Sunday, March 24, 2013

All and Nothing

Lots of planning going on here over the past couple of weeks, for Easter, for vacations, for Elise's surgery, flights for Sonya's wedding, work travel planning, and on and on.  But at the same time, not a lot has been decided.  Ok, our Easter plans are set with a visit to Oma and Opa and a couple of days in a country B&B, but besides that everything is a bit in flux.  I think that's how most days turn out here... lots of things happen but not much gets "done".  Between work and kids, it seems anything that takes more than two minutes to complete gets pushed to the evening.  And by the time the kids are in bed, sometimes the last thing we feel like being is productive.  Oh well, the important things get done and in the meantime we've been having some fun.  Last weekend we made it to a big farm and Lily, Paul and Elise got to see lots of horses, pigs, and cows.  We're trying to make more of a conscious effort to get out as a family and do more 1/2 day trips to make the most of being in this great place.  There's still a lot of inertia to overcome to get us all out of the house at the same time, but it is a bit easier now that the twins are down to a single nap per day.  We end up with a big chunk of time weekend mornings where we can go and do something fun.  Hopefully the weather will warm up so we can get out for more outdoor outings soon.  In the meantime, here's what we've been up to lately.

Lily and her pal Livvy, matching swim buddies.


A typical after-dinner scene of random activity at our house.

Silly Lily with a friend from school over for dinner, hamming it up.

At a neighbor's birthday party earlier today.  We had a moment of feeling like everyone was suddenly a big kid, all three of them sitting and eating and behaving like civilized children.

Elise definitely likes to draw.  Especially while Lily's at school and can't guard her art supplies...

And she can now propel herself around on Thomas, one advantage of having a big ol' foot.  Another is climbing since this little monkey has about an extra inch of reach vs. her brother.

Sisters playing before bed.  They're all starting to play with each other a bit more, especially if the game is chase.

Bathtime fun, Lily can even help a bit now.

Paul having a celebrity moment wearing his stylish shades indoors.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

February 2013


February is already done and don't even know where to start when it comes to summarizing the month. It felt like a very grown up month with big decisions to be made, praying for current and future family medical issues, and also a very fun month celebrating Fasching (Kinda like Mardi Gras but longer) in Munich, seeing the twins interact more and more, having family fun in the snow, and joining a tennis team for this coming summer season.  I'll just post some of my favorite pics and videos from the month. We would have blogged more but our computer went kaput. I wouldn't recommend the MacBook Pro.

Elise discovered coloring (and her belly button)



My favorite picture of the month...maybe because Lily is playing nicely with Paul and Elise.

Whenever a dance worthy song comes on now, Paul goes to the speaker and starts to dance and Elise comes to me wanting up so I hold her while dancing.  This is a self pic after dancing to Hey Ho from the Lumineers.
Paul has liked trucks for a while but now he is obsessed with Garbage Trucks.  This is Paul seeing the Garbage Truck from our window.  Shortly after this pic, he was so excited and stunned from the Garbage Truck driver waving to him that he fell off the couch, ouch.

Lily's first time EVER falling asleep during dinner.  As you can see, she was pretty sick.
No, we did not build this.  Just thought it was cool.  Some guy and a ladder built a pope snowman 15 feet high because he can.
Some interaction - Prost.

Paul is usually such a bad eater wanting out so soon but this moment, he was mesmerized by food for a change.  Elise decided to have a little fun...as did Lily.



It feels like these moments of loving sibling interaction are few and far between but at least it's so cute when they do happen.