2012

We've had a great 2011, and wish everyone an exciting 2012. We noticed that this year Alice will turn , Gryphon will turn , Cheri and I will turn and celebrate anniversary number . This may just be a fluke of the Mayan calendar.

New dress

Feli came to watch Gryphon and Alice earlier this week. Gryphon was apprehensive, but just as in The Berenstain Bears and the Sitter, he ended up having a good time.

Alice toddled around in a new dress from Nanna yesterday.

While Cheri worked at the clinic, the rest of us adventured up to Mt. Tapochau again. It was very windy, and Gryphon spent his time trying to find hiding places from the wind, worried that he would "blow up into the air."


We had lumpia and banana bread for dinner at the street market afterward.

Computer Superfail

Did I tell you that, in the last month, my camera got knocked over and required a new lens? Or that I drove over my tripod? That my cell phone went through the laundry and fizzled? Well, today the hard drive on my computer spontaneously died, and I have little hope of retrieving stuff from it. I don't think I'll recommend the HP Pavilion to friends (though it had been working fine until now). Fortunately I had backed up my files at the end of November, and most of my photos are online. However, the blog may look a little sparse in the coming days. Good thing Cheri gave me Habibi to fill the void in my life.

Christmas

One of the reasons we moved to Saipan was so that Christmas would come 18 hours earlier.
 
Gryphon was very excited.  Alice had to take a nap after an hour. 
 
Then Nanna and Dar Dar joined us on Skype.
 

Alice had a tea party with the Mad Hatter, er, Gryphon.
 
Everyone was ready for a nap after lunch.
 
“Gryphon, I love your peace turkey” -Cheri

Pink ladies

Gryphon and I needed an excuse to make more cookies, so we gave away all the Saipan stars to people in our apartment complex and whipped up a double batch of sugar cookies. He wanted to frost them pink, so we did. Well, we tried, but there were so many ladies that I had to freeze some to do later.

We had Christmas Eve dinner at the Indian restaurant. Mmmm, mmm hmm.

Saipan Stars

 
Alice is feeling better now, so we went up the hill to the pool.  She got to try out the swimsuit Feli gave her.
 
 
In the afternoon I used some leftover tatiza dough I made with corn flour to whip up some Saipan Stars.  They’re not that great, but the clients aren’t picky.
 
 
 

 

Boxes

We were excited to find seven boxes waiting at our mailbox today! While Alice napped, Gryphon and I muffled our excitement as we dissected each one and put the contents under the tree. Alice took an unprecedented four-hour morning nap, so after finishing with the boxes Gryphon had time to watch a little Cars while I did some work. The laptop screen was divided as such:

Cheri was still sleeping off her action-packed night shift while we headed to the hammock. This time we brought along the Mythbusters so we could ignore the beauty all around.

Hammock

 
While Alice is still putting the bulb syringe to good use, I have declared myself well and put up the hammock to celebrate.  The three of us spent almost two hours lounging in it this morning while Cheri slept off the first of several consecutive night shifts.
 
 

This evening we had dinner at the market.  Gryphon’s prize for eating his lumpia was a ride on the bumper boat.  We were the only  ones riding, so we had a lot of room to pick up speed (they’re electric cars with big rubber bumperS all around them) – a little too much speed for Gryphon’s taste, so I ended up solo for the last few minutes.