Sweet Baby From a Month Ago…

 

My good friend Felicity, who is also a great photographer, loves to practice taking pictures using our sweet Tybee.  Here are the last pictures she took.  Tybee wasn’t really in the mood, but she’s adorable anyway.

Fun with Instagram

 

I discovered Instagram today on my iPod and had a little fun trying it out…

Halloween Festivities

For our “mommy/son date” on Friday, Ethan wanted to carve pumpkins.  This really isn’t something I enjoy because it requires creativity and makes a huge mess, but I couldn’t say no to him, so that is what we did.  Luckily it ended up being more of a family affair, so I had help with the clean up and more supervision of the knife usage.

Our Fashion Guru

Ethan’s Choir Debut at FamilienTag

 

At Ethan’s school they offer various after school classes/activities for the kids.  It changes every semester and this semester he is taking creative building, table tennis, choir, drawing, and soccer.  He loves them all…except for Choir.  Apparently he is more of a dancer than a singer.  We feel like it is a good experience for him though, so I continue to take him.

Anyway…his choir usually has performances on Sundays so we have never been able to attend one…that is until now.  Eltville (our town) was lucky enough to host FamilienTag (Family Day) this year and they asked Ethan’s choir to perform at it.  It was a lot of fun to see him up there, but as you will find, he was less than thrilled.  He’s a cutie though.

Surprise Pictures

As I was uploading pictures from our camera to our computer, I discovered some pretty cute ones that I either didn’t know existed or had completely forgotten about.  Just wanted to share

An Evening Stroll With Two of the Cutest Kids

James is on the swing shift this week and next week and so it is just me and the kiddos in the evenings, which can make for some pretty long evenings if we don’t have anything planned.  Tonight we decided to take a walk down to the river.  It was a bit cooler today and so these cuties were able to try out their new fleece jackets that came in the mail yesterday.

Hiking in our own backyard

We had so much fun hiking in the Alps that when we got home we decided to put our hiking shoes back on and go hiking in the outskirts of our own town.  We’ve known about this hiking trail since we moved here, but hadn’t had the chance to go yet.  It was a perfect day with beautiful weather.  You will even notice in the pictures that there are signs of Autumn being here now.  I love this time of year with the leaves changing color and the sounds you make from walking on fallen leaves.

Garmisch Part 3: Alpspitz

During our “free time” we decided to head to the top of the Alpspitz which is the second tallest point in Germany.  The Zugspitz is the tallest, but it cost 3 times as much to go to the top of it and there isn’t anything to do up there.  At the Alpspitz they have hiking trails and activities for kids.

Garmisch Part 2

During the day, James and I had classes we had to attend and so we took Ethan and Tybee to child care.  Ethan had a blast at his.  They went hiking, saw a “candy castle”, rode up a ski lift, went to Munich to see some animal town, watched movies, etc.  He didn’t want to leave he had so much fun there.  Tybee, on the other hand, did not have the same joyful experience.  This was her first time being left with someone else for an extended period of time.  I’m not sure who it is was harder on, us or her, but she did not enjoy it.  However, some good did come out of it because she now goes to other people a lot easier than she did before.

Garmisch Part 1: Tybee’s First Swim

At the end of August our family was lucky enough to go on an all expense paid trip to Garmish, Germany for a marriage retreat.  It was a lot of fun and very profitable for us.  The resort/hotel had an indoor pool that we decided to take Tybee to for her first experience of swimming.  Unfortunately they had a rule that she had to be wearing a flotation device.  She did not like this rule.  As you can see in the pictures we eventually took it off because she was really not liking it.

A second grader, a reader, and a 3 month old

Today was Ethan’s first day of 2nd Grade!  I really can’t believe it.  I feel very old today.  He was so excited to go and see his friends and be able to use his new backpack.  All of the kids have the same type of backpack and so this year he wanted one too.  What a cute kid.  Tybee and I sure did miss him this morning.  It was awfully quiet.

Randoms

Ethan helping me out by keeping Tybee happy while I get ready for church.  What handsome kids they are.

Rothenburg

Not only was last Tuesday Tybee’s 2 month birthday, but it was the 2 year anniversary of mine and James’ first date, which was on Tybee Island in Georgia.  That was where and when our life together began.  So we thought it very fitting to name our sweet little angel after a very significant and beautiful place.

To celebrate this anniversary of ours we wanted to take a day trip somewhere and so we decided to head to Rothenburg and invited some friends of ours, the Meyers family, to join us.

I’m Back

This morning I went running for the first time in 9 months.  I haven’t been since before I watched the Thorne’s kids while they went on vacation.  I got out of the habit while they were here and then felt too sick from being pregnant to start again.  Oh My Goodness!!  I am so out of shape.  It felt really good to get my body moving like that again, but it was hard.  I got a lot of stares too.  I’m sure it was because my tire I now have was bouncing up and down.  Before I left, James said to me, “Make sure you don’t push yourself too hard.”  Of course, I said back to him, “I know.  I won’t.”  I’ve had such a hard time recovering from the birth of Tybee that neither one of us wants me to hurt myself in any way and be back to being sick again.  Unfortunately I don’t know how not to push myself.  Once I started my knee was killing me, but I pushed passed that and it eventually went away, then my chest started to hurt because my lungs haven’t had to work that hard in a long time, after that I started to feel like I was going to throw up.  At that point, I pushed myself a little bit longer and then stopped and walked a bit and then ran some more.  It felt really good to push passed the pain.  I forgot how invigorating it is.  I just keep thinking about where I was 1 year and 2 months ago.  I am no where near that, but can’t wait to get back to it.  Anyway…I just wanted to say that it feels good to be back and today is going to be a great day!

2 Months of Sweet Tybee

Tybee turned 2 months old on Tuesday. It feels like she has always been here, but then at the same time I can’t believe it has been this long already.  I took her in to see the doctor yesterday and she is healthy and strong and perfect.  I had forgotten how little she really was. So here are some random pictures of Tybee from the last two months that I have wanted to post, but haven’t been able to due to time and energy.

Luxembourg

Two weekends ago there was a father/son campout at the US Military Cemetery in Luxembourg.  Since my parents were here at the time, James, Ethan, and my dad went camping while my mom, Tybee, and I stayed in a hotel.  Then the next day we explored Luxembourg.  It was a fun little excursion since none of us had been there before.  That was Ethan’s first camping experience too and he loved every minute of it.  He now wants us to go camping as a family, but I’m so not a camper :/  We’ll see if he catches me at a weak moment on that one.

Here is the cemetery where they camped.  It is very eye opening seeing all of the graves.  This is just a very small portion of the soldiers that died during WWII.  General Patton is buried here as well.

 

Here are some pictures from the beautiful city…

This is outside the Grand Duke’s Palace.

I guess there were underground tunnels built in 1644 called Casemates.  Unfortunately they were closed when we tried to go in them.

We really enjoyed Luxembourg…the people were really friendly and it was a clean, beautiful city.

Tybee’s Blessing Day

Last Sunday on June 5th, exactly one month from when she was born, Tybee was able to receive her blessing.  As you can see in this picture, she was a little angel.  She was so good during the whole thing.  I think the fact that it was really warm in the chapel helped.  This little girl hates to be the slightest bit cold.

She sure does love her brother and he adores her.   A couple of days ago we were driving in the car and she was hungry and fussy, so I asked Ethan if he would try to calm her down.  He held her hand and sang to her and she quieted down and went to sleep.  It was the sweetest thing to witness.

I am so blessed to have two of the most amazing kids!

We have a 7 year old?!

I cannot believe that Ethan is already 7!  Where has the time gone?  He has really grown up this past year.  It is amazing all of the things that he has courageously conquered and endured…moving to a new country, starting a new school with a foreign language, learning the new language, becoming a big brother…and he has done it very patiently and maturely.

This year for his birthday he wanted to have a Lego party.  Since I have been having a difficult time recovering from having Tybee and adjusting to a newborn’s schedule, we decided to go the easy route…we held the party at the Lego Store.  It turned out to be the perfect thing because they did everything.  We didn’t even have to stay during the party.  They had all 8 kids thoroughly engaged the whole two hours.  It was great!!  Afterwards we walked the kids to the park for cake and presents. 

In these pictures the kids look a bit bored, but they were just getting started and getting to know each other.  Half of them were German kids from Ethan’s school and the other half were American from church.  I was impressed how well they did together.

 

While they were at the party we left and enjoyed a little lunch at the bakery around the corner…Can I just say again, that this was the easiest party I have every given and probably the most fun for the kids.  It was a win, win situation