A milestone: rolling over

Here is another milestone. Unfortunately for me she did this while she was in Moorhead and I was back in Durham. Apparently she was rolling over repeatedly this day. Since then she hasn't been able to roll over again. Sigh.

Avalon Reija - where does the name come from?

I have gotten a lot of questions about where we got the name Avalon Reija, so I thought I would address them in a post.

Avalon - I first ran across this name playing a computer game in high school and I thought it would be a great name for a girl. (Side note: rarely do I think of anything this far in advance.) Avalon was the name of an area in this game. Actually the area was called The Mists of Avalon which, I believe, comes from this book. I've never actually read the book, but maybe now is a good time to do so.

According to wikipedia, the place Avalon first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 1136 pseudohistorical account Historia Regum Britanniae as the place where King Arthur is taken to recover from his wounds after his last battle. More recently, there is actually a song called Avalon by Roxy Music, you can go here to listen to it and here for lyrics. There is also a band called Avalon, but they never sang a song with the same name.

Reija - after we decided on Avalon as the first name, we were interested in finding a Finnish middle name. Mainly, we just looked at websites for Finnish names and tried to find one we liked. As far as we know, there is no meaning behind the name Reija, but if anybody knows differently, please let us know. The most frequent question we get regarding this name is `how do you pronounce Reija?' Go here to find out. Basically, roll the `R,' pronounce the `j' as a `y', and (if you are really ambitious), pronounce both the `e' and the `i.'

Last minute deals

We had an interesting experience when looking for a trip back. On Monday night we looked at flights from Durham to Mpls and found a direct NW flight for $630 per person...flights with stop-overs were a little bit more. Since we didn't know what plans would be, we didn't book the tickets. On Tuesday morning, the cost had increased to $830 and now we knew that we need to get home by Thursday....we couldn't believe our luck that the price had increased $200 (~33%). We checked out the bereavement policy at NW and found that for tickets in this price range, they typically give a 10% discount which was not much consolation relative to the 33% increase in price from yesterday.

On a lark, I decided to check kayak, a site that checks a whole bunch of other sites for flights. One of the options is to check other aggregaters, so I checked all the boxes (I was desperate). Travelocity popped up and had the same prices for flights as we had seen previously. But then I saw a line that said "Last Minute Deal" and it said "Flights + 4 Days Rental Car from $420." Long story short, I ended up getting the exact same flight from above plus a car rental while we are home for $430 per person. That's a $400 savings per person plus we have our ride figured out.

On a separate note, I highly recommend priceline for car rental. Unlike flights where you can name your price, but have no control over the time for the flights. In naming your own price for car rental, you have completely control. The only thing you do not determine is the car rental company, but me and my friends are 100% on getting a reputable company. So check it out!

A sad day in Avalon-ville

Avalon's great-grandmother (Camille's mom's mom) passed away Monday. So we are heading back to MN to support the family. Unfortunately Avalon's great-grandmother never got to meet Avalon since Avalon's first trip to MN was supposed to be this coming Wednesday. Instead, we are heading back tomorrow.

Hurricane Hanna

Avalon survived her first hurricane last night. For those of you who aren't in tune to the goings on of the mid-Atlantic (you can catch up at the National Hurricane Center), Hurricane Hanna swept through North Carolina last night. For those of us in the Upper Triad, Hanna brought windy/rainy conditions, but nothing too extreme. In fact, I'm pretty sure Avalon had no idea anything occurred.

I have uploaded some more pictures from Week 3 and 4 to my picasa site.

Grandpa Niemi

Well, it was my dad's birthday yesterday so I had planned on putting a picture of him up on the blog, but I wasn't feeling so hot yesterday so I didn't get around to it. So here is a pic of Grandpa Niemi. Happy Birthday Dad!