Visiting Martin's Brother

At the end of May we went to Black Mountain, NC to visit Martin's brother Matt for his 40th birthday. Matt and his wife Kelly and their two kids Savva and Jeremiah recently bought a dome that they are fixing up to live in starting in the fall. The dome is further in the back woods of NC with enough land so they can have a decent garden. The dome doesn't have electricity or running water since the idea is that they will live off the land - they get water from the creek and will have a wood burning stove for heat in the winter. Here are some pictures of the dome and the scenery from their property. The last two pics were taken at the cabin we stayed in with Martin's parents, grandmother, and other brother Mark.

Before the haircut

These were the pictures we took of Dylan before he got his haircut. Unfortunately I forgot to take "after" pictures so you'll just have to see the haircut in the pictures from NC that I will post shortly.




The haircut went reasonably well, better than the first time we took him and much less frustrating than me cutting it. We took Dylan to Cartoon Cuts at the mall where the kids watch cartoons on little screens so they sit still while getting their haircut. It was okay. I really didn't like the lady we got though but I suppose it would have been a lot better if we had someone else. She made comments like "when was the last time he had his haircut" like she was annoyed that she actually had to do work. And I don't think she cut it totally straight either. Not sure what we'll do next time. Cartoon cuts is kinda expensive but he did wiggle less.

Family Wedding

Here are the pictures from the wedding I spoke of in my last post. My cousin (second, once removed, to be exact) Chris who lives here in NVA married a really sweet gal named Christina. The wedding was in Manassas.

This is the mother (Michele), sister (Lauren), and father (Keith, far right) of the groom. It's great having some family in the area so if say there was every a hurricane in NVA that took your power out for 3 days you could haul your food to their house to store in their freezer (as I did 5 years ago). They are super fun too, as you can tell from the picture. Oh, and yes I actually know who my second cousins are - since I don't have any first cousins I was closer to my second cousins than most other folks. Although Martin too has as a handfull of second cousins that he knows pretty well.

Early nap = Mommy gets to catch up on blogging...

Dylan fell asleep in his highchair eating lunch at 11:45 today so I have some time before I have to work to post some more pictures. These are from a trip to the National Zoo in mid-May. My parents were here for a family wedding and before the wedding we went to the zoo. This was about right at the beginning of when I started getting morning sickness (but I look exhausted already!).

I love going to the zoo because each time we go we see different animals being active. This time it was the pandas and the monkeys. The pandas were out showing off and climbing trees while we were there.

This was the first time I had see the O'rang atangs out on the O-line.

Dylan's reaction to the new baby....

I can't believe you guys didn't consult me on this one.

Do you realize what this is going to do to MY life?

At least tell me its a boy...please tell me its a boy... _____________________________________________

Actually this was not when we told Dylan - just a messy dinner but I had to spice up the blog a little. Dylan doesn't get the baby idea at all. He barely knows the word for baby. He'll do a lot of growing up in the next 6 months though. I'm sure we'll have lots of opportunities to teach him. And to get him used to Mommy holding another baby. We hung out with Nancy and Duncan and their 3 kids on Sunday and as I was holding Linus, their 10 month old, I definitely saw Dylan get jealous. Maybe he'll be better with a smaller baby - we'll see when go to visit his new cousin Zak in a week and a half.

We will be finding out (hopefully) if we are having a boy or a girl, probably the by the end of next month. We're kinda hoping for a girl so we don't have to go through the name choosing challenge again and because she would be the first baby girl on either side. But it would be fun for Dylan to have a boy playmate close to his age.

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2 to the 5th

Lest you think I was going to try to ignore my birthday this last week, I am adding this post to show that I am not afraid of mentioning it. Martin called it my "second sweet sixteen" and said that I'm now 2 to the 5th years old. I prefer 30th birthday part 3. This year my party/present was the trip to Chincoteague which I thoroughly enjoyed. I loved the place and I felt like I was on a real vacation. On Sunday we traveled home and stopped at DQ on the way. Then on Sunday night we went over Laura H's house for pizza. Some other grad school friends Tom and Karen and their kids were in town so that was the purpose of the party but Laura made me a chocolate cake with homemade icing and so I still got a cake and singing! Thanks Laura! Thanks also to those who called or sent cards or e-cards or facebook greetings!

Mother's Day

So, I'm really behind on posting pics. These are from Mother's Day. Amy was in town and we went with Laura, John, Jack, and Julia to Olive Garden. The boys of course had a blast together. This was when we told these guys about baby #2.

Update on the Kids :)

Tuesday I had a doctors appointment and all seems to be going well with Baby #2. We got to hear the heartbeat for the first time which was very cool. The heartbeat was in the 150 range.

Dylan's latest words include:

book
Miah - for his cousin Jeremiah
[sign for] please
[sign for] help
ambulance (this is pretty mumbled)
sun
Zak - his new cousin
[the sound of an elephant]
[the sound of a frog]
[the sound of a lion]

And he knows some letters already: E, H, N, O, S, X. He sees the letters and says the name of the letter. I'm pretty impressed with this. Is this normal? He doesn't know his shapes yet so I that's why I'm surprised he knows some letters. But then again, things like "circle" are harder to say than "E."

Family Update

Carrie had her baby on June 13th - Zak Remington. Zak weighed 8 lbs 5 oz and came out after 2.5 (yes, there's a decimal point there) hours of labor. My sister even drove herself to the hospital to get there on time. I'm hoping early babies and short labors run the family (just not too short).

I started my new job on the 9th and all is going well. After a rough first week, Dylan has adjusted to the new day care provider (Bushra is in her country for the summer). Martin has been doing a lot of cooking and cleaning lately since I haven't felt that great.

Dylan doesn't have any new words but he has a new sign (for please) and a couple new animal sounds that he does - frog and elephant. We've been in the pool a number of times already and Dylan has a blast, especially when he's not cold. He was in for 30 minutes yesterday though and his lips were blue.

This coming weekend we're heading out to Chincoteague Island for my birthday. Should be fun. We found a hotel with a nice pool.

Family Pictures

These pictures were taken after my grandfather's funeral last month (hence all the black). I found out I was pregnant a few days later. My sister Carrie and I were pregnant at the same time at least for a short time. Here she is sporting her baby belly.

Dylan and Great-Grandma Z
Grandma and the Grandkids
The Etner Fam
Our Cutie

Barefoot and....

Pregnant! Sorry I've been slow to make the blog announcement. Most of you already know. I have a lot to catch up on. Anyway, I'm due January 11th but as I keep telling everyone, we're hoping for a 2008 tax exemption! I've been feeling like crap; hence the decreased blogging. The sickness seems worse than with Dylan. I'm ten weeks now and I'm starting to feel better so hopefully I'm coming out of the worst of it. I'm more tired now than sick. I went to the doctors at 5-6 weeks and I go back at 12 weeks on July 1st. Everything seems to be going well. I found out I was pregnant a week before I got my formal offer from the FDIC. I haven't told them yet. I'll wait until after my next doctors appointment. I'll have enough leave to take a 3 month maternity leave so changing jobs didn't hurt me at all in that respect since I'm still working for the government. And now I'll have my own office so I can just pump in my office once I go back.

Word Count

Is anyone counting? I think Dylan is up over 50 now. Apparently he also knows a word in Urdu. It's the word for bread - I don't even know what it is but Bushra told me knows it. So that makes Dylan officially tri-lingual: English, Sign Language, and Urdu.

Other words this week:

Ouch - lots of opportunities for this one.

Bunny [pronounced bun-nay] - although it sounds a lot like Money...maybe he was saying bunny all along...but that still doesn't explain why he said money when Martin was talking about a bank and didn't even say money.

Potty [pronouced pot-tay] - although this could be Body, we're not sure which he is saying.

OOoh, oOoh - the sound a monkey makes.

Bye - he says this when he is ready to leave.

New Job!

Last week I (finally) got a formal offer of a new higher-paying part-time job at the FDIC. I applied for this job back in December, had an interview in February, a second interview in March, and then an informal offer (although they didn't let me know the salary) a week later. Then it took 2 months to get the salary offer approved. So that's why I say finally. Despite the delay in getting the offer, I'm excited about the new opportunity. I'll be working in the division of insurance and research doing banking and regulatory policy work and looking at new bank applications. I've been assured by a former co-worker who I'll be working with that the HR problems are confined to HR and that the FDIC is a great place to work. They even let me work part time even though the posting was a full time position. I'll be working more hours though because I told them I was willing to work 3 days in the office. So my new schedule will be MWTh in the office and then TF teleworking 3 hours each day. I start on June 9th.


I've been at the Treasury Department for almost 7 years and had been keeping my eye open for other jobs since right before Martin and I got engaged. Not that I didn't like my job, I just wanted to do something different and get some more experience. Life events and no real opportunities and great co-workers kept me at my job this long. I felt like I need to get something else on my resume before quitting work to stay home full time (the current plan is to do that in 3 years) so that I'll have more experiences to stand on when I try to re-enter the work force after a stint at home. Yes, I'm planning for something like 20 years down the line. That's how I operate. :)

I'm also hoping that working part time at a different agency might open up some other part time opportunities for other women. I'm not exactly precedent setting but it's still not very common at the FDIC.

Other perks of the new job - in house gym that's cheap (like $1 per week) that has lunchtime ab classes, extra retirement fund with an additional 5% matching over the 5% matching in the Federal Gov's TSP retirement fund, own office (no window though), and a subsidized cafeteria with good food. My new office location is 15th and F NW so it's not far from where I am now. I think the commute might be a little longer since I'll be walking more (more exercise!) from the metro to the office. It's one metro stop closer than my current office.

So that's the update. I think I've told most of you about this but I couldn't blog about it until it was official. Oh, so I told my boss last Thursday, which some of you know I was stressing over. I guess it went as well as I could have expected but it was a rough day. I heard from my boss and co-workers "we're disappointed," and "I wish you would have told us you were unhappy." In the end I got the half-hearted pleasantries and now I think they've gotten over the shock and are talking to be again but yeah, that day was rough. It was a hard decision to leave because I feel so vested in the department and my co-workers but I really needed a change. I think they'll be fine without me.

Rachel's concert

A few weeks ago, my niece Rachel came to DC for a band trip. Her middle school band played near the Capitol during lunchtime and I got to go see her. She's the second French horn player from the right.

Baby Shower for Lisa

A few weeks ago our home fellowship group had a shower for one of our own - Lisa (on the right below). She's the 5th woman in our bible study to have a boy in last two years! Alison, another friend from church (below left) also had a boy recently.



Here's Lisa with her sister Ruthe and her niece.


Alison and Krista (our host) and a shy Henry.

Climbing into the laundry basket

Dylan was so proud of himself for this one...

I also forgot to mention yesterday that Dylan know two letters: A and H (atch).

Say the Word

Dylan's latest words

Lawnmower: it's mumbled but it's definitely in context, he has a book with a picture of a lawnmower that he frequently points to

Motorcycle: also mumbled but always said in context

Jack: his best friend's name :)

No: this one is not cute except when we sing "this little light of mine" ("hide it under a bushel - NO!")

Oink, Oink: sound of pig

Mahl, mahl: sound of cat

Dutch: we finally figure out this is his "don't touch"

[sign for] bear

Woodlawn Plantation and Pope Leighy House

A few weekends ago my parents were in town for a bridal shower for my cousin's fiance. The shower was on Sunday so on Saturday we did some touristy stuff. We went to the Woodlawn Plantation in Alexandria. The plantation was a wedding gift from George Washington to his nephew (who married his wife's grandaughter from her first marriage) - 2000 acres - nice wedding gift!

Here's the house that Washington's nephew built.
The Woodlawn Plantation is also now the home of the Pope Leighy House - a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (of Falling Water fame). The home was originally located in Falls Church but was moved in order to make room for I-66.

In loving memory

Albert (Red) Zackal

September 8, 1920 - May 1, 2008

My grandfather died last week. He was 87 years old. We were up in PA for the funeral this weekend. Grandpap will be missed by many people and remembered for his hardy and welcoming greetings ("Heeeyyy" - even after his stroke) and his persistence and thriftiness in collecting cans for recycling. He will also be remembered as a loving husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, uncle, and brother. We love you grandpap!