Here's a quick video of our trip to the Buin Zoo!

Great weekend

We had a fantastic long weekend. It's always great to have Der home with us for more than the normal 2-day weekends. Thursday was a relaxed day. Kirsi and I went over to Mary Brett and Richard's place to take some pictures of their kiddos, Jayde and Parker. It's so pretty here with the fall colours so I got some good shots of them. Jayde and Kirsi are the same age, just 3 weeks difference, but they haven't had the chance to play together much. They had a great time playing with Play Doh after the photo shoot. Then, that afternoon, I took Kirsi and Aidan over to Agustina's house to play. Agu and Monica were great hostesses, like usual, and they had made a cake for snack time. Kirsi had so much fun playing with Agu - jumping on the trampoline, playing with all her toys and playing with bubbles. We need to get together with them more often!

Friday we went to the zoo, which was a lot of fun. Saturday was more of an organizing day - Der got the upstairs more ready for moving the kids up there when winter comes in full force. He's waiting on me to get the baby stuff sorted before he tackles the storage room. I need to get on that soon! We were having guests over so I made my Spinach-Feta (without the fet because of the listeria scare here) Dip and I tried a new recipe from my favourite site, www.allrecipes.com. I tried a Baked Apple Pudding. It turned out pretty well but not my all-time favourite dessert. Good for a dessert if you don't have much time.

Saturday night we had Julie and David over for games night. We enjoy their company so much; they're so much fun and are great people. (They are the parents of Asher and Liesl, the kids our kids play with all the time.) Julie and I are very good friends so it will be hard to say good-bye to her in less than a month now. They're going back to the U.S. for a year and then who knows. Maybe one day we'll be in the same general area. :) We have talked about coming back to Chile at the same time for Aidan and Liesl to visit the country they were born in. That would be super fun!

Today, we went to church, which was great as we had missed three Sundays in a row. The best news about church was that Aidan made it through the readings and the homily without needing to be taken outside! Lately, he's been so loud in church that Der has to take him outside almost as soon as the Mass starts! But today, he was happy to eat his rice cakes while we got to listen to the readings and homily. This is a good sign! After church, I was really wanting to go out for breakfast/brunch but there's no great place to do that. There's one cafe here that serves breakfast all day but it's overpriced and you don't get much food. We need a good breakfast place here. I'd love to eat at Chez Cora again!!

This afternoon, I went to Starbucks to meet up with my crafts ladies. It was a huge group today - Julie S., Marielle, Julie M., Amie, Mary Brett and two new ladies, Teri and Julie. We had a great time, chatting and doing our thing (I took my scrapbooking again). And I managed to get 4 pages done too!

Buin Zoo

Friday we went to the zoo at Buin. I much prefer this zoo to the one in Santiago - I like the layout better and the enclosure seem better to me. Our family loves spending time at the zoo so it was fun day for everyone. This was the first time that Aidan seemed to take notice of the animals. When we first got there, he was almost shocked at seeing all these creatures. He kept staring at the monkeys climbing around. But then he got used to the action and really seemed to enjoy himself. His favourites were the fish swimming in the tanks.

Kirsi was so much fun, too. She's always loved the zoo but this time she seemed to be super into the animals, what their names were and what they were doing. She loved talking about the jaguars and the guinea fowl. By the way, she still bypasses the baboons (she hasn't forgotten her traumatic baboon screaming experience over a year ago). Her favourite exhibit was the reptile one - she loved looking for the snakes, lizards, iguanas, tortoises, etc. hiding in their enclosures.

Jaguar:


Spider monkey:


In the aquarium, Aidan's favourite part:



Kirsi also had a great time petting the animals in the petting zoo. She was a little nervous but when Daddy got down to pet them with her, she really enjoyed it. Aidan, on the other hand, hated petting the animals or getting too close to them. He totally backed off and refused to touch them.



Aidan just hanging out, looking at everything:


There are more pictures on our Photobucket site if you'd like to see more.

More pictures

Aidan can get off the bed himself now:


And tada!


Look at Aidan's cute little teethies:


Sweet girl:


Daddy and Aidan:


Pirate Kirsi at Jayde's Dora Pirate Birthday Party:


This is one of Aidan's favourite things to do now:


And here's another:


11 months old:



Another fall picture of our sweeties:

La Ligua

Friday we went on a day trip with Julie, Asher and Liesl to La Ligua, a little town known for its knitted clothing. It's a couple hours north of here so we settled in for the drive. There were some beautiful things there, making me wish that I were a talented knitter, and I ended up buying a few things. I was hoping to find a long sweater-style jacket for me, as the winter coats here are expensive and not what I'm looking for, but the one that I really liked didn't fit. :( The shops are located on either side of the main street and I'd say they line the street for about a kilmetre or so, maybe a little less. It was fun going into the shops and seeing what they had to offer. Some of the stores had beautiful stuff, others had some nondescript stuff. The funniest things were the kids' sweaters with the off-make Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and Spiderman designs on them; they just looked strange. I think the funniest, yet very typical, scene was the bags of avocados for sale in the window, along with the knitted sweaters.

New horse

Today was horse riding lessons again but it was the first time we went to the new location. Before, Kirsi's lessons were just up the road from us, 8 minutes door-to-door. Now, we have to drive 20 minutes to get there and at least 25 minutes to get back (depending on the traffic). Kirsi was very excited to see Miss Tole again and Chilindrina, her little pony. But today, Kirsi didn't ride Chilindrina, she rode a bigger pony named Cubito. She looked so small brushing him; Tole had to lift her up so she could reach his back. :)

Tole moved to join the oldest equestrian club in Santiago that has a well-established pony club. It seems that they do things a little differently than Tole did on her own. Kirsi was in a group of 6 kids today, as opposed to 3, but Tole stayed with her the whole time, thank goodness. There was the main teacher who did the class (Maria Ignacia) and she helped out the kids who needed it but she was not one-on-one with them like we have been used to with Tole. We'll see how things go the next few weeks to see if we're still as happy with the new program as we were with the one at the Aventura Pony Club. Kirsi enjoyed her first lesson there, but she kept asking me why she didn't clean her pony's hooves (like she normally does). :)

Our week

We had a busy weekend last weekend. On Friday morning we went for breakfast with some friends and then to the playground. That afternoon, we went to Kirsi's friend, Ana's, birthday party. Saturday morning we went to Asher's birthday party, but before that we stopped off to take some fall pictures of the kids. After the birthday party, we went straight to lunch with some friends. Sunday, we visited a vineyard with the Stephonson's and had a wonderful time. It was a good tour and the restaurant had delicious food. I think it was one of our busiest social weekends since we've been here, but it was good.

We also said good-bye to friends that we met in December. They are from Ottawa but were here for Peter's work. Heather, Marin and Thomas often joined us at the playground or for playdates so it was sad to say good-bye.

Aidan's 10-month picture:


He loves playing in the backyard in this car:


He also loves helping with laundry (mainly throwing the clothes out of the basket and, once in a while, putting it back in):


Playground pictures...





Kirsi wanted hair like her friend, Chloe. This was as close as I could get it:


At Asher's pirate party:



Fall pictures: