Going to the olympics

The process for getting tickets to the London 2012 Olympics is fascinating. We requested tickets for whatever we wanted to see, and recipients are selected by a lottery system. We were told when we requested tickets last month that money would just be charged to our credit card sometime at the end of May if we got tickets, but it would be months later before we found out which event(s) we got tickets for. Money was deducted today!! So we know we're going to the Olympics, we just have no idea which event(s) we'll get to see. :) We'll keep you posted.

(Yes, this is a portion of the online banking screen.)

half-birthday

No, we don't plan to celebrate all of his half-birthdays, but this one seemed worthy of celebration. I baked an apple pie for a barbecue with friends, and I reserved a bit of the filling (pre-seasoning) to bake Gavin his own little (half)birthday pie. The next photo is his first bite of the pie.Thankfully we redeemed ourselves and let him try something that he actually loved. We've never seen his face so clean after a meal--he wanted ALL of the strawberries in his mouth.We've loved every minute of Gavin since he came into our lives 6 months ago!

Gavin: the latest

This is one of the posts you should skip if, for you, Gavin could star in a show called "Babies I Don't Care About" because this one's all about him. :)

He's almost 6 months old! Here are a few of the latest (random) photos.

canine encounter

Eurovision 2011

You might remember our coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest the past few years (08, 09, 10). It just doesn't get more entertaining than Eurovision. This year's competition was held in Dusseldorf, Germany because the previous year's winner gets to host the next year's competition. Interestingly, Lena, the performer who won it for Germany last year, was also Germany's entry this year (with a different song).
It was well worth watching the whole thing, but here are our highlights:

• The winner was Azerbaijan. We didn't love their song (not that we hated it), but here's the video of it.
  
  
  


• The initial photo in this post is from Moldova's entry. Yes, they really wore those hats. And the lady was on a unicycle... (This is why we love Eurovision.)


• Probably the most talked-about entry this year is Ireland's. Their performers are a duo (identical twins) called Jedward, who became famous in the UK for being awful but getting pretty far in 2009's X-Factor competition. (We watched that season and were really rooting for Jedward to leave as soon as possible.) Their song this year, called "Lipstick," was pretty bad


• The Israeli entry was a song called "Ding Dong" by Dana International (below), a transsexual past winner of Eurovision (1998). She didn't make it to the Saturday final this year.

• Portugal's entry (which also didn't make the Saturday final) was a hilarious protest song against economic austerity measures.


• Bosnia & Herzegovina's entry was very entertaining with an eclectic ensemble (including a hip-hop dancing trumpeter) and a catchy tune.


• The Ukraine's entry was awesome because a popular sand artist shared the stage with the singer and did some art on the screen while the song was going on. Apparently the sand artist was the winner of "Ukraine's Got Talent."


• Finland's entry is a save-the-world song sung by a performer called Paradise Oskar. The song, called "Da Da Dam," grew on me and I quite liked it Saturday night in the final.
  
  

• Russia's entry was catchy but a little naughty. I don't know if it's the dude's accent while he's singing it, but we found the following lyric hilarious every time he sang it: "You look so good On the floor Put my mind in the dirty zone."


• Our favorite entry that didn't even make the final (we saw it on Tuesday's semi-final) was Armenia's entry called "Boom Boom." Here's the video.
  
  

"solid" food

Gavin has recently begun to experience foods other than breast milk. I'm not sure why we call them "solid" foods because they have to be pretty well pureed for him at this point... More solid than milk, for sure, but we're not just giving the dude a piece of bread or anything. [Side note: a piece of bread would be way less messy. Yes, the mess is cute--unless you're the one cleaning it!]






He's been enjoying the rice cereal and gradually learning to eat from a spoon, so today he ate his first fruits: banana /plum. He liked the first couple of bites, but you can see the uncertainty (and the bananas & plums) all over his face.

Algarve

After Lisbon we headed down to the Algarve region of Portugal where we enjoyed beautiful beaches (and the pools at our hotel), as well as great food and cute little Portuguese villages. Jacob doesn't really like fish, but we decided to have the authentic experience at the peixe rodizio (fish grill), and even Jacob loved it. Here are a couple of photos of the fish--they brought LOTS of it.

In the Algarve Gavin experienced his first beaches. The first shot below is his first feel of sand between his toes. Then there are photos of him playing in the sand and dipping his feet in the (icy) water (it's the Atlantic Ocean, not the Mediterranean Sea like you might expect).

We loved the unspoiled villages we visited with their tiny winding streets, pretty churches and beautiful tiled houses.

bread alone

Do the pastries from our recent Spain/Portugal trip really need their own post? Maybe not, but there were a couple of pastries worth special mention.

The first was one we heard about from Portuguese friends before we left. The taxi driver from the Lisbon airport even mentioned it too. It's the pastel de Belem, and it was worth the special trip. Here's a photo of Jacob elbowing his way to the counter (after he paid) to get them.

They're little custardy pastries, and the bakery gives you cute little packets of powdered sugar and cinnamon to put on them. Absolutely delicious.

The other really amazing pastry was one we just stumbled upon. It's an entire apple--skin and all--baked into a flaky, gorgeous pastry. They core the apple and put a cinnamon stick in its place before wrapping it in pastry and baking it. The apple inside gets really mushy and yummy. And because we feel pastry-eating should be a family affair (and the apple was nice and soft), Gavin enjoyed some too. Here are a few more pastry/bread photos in case you needed to see more. (The very first photo and very last photo on this post are in Spain; the rest are in Portugal.)

Lisbon

We spent a couple of days in Lisbon and really enjoyed the city. I especially loved having Jacob speak Portuguese with everyone. We hiked to the Castle of Sao Jorge, a Moorish battlement overlooking the city. Here are a few photos from the hike and from the top. We also visited Jeronimos Monastery, beautiful outside and in. Gavin and Jacob are in front of Vasco da Gama's tomb.Below is the Belem Tower, built in the early 16th Century as a symbol of the Portuguese discoverers sent from Lisbon to explore the world.Lisbon also has an interesting urban elevator, the Santa Justa Lift, which was originally steam powered (and designed by an apprentice of Gustave Eiffel).The April 25th Bridge, the largest suspension bridge in the world, spans the Tagus River in Lisbon, and is often compared with the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. On the opposite side of the river is a huge statue of Jesus called Cristo-Rei, inspired by the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. The below photo shows both the bridge and the statue.Here are my favorite traveling companions.