Poll

So, I won't give you any background. Just curious.

How many of you stay at home moms, or working for that matter, get up and make your husband breakfast before they leave for work?

I'm looking forward to some comments on this one. :)

Let's Play Ball

Baseball season has finally arrived! The boys are on cloud 9 and had their first games on Saturday. Landen is getting to pitch and did a pretty good job considering they only had 3 practices before their first game. He walked several, made a few strike outs and then played 1st base toward the end of the game with 2 good outs. He is playing in the 9 - 10 year old league and is one of the youngest players since he just turned 9. His team lost 9 - 7. Hayden is all grins as you can see from the pictures. They don't keep score, but have a blast playing. He got to play 1st base, pitcher and 2nd base. He got a great hit and is so happy to be a part of something.

We love baseball season and had a gorgeous day outside that day. I even got a little bit of a sunburn on my neck if you can believe that! It was wonderful....

Happy Birthday, Little Man!

Finally. He's 5. He's been waiting on this day for a long, long time. It's been a difficult year for my little guy, but he's finally made it to 5. Let me give you some background. Before we moved, he was in Mother's Day Out (aka school for him) and got to play soccer and baseball. He had lots of friends on the street to play with and kept himself quite busy. Then, we moved him to Germany and everything changed. It's probably been more tough on him, than any of us. We got here and we struggled with the decision of whether to put him in German preschool or not. That was our one and only option for him. We weighed the pros and cons and talked to him about it and he wasn't too excited about going to school where they didn't speak any English. Hindsight, mommy was probably more fearful of it than he. Anyway, we chose for him to stay home one last year before he heads off to kindergarten in the fall. On top of that, military rules are different than in the civilian world and in order to play ANY sport or be involved in anything around here, the child must be 5. Hence, this is why he has been waiting so long.... He's ready to start school and play ball!

Hayden, Hayden, Hayden. You are a funny little fellow and make me laugh on a daily basis. I seriously could write a book of things you have said. I wish I had written more of it down. I certainly have my days with you that are long and daunting (like Tuesday.) Then, I have my days where I fight back tears because I know this is the end of my time with you being a "little" boy before kindergarten starts just a few short months away. It seems like just the other day I was in the hospital giving birth and out came this 9 lb 8 oz bundle of boy with lots of blond hair.

You are an aggressive, feisty little thing. You are not always wild about your sister "sharing" your toys with you, but you are adjusting. Some days you are very gentle with her and other days I catch you doing things to her behind my back. You and your brother are inseparable. You fight some, as most boys do. But all in all, you are each others best friend. You ask when Landen is going to be home from the time you wake up until he walks through the door at 3:00.
You make friends fairly easily. However, you broke my heart one day not long ago when I told you a little girl down the street was moving soon. You looked up at me teary eyed and said, "but I won't have any friends." Poor thing. There I went again saying, "just wait until your 5 and you'll get to play ball and go to kindergarten and you'll have LOTS of friends then. "

Well buddy, you're 5. Baseball has started and you are also taking a gymnastics class. You are thriving with your new found "friends" and grinning from ear to ear. I'm going to miss you next year when I'm eating lunch and I don't have anyone to play restaurant with. Or, when I head to the gym and don't get to make sure you take your gameboy along. I'll miss watching you stay in your pj's until 4 pm when I finally make you get dressed because we are going to be seen in public. I'll also miss watching you change the channels with remote in hand, just like a man.

We love you and are so proud of you. Happy Birthday, little man. I hope its all you thought it would be and more.

Embarrassing Moments

I realize I've posted quite a few times close together. I'm afraid if I don't post it right then, I'll forget... so here goes.

We did a little shopping today. One of our favorite stores we go to is called, Hela. Its similar to a Lowe's with a side of birds, fish and bunnies to look at. Today, we went for some plants since we keep hoping we can plant some flowers soon. I'm beginning to wonder. Anyway, the flowers didn't look so good, but we went ahead and got some top soil before heading to another nursery for flowers. Matt loaded the bags into the cart and Jordyn, of course was riding in front. The carts were very shallow and the wheels turn in all directions which makes it a little harder to control. Anyway... I'm sure you can see where this is leading.

The soil is loaded and Matt and the boys are looking around while I'm pushing Jordyn. The next thing I know, the cart is flipped upside down, I scream and am on top of the cart while Jordyn is sitting backwards (hanging on for dear life) and about to flip out of the cart! For starters, there are no safety straps in carts here. Secondly, in my defense, there was a big dip in the middle of the sidewalk which is where I went overboard. Luckily, there were only a couple of onlookers and Jordyn was ok - we're sure they were thinking, "dumb Americans!"

Matt is used to these occourances as I do things like this fairly often. For example the time I fell down in the restaurant while about 7 months pregnant... Oh. And the time I fell outside the restaurant when I was 8 months pregnant in CA! Remember, Judy?? I told the boys to get used to me embarrassing them.

I cried I was laughing so hard on the way home. And, yes my 3 fingers are a little jammed and ridden with soil and my knee a little scuffed. Thank goodness I caught Jordyn's foot and her stomach muscles have developed a little.

5K

I'm bummed. I didn't finish. I didn't even get to start! We woke up to rain and cold with a wind chill of 29. We were first going to a kids run at 9:00 am then the 5K at 10:00am. We nixed the kids because it was pouring at 9:00. However, by 9:30 it started to clear up. Hindsight, I wish I would have gone on in the event it stopped raining. However, by the time I changed my mind it was too late. Ahh well... I ran 3.25 miles without stopping on the treadmill on Thursday. Does that count??? There is another race in 2 weeks, so I'm going to aim for that one. However, its the same day Matt runs his 1/2 marathon in Luxembourg so I'm on my own. I'm so disappointed. Oh well. Matt and I may go run the same path tomorrow - just for fun.

Question of the Day

The doorbell rings and my 18 month old happily runs to the door and awaits for me to open it, then begins repeating MMM.. mmmm... MMMM.... when she sees the pizza boxes. Does that mean we order pizza a little too often?

Holland

After getting back from our Disney/Paris trip with the boys Wednesday night, we spent the next day unpacking and packing again for our quick trip to Holland. I've always heard about the Holland tulips growing up and this is one of the things I had on my list to go see. When I found out my parents would be here during the spring, we decided it was a great time to go. I must admit, Matt and my dad weren't the "most excited" about seeing flowers, but I think they were both happily surprised and we all had a great time. I wish my grandmother could have seen this when she was still herself. She has alzheimer's and doesn't remember, but she always LOVED flowers.

We left Friday morning and drove to Leiden, Holland where we checked into our hotel. A Holiday Inn, none the less. It had a huge kids area, swimming pool, and double beds like we are used to seeing in America. The town of Leiden was really cute and it took us about 4 hours to get there. If I had it to do over, I might have tried to spend a little more time walking around it. It had cute little canals, a windmill, and a big shopping district. Not to mention, the people on bicycles were EVERYWHERE. We've never seen so many bicycle paths and people using them. Some are dressed up, some are in jeans... but they ALL seem to own one and use it a lot. When you find out that it cost us 70Euro (about $115!) to fill up 1/2 tank of gas there, you can see why they ride their bikes.

After checking into our hotel we headed to Noordjwick, Holland which is a little beach town near there. On the way we passed several fields with blooming flowers. It was beautiful seeing all the colors out in the wide open. We snapped a few pictures of the North Sea Beach, but it was cold so we didn't stay long or get near the water. The beach was very wide, similar to those beaches in CA. We ended up eating at a McDonald's after trying a local restaurant that had an open sign, but were only serving one item on the menu at the time. Good ole' McDonald's saves the day again. lol The rest of the evening was spent at the hotel swimming.

Saturday morning, we woke up and headed to Keukenhof in Lisse, Holland. This is the well known park that we hear about. It is open from late March to mid May every year and the flowers bloom at various times throughout that time. We spent the morning in the cold, but there was no rain so we were thankful. There was every kind of flower you could imagine in patterns, arrangements, greenhouses, outside, inside, you name it. Some of them were huge! The park also had a children's area, windmill, shopping and restaurants. With 3 kids and only flowers to look at, it can only last so long so after a few hours we headed out of the park.

By this time it was afternoon and we headed to Amsterdam for a quick look around before we drove home. My! What a surprise. I've never seen so many people, buildings, bicycles and train/electric cars all in the same place. Not even in New York. It was CRAZY driving down there but Matt did a great job as always. He was dodging everything under the sun while trying not to get hit by a street car in the mean time. To our delight there were canals everywhere, boat tours, shipyards, and LOTS of other things to see. I tried to snap a few pictures from the car, but we are definitely going back to take a closer look at that city. It was something else and the pictures really don't do it justice.

Here's a slide show of the trip. I still have a few pictures to share with mom and dad, but I'll wait a few days on those. Hope you enjoy the pics.

Oh, and the 5K is looming over my head. It's on Saturday!

EuroDisney & Paris

We've learned that April does not mean Spring is here in Europe. I'm talking COLD and rainy. Supposedly, last year April was the hottest month of the year. So, we were looking forward to some flip flop and light jacket weather. However, we have yet to see sunshine around here!

That being said, we really lucked out on our trips. Matt and I first took the boys to EuroDisney and Paris while my parents stayed behind and kept Jordyn at home for us. Thanks mom and dad! We had a great time and were able to do so much without her. We missed her a ton, even the boys mentioned it several times, but it would have been so much harder with the weather being so cold and the long lines. It was definitely Great Britain's Spring Break as well because we were surrounded by them. It was nice being able to understand them, though :) The Disney characters spoke a lot of French so we didn't always understand them, ha. It was funny listening to Buzz Lightyear trying to be macho with his French accent which sounds so pretty.

We spent 4 days and 3 nights at a Disney hotel. They had it down to a T when we got there and we filed in and out, got our tickets and were off to the parks. If you closed your eyes while you traveled and opened them once you were there, you would think you were in CA at Disneyland. There's downtown Disney (although a smaller version), and flowers made of mickey mouse ears at the entrance. They had two parks - the main one and Walt Disney Studios. We went with two other couples from here and had a ton of fun riding rides, eating at Planet Hollywood, and enjoying shows. We went to the parks for 2 days straight. Hayden was a trooper - we even drug him onto the Tower of Terror! If any of you have ever ridden it you know it is pretty intense. Hindsight, we shouldn't have taken him. I kind of knew that taking him in. He didn't want to go on anymore "dark" rides after that. We ended up buying him a little light to carry in his pocket.

The third day, we went to the train station and hopped onto a train to ride into Paris. It cost us 43 euro for a round trip for 4 of us. That equates to about $70. The train ride took about 35 minutes each way and it really felt like the subway does, only above ground. Once we got to our destination, we made our way to the Eifel Tower and hopped in one of the 4 LONG lines. People were everywhere, but we just jumped in like we knew what we were doing. After standing in line for a good long time - maybe 45 minutes or more, we got up there to buy our tickets. Oops. Did they just see that sign I read up there? I kept denying it. We're in the STAIRS ONLY line with 3 adults and 4 kids. Hmmm.... well, we're not waiting again so here we go, UP THE STAIRS. It really wasn't so bad. I mean, we couldn't breathe by the time we got up there, but we were all in one piece, lol. The kids made it great and I was thankful I have been exercising a lot lately or I just might have died on the Eifel Tower. It was beautiful once we got up there and I felt very secure. I'm a little apprehensive of heights, but I didn't feel like I was going to fall off or anything. We went to the upper mid level, but the line to ride the elevator to the top would have taken another hour at least so we chose to go back down. We gave Landen the choice and he was fine with it. We didn't do much else other than walk down the Champs Elysee and show them Notre Dame. We are going back in July again with company, so I figure they will get to see more next time.


Back to Disneyland for one last day of "fun." By then, we were pretty exhausted but managed to stay until about 3:00pm that day and then we headed home. We were all a little cranky by then, even mom and dad. For 4 days we went from about 6am to 10pm without stopping. I wished I'd had a pedometer on me to see how far we had walked. The boys did great and we all had a blast!



My next post will be about Holland :) I'll try to post it in a couple of days. My parents leave in the morning and I can't believe they have already been here 3 whole weeks! We've had a great time together.

Coming Soon...

We're back from our recent travels! I'll try to post in the next few days some more details. Look for our trip to:

EuroDisney/Paris


and Keukenhof, Holland