as she followed it up with..

“You will have your green card long before then”

Yehhhaa

So the interview started, she hadn’t seen a British passport before, or a English birth certificate so I was having to point things out. Then we got onto the whole “are you really married” bit. We bored the poor woman with stories of the wedding and why it was so quick and how much time we spent on the phone etc etc.

Right in the middle of the interview Elizabeth delivered her thoughts on the whole process and it was smelly!

I think the smell helped speed the process up, we were all done and outside by 1.30!

So it is official my green card will be here within 3 weeks, then I can get a drivers license and all the exciting things like that. It also means I can go to the UK and be allowed back in without any problems which is a big thing.

This is Elizabeth in her brand new forward facing car seat. We couldn’t imagine the trip with her facing the other direction. She is a couple of ounces smaller than what is recommended, but she’s tall enough. Elizabeth LOVES the new seat.

We woke up around 6:30 and left about 7:30. We had one small stop in Beaver, Utah, for breakfast & a crawl around, and made it to our hotel around 1:00. We checked in and settled a bit and then went right to the zoo.

As Elizabeth is so young, she didn’t see the smaller animals very well, but she would love to have a pet giraffe, elephant, zebra or porcupine. It was fun for us to see her smile again after the days of the painful teething. She absolutely loved the zoo. When we’re in Vegas again, we might try taking her to see animals down there.

After the zoo, we went to the Gateway Mall, which is an outdoor mall. We pretty much just walked around and didn’t buy anything. For dinner, we decided to go someplace we’ve never been before, so we picked the Training Table. It was different and had pretty good food, but we won’t go there again.

In the evening, I got Elizabeth dressed in a sleeper (see the picture below), which we bought special just for our trip to Salt Lake as it’s so much colder there. It was so funny to watch Elizabeth holding out her arms and looking at them with a strange look on her face as if to say “what are these things on my arms?!?!”. You see, this is the first time that she can remember having sleeves!

We drove to Temple Square and just walked around looking at the buildings. We attempted to sleep early Sunday night, as we were both exhausted from all the driving & walking, but of course we were in a strange place and Elizabeth didn’t want to sleep there. She slept by herself for about an hour and then Paul ended up holding her until about 4am.

<— Paul & Elizabeth at the Tabernacle on Temple Square.

Today on the way to the grocery store, Elizabeth got to pet her first horse.  At first she was a bit scared of the big animal, but when I pointed out familiar characteristics like eye, hair, nose, etc., she settled down and decided that she likes horses after all. 

Also, the breastfeeding has finally come to an end.  I can finally go back to eating chocolate, peanuts, broccoli, garlic, onions and anything else I want. 

As you can tell by the lack of posts, tooth #4 took its toll on us.  Elizabeth had a HUGE lump in her mouth (about the size of a small pea) that was the swollen part of the incoming tooth.  She would scream when it was touched and winced in pain as you wiped her face.   She didn’t sleep very well and also wasn’t eating much. 

Well, it’s finally here and things are much better.  It’s funny that her top teeth aren’t her middle teeth, they are the ones next to the middle teeth.  It looks like she has fangs!

Elizabeth weighs 19 lbs 4 oz.  and is 28 3/4″ long.   

Usually, if our doctor is worried about anything, he makes the child come back in 3 months, but he said Elizabeth is doing so well, he doesn’t need to see her back until she’s 18 months old and ready for her next round of shots.  She’s done very well with these shots — no fever and hardly any fussiness at all.   We have also started giving her small amounts of cow’s milk.  She will be completely switched from breast milk to cow’s milk by the time we go to Salt Lake City on the 15th of this month.