Oh my gosh, it's 2010

And I haven't written a blog post in over a month! Honestly, it has been so much easier to keep up with friends and family on Facebook. Blogger takes a LONG time to upload pictures. Even when Facebook can't find it's server and hiccups on me, it still takes less time to get all my pictures up to show the world (just kidding, privacy protection is ON, I just show off my babies to family and friends). But we HAVE had a very busy December and so far, are having a fantastic 2010!

On December 1st, our household goods arrived in Lubbock, an entire 3 weeks early! It took a couple weeks to get settled into our new house and we still haven't quite emptied our garage of boxes and our master bedroom closet is atrocious but really, who besides us goes in there? :)

Steven came to Lubbock to hang out with all of us in the middle of December and we had fun with late nights of dominoes and lots of Super Mario playing on the Wii. We had our Christmas dinner on the 23rd with Dave, Sara and Cristian. It was great to have them all over again and eat a lot of food and open a few presents. The kids (and by kids I mean the GUYS) played Super Mario yet again and once the babies went to bed, we played dominoes and either Dave or Brian won. I really can't remember who but they are the ones that always seem to win. ;) On the 24th it snowed and snowed and snowed. Lubbock can't handle a lot of snow so the roads were really bad and Christmas Eve church services all over the city were cancelled. Christmas morning was bright and sunny but still freezing and still treacherous on the roads so the weathermen suggested to stay put. So we did. Hannah's first Christmas was a LOT of fun. This was the first year that Luke really got into Christmas and talked about Santa and the Christmas trees and reindeer. He also watched Mickey Mouse's A Christmas Carol (from way back when) over and over and over and just loved it. The kids loved their presents and of course, Luke played with Hannah's toys, Hannah checked out Luke's toys, then Luke played with all the toys while Hannah ate wrapping paper. We rang in the new year by doing absolutely nothing exciting since we are old, boring and have little kids. ;) But Brian is living it up in San Antonio as I type this, at the Alamo Bowl - Texas Tech vs Michigan State. GO RED RAIDERS!!!

What else? Well, Hannah is working on a few more teeth, Luke asks us how to spell EVERYTHING and then tells us how things are spelled. "Mommy, how do you spell refrigerator? M-S-R-A-T-X-4. That spells refrigerator!" lol. But he does remember some of the words we work on, cat, dog, mom, dad, hannah. Brian starts school on the 15th of this month. And don't forget that he turns 33 on the 14th which makes him old. Very very old. Hannah banana turns ONE on the 21st and a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse themed party is in the works so if you want to attend, bring your mouse ears. And me? Well I've been sewing like crazy of course! I am taking full advantage of Brian being home and since he is a HUGE help with the kids, I have time to sew and create. I've been making nursing pads, diaper covers, bib clips and minky bib squares and hair bow gardens! And I'm even dabbling in making hair bows - focusing on bows for babies, infants and little ones - in keeping along with the "andMore" of FrayBabyBibsandMore. I really want my shop to be a fun one stop shop for new moms and moms of little girls. I plan on making some rompers, dresses, matching bloomers and paci pouches - this is, of course, once I figure out how to add 4 additional hours to each day so I can have time to implement all of my grand plans. I'm taking it a day at a time, however, and really enjoying making new things.

I will try to do a better job of posting over here. If nothing else, I'll make sure I get some pictures up of the birthday girl (oh and the birthday daddy as well)

Happy New Year!

Happy Birthday to Luke!

Luke turned four the day after Thanksgiving. We were in Houston with a bunch of family to celebrate. He got to go to the park with daddy and grandpa in the morning and then had a party with his great aunts and uncles along with the rest of us (mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, uncle steve, hannah and grandma Vickery). We had a huge bouquet of balloons for him, a cake with an airplane on it and presents. He had a great time opening his gifts (it took him forever, which I thought was awfuly cute and made his excitement last), devoured his cake (okay, devoured the frosting!) and had a blast releasing his balloons one by one into the sky. Later that evening when he was getting ready for his bath, I asked him if he had a good birthday and he exclained "I DID! And they all sang the Happy Birthday song to me!"

Deep in the Heart

We're here, we're here! We're calling Texas our home for the next 20 months or so and I'm thinking I need to change the name of our blog. :)
We arrived in Lubbock on the 22nd of October and boots to the ground, we started hunting for houses. We found a house that isn't available until the middle of this month which is perfect for us considering our first (very very small) shipment of our house won't be here until the 21st or so. The rest of our belongings should arrive right before Christmas.
So, a house has been found. We're still hunting for dentists, doctors and a preschool for little man. We are going to visit 2 schools next week and see if Luke likes what he sees.
I've been taking some pictures here and there but for some reason, Brian's computer won't read my memory card so I have to waiti until our November shipment of belongings arrives so I have my own computer. So you will all have to wait for the pictures from the Texas Tech football game that we took the kids to last week. I do, however, have a few pictures from Brian's camera and I'll share them because I'm nice. ;)
I'm sewing again therefore my brother's house has little fabric scraps and threads everywhere and his dining room has become my work space. It probably stresses him out a bit but we're only here for a couple more weeks - I think he can live with it until then. I have some fun new items in my Etsy shop and can't wait for the rest of my inventory (from my sewing in Germany) to get here so I can have a huge blowout sale!
I'll try to update more frequently now that we are semi- settled.
Here are a few pictures. I'll pull some more off of Brian's memory card this weekend.

We're here, we're here! We're calling Texas our home for the next 20 months or so and I'm thinking I need to change the name of our blog. :)

We arrived in Lubbock on the 22nd of October and boots to the ground, we started hunting for houses. We found a house that isn't available until the middle of this month which is perfect for us considering our first (very very small) shipment of our house won't be here until the 21st or so. The rest of our belongings should arrive right before Christmas.

So, a house has been found. We're still hunting for dentists, doctors and a preschool for little man. We are going to visit 2 schools next week and see if Luke likes what he sees.

I've been taking some pictures here and there but for some reason, Brian's computer won't read my memory card so I have to waiti until our November shipment of belongings arrives so I have my own computer. So you will all have to wait for the pictures from the Texas Tech football game that we took the kids to last week. I do, however, have a few pictures from Brian's camera and I'll share them because I'm nice. ;)

I'm sewing again therefore my brother's house has little fabric scraps and threads everywhere and his dining room has become my work space. It probably stresses him out a bit but we're only here for a couple more weeks - I think he can live with it until then. I have some fun new items in my Etsy shop and can't wait for the rest of my inventory (from my sewing in Germany) to get here so I can have a huge blowout sale!

I'll try to update more frequently now that we are semi- settled.

Here are a few pictures. I'll pull some more off of Brian's memory card this weekend.

7 days! Ack!

On the 29th of September we received our orders telling us that we are moving on October 22nd, a few weeks earlier than we originally thought. We then found out that our movers were going to be at our house bright and early on October 12th! Since then we have been busy cleaning, decraping, organizing, making trips to the thrift store and to the refuse facility. The fish have found a new home and will be transported to our neighbor's house tonight. The a/c and tv stand are at the thrift store waiting for buyers. The lawn has been mowed one last time and our other neighbors are now the proud owners of our electric lawn mower and weed whacker. I just completed three BIG custom FrayBaby orders and have a few small ones to finish up. I am having a crafters open house on Thursday at yet another neighbor's house where I hope to sell even more items. The more I sell, the less has to get packed up and shipped over the ocean. We still have to sort out 1300 pounds of "hold baggage" - the items that will get flown over the ocean and arrive to our new house in November. The rest of our household will not arrive until right before Christmas! It is always a challenge to try to guess what you will need for a month before the rest of your stuff shows up. Luke is finishing up his last 2 weeks of preschool and I'm hoping to squeeze Hannah in to the doctor for a 9 month well baby check up. No shots at the 9 month, just a health check. I also have to find a health care provider in Lubbock and it looks like the University accepts Tricare and we won't have any out of pocket expenses - yay! The cars get shipped out this Friday (the Mini) and Monday the 19th (Pacifica) - who knows how long those will take to arrive. :( We're still busy, busy, busy but if anything exciting happens, I'll be sure to post about it. :)

Day Trip - Poland

We headed to Poland yesterday morning around 8:30am. By the time we filled the car with gas and got coffee, we were on the road by 9am. We arrived in Poland around 2pm and had right around 3-4 hours to shop. Not much time according to Polish Pottery shopping standards and we cut it even shorter by taking a break around 3:30pm for a late lunch. The lunch took up about an hour of my precious shopping time but it was so worth it. Check out the pictures to see the beautiful and charming place we ate at. Brian ordered a traditional Polish dish - meat and rice wrapped up in cabbage (like a huge burrito) and covered in a light tomato sauce. It was amazing! I ordered potato pancakes with sour cream and fried apple pancakes for Luke and I and they were so, so, so, so stinking good. That was one of the best lunches I've ever had and it made the trip entirely worth it. :) We resumed shopping for another hour and then headed home. Yup, we drove home that night and were back in our own bed by 11:15pm.  Hmmm, I wonder if I can make it there one more time before we head back to the states.  :) 

  

A lesson from Luke

Today while driving home from the Flohmarkts we visited in Nurnberg, Luke was singing songs to Hannah and somehow we all started talking about bugs, critters and animals.  It started out with Luke calling out an animal and me making the sound. He called out butterfly and since I have no idea what noise a butterfly makes, I asked him if he knew what caterpillars turned into. Since he just learned all about caterpillars last month, he shouted out "butterflies!" He then informed us that they also turn into bumblebees. I said, no, they don't turn into bumblebees but that bumblebees have stingers. Luke told us that bumblebees AND wasps have stingers but they don't sting him! So I told him that bees make honey. "Honey?!?" he exclaimed and went back to singing. "The chickens give us eggs, the chickens give us eggs, high ho the dairy oh, the chickens give us eggs!" "That's right!", I said, "bees give us honey, chickens give us eggs and do you know what cows give us?"  "Cows?" Luke repeated, "POOP!" Cows give us POOP!"  Umm, not exactly the answer I was looking for but I can't argue!  :)

My birthday!

The 15th was my birthday so Brian, the kids and I headed to our favorite restaurant - the Winklerbrau - for dinner. It was delicious! And after our meal, we took advantage of the gorgeous weather and snapped some pictures outdoors.

What we do on beautiful 65 degree Sunday afternoons...

We go to Weltenburg! Weltenburg is an old monastery located on a river's edge. We've been there a few times (I blogged about it last February - click here to revisit) and today, since Brian just finished a month long rotation, and I just finished a month of single parenting, we wanted to get out of the house and have a lazy day of enjoying the sunshine on this early fall day. We headed to Weltenburg to take pictures and throw rocks in the water (woohoo!) and when we arrived, we realized the hundreds of other people had the same idea. We also discovered that in the courtyard of the monastery, they serve lunch and dinner so after we walked around a bit, we sat at a fest table with some of our closest German friends (I kid, I kid, we had no idea who they were) and enjoyed some delicious food. And on the way home, 3 out of 4 of us enjoyed a leisurely nap. Here are all the pictures - notice how difficult it is to get a decent picture of Luke - he was trying to enjoy the water, watch the boats and throw rocks and I kept bugging him. :) And Hannah scratched the heck out of her little cheek this morning playing with a toy - we have no idea what toy caused the damage but geez! nice baby toy, huh? Hope you all are enjoying YOUR Sunday.

A little old man with a HUGE paddle pushes this barge back and forth across the river.  There are people just chilling in the car as they get transported across.  Call me crazy but I just don't like the look of that!  lol

Perfect rocks for skipping!

Beautiful, no? We couldn't have asked for a better day.

See the huge riverboat behind them?  Very cool.

Awwwww....who's her daddy???  Little twins, even the expressions on their faces, just watching the water.  :)  (Click the picture to enlarge)

The courtyard!  Fun!

They entertain each other quite well.  lol

Hannah in the cool German high chair.

Preschool Break Day 2

Our Day 2 activities have ended with a huge rain shower so I let Luke get his umbrella and head on out. He had a blast and as the rain tapered off, he let the plops of water fall on his head. We're about to head into the tub then off to bed but I wanted to share pictures of Luke and link you to our arts and crafts project of the day - HERE!!

Preschool Break, Day 1

Click here to see what we did today!