Sledding on a 1/2" of snow

Today after we got back from picking Gregory up from preschool I felt like being outside a little bit.  So we went up three flights of stairs to head back down and play in the 1/2" of snow.  I wasn't sure if sledding was going to work, but we were going to try it.  This was Gregory's first time sledding and he had a blast.  I can only imagine how much more fun we'd have with more snow and bigger hills :-)  Gregory shared his fun with his brother by letting him sit on his lap to go down the hill. 


I'm calling them hills, but I am not even sure if they qualify for this name...bump might be more like it.  The "hills" I am referring to are in front of our apartment (the slope from the sidewalk to the parking lot)--not too long, or too steep.

 

Without further adieu...below are three videos.  Be sure to listen close to the second video...you'll hear Gregory screaming his favorite Toby Mac song...Get Back Up Again.

Joshua's 2nd Birthday

So with Christmas past, we moved on to Joshua's 2nd Birthday.  There is only one thing this boy is crazy about and it Choo-Choo's as he says so cute!  So I had been planning a Thomas the Train birthday party and my family got the message so well without me sending out a mass email or telling more than my sister (hmmm....I'll leave it at that) :-)  Before Christmas Joshua only had trains from Ikea (along with a few packs of tracks) a train book and a few Thomas bath toys (he hardly ever played with).  Now after Christmas and his birthday, what doesn't he have?!?  He has little Thomas', a Shake and Go Thomas, a motorized talking Thomas, a Thomas dvd, Thomas Megablocks, Thomas Slippers, Pajamas and a shirt and more!  I found a cute idea online for a cake since I forgot we were in Europe, it's a holiday and no one makes short notice birthday cakes!  Whenever I would ask Joshua what kind of cake he wanted he would always answer "blue", so that's what we did a blue and chocolate marble cake.  Last year a friend of mine had the same "theme" for her son's birthday, so she shared their pinata with us and some other items.  That was super nice since it's hard to find much over hear for parties sometimes.

We had a family from church over to celebrate with us.  They are from Colorado Springs and their youngest daughter is in the nursery with Joshua at church and their oldest daughter is in Gregory's class at church.  Kind of funny that the kids we know that are Joshua's age are girls - and Joshua isn't as picky as his brother as to who his friends are (yet).  The kids had a fun time playing and we had a fun time visiting with Jon & Jen.

Now that I've typed all of this I realized, that I described the event pretty good, but didn't talk too much about Joshua, so I think I'll save that for another post.

Here's the cake and the birthday boy...and as always, more pics here... 

 

Christmas 2011

I know Christmas is a distant memory already for some, but we are still celebrating and enjoying it (even though the decorations are put away).  In fact we are still awaiting gifts in the mail :-)  In fact today (January 2nd) we drove past the nativity by the chapel to check to see if Jesus was in the manger still.  Gregory couldn't understand why I said that he might not be there because sometimes people are just naughty and they might steal him.  He said he's just pretend he doesn't do anything, he can't even talk.  I am so thankful that our "real" Jesus isn't like that, he does do "stuff" and does care about each of us.

So back to December 24th and 25th.  I was dealing with a pretty bad kidney infection so I wasn't feeling too much in the "Christmas Spirit".  Tom had to work on Christmas Eve and got home to late for us to go to the church service, so we enjoyed Faith Baptist's Christmas Eve service live online (our good friend Jan Horak is the Youth Pastor at this church and it's the one we went to when we lived up in Ramstein).  This was really neat for us to still "feel" like we were apart of one.  And then on Christmas morning I was feeling pretty bad again, so we decided to take it easy and relax at home.  So we opened our stockings and gifts after eating some breakfast (cinnamon rolls).  Then we had a pretty traditional Christmas dinner (Ham, but not too many extras since I was in so much pain).  Later in the day we watched Faith Baptist's Christmas Day church service (since it was at 4 pm).  The boys enjoyed watching Jan do the kid's part of the service since they know him.  This was pretty neat to watch them listening to a friend share about Jesus and Christmas. 

All in all the day was a pretty relaxed day and finally on Wednesday I was able to get back in to the doctor to get new medicine since the first round of medicine my bacteria was resistant to.  Over a week later I am finally feeling better.  We were worried for a bit that I might end up in the hospital (for those of you who remember, back in 2003 I was hospitalized because of kidney problems).  So we are very thankful that things have seemed to clear up and I am healing fine.

For those of you who are wondering what were our gifts...for me there were clothes, Pampered Chef items, a book, a purse, chocolate and other items.  For Tom, there were cds, books, clothes, dvds, tools and candy.  For the boys...toys, some pajamas, books.