Living it up in Lexington

Big brothers are so sweet.

2009-02-23T09:38:00.000-08:00

Dallin is such a sweet big brother. A couple of weeks ago we discussed the merits of buying vs making a gift for his sister's birthday. We decided that he would make her a bookmark using some art supplies on hand. He put it off and off until the night before her birthday when he panicked at the realization that he hadn't made her gift yet and it was bedtime. He begged for a special dispensation on bedtime, at least long enough to make her gift. Then he argued with me over making a bookmark because she can't yet read and so she doesn't need one. I was very frustrated at this point, when he came up with the idea on his own to make her a book to go with her bookmark and then he would show her how to use the bookmark. At that point I would have said yes to nearly anything, so off he went to get to work. I told him that because of the late nature of the project he could not use glue, only stickers, crayons, and markers. I helped him fold his piece of paper, find the stickers for her initials, and then went off to take care of dishes. He asked me how to spell a few words and I was very curious about what he was writing. This is the final product.

Sissis Book of Birthdays

Front Cover

Page 1

Page 2

The Bookmark

I couldn't decide wheather to laugh or cry when I saw the finished book. I thought it was so sweet of him to "document" her birthdays for her. What a good big brother.

Happy Birthday Anneliese!

2009-02-21T18:56:00.000-08:00

Friday was Anneliese's 2nd birthday. Can you believe it? We can't, our baby is already two. She has been talking about her birthday for about a week now and for three days leading up to it she would burst out into her own version of happy birthday. We took this video in the morning before she went out to see her presents (my family is German and in Germany you do presents first thing in the morning). FYI- Anneliese call herself Lila because she can't say her full name. It has caught on and we all call her Lila now too.

This is her blowing out her candles on her muffin (6:45 AM is a bit early for cake).

Obviously she is a complete ham like her brother. I don't know if that is genetic or just something she has learned from him. We did watch a video from her first birthday where she was doing almost the exact same little side to side dance (minus the head action) while we sang so maybe it comes to her naturally. As you can tell, she is definitely a silly kid right now.

Here is her cake that we had after dinner. She saw the Ariel candle in the store and had to have it over any other type of decoration we looked at. It made it easy to come up with a theme for the cake, harder to decorate it with my meager decorating skills and uncooperateive pan that wanted to keep half of the cake for itself. Fortunately two year-olds aren't too picky, and most six year-olds are pretty happy when a cake is held together by oodles of frosting and then coated with two types of sugar!

A quick re-cap of Anneliese's last 3 years.

Two weeks old

First Birthday

Second birthday

Dancing in the Rain

2009-01-30T14:12:00.000-08:00

So, remember that snow we reported on January 20th? These are pictures from a rain storm a mere 8 days later. Notice that my child is wearing shorts, tank top, and flip flops. In January. Someone recently said about our local weather "If you don't like the weather, just wait two days." So true.

This is a completely random photo, but a funny one. Anneliese has recently discovered dressing up, as well as the joys of mixing and matching dress ups!

Innauguration Day

2009-01-24T11:07:00.001-08:00

Dallin was very excited about the innauguration of Barack Obama. They had talked about the election last November in school and the kids voted in a mock election. Dallin voted for Obama and was very excited that he won. About two weeks ago I was making a shopping list and asked Dallin if he could think of anything that we needed. He told me that we needed to go to Walmart to buy flags. I was stumped. Why did we need flags in January? He told me that we needed them for him to take to school for the innauguration on January 20th. I couldn't believe that he was that politically aware. He's six! I don't remember talking about this kind of stuff in Kindergarten, or even caring about it. We agreed instead to make our own flags, and we did so for family night on the Monday before the Innauguration.

This shows the kids holding up their pictures while we watched President Obama's address on TV. Luckily that was our snow day so we were able to watch it real time.

Dallin drew this portrait of President Obama on the back of his flag picture. He was very proud of it.

This gives you an idea of Dallin's excitement over this historic election. Blaine and I might not have voted for President Obama, but he is our President and our hopes and prayers are that he really can effect some change for the better within our country.

Let it Snow!

2009-01-20T10:14:00.000-08:00

Dallin's prayers have been answered. There have been rumors of snow all weekend, then yesterday the school district preemptively cancelled school because of a winter snow warning (predicting 2"or less). We woke up this morning to a dusting of snow and very excited kids. Warning, this is a long post with a lot of pictures.

Snow Day

Dallin and Anneliese wanted to try to have a snowball fight, but it was a lot of work collecting enough snow for even one snowball. At least it was wet snow so it packed easily.

First Snowman

Snowplay

Snowman II aka Robby

Warm Up

The kids finished off a great day with a nice warm cup of cocoa. The perfect ending to a near perfect day!

PS Ever really wonder what really happened to Frosty that day?

I think that story took place in the South.

The fate of a Southern Snowman

Funny Faces

2009-01-18T15:59:00.000-08:00

This is what Anneliese learned to do over Christmas break. Dallin showed her how to make this face and she giggled and giggled all night long. I love it when kids laugh like this. It is still one of her favorite things to show people.

Winter Wonderland

2009-01-17T19:04:00.000-08:00

Since Thanksgiving Dallin has been talking about snow. He really wanted a white Christmas and even prayed for snow. He wrote and drew a picture for school all about how his favorite type of weather was snow. He hasn't even seen snow since he was really little and he can't really remember it. We tried going to the snow exhibit at the local Children's Museum, but the snow that they blow there is really tiny bubbles (it does look a lot like snow though). That is what this really bad picture is of. It was really hard to see it when it got closer to the ground.

The fake snow just wasn't doing it for Dallin. He keeps talking and talking about snow. We tried to plan a trip out to Utah, but the costs are just too high. We tried to plan a long weekend to North Carolina, but Anneliese got sick again. It just wasn't happening. A kind Heavenly Father heard the prayers of a young boy, and while he didn't quite send snow, he sent the next best thing...ICE!

We got some of that cold front that has been plaguing the Midwest. No, it was not 30 below in SC, but it did dip down into the 20's. All of the local news stations had segments on how to prepare for record breaking low temperatures, and our apartment complex even made a point of sending out a flyer on what to do to prevent pipes from freezing. Imagine our delight to wake up Friday morning and discover that someone in the complex had forgotten to turn off the automatic sprinkler system (I have no idea why it runs through the winter...the grass is dead.) Dallin was thrilled to see icicles hanging off of several bushes and ice covered sidewalks, and grass. We stopped quick on our way out the door in the morning to "pick" a couple of icicles for him to suck on (ugh, how did my parents stand it when we walked around sucking icicles as kids? That is disgusting!). He thought it was great fun when they melted in his cupholder in the car. After we returned we went outside to play with the ice a little more.

This was a lot of fun. There is still a tiny chance of snow this weekend and Dallin is very hopeful, but for now, I think that some of the desire for snow has been satiated.

Long Time No See

2009-01-12T11:57:00.000-08:00

Ok, so we have been AWOL for months, but with good reason. I got our BLOG set up only to realize that our camera had major issues (no flash) and a blog without pictures is no fun. Fortunately Santa saw a need and brought a new camera. Here are some old pictures to try to catch up. Sorry for the ones that were dark, again, no flash.

Anneliese Grows Curly Hair....Lots of it!

We get asked all of the time where she gets her curly hair and if it is naturally curly. Well folks, as you can see we spend hours each day curling her hair. I think I will just get it permed (hey it worked for me in the 80's!)

Dallin Starts Kindergarten

Dallin now attends school at Lexington Elementary School. He loves recess and lunch (who doesn't?) and all of his related arts classes (PE, Art, Computer, etc)

This is Dallin with his Zuckertute or Schultute (Treat/School bag). It is a German tradition that children get a cone shaped bag of goodies on the first day of school. A big thanks to Oma (Barbara) for helping keep the tradition alive.

Blaine and Chris start Crossfitting

(AKA working out)

This is me push-jerking 135lbs at the end of a serious shoulder workout. This is one of my favorite lifts to do now!

This is Blaine getting his first muscle-up. It is one of the most difficult and complicated moves to learn to do. Blaine worked hard at it and picked it up really quickly.

As you can see, we've been busy. I hope to start posting more regularly from now on. Stay tuned!

Labor Day Weekend

2008-09-02T05:05:00.000-07:00

We had planned a nice relaxing "staycation" at home for the Labor Day weekend this year, but of course our plans changed at the last minute, as they always seem to do. We got word on the Thursday before that Blaine's brother Casey was returning from Iraq on Friday. This was a surprise because he wasn't expected for 4-5 more weeks, but we are so happy that he made it home and was safe the entire time that he was there.

His return meant an impromptu trip to Charleston to spend the holiday and we are all so glad that we went. This was one of the best trips back that we have had since we moved. Having an extra day off made all the difference in the amount of time we spent as a family and the fact that we were able to relax instead of rushing around to do things. We had a relaxing day on Saturday and got a lot of things done around Ronda's house. Blaine and Dallin worked on the car and enjoyed some "man" time. Saturday night we had a rare opportunity to get all of the adults together for dinner. Usually when we try to go out with the family Ronda ends up staying behind to babysit, but we hired a sitter and both she and "Big Blaine" (Blaine's dad) joined us. we had Chip and Jenny, Casey and Laura, Ronda and Big Blaine, and of course us (Blaine and Chris). We went to the Mustard Seed (FYI they moved--who knew?) and the food was yummy and the company good.

Sunday was also a fairly leisurely day with a nice walk (see the pics, gotta learn how to add those better) and we got to enjoy having Kathy over which hasn't happened in a while. Monday was the best part because we went to Splashzone as a family, joined by Kathy, Becca, Hunter, Haleigh, and the Bakers too. The weather was pretty nice, if you don't mind rain, but hey, we were wet anyway! Once the clouds cleared out it was perfect, not too hot, not to sunny. All in all it was a blast. We also got to see Grandma (Mary Beth) for a few minutes, who was just back from a whirlwind trip to Wisconsin. We even made it home in time to get the kids to bed at a decent hour. All in all, a terrific trip! We are so lucky to have such a great family and we really miss having them close by.

So it begins.......

2008-07-09T11:12:00.001-07:00

It appears that we are finally joining the rest of you in the 21st century. First we get a digital home phone line, then Chris finally gets a cell phone, and now we are starting this blogging thing! What next?

We are excited to share all that goes on in our madhouse with the rest of the world. Especially our friends and family who are spread across the US and Europe. We just hope that Chris can figure out how this all works.