This is from a few weeks ago, but I love this performance by my daughter’s school band of “Kitsune – The Fox Spirits’. We are always so proud of the band.
AND.. you can’t leave without hearing “Songs of the Whalemen”
Category Archives: family
Excitedly Waiting…
for the USCIS to say, “You’re Approved”. Several of our compadres on VisaJourney who filed around the time we did are getting approved. We think we should have the word sometime this month. This means Ian will be “good to go” (his favorite American saying… one of them) for 10 years until he HAS to apply for anything else. He seems quite keen to vote, though, so I have a strong feeling he might be going for citizenship next. 
The only time when it’s been outwardly apparent (aside from the British accent) that Ian’s not a US Citizen is when we traveled to Canada for a day last year. It occurred to us that we needed to make sure the entry and exit rules weren’t different for a British citizen than a US citizen. And of course the entry questions were a bit odd… “Why are you here from the UK”, for example. Erm.. we just crossed the border, dude. We are visiting Seattle and thought it would be fun to leave the country and visit the aquarium, ok?
He would definitely have the advantage, if (and we’re definitely not) we were going to Cuba. He would be able to get off the plane. We would get an immediate return flight. We need a special visa and we need to be on an approved sort of visit (being a journalist or traveling with the Pope or something).
Ouch
I got a call from school around 10:15 this morning from the school nurse. Brit had tripped and landed on her elbow. The nurse was recommending an x-ray, so I picked up Ian on the way to school, called the doctor on the way, and arranged an appointment. (Well, it was more of an “Brit may have broken her elbow and needs an x-ray… Where should we go?” call.. totally not knowing if we needed the ER yet, or urgent care or needed to see the doctor first)
We had a doctor’s appointment set for 15 minutes from where we were, which was awesome, since we were in the same neighborhood.
The doctor examined her arm, did a few physical tests, then sent us for x-rays to see if there was a break or fracture somewhere, but luckily, there wasn’t.
We came away with an excuse for gym class for no upper body physical activity and instructions to give her 600 mg of ibuprofen and ice to her elbow for 7 – 14 days.
Crazy day, but it turned out alright.
Father’s Day
It started with this
.. present opening..
.. a few international phonecalls to our dads living overseas..
.. a trip to Lauritzen Gardens, where we viewed lots of interesting gardens and rode the tram (it was a hot day!)
 |
| 2011-06-19 |
Then we dined on amazingly grilled amazing steak and corn-on-the-cob.
It was a good day.
Good weekend
We spent a few hours Saturday at the Summer Arts Festival. It was interesting to walk through the artist’s stalls and see what they had for sale. Brit bought a signed photograph taken of a polar bear underwater. We’ve framed it and hung it on the wall.
The band at the festival was a Native American rock band called Brulé. We took video but the background noise really took away our ability to do their music justice. So you can read about them here: http://www.brulerecords.com/isis/promovid3.html and here: http://www.brulerecords.com/home.html.
We spent an hour or so on Sunday at the Omaha Farmer’s Market in Aksarben Village. There are a lot of people walking their dogs there, and it’s always nice to meet them. We bought a few things, like a new collar for Molly, our mini-schnauzer, and some ground beef from Thistle and Clover. We’re cooking some burgers for dinner (when I say “we”, I mean “Ian”) and topping them with chèvre and some habanero paste from JPaste.
My parents are on their way back to Italy. They’ve had loads of travelling in the last week. When they get back, I bet work will be relaxing. We’ll see. I always get incredible jetlag (in a flu-sort of way) going that direction.
It was good to see them. I hope we’ll see them again soon!
A visit from my parents
My parents flew out from Italy. It’s been their first trip to the US since they moved to Italy (temporarily) last year. It was nice to catch up with them and show them around the bits of Omaha they hadn’t seen yet.
This is us (sorry, Ian is taking the picture) laughing because Brit kept laughing.
We ate at a really nice restaurant called Firebirds, which has wonderful steak, by the way. Ian cooked an amazing dinner of pork chops, potato salad, potato wedges (for those against eating potato salad.. is there anyone? Oh.. Brittany!), and a lovely salad with homemade vinaigrette.
We toured Village Point’s shopping area, went to Kohl’s to do some shopping, then my dad bought loads of Jiffy cake mix and other various things to send back to Italy.
Oh, and we couldn’t miss going down to the Missouri River to see how overflowing it was.