My sister's visit

We had wonderful time with my sister Irada who visited for about 2 weeks in September. Isabella and Adib told everyone they know and they don't about their Aunty visiting.

Here we are at Senyor Pepper Mexican bistro. We enjoyed the decor, food and live singing with guitar.

Cruising on Potomac. We took one of those 45 min tours to see and to hear about the Monuments and other historical building, and enjoy the sunny day and fresh smell of the river waters.

Sunset on Potomac, it was a beautiful scene.

Look at the gray sky in the background! Irada and I went for a concert in front of the Capitol building out in the open; they have free concert on every national holiday and it was the Labor Day. And right after the first part of the concert was over and we broke for the intermnission it started to pour down so they had to cancel the second act and we got soaking wet by the time we got to the metro station. It was fun and quite memorable nevertheless.

At the Nature centre at the Rock Creek Park.

At the Botanical Gardens.

My sweet boy.

We took a trip to the Great Falls Park in Virginia which is one site of the George Washington Memorial Parkway and is on Potomac river. It was a cloudy day and it drizzled a little but we enjoyed the outing very much, had a picnic (the yellow jackets were the only annoying thing), saw the visitor center and did some hiking.

Summer in DC

I am getting less regular at the up-dating of my blog. But I can't let it go that way for more than 2 months, so here is a long due up-date.
It's almost beginning of the new school year, public schools start on Aug 24 here in DC, so, in a week, Isabella will start Kindergarden. Is she excited? Nah, don't know why, but whenever people ask her if she's starting school soon, she'll make a sour face and say, "Yes, but I'm not excited". I guess Isabella nad Adib enjoyed this summer and all the activities they got to do and places they got to see that they actually didn't have time to get bored and long for school. Plus they are inseparable and play together all the time, so they'll miss each other during the school hours. Adib has another year before he can start pre-K.
He turned 3 on July 5, and we had celebrated his B-day by a trip to the North Beach on Chesapeake river on Saturday and a B-day cake which was a carrot cake shaped like car with a frosting, all home-made, which Adib shared with his sister, Mommy and Daddy, on Sunday, after the Sunday School at the Baha'i Center. No party this year, may be when he turns 5 in 2 years:-) He's not into birthday parties as much as Isabella has always been, so he was quite content with the car-cake and presents sent by both sets of Grandparents.

We go to the National Zoo a lot, it's only a few stops by bus that we get on across the street from our place and get off right at the Zoo entrance. We've been there a number of times and everytime find new fun activities and see new animals. On Sundays we go to one of the Smithsonian museums, or hiking at the Rock Creek Park which also has a small educational museum, planetarium, a horseback-riding club where kids get to pet and feed beautiful horses. There is also a number of parks around our neighborhood and in summer they become "spray"parks with sprinklers and water fun for kids. It's quite useful when it's over 90'. July was rather nice and warm but August is hot and humid. So that is for my "almost end of summer, sigh..." post, enjoy the pictures.



At the Rock Creek Park

At the Air Space museum

Adib turned 3!

With Red Grammar at his concert for children in Strathmore, MD. It was a "back-yard" performance and we all sat picnic-style, on the grass or blankets. It was a great concert, he is definetely one of the best if not the best children songs musician. We had a blast! And Red took this picture of us and placed it on his web-site as well. Thank you, Red!

At the North Beach, Chesapeake.

Some recent pictures

At the stable we discovered at the RockCreekPark. The horses were gorgeous and so gentle!

This one kept licking our hands and sniffing at Bella's hair. Did it look like hay? :-)

At the Imagination Bethesda Art festival. We had a magician, Persian dancers, craft making, pretend tea party and so on. Bella and Mommy made a paper plate carousel.

This is a fountain at the Chevy Chase Circle, on the border of DC and Maryland, 5 min walk from our apartment building.

I'm back and blogging!!!

Wow, my last posting was in March, almost 3 months ago! I've never been that bad with blogging before and hopefully will be posting more regularly again. As many of you know, (from Facebook :-), we moved to Washington DC at the end of April. And the whole month of April we were moving. The reason our move took rather long time is because we were helping at the same time to move Michael's parents from Jasper GA to Augusta GA where they could be closer to Michael's older brother and his beautiful family.
Michael started his training with the USAID (US Agency for International Development) as a Foreign services executive officer, at the end of March and children and I joined him in DC a month later. Meanwhile Michael found a nice 1 bedroom apartment in DC and received our shipment and unpacked while myself and the kids stayed with Michael's parents helping them move and settle in their new house. Although the apartment here in DC is rather small, we like it a lot and with a little bit of engineering skills managed to fit in everything we needed to. And it's a great family friendly neighborhood with a few nice parks, public library, convenience stores, community center, all in a walking distance. And a bus stop is right across the road from our building. Public transportation is fairly good, so we decided not to bring our car and left it with Michael's parents for the time being. Michael uses metro to go to work and metro station (Friendship Heights) is about 15 min walk from home.

So Michael has been enjoying his training, meeting a lot of interesting people. And a few weeks ago at the graduation ceremony for Michael's orientation class which we all attended, we learned that our first international post will be the Philippines! We'll be going there in about 8-9 months time and we are pretty excited.

Meanwhile I am enjoying (most of the time that is :-)) being with my children all day, exploring neighborhood parks, the Zoo, Smithsonian museums and other fun places. Isabella used to be in preschool in Jasper GA (Headstart pre-K) and she enjoyed it, the teachers were great and we made great friends. But since we relocated towards the end of the school year we decided not to start her in a new school until the next school year, in September. We already registered Isabella at the district public school which is one of the best in the city and is about 15 min walk from us. It has an awesome playground and park adjacent to it and we like to go there on nice sunny days. And in summer they turn on sprinklers on the playground (they have it in a few different city parks and call them spray-parks :-) and the kids love it, they love splashing and getting wet which feels so good and refreshing on hot summer days. We've had a lot of rain and storms in DC lately which is not so typical for this time of the year, but I don't mind at all, i love the rain and always welcome it, especially after hot hot days.
Meanwhile we are doing some homeschooling too, reading, making crafts and playing outside. Although we have registered Isabella for kindergarden at a local school, I'm still investigating home schooling option and am reading about it. I'll try to write more about it in a separate post.
I don't get to be in touch personally with many of you but I do think about you all and hope you and your families are doing well and are in a good health. I'm trying to be better at keeping in touch and it's always thrilling to receive a phone call or email from good old friends. You can always leave a comment on my postings, drop an email at sevda.teske(at)gmail.com or call me on the phone.

Happy NawRuz! Novruz bayraminiz mubarak!