Is it really 11 days till Christmas?

Somehow it does not feel like Christmas is around the corner...I have done my baking - though because of nausea I haven't been able to eat much of it (well, okay I couldn't eat cookies buuuut the chocolate cheesecake was another story!). The house is decorated, lights are out and presents are wrapped....but somehow it just doesn't feel like Christmas.

Maybe its the weather? While I am not a fan of snow (it can stay in the mountains as far as I am concerned) but I had not thought we'd have rain (RAIN!) and grass that is still green. It isn't warm outside, but it certainly isn't a white Christmas like I was expecting. This year has flown by!

I still have not found the camera cord to download pictures - that is still a work in progress lol I need to check the place top to bottom again - and if that fails I am going to start to follow Ty around on the floor and start checking nooks and crannies at her level :)

Ty is 15 months doing her own thing - which still does not include walking. Yep - she walks along furniture and will walk if she is holding just one of our fingers but other than that - NOPE! She is into everything and some of her current favourites are: cupboards and drawers -particularly pulling everything from bathroom cabinets and throwing it into the toilet while your back is turned. YEAAAA!

Another fav (and my heart attack moment) is her crawling up AND down our spiral wood and concrete staircase by herself. I mean she hits the top will crawl into a room and come back to the top of the stairs and turn around and come back down! How she has mastered the confidence to do this but won't let go of that last finger ?? lol Frankly while I am looking forward to not having to scrub out knee stains, for how fast Miss Curious already moves there is a part of me that is secretly grateful she is not walking on her own because I fully expect the following week she would be running!

Long enough post. We are off to find our Christmas tree. Yeah we are a little late. Its our last Christmas item...Sebastian was gone and while I checked out a few places I didn't find a tree I liked. So we are off to find a tree (& hopefully not a Charlie Brown one!)

Back Up and Mostly Running

YEAAAA!! We now have phone AND Internet - and at the same time no less!! Now if I could just find the camera cord to download the latest pictures we'd be set LOL I think it is in the suitcase that Sebastian took with him TDY. Sucks. He is back in a week (currently touring Corps sites in Germany with a VIP) so until I find another I am stuck with the pics I have already.

The one below is from when we took Sebastians parents to Gamisch...

...and yes - this is the FIRST shot of what Sebastian calls my 'soccer-Mom' hair. I took about 5 inches off! And I'll give you 2 guesses who is in the cap & glasses...Ty's really not sure about this 'new look' LOL

Proud Grandpa and Tyler about to start shopping in Garmisch!

Since their visit I have thankfully gotten through the worst of the morning sickness, etc. For Thanksgiving we braved the car ride to the Austrian Alps to ski. (We really need to find new toys/ways to keep Ty entertained on the road...any thoughts/suggestions? Shoot 'em over!)

Well, I did not ski (didn't want to chance someone running into me), but we stayed at this gorgeous hotel and Sebastian got to ski a bit while Ty and I hung out at the indoor pool :-) One definite note for future travel - when breakfast and a 4 course dinner are included it is better to bring a babysitter along! Dinners started at 6:30 and went for 1.5- 2 hours! Ty was a really good sport for most of it (ALWAYS get a corner booth seat - they can then play a bit)...but after a couple of days we were ready to hit a pizza joint ...(and yes a cheeseburger would be great too LOL) Sebastian didn't get to ski as much as he wanted. They closed the glacier down - winds were gusting up to 70km/hour - for a day and a half, but he was able to get a day and a half in. Plus that day gave us a chance to go to Innsbruck where they were putting out their Christmas Market so that was cool. Once I have those pic's I will put them up in a slideshow.

Below is what the town looks like. 2nd note to self: old churches are really beautiful and all that, but unless you want to wake up early to church bells best to stay at a hotel that is NOT so close to one!

We are not traveling much other than day trips for the next while with the exception of day trips. I have to admit I am rather happy about that - traveling is fun but tiring too (those with kids know what I am talking about). I am looking forward to checking out the Christmas markets here - the one in Nurnburg is supposed to be legendary! Decorating the house is going to be fun - sadly our PX here does not have a lot of basic stuff so we will be getting a lot from the economy. Normally we would be more than happy to do just that, but with how bad the exchange rate is lately sometimes shopping just sucks!

Long enough post for now. Provided that my modem does not burn out again I will be posting more this week :)

Internet down - arghhhh

Hello All!

Well as luck would have it right after I wrote my last blog our phone died...so I went to Deutche Telecom and was told to 're-set' it by shutting everything down/cut power and restart everything....yeah, well I got the phone back and promptly lost all Internet!! ARGHHHHHH!!!!!

So back to DT I go and I get a phone number to call....oh joy German technical support and I barely speak enough German.....luckily I got someone who spoke better English than my German (lol) and to make a long story short after many tests and trials they sent someone out to tell me our modem is defective. Even better, because it is a warranty thing I cannot simply swap it out at the local DT office - ohhhhh noooooo - we have have one sent to us which, of course, got here while we were gone last week for Thanksgiving! Ahhh some of the joys of living overseas :) 

Well I got the new modem today and was able to set it up - more or less. (Plug and play does not exist here) Still have not figured out why I cannot get the computers to connect wireless to the modem yet. Hope to have that figured out in next day or two so I can use the main computer upstairs that I normally blog from as it has all my pictures! 

I wish I could find an animation someone sent to me once - it was a cartoon figure getting PO'd at their computer and beating the #%%& out of it...Yup that would about sum it up! :-) So I will try to get more up on lots of stuff - travel, pic's etc - once I get the rest of the computers back online. 

Tchuss for now!

Bad Blogger!

Sigh...yup that's me - a bad bad blogger who has been AWOL for over a month! Sorry!!! October to November just kinda spun out of control....

Sebastian's parents were here for 3 weeks which was fun. Ty got to get to know the Pastor side grandparents again and it was great to visit and check out some new sites around Germany. I will post pictures in the next day or two (promise!)

Aside from that yours truly has been 'under the weather' for over a month...yup that long. It sucked; nausea, sinus/allergy attacks, exhaustion, more nausea.....but then again what do you expect in your 1st Trimester of PREGNANCY!? :-) Yes we are expecting again, but this time I will not have to deal with the summer heat! My current due date on/about my birthday: 5 June. We are both really excited and looking forward to our newest addition though the idea of "family of 4" when traveling, hitting restaurants, etc is taking some getting used to :)

Sebastian is already convinced that it will be another girl and that he will officially and permanently be outnumbered LOL I am not so sure - but we'll have to wait a while and see.

I must now go feed the hungry mouth that is already here :-) When it comes to food, patience is not her strong suit! I will post more this weekend.

Take care!

Ireland!

Gosh it has been such a busy month! September long weekend Sebastian came home, we went to Garmisch the following weekend (see couple pictures below) and the weekend after that we were off to Ireland! Coming back last weekend we were tired but had really enjoyed out trip!

The weather held for the most part - scattered rain here and there but nothing to terrible bad. We landed in Dublin and then took the train to Galway as well. While in Galway we took a bus tour north to a national preserve area called Connemara. If we were to go back, that is where we would go back to. The whole area is rolling mountains, hills, mist, stone fences, and lots of sheep! LOL I don't think I have ever seen so many sheep in one country! All along the train ride Ty kept looking out the window saying" Da dawgs!!"

Have to keep this short - will add more to this post later. Time to make dinner!

Sept/07

Tyler's 2nd Birthday Party

Sorry for the delay in getting this one up. I had actually completed it mid-week when I lost the Internet connection and the entire slideshow! It took till now to get it re-done :)

Ty's Birthday Part 3!

Mom got tired so I put together a slideshow for my Dad. We had fun tonight! But it would have been more fun if Daddy had been here! Hmmmmm I DO get to have another party when he comes home...so that works out okay :-)

OH I saved you a cupcake too !

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TY! Daddys Post

Tyler Mackenzie Pastor is now 1!

While open to everyone, this post is mainly for Daddy who is not here today.....

just so you don't miss anything! I will be posting more as the day goes by.

Your daughter having her pancake breakfast!

One pancake with syrup and the other (in your honour) with NUTELLA! LOL

Notice there isn't much left on her tray - she definitely likes Nutella :)

The the sticky-nutella-birthday girl needed a luxurious morning bubble bath to get all the chocolate off!

Our shadow had to, of course, join us!

Next we iced all the birthday cupcakes and Ty helped with the sprinkles! All set for tonight! (The birthday cake we will do on Monday) I am still trying to figure out how to make the "1" candle I bought stand up on one of these...

We tried to get a birthday shot in while she was still clean but now

she is getting tired and is not interested in picture-taking!

I am going to try to get her down for a nap (yeah keep laughing) and will take more pictures and post them later.......keep checking back when/of you can....

We miss you and love you! Can't wait till Sunday!!!

Birthday Part 2

BACK!

Well there was no naps this morning so we had lunch. And since we were having lunch by ourselves I decided we could break and have one lil birthday cupcake early!

This is how it started.......

YUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMM!!!!

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!

And this is how it ended!

LOL Funny - she was more than willing to share her sandwich with Max & Riley but NOT the cupcake!

The we played outside a bit - it is a beautiful day today and the lady at the Neukauf gave Ty some bubbles so we coloured with chalk and blew bubbles in the sun!

Then finally came the nap :) And me getting everything ready for tonight...Speaking of - people should be here in an hour or so, so I had better get going! Will write more at the end of the night.

Max's surgery

Well Max went under the knife yesterday. He had a big lump/mass and a smaller second one that we thought were fat lumps. We figured it was better to get rid of it now instead of waiting for it to get bigger as time passed since neither dog is a spring chicken anymore and the bigger one was about half the size of my fist!!

Well turned out they found 3 lumps so now he has stitches on his stomach, under his left leg and on his front right leg. In other words he is a mess! I picked him up and brought him home around 3:30 and he was still half out of it. Ty was a problem as she kept crawling over to him to see him and I had to keep pulling her away. (Putting Max in another room wasn't an option since I had to make sure he didn't start licking his wounds and he kept howling/whining when he could not see me). It made for a long afternoon and evening LOL especially after a day of painting here :)

He woke up a couple times last night (we had to sleep downstairs) and, finally, I was able to get him to stand up this morning....till that point he was in exactly the same spot that he had laid down at yesterday when he first came home. He has also been able to keep the pain meds down - along with whatever food Ty decides to 'share' with him LOL Thats when I figured he was on the mend! Now comes the fun of keeping Ty away from the stitches, etc till they come out in a week or so :)

Good Morning!

Well not a lot to update here. Sebastian took off late last week. He is in Cali now and, according to him, very busy and hot! LOL I think it is close to 100 F there right now (we have rain - not sure which is better!).

Back at home here we are here playing catch up :) I have catching up with my trading to do and, having just found out that we maaaay be in the house longer than a year, I have decided to go ahead and do some decorating that I initially figured we wouldn't do because of the time lines. We have also been talking about taking a trip once Sebastian is back home so I am researching that as well. Man I wish the dollar would go back up! OH and planning Ty's 1 yr birthday :-)

Ty is, as always, keeping me busy too. She now has 4 teeth on the bottom and 2 on top. I don't know if that is all she will get or if she is getting more - for how much she is chewing on stuff I think there may be more coming sooner than later but time will tell.

Units here are deploying - including some of our neighbors. So we (my neighbor and I) are planning a get-together Friday at our house for family members left behind making it lasagna & wine night! Nothing makes deployments easy but knowing we are all here together (hopefully) makes things easier.

Thats about it for now! Hope everyone is doing great :)

Dog days of summer

Here are some recent pic's from around home (Max & Riley were starting to feel neglected on the blog! :-)

Where is summer going?

YEAHHH! I cannot quite believe it but Ty is now 11 months! Cliche I know but where did the time go? many times over the past months we have commented that she definitely does not look like a baby but a little girl....particularly when I (finally) started to get pictures printed and put into albums!

Which also means Sebastian is about to leave to have his 'fun in sand' LOL Though I don't know that he would describe being in the Box that way. He will miss Ty's first birthday but only by a couple of days so we are having 2 parties - one on her actualy birthday (I couldn't just let that day go by with nothing) and then a bigger party once Daddy is back :-) My friend Lori is all for it so she will be my accomplice! Something tells me Tyler won't mind having 2 parties,....okay, she won't remember having 2 parties but Mom won't mind either!

The other reason I fell like summer is fast fading away is the weather. I hope it warms up again soon. It was great in July - hot actually and this past week the temperature dropped enough at night that I have been putting Ty is fleece PJ's! Daytimes have been sometimes sunny with clouds suddenly rushing in making you think a big storm is brewing...then it rains a LITTLE and then disappears again?!? WTH? Strange that it can supposedly be around 15+C but it sure won't feel like it. Someone commented that they heard once the kids get out of school that is when the temp starts to drop aka that its the beginning of the end of summer....the German kids got out last Friday LOL so that timing wouldbe about right! I hope that isn't true - I am NOT NOT ready for summer to be over!

Playing in the Park

Getting ready to go to the park!

We had a 'play in the park' day with some good friends of ours. We are lucky enough to have some really great neighbors here including Lori ( yes her name is the same as mine!) who has a little girl close in age to Ty along with an older son - and Ty loves to play with both of them! Visiting at each others houses is pretty comonfor us :-) but today it was decided to hit the park. Fortunately this cute little park - complete with ducks, one white swan and a fountain - is not far away from our houses. We both took our bikes and Chariots to the park instead of driving....a Chariot you say? Well it is a bike trailer, jogging stroller, regular stroller and a couple other things all rolled into one! LOL This is what it looks like:

So yes, Munchkin has her very own, ahem, Chariot that awaits her in the garage :-) That's what it looks like without the bike attachment or jogging/stroller wheels on it. It is AWESOME! For anyone who is looking or a high quality multi-purpose stroller/bike trailer this is the way to go! We can bike to another town, put the stroller wheels on, lock up the bikes and go from there. I have some pics of Ty in hers - they must be on hubby's laptop.....will have to post them another time.

So onto the park we rode and we managed to escape the rain though we really had some doubts from time to time. Here are some pictures - no slide show as I cannot seem to log onto the site to make one today (grrrrr hate unreliable sites!)....

Snack time at the park!

Baby P doling out the head 'bonks'!

Floppy hat for the very little sun that came out!

Unfortunately my one or two shots of the pond didn't pan out, I'll have to try again next time! At the moment Ty has decided it is NOT blog time so I will have to write more later....

'Remember Me'...For anyone who has not seen it

Regardless if you support the war or not, I think everyone agrees how important it is to support our soldiers. This video brings that home. If you have not seen it (it has 8 million hits) take a minute - it is MORE than worth watching.

Nicole & Jason's visit

THANKS Jason & Nic for taking an extra train or two to get here! I know we are a bit off the beaten path LOL While it was a quick visit we really enjoyed having you here and wished you could have stayed longer. I know Ty had a great time (above) and she sends you 'baby bonks'....Max & Riley already miss you as well :-) They are now feeling seriously neglected without Jas on the floor with them!

It is always great to see old friends again and this time was no exception. It also made us miss being state-side! Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate - maybe next time (hint hint). But that just made hanging out, barbecuing and catching up all the more fun. The timing was perfect as well - we were back from our Garmisch/Austria stint (where we actually ran into Jas & Nic!) and it was right before Sebastian had to take off to the states once more.

Speaking of - yes he is gone for a week or so which is partly why these blogs are shorter and a bit late getting out there :-) Well that and it finally stopped raining long enough to get our jungle lawn done (ughhhhhh) I kid you not it was a good foot high in places! In 24 hours the temperature when from 60's on Friday to 94 over the weekend. Tomorrow the rain returns....

Tyler has been mostly in good mood despite that her sleeping at night has been off lately. I didn't know why till yesterday when I saw the new teeth coming in!! New ones on the bottom AND top! Yeah, teething....figures that would be when the Army sends hubby in a trip! LOL

Naptime is over so I have to run. Hope everyone is doing great!

Last Trip Slide Show!

Here are some pic's from the last Garmisch trip (last week)...we went to Austria to do some hiking which was awesome! (And a very good workout carrying the ever0-growing Tyler)

Even better was running into friends of ours from Bragg, Nicole and Jason. Call it serendipity or fate - we were leaving Garmisch when we saw some people walking along and Sebastian and I looked at each other saying No Way! Turned the car around and went back and sure enough - there they were LOL We knew they were in Europe but didn't think we would get a chance to see them...I have a few pictures of Jas & Nic's visit with us that I will post a bit later today...At the moment darling Ty is insisting that we do something else :)

Till later.....

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

Over the past weeks there have been babies arriving all over the place -

For Kelly & Rob, Elena & Andrew and Rachel & Neil....

For Barbara & Joel......

To check out pictures of these lil cuties, Kelly and Elena's site links are on this page. Peyton is Kelly's and Giuliana is Elena's.

Barbara & Joel and Rach & Neil don't have sites yet (hint hint) but once they do I will link them as well.

Congratulations again and wishing you sleep-filled nights!

(LOL Hey sooner or later it will happen! :-)

Baby Proofing almost complete!

Tyler has been crawling for a bit now - since about the 5th of June - and now is unstoppable! The hotel room last week it was a challenge because nothing was baby proofed and she was all over the place finding whatever she could to shove into her mouth (surprise surprise) and she has picked up a real fascination with cords; power cords to the laptops, speaker wires, earphones/headsets, phone cords, etc, ANYthing that is a wire/cord. I never noticed before how many there are in a hotel room, till then. This past weekend we went and picked up another set of baby gates for upstairs and the main floor. I bought one before to try out but it didn't work very well (plastic) so back it went. Given that our walls are concrete and the floor is tile over concrete, I want something I know works!

We found some nice wood ones in Weiden that did the trick. Housing (thank god) sent out a couple guys to put them up this afternoon. They are the kind that fastened to the wall and attempting to drill into concrete walls was not my idea of fun! Now we should be safe at least until she figures out that she can open cupboards LOL

Munchkin in the kitchen - I think I will pick up the cupboard locks sooner than later though.....all my tupperware/plasticware is in the bottom cupboard at her level. She just doesn't know that yet :)

This morning Ty and I took Max to the vet. He has a good sized lump on the inside of his body by his back leg. We had gone to one vet and tried antibiotics and it got smaller but did not go away so this time I got a base appt and they biopsied it. It is....a fat lump....Mr Skinny-as-all-can-be and it is a fat tumor. LOL I am not complaining - I was worried it was going to be something really really bad so I am happy that is all it is but I was surprised. Riley has one too that we found while in CA. Think I am going to get both of them taken care of while here in Germany - it is much muuuuuch less expensive to do it here at the base vet than back home. He is still a big ole wimp though. The waiting room was packed and there was a cat in a carrier that he kept sniffing. Finally the cat puffed up and hissed at him. He jumped back a foot and a half and practically layed down on the floor his tail between his legs LMAO Everyone cracked up. He then got up and howled as if to prove he hadn't been scared. Ahhh yes - my protector!

Visit to Dad's Office

Well we went to visit Dad at his office and Ty loved it. Soooooo many things to look at and touch and throw on the ground LOL I suggested I could leave her there for the afternoon as she seemed quite happy....(grin)....Sebastian was less enthusiastic about the idea.

This is going to be FUN!

"Dad won't miss the markers and highlighters and sticky notes and calculator and papers and....." Whaa? Who me make a mess??

Dad watching and attempting damage control....

LOL Dad's revenge with sticky notes and rubber bands