Excitement!!

We are very excited this week.

First off we got our orders for moving. These gave us the go ahead on scheduling a "pack out" date. So the movers will be here on May 26th and 27th, then we go in to a hotel for a couple of days, and then fly into Savannah on June 2nd!! Can you believe it is coming up on us so quickly. It is crazy how short our time here is.

Second, the weather is finally starting to get nice. Yes there is still rain in the forecast, but the temperatures are slowly climbing into the 60's, and the boys played ALL day outside yesterday. I meant to go out and take a picture, but it never happened. They started off by catching snails and making homes for them. They also played with neighbors, got themselves all muddy, and said they built a fort. Perfect. And I didn't even hear much crying or fighting. How wonderful is that.

And third on our list of excitement is........ My sister LAURA is coming to visit us!!! Most of you already know this, but she comes in just 5 days and I am so excited. Her husband Brian bought her a ticket here for her 30th birthday. She will leave her 3 kids for the week, and come here and help me take care of my 4. What a trade off huh? haha Anyway, we have big plans with Laura and we really hope the weather cooperates. I am going to love spending some time with her, and showing her what my life has been like in Germany. Then when she leaves I have 20 days to get rid of what I need to from the house, and our German living days will be over. So happy and exciting, and so sad and memorable.

{Laura with her family}

PS- I read through all of Laura's blog posts last night looking for a picture of her by herself, and couldn't find a single one. Apparently she thinks it would be a crazy thing to do to put a picture of herself by herself on her blog. I did have a couple good laughs when reading some of her old blogs though.

Fantastic Friday night

On Friday night Steve and I went out on a date and had the best steak we have ever had in our lives.

Our next door neighbor Ronya was having a sleep over birthday party and she invited all 3 of the older boys. They were to go over at 5:00pm and stay the night there. Well, since we had some free babysitting, I told Steve we needed to go out for a nice dinner. Of course Brandon tagged along with us, but he is getting used to that. Steve had heard a friend talking about a steakhouse in Frankfurt called "The American Steakhouse" and Steve decided that is where he wanted to go.
We got there and were a little nervous about having Brandon with us, because it was a fairly upscale restaurant. We didn't want anyone complaining about "the baby", but we ordered anyway.
First a really nice waitress who spoke great English came to take our order and she showed us all the different cuts of meat they had. Steve choose a rib eye, and I had three small cutlets with different sauces. We also ordered some garlic bread and I had a cesar salad. For Brandon we asked her to bring us some mashed potatoes, and she brought them in this fancy glass dish with some creamed spinach as well.
I cannot even tell you how good this food was!! And you all thought Steve was a good cook. :) We were in total heaven eating this, and Brandon too. It was cooked perfectly and the seasonings on everything were fabulous!! Dang, we should have been going there for our anniversary these past four years instead of to the castle.
Of course we paid a pretty hefty price for this divine food, but we both say it was absolutely worth it.

After we got home we put B to bed and then had a friendly game of cities and knights. It is an expansion to settlers that Laura and I will teach the family in August. My dear husband is such a superb game player that he beats me at EVERYTHING. I am a fair competitor, but he beats me the majority of the time. Well, he had beat me 10 out of 11 games of playing cities and knights, and I finally won another game on Friday night. I was thrilled, because I beat him pretty good.
It is such a fun game, because it requires more strategy than settlers, so you gotta really plan things out rather than just hope you pick up a lot of cards.
{I told Steve to smile and look happy}

So, that was our great Friday night, and I am so glad we got to spend some time together and eat some memorable steak. I would love to know what the best food you have ever eaten is.

The Apostle Song

This is such a cute song. My sister-in-law Kristin send it to me via email. Enjoy :)

8 month old

Well, lucky for you all, I have found something I can blog about. Brandon turned 8 months today (April 17th), so I will tell you a little about him. I of course am enjoying him tremendously. I sometimes feel bad about saying this, but my favorite age with my children has been from the time they are born until they are about 2. I feel bad because they are already out of my favorite age stage before they even know what is going on. I just love having a baby! So, I took some pictures of our youngest today to show you what a big boy he is getting to be.

{He has figured out how to pull himself up on things which has made naptime more interesting}
{You gotta click to see how much he weighs. My scale is in kilos, so remember 1 kilo equals 2.2lbs}{And since he is a pro at crawling now, he gets himself into some pretty fun situations. He pulled the cat water over on himself the other day. Neither of us liked that very much.}

He is sitting very good, crawling all over the place, he has 2 new teeth as of last week, he's been saying dadada for a while now, and for the first time today I heard him say mamama. He goes to bed about 7:30 but for some reason has been getting up at 6:15am for the past 4 to 5 weeks. I don't like that so much. I think it may be because of the sun which will continue to come up earlier and earlier.

When we have family prayer, Brandon's favorite thing to do is climb on this broken dresser and pull out all the clothes. It is actually a perfect toy for him, because it is easy to climb up and since the drawers are all messed up they don't pinch his fingers. The problem is when he squeals and laughs when we are praying. He did that last night, but of course I couldn't video during the prayer, so this is the best I could get when prayers were over. The squeal at the beginning is what he did all during our prayer.



On another note, I have been thinking a lot about the dynamics of my family this week. The other day I came upstairs and all 4 boys were downstairs. I heard the older three making plans to go outside, and as they went they were yelling to each other, "hurry and close the door so Brandon doesn't come out." Of course they were just looking out for his safety, but I got a vision of how his life is going to be with him being so much younger than Jacob. I had 3 boys before Steven turned 3, then I waited 3 years and 3 months before Brandon came. I am just wondering if I am obligated to have another baby for Brandon's sake. And then I will want it to be a boy so he has a friend, and that is probably when the girl will come!

Also, yesterday a friend from Steven's t-ball team had a birthday party and he invited Steven and Nathan to come. Right when I saw the invitation I knew we had a problem since Jacob's name wasn't on the invite. This is a family that we only see once a week so they don't know us very well. Anybody who knows our family would know that you can't invite 2 and leave out 1, that just doesn't work. You can invite 1 and leave out 2, but the other way around is just too sad. Jacob survived of course, he even took a nap in the car. Luckily today is our neighbor Ronya's birthday party and she invited all 3 boys. She is going to have a sleep over, so Steve and I are going out to dinner. :-)

Now for the contest: Who does Brandon look the most like? Steve was asleep on the chair, so he forfeit the picture, but you can choose him if you want. I am going to get a picture of him today.

{Jacob}{Nathan}{Steven}{Me}

Random

I am afraid I am a little blogged out right now. I am really not any busier than I normally am, but I just haven't felt like blogging. Didn't I do this last April too? I don't know what that deal is, cause it is not like we are playing outside in the spring weather. Our weather has been cold and rainy.

But for the sake of you who are waiting for the next blog post, here are some random pictures.
{We had a couple nice weather days, so the boys and I went on a walk to the park. Brandon always pulls his socks off. It makes Germans very uncomfortable for babies not to have a hat and socks on, I guess that is why they put babies in tights. I have some tights too, but they were all dirty.}
{Jacob feel asleep in the car and was wearing these Harry Potterish looking glasses that my Mom sent to us. Steve and I thought it was so funny that he feel asleep with them on.}
{Aside from the year that Mom and Dad came to visit, we have not had any snow in Darmstadt. The winters have been extremely mild. So why I was asking myself would we have a blizzard on April 7th? It snowed like this all day. It wouldn't stick because it was too warm on the ground I think, but tons of snow was coming down ALL DAY. Very strange.

{The other day I went upstairs laying down with Jacob, Brandon was asleep and Nathan was also upstairs watching a movie. Steven was downstairs playing X-box with a neighbor. He decided he wanted to go get some gum from the candy machine they have down the street, so he had written me this little note. I got up before he left and gave him permission to go, but this is the note he was going to leave me. His friends name is Samuel, but the way he spelled it is how the Germans pronounce his name. }



{And here is a video of baby B after dinner one day. He kept making this face like he was going to cry and then changing his mind. He is so cute!}