Small World!

We have new neighbors to our left- our friends from Lions Park, Cliff and Julia Harty just moved in with their two elementary school age boys Everett and Simon. We love having them next door because they are really cool people and Siri loves having more kids to play with. The really crazy thing is that they both are attorneys and also graduated from Gonzaga Law. They graduated a couple of years before me though, but that means that we still overlapped by a year. We know many of the same people. Now we are living in the middle of no-where and whadya know- our neighbors are not only from Spokane, but they went to Gonzaga. It turns out they also lived only about 20 streets south of us on Spokane's South Hill.

Siri was invited to her first birthday party yesterday. She did such a great job playing with all of the kids. She only had one small temper tantrum and that was at the very end of the night after she had been playing hard and it was well past her bed time. She shared toys and interacted with the kids. She was very quiet, as she usually is with new people. There was also an infant there and a couple of times she quietly sat down next to her and gently patted her head.

Our Beach

These pictures were taken a few weeks ago before we moved into our new house. We were visiting a friend (Erick's golfing buddy) who lives a few doors down from where we live now. The beach is amazing here and Siri seems to love it (most of the time). Sometimes she loves to go in the water and other times she would much rather sit up on the grassy shore. The fact that she doesn't like to swim that much is actually a blessing. She stays far away from the water unless we are right next to her. There is also a 5 foot rock decent to get to the water, so if she was interested she'd sooner break an arm before she ran into the ocean without us- a bad situation either way but we would prefer the broken arm to the latter. She laughs most of the day and she loves to make Daddy laugh. Here, she had a runny nose because she had another tooth coming in. She kept blowing bubbles with her nose; a trick my mom says I also did when I was a toddler. She is growing like a weed and is as tall as many 2 and a half year olds.

Pacific Arts Festival

Over 20 countries from across the South Pacific gathered on our island for two weeks to showcase their arts: photography, dancing, crafts, food, music, etc. It was a great celebration. Siri loved all of the events. On the last Sunday of the festival we spent the whole day in town at the beach in front of my work. For lunch we sat in the shade and across from us was the large stage with performers as pictured below. You cannot see the performers in the picture here, but they were vi sable above the crowd if you stood up. The mountain that you see is called Rainmaker mountain. We had beautiful weather for the whole of the festival.

Baby Girl Simonsen is getting bigger

This is my belly around July 23rd. We went swimming at Tisa's on Sunday afternoon. This was after two weeks of Pacific Arts Festival celebrations. We were out each night with Siri watching the amazing performers from more than 20 island countries. Siri had a blast. A group was performing at Tisa's this night before they left on the plane. My belly is much bigger now. Only a few more months left. She is due to arrive October 28th. My pregnancy is going great. She's treating me well, just like Siri did. We are all excited to be in our new house that stays so cool and it is wonderful to jump into the ocean on a whim without having to pack everything up. Erick is enjoying kayaking too. Our friend lent us his to use whenever he isn't using it and he is storing it at our house, which basically means we can use it all the time.

Siri Loves Elmo

Siri picked up one of of her juice boxes a couple of days ago and freaked out saying, "Elmo, Elmo, Elmo!" Well, it was actually more like "EMO, EMO, EMO!" We don't have any Elmo things at our house, only a Grover book that she loves. There is a picture of Elmo on the back of her Grover book and just yesterday she also picked up her book and pointed to Elmo and exclaimed "Emo!" She must be reading Elmo books at daycare or maybe she watches Sesame Street there. We don't have a television so she hasn't watched any t.v. with us. It is pretty cute. She is also getting really good at saying "Bye." She also makes tons of animal sounds- she'll make cow, monkey, and sheep noises. She loves puckering her lips and saying "moooo."

We just moved into our new house last weekend. We love it. We sleep so much better without the stray dogs running around and Siri loves the big yard. We are also right on the ocean so she can see the boats and the planes and goes crazy over both. She loves airplanes and will wave goodbye as they fly away.

She has also been going to the daycare for the past few months. She loves it there. We drop her off and she runs to play with the kids. There are only about 8 other kids. They are all Samoan kids with the exception of our friend Noa who is the same age as Siri. She is learning a lot of Samoan words too. She knows how to say "no," "bring it," "stop it," and "you better knock it off." Basically she knows all of the words you tell to kids or kids tell eachother when they are being obnoxious. Those are the words that I recognize her saying, but she might know more too but she just says them and I take it for babel because I don't know very much Samoan yet. All of the kids speak Samoan all of the time, but the caregivers speak in English most of the day and read English books. She is learning songs too and she loves to dance when music comes on. She'll do the hula for you if you ask, and she'll show you her 'twinkles' when you read Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. She's a really fun girl and all the kids seem to love her. They sing her a song when she leaves and she just smiles like crazy.

Island Life Update

We have been so busy here on "The Rock" as it is lovingly referred to by locals and imports alike. We just had the 10th Annual Pacific Arts Festival which culminated in an amazing fireworks display. For two weeks Siri stayed up late dancing with artists from over 20 pacific islands. I will post pictures when I have a better internet connection. Now we are resting from so many late nights. We also are getting ready to move into a new house that is right on the ocean. We will likely move later this week. Work is going great for me. I am very busy, but the work is exciting. I work with immigration issues daily. Erick was just hired by the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources. He gets to work from home and it is just 20 hours a week so he gets to still spend a lot of time with Siri. We also have another baby on the way. The new baby is a GIRL! She is scheduled to arrive October 28th. She is healthy and I am doing great too. Thanks for the cards and emails. It is great to keep up with what is going on back home. We miss all of you and I wish that you could hang out on the beaches with us!