TEN!!!

Well, Corben is 10.  How about that?  He's been alive for 1 decade.  It's crazy crazy crazy to think that ten years ago he was a teeny tiny little baby wearing preemie diapers and clothes, and screaming and crying all the time.  Now he's still wearing teeny tiny clothes (size 7 and 8) and he doesn't scream and cry quite as much..... :)

Really, we're so excited for him.  He got a brand new bed.... queen sized for his room.  We wanted him to feel a little more grown up, and he needed a new bed anyway, so why not get him something nice?  He got to take treats to school, which never happens, because usually spring break falls the same week as his birthday.  So this was a super special school day for him.

This year Corben requested a "Strawberry LONG cake"  He wanted a giant strawberry shortcake instead of regular cake.  I was more than happy to comply, seeing how I don't have any of my cake stuff sitting around.

Some day we'll get pictures of how excited the kids actually are about their gifts.  Corben was practically bouncing off the walls.  He got a Nintendo 3DS XL and two games to go with it.  He immediately started putting it to good use, and has been sharing with Tayzia, who is surprisingly good at Mario Kart.

Happy birthday Kiddo!  We love you so much.

The Waiting Game

We've moved into our house, we got our van that we shipped, and normally at this point, I'd post some pictures of the house in all it's glory.  However, we still don't have our STUFF.  Our household goods stuff.  We're waiting and waiting, and I'm starting to wait very impatiently.  Our mandatory deliver date, has come and gone, and we still have no idea where our stuff is.  I don't want to put up pictures of the house until we have our things in them where we want them.  I think that makes all the difference, showing off our home, as our home, not just an empty shell with government (dental office style) furniture.


Since I can't post any of that, I'll post some other stuff!

This is the gorgeous new carpet we got for our living room.  We have some carpets coming, but they are going in our office, and bedroom, and we needed something to break up the wood flooring in our living room.  (a note on our wood flooring, in all the house we have what looks like the pergo sp? flooring, but our living and dining room are actual wood floor pieces that were shipped in from a home that is older than ours.  So while it isn't brand new looking, it has history, it's beautiful with all of it's imperfections, and we have to be careful with it, hence the need for a large rug.)  It's not easy picking out a rug, if you haven't done it before.  We have a couch on order, and it's Mocha colored, and our LL painted several walls in the home yellow.  We had to find something that would mesh with both of these things, and we feel this will.  The lighter portion is yellowish gold in the sunlight, there's the burgundy color, and then inside that is what looks to be a nice mocha brown, so hopefully it will coordinate!

I fell down the stairs.  Anyone who really knows me, knows I'm pretty accident prone.  For example, as a junior in high school, I broke the middle toe, of this same foot.  I was kicking my leg back and forth (warming up for a dance rehearsal I was about to go to) and I accidentally kicked it into an old piece of furniture in our house.  It bruised up just like this.  (funny thing, that dance rehearsal was the very FIRST time I ever met Tim.  I thought he was funny looking and kind of rude, and he thought I was a wimpy complainer, since I was complaining about my injured foot during practice.... good thing we met again a year later and actually liked each other huh?)  Also, this same foot, toe next to the pinky toe, is the toe that I nearly ripped off during a dance concert in Salt Lake.  I ended up with 9 stitches from front to back.  If you look closely, you can still see the scar from those stitches.  (hey, Tim was with me for that too..... interesting.)  This is also the same foot that I tore the ligaments in my ankle, and have sprained several times since.  Needless to say, I'm accident prone.  I slipped down the bottom three stairs, jammed my toes, banged my elbows and calf.  I think I only sprained it this time, because I can actually walk around, and if I had to, I think I could dance.  I like to take pictures of my ugly battle wounds... it makes me feel like I lead an interesting life.

I think I need to go out and take some pictures so I can add some more fun things to this blog.  I live in Germany!  I need to LIVE it!

Bonn and Koln

For our very first excursion in Germany, we set off toward Bonn.  Bonn is a city about 2.5 hours north of us.  Bonn used to be the Capitol of West Germany, but was replaced as Capitol by Berlin in 1990.  Bonn is also home to the University of Bonn.  (part of the University is housed in an old palace!  We drove by, but I wasn't able to get a good picture).  We met up with Fabi, who lives in Bonn, and he took us around the city, and to one of his favorite Italian restaurants.  (We don't do a lot of adventurous foods when we have the kiddos with us.) and then to the HARIBO shop.

The HARIBO shop has gummies as far as the eye can see, and many of them are not available in the states, so we all decided to walk and choose some that we've never seen before.

That is when we came across these.............

They also had some rides, little outside of the grocery store style rides.... my kids loved those more than the gummies!

Walking around, outside the train station in Bonn

On the train heading to Koln (Cologne)

We hopped on the train to Koln, so we could see this..... The Dome of Koln  (It's also called the Dome of Cologne...)  Isn't it gorgeous?  

I LOVE the ceilings!  I wasn't able to get a great picture, but there's a golden sarcophagus here that is said to house the 3 wise men, as in THE 3 wise men!  That area of the church was blocked off this time, but I know we'll be going back.  When the weather is warmer, we're going to climb to the top of the Dome.  Fabi says it takes about 30 or so minutes to climb it....... yeah.

For a small donation, the kids were allowed to light candles.  I think they enjoyed lighting them, though none of us are really sure what exactly we light the candles for.  

We had such a good time.  It was really cold though, and when we left it started to snow pretty hard.  It took us a long time to get home, because they didn't plow the roads.  It was a little scary.  I can't wait to go back out and see more of Germany!