Picture Rearranging / Mom and Dad Visit

Mom and Dad were here a couple of week-ends ago. The point of the trip was to see Obama speak, but we lost our seats for that event when it moved from the outdoor football stadium to the indoor basketball arena because of rain.

But they did bring with them a painting that is on loan to us from Cecilia and Harald, which I hung over the fireplace in the family room. I definitely think the white looks great against the gray brick wall. However, its a little big for that spot. When I find something that goes with it well to put in that spot, I think I'll move it to the right and hang it where there is more space above and below.

The picture that was there, the lovely layered photo Miran took of trees reflected in water in Sarajevo, got moved up to our bedroom. I'm really happy with this. In addition to filling what had been a blank spot for years, I think the muted colors of this picture look much better and it really pops against the bright green wall and in a room that gets more light.

And we also moved a bookcase from IKEA that was in my office at work home and installed it behind the couch in the family room. That area was kind of dead space so now it feels much more useful. I still haven't put anything on it, but my plan is to combine fiction and art objects.

Virginia Visit

I haven't posted in awhile so I'm going to post about a couple of things that have happened in the past month - starting with the trip to Virginia. These pictures are all borrowed from everyone else's blogs so will be familiar to my family, but new to Miran's family.

Uncle Miran with Maggie, Michael, and Ingrid:

Sisters 1 - Mommy, Lee, and Maggie:

Sisters 2: The Next Generation - Cecilia, Me, Margaret:

Cousins - Margaret, Cecilia and her husband Harald, Miran and I, my cousins Patrick and Megan, and Patrick's wife Haley:

Congratulations Azra!

Today we got an exciting piece of mail - Azra's Associates Degree! Yeah! Congrats! Two years, one degree down - and next week she'll be back to start on the next two years and the Bachelor's degree at UNC Charlotte.

And here is just a lovely picture of Azra from earlier this summer in Bosnia.

Ice Cream !

For his birthday, mom and dad sent Miran the ice cream maker attachment for our kitchenaid mixer. So far I've made three batches of ice cream and I'm 1 for 3. The first attempt was supposed to be lemon, but we could only taste the vanilla, and it had a weird texture because I used stevia. The second batch (pictured) was a second try at lemon with a whole lot more lemon juice and lemon zest and real sugar. It was perfect.

The mint chocolate chip never churned into ice cream and we still don't know why. And here is Miran taking a picture of himself and of me while I make ice cream ... which he has very much enjoyed eating.

Bahamas

As everyone knows by now, for Miran's birthday and our 8th Anniversary we took a spontaneous trip to the Bahamas. As I mentioned, we forgot our camera, so just have a couple of pictures from our cell phones to share.

Our hotel:

The view from our room:

Me at our anniversary dinner at an Italian restaurant:

Miran in the stocks at the pirate museum:

Miran collapsed in the lobby when we arrived at the hotel after not sleeping the night before and we had to wait a few hours to get into our room:

Me changing from nice sandals into flip flops because of the pouring rain that same first afternoon when we decided to check out downtown Nassau to waste time while waiting for our room:

But most of the time it was beautiful. Here is Miran enjoying the ocean from the boardwalk in front of our hotel.