My FIRST Birthday!

What fun! Baba Dace, grandpa Van, auntie Anna and lots of friends over all for ME! We played, ate cake and ice cream, and sang. I got lots of great toys and am having SO much fun playing with them all . Here are a couple of pics from the big day.

Papa and Grandma Sharon come to visit

Kai and the girls got some QT with Papa and Grandma Sharon last week. There's nothing like a grandparent's love and spoiling! Here we are having fun in Annapolis, MD at the Naval Acadamy.

Petting Zoo

We went to the National Zoo in DC last week, but for Kai, Amanda and Alex, nothing can compare to the Reston Petting Zoo!

I'm just putting this photo up because I love it - I don't think I've ever seen pure joy before seeing this shot. This is his first "swimming" experience in a lake in Latvia during our trip there for his christening.

Fish and Mushrooms in Latvia!

I grabbed a little time off last week for some R&R and headed off to Latvia for some fishing, mushroom hunting and perhaps a little drinking on the side :) I was a bit worried when I looked at the weather forecast which was something like Seattle's - rain, rain, more rain - but it turned out to be gorgeous three days in which the clouds circled us but never dumped on our location. Gundars and I spent a couple days canoeing down the Venta river which starts in Lithuania and ends up in the Baltic by Ventspils. Gorgeous river, fairly slow and full of fish as you can see in the picture above - lots of pike, bass and sapale (I don't know the English namefor this one). We also spent a couple days at Oskars afterwards which involved more drinking and eating than anything else, but that is what vacations are for. On the last day we hit the woods for barvikas (porcinis) and gailenes (chantarelles) - LOTS and LOTS to be found. I wish it was this easy to find them in Serbia - they basically grow by the roadside there, and as long as the Latvian and Russian grandmothers don't beat you to the punch you can pick a couple of kilos in no time. Funny sight, though, to see literally hundreds of cars lined up along the road by local mushroom hunting grounds and old ladies elbowing others aside to get to their favorite spot. Gundar's mother, Violeta, literally lights up when she talks about her latest foray into the woods, describing in vivid details how big they were, which trees they were growing close to and of course the actual number she brought home. We feasted on spekis (smoked fat, mmmmm), black bread and mushroom saute late into the night before I headed back to home... I looked like a refugee on the plane with my plastic bags full of pierogi, fungi and bread.