December Update

Waw, december just flew by! Two big events this month: Luke turned 1-month old and celebrated his first christmas.

Luke's 1-month birthday was a quiet family affair. Luke got an extra helping of milk, a bear hug from dad, and the undivided attention from Papy and Mamy.





For those of you who are interested, we have more pictures of Luke posted here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/asavineau/LukeInDecember

For christmas we headed down to the south of france to see Alex's family. It was great to find some sunshine (though not warm weather!) on our trip. We have a load of christmas pictures that you can view here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/asavineau/Christmas2007


Tomorrow we celebrate New Year's eve with friends of ours. We hope we can make it past midnight!

Happy New Year to all of you - may 2008 bring you lots of love and happiness!

Settling in

On Friday we celebrated Luke's 2-week birthday. In those two weeks, he:

-learned how to breastfeed
-learned to soil a diaper
-learned how to be incredibly cute
-gained an astonishing 35grams/day (that's 1.2ounces for you americans and brits)
-became an american citizen
-had his first pediatric visit
-learned how to projectile pee (he loves to aim for his dad!)

I think we can all agree he's a prodigy! :-) I've posted just a few more pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/asavineau/FirstTwoWeeks


Next week Alex returns to work and his mom will be visiting us for a week. We'll also be celebrating Luke's first St. Nicholas holiday, a Belgian tradition celebrated the night of December 5th. For all of you who are David Sedaris fans, check out his story on St. Nicholas "6 to 8 Black Men"; it's hilarious. http://filebox.vt.edu/j/juvandyk/pics/6to8blackmen.htm

Luke has arrived!

Please join us in welcoming to the world

LUKE SAVINEAU TIERSKY

Luke made his grand entrance at 10:10 am on November 16, 2007, weighing a perfect 3.440 kg and measuring 51 cm. 10 fingers, 10 toes, and one appendage!

“…he smells like a muffin that just came out of the oven…” (Luke’s exhausted but incredibly happy mother seconds after birth)

Far too many pictures, hastily posted, available here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/atiersky/LUKE1711?authkey=cawZAvOu4Ok

The last few days...

So baby could make an appearance any day now. We're on pins and needles waiting for his arrival. On Saturday I declared the birth "imminent" - I swear I thought it was going to happen that night. But now it's tuesday and still nothing... So we continue to wait.

If you want to see some pictures of our last few weeks here in Brussels, check out this link:



http://picasaweb.google.com/asavineau/WaitingForBabyTiersky/

Our summer in Europe

Check out these pictures from our first summer in Europe.

http://picasaweb.google.com/asavineau/OurSummerInEurope

Welcome

Dear friends and family,

After constant nagging from my friend Nurit, I finally got around to our very first blog posting! Come back here from time to time to get the latest news the land of waffles and beer.

It's now been more than two months since we left DC for Brussels. Time has flown by! I wish we had more to show for it than a half-furnished apartment and lots of unpacked boxes. Life here is a little slower than in the US and we just can't get things done as quickly as we used to. However, we managed to get the most important thing done, which was to find us some sweet digs. After weeks of searching and visiting some very uhm...unique places, I finally found us a really nice 3-bedroom(!) apartment just 20 minutes from the center of Brussels. The apartment has a large balcony for enjoying to occasional sunshine and a fireplace for those long gloomy winter days. What more could we have asked for?! We'll upload some pictures once I get around to taking some.

Alex is well ensconsed in his position as director of defence and security issues at the Nato Parliamentary Assembly. The work is interesting, his colleagues are all pleasant, and he's usually home by 6pm on most evenings. What a change from DC! For more information on his work, check out this link: http://www.nato-pa.int/

We've both reconnected with the local frisbee scene here in Brussels, which is more thriving than you might imagine. Our first week here we went to a pick-up game. The second week I got invited to play with the Belgian Women's Team. The third week I was asked to coach (and still play) the Belgian Women's Team. So I'm dedicating myself over the next couple of months to mold the women's team into a lean, mean ultimate machine. We're training for the European Championships, which will be held in August in South Hampton, England.

Since I've recently stopped working for my company in DC and am between jobs, I've also taken up a new function as travel agent. We recently spent the long Easter weekend with Alex's family in the South of France, and in May we're headed to Madeira (Portugal) to celebrate our five year wedding anniversary.

I guess all in all we're doing really well. We miss all of our friends of course and are really looking forward to seeing you all on this side of the atlantic. We have a wonderful guest bedroom that is now open for business!

Big hugs to all,

Anouk and Alex