Bits and pieces

     It's said that life is made of short little moments that just happen. Here is us, just living.

     I decided that the blender I got a year back needs more work for its money. So, I became a smoothie junkie. All good and tasty until one gets on the weighting scale.

Frapuccino with wiped cream and chocolate syrup. 2000 calories and still counting...

banana strawberry milk shake with honey. fine, wiped cream and strawberry syrup as well :)

      Catalina's day care participates in the neighborhood 4th of July parade. This year the parade was not such a big hit for our family. The weather forecast announced rain, so we waited till the last minute to see if the parade is still on. Last minute, Marius decided to join us as well, but he was so stressed he'll not be back on time at work, that a lot of that stress was projected onto Catalina and me as well. My little patriotic angel was as sweet as ever, and dressed up like mommy asked her.

Catalina and mommy had a lot of one and one dates. With daddy working extra hours or always being tired, we enjoyed the outdoors as much as possible. Catalina is now very good at riding her tricycle, but still not very interested. She just doesn't see a point in pedaling :). She did enjoy however her shiny ball from nana Petronela.

Gardening Catalina's style

This is the whole universe according to Catalina: The sun,  Earth, a moon and a big rocket!

Pools and birthday parties pretty much filled our summer. Nothing to complain, when my buddy is the cutest girl in town!

We were then lucky to have Peter, Silvia, Mikil and Petronela once again with us. They were awfully tired from flying over continents and oceans, from riding trains, buses, taxi and cars. But Catalina and mommy wanted to make the best of the very short time we had together. So, we dragged everyone for a day of history in downtown Philly.

A grug, or a girl hug (thanks for teaching us, Silvia!)

 During our historical tour, I obviously wanted to take pictures at every spot. As expected, the kids were more interested in silly little toys and gadgets. I thought it would be very cool to have some half romanian and american little patriots in the picture, but Peter agreed only of can be the girl. You can see, this pissed Catalina quite a bit :)

 Luckily, Catalina has two boy cousins, one of which has more sense than two 4 year olds. Thanks Mikil for putting this smile on Catalina's face :)

One of America's finest citizens!

Ok, we had some ice cream too :)

I did say we were on a historical tour, right?

I think this is as pretty as one can have the Liberty Bell. The kids all agreed that the bell is just a bell, and that the story was waaaayyy too long. You have to give it to them, it was on a 90F day with probably 100% humidity, jet lagged and after an hour long wait in line to see the bell. And still I got some smiles on my camera. I carry all these smiles with me every day, and they keep me happy when the sun forgets to shine.

A week from today we are getting ready for our Colorado/Yellowstone trip. Here we come, the whole bunch for the Colorado part. Family reunion speaking, this turned out to be a pretty good year. Is it greedy to hope for even better next year? :)