Beautiful March Morning!

Woke up to this view. Apparently the seasons get a little bit confused around here. It snowed for 2 days in a row last week too. I love how crisp  and cool the air was this morning and it was absolutely pretty.

Water droplet with reflection of one of the houses on the street

Grammy's Visit - Day 3: Dec 23 , 2011

I had this post on hold for a long time since I was concentrating on other projects I ambitiously wanted to get done before the baby arrived. Procrastinating is never ever a good idea. I ended up losing all the pictures I took when Grammy was here since (if you've read my previous post, you might know this already) - our hard drive crashed two weeks ago. Fortunately I did upload a few pictures beforehand so even if it's outdated, for my memory's sake, I'm just going to put it up here.

We took a trip to Seattle on the third day Grammy was here. This picture was taken on our way to ferry terminal in Bainbridge Island.  

Views from the ferry

View of Bainbridge Island from the ferry with Olympic range in sight.

Nearing Seattle ferry terminal. The last picture shows container cranes at the Port of Seattle marine facilities, where several container ships are loading or unloading. 

Various view around the ferry terminal

Passing Ivar's, a seafood restaurant. Would like to go there one day since it got some good reviews.

Mother and son sharing some moments together

It was a beautiful day in Seattle considering it was in the middle of winter.

Farhan is in awe of the ceiling 

 Grammy is picking up some smoked salmon from Pike Place Market to bring back home

I am a happy person in the midst of these colorful fruit and vegies

 The Pike Place Fish Co. They got famous for their fish- tossing antics.

Pictures of Sarah

I lost all of the digital pictures I took of Sarah since she was born when the external hard drive went kaput. Luckily I have some hard copies that I've printed out. The scanned version is not that great but here are some for your view.

Sarah at 10 days old

Thank you G.Grandma Louise for this really pretty blanket and super cute hat that you made for Sarah!

Updates

I've been meaning to post this entry weeks ago but never got around to actually finishing it. There has been quite a lot going on in the Bonnin's family which I don't even know where to start. There's one particular thing that happened last night that makes me feel like I wanted to scream on top of my lung out of frustration. One of the external hard drives where I kept all the pictures that I took from June 2011 until yesterday, has crashed. The night before I accidentally deleted all family pictures from my camera SD card, the ones Daniel and I took before my mom left for Malaysia. Luckily Daniel was able to recover some of them using a software that he had to purchase online. And this morning our bathroom got flooded by overflow water from our toilet and the water managed to seep through the ceiling to another bathroom downstairs and flooded it as well. Even our garage got affected. Certainly not a fun way to start our week!

The happy news is we have a new addition to our family. Sarah Nabila Bonnin was born on Feb 3, 2012 at 8.21am, only 2 days shy from Maulidur Rasul. She was 1.5oz short of 7lb and 19.5" long. Daniel has been snorgling her ever since. She's certainly going to be her daddy's little girl. As expected, there are physical and emotional exhaustion involved, and my very productive milk glands are running my life nowadays. Sarah can be pretty demanding when it comes to feeding. She wants to nurse almost every hour. But this is not as hard as feeling bleary eyed and groggy all day long due to sleep deprivation, which is again - already anticipated. Thankfully, her brothers are old enough to be independent and do not need so much supervision. They've been helping me with  housework long before Sarah was born; cleaning their dirty dishes, vacuuming, emptying the trash, folding their clothes, making their bed, and cleaning their room and their bathroom. Daniel has been such a great helper too. He takes care of a few house chores for me and he certainly does not have any problems with changing dirty diapers especially in the middle of the night.

Sarah on her birth day - Feb 3 2012. The labor went very quick that there was not enough time for an epidural despite the fact I was planning to have one. Although it took me 40 minutes from the start of contractions to delivery, it felt like eternity. Once my water bag was broken, I went from having almost nonexistent contractions to having full blown contractions right on top of each other. Despite having had 3 previous vaginal births, I still wasn't prepared mentally. It was nerve wrecking especially when I started to feel my body started to push involuntarily and there was nothing I could do to slow down the process.

 Sleeping peacefully after being cleaned by some excellent nurses.

The boys were thrilled to finally meet their sister that evening. Ezzat especially has been asking to hold his little sister every time he sees an opportunity. 

  The boys with their Tok. Emir and Farhan were busy watching TV.

Feeling much better the next morning.

 We were so ready to go home after being in the hospital for 2 days.

It's Saturday!

I'm so craving for this.

And these.

Instead we had this.

I am pining for this just because it's winter and I love the white stuff and winter just doesn’t seem right without it.

 But we have this. That's ok, revelling in the joys of greenery is not so bad either. Of course minus the cold and wet weather.

Daniel is gone all day today. He had a gig in Seattle this morning with the Navy Band and then later in the evening a gig with a local group called Rude & Unprofessional in Bainbridge Island. So it's just me and the boys today. They woke up pretty early, had breakfast and did everything they need to do first before they are allowed to play. It started with reading, then some math exercises on their school website called IXL, then on to math flash cards, and finishing whatever homework that they haven't finished last night. They already used up their computer/game time today and right now they're watching some TV while eating popcorn after we had lunch.

Woke up to see them in their choice of clothing for today. Grammy got these for them last Christmas.

Apparently I missed blogging the actual first day Grammy was here. It was on Dec 20th. A very cloudy day that day so we decided to just chill at home, which was actually pretty nice despite being cooped up in the house all day. Grammy did some cute craft projects with the boys. 

 Ezzat's octopus, with different eye sizes.

I was busy making a bed skirt for the baby crib for 2 straight days. I bought a pattern for it thinking that it's going to be a quick easy project. The problem was it's for a full size crib and the one we have is a mini crib. My sewing teacher helped me adjusting the pattern size and showed me how to do the dust ruffles. I am pretty slow when it comes to sewing, especially when I really want to have a super neat work in the end. So I spent 3 hours in the class (the actual class time is 90 minutes but Tammy, my teacher was nice enough to let me stay for another 90 minutes)  just sewing all the parts together and serged everything that needs to be serged and still I wasn't able to finish the whole thing. It looks simple enough for a beginner like me but seriously it's a nightmare. I took it home, tried to sew it by myself and thank god it's finished now! I almost gave up considering how much seam ripping I had to endure.

The end product. I laid the bed skirt on our bed to see how it looks like. I haven't put it on the crib since there are still some parts that need to be serged and I have to wait for the next class to do that.

 Next project, a baby quilt!

Grammy's Visit - Part 1

We really had a fabulous time with Grammy. We're so glad that she was able to visit us for a few days and the boys loved having her around and wished that she could stay longer. I wish we didn't live so far away from our families, from both sides. And yet, I think that's what makes each and every visit so special. We don't get to see each other that often and it makes those short moments that we spend with our loved ones more memorable.

Day 2 - Dec 21 2011

We were lucky to have a few sunny days while Grammy was here, especially since right after she flew back home to Oklahoma, we had one whole week of non- stop rainy days. This is Island Lake Park which is only a few minutes away from our house. Grammy and the boys decided to walk to the park while enjoying the sun. Daniel and I drove there instead and met with them a few minutes later.

Grammy was having fun riding the scooter.

After the park, we went to downtown Poulsbo to walk in the park and around the quaint little town.

The boardwalk that you see in the pictures connects two parks: American Legion Park and Liberty Bay Park, which leads us to the downtown and the marina. 

'Nice to meet you sir'. This bronze statue was created to honour former Poulsbo Mayor, Maurice Lindvig that served the town from 1969 - 1976.

Hanging out at the park before heading towards the town.

Our last stop, the Sluys' Bakery for some sweet treats.

Almost there and Happy New Year!

I am 36 weeks pregnant and that explains the tummy, in case some of you don't know.  Not that we made a big announcement about it either! Time flies. I'm not sure I am emotionally ready for the baby but she's coming out anyways, soon!

 Ezzat read a book about Egypt and pharaohs and asked me to take some pictures of him in action pretending to be one. Silly boy! I love that sometimes he still looks babyish.

Btw, Happy New Year! Our new year's eve night was pretty quiet. We didn't even watch any TV about the new year celebration. The kids popped their poppers and then went to bed. They were kind of scared to pop them, but they had fun. 

You can tell from their faces, their were not very convinced about how much fun the poppers were.

Aftermath of the party poppers. Our living room was covered with rainbows of confetti. Pretty, yes. Cleaning up, not so much. Especially when our dear old vacuum decided to retire from service on the last day of 2011.