Christmas

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We were in Germany with some good friends and just got back yesterday. We had our little Christmas at home yesterday and Chase loved it more than I thought! Here is a quick picture from that...hopefully I can get Germany pictures up soon!

Three Day Weekend

So this is nothing compared to what my friends and family are getting outside DC but we got a couple inches of snow on Thursday night and Friday. Enough for dad to have a day off Friday -YEAH!! Chase is soo much better but still not quite himself so he wasn't too impressed with the snow.

Wagner loved it!

On Saturday we headed to base for the kids Christmas Party. Chase was a little young for some of the activities and since we don't really "do" Santa he didn't sit on his lap or get a gift from him. Here we are decorating an ordanment.

Dada dissappeared for a while so we had to drag him out of his office :)

We had some cake on Saturday night with friends for daddy's birthday.

Our truck has a quirk where even if its unlocked on the drivers side when you go to open the door the lock catches. Well when he went to go start the truck he didn't unlock the passenger side so when we went to open the door we were locked out. All of the "24 hour Locksmiths" we saw in the phonebook weren't answering the phone so thankfully the guys got it open with a coat hanger!

Christmas Party

We didn't get too many good pictures from the Christmas Party this past weekend. I guess we still need to figure out that camera.

Here is an okay one of us. The shadows aren't very flattering though.

Our table won 2 games. Here is musical chairs - at each round you had to go get something from your table (this is the last one where you had to wrap yourself and a member of the opposite sex in wrapping paper!). We also won the Christmas carol game.

The girls from our table.

I didn't even know if I could go until last minute. I had made arrangements to switch off babysitting with friends for their Christmas Party. Theirs was the night before and we watched their little boy. The day of our Christmas party was the day Chase started his fever so we couldn't let him get the other boy sick. Thankfully our friend from KSU who just showed up here sat at our house while Chase slept. Thanks CP!!

Christmas Trivia

Maybe Will was smarter than we thought. I guess if you find a spider web on your tree it means good luck in Ukraine. Here is the legend...

There once was a widow, who lived in a small hut. One day a pinecone dropped on the floor and it took root. Her children were excited that they would have a tree for Christmas. All summer long they made plans on how they would decorate the tree. They were very poor, so poor that they did not have anything to decorate the tree with. The widow went to bed on Christmas Eve knowing that the tree would not be decorated. Early on Christmas morning, the woman was awakened by her children. "Mother, mother wake up and see the tree it is beautiful!" The mother arose and saw that during the night a spider had spun a web around the tree. The youngest child opened the window to the first light of Christmas Day. As the shafts of the sun crept along the floor, it touched one of the threads of the spider web and instantly the web was changed into gold and silver. And from that day forward the widow never wanted for anything.

Poor Little Reindeer

Chase was supposed to make his acting debut today. The nursery he goes to was having a program and the 2 and unders were supposed to be reindeer and ring bells. I made the antlers and had a brown sweater with white piece of felt on front and they were going to paint their noses red. But alas, Chase has been running a pretty high fever since Saturday so we couldn't go. We took him back (we went to the ER Sunday) to the doctors today and he has an ear infection so we are starting antibiotics.

I am so glad I have most of my Christmas stuff done because the last two days Chase has barely been out of my lap. We just opened an early Christmas gift for him to hopefully keep him busy (a Baby Faith DVD).

We had dinner reservations for Dad's 31st bday tonight. It looks like we will just be ordering in. I have been trying to write a post honoring him but haven't been able to spend that much time on the computer. It might just be a little late. I also have pictures from our Christmas party so look for that coming soon!

An English Christmas

Our friend William (3 yrs old) was over this afternoon and was admiring our tree. He goes, "look mom a jingle bell and a spider thing." He was talking about the snowflake! I told you there are too many spiders and webs in this country!

Here's our pathetic tree in the window. However, our small living room and low ceilings make it look perfect. Oh and its not snowing...that is fog at 1pm!

Spaghetti

When dad is night flying we get to have whatever we want for dinner. Since he is not a spaghetti fan I figured this was a good week to try it. Chase loved it!

Gingerbread Cookies

I love this time of year! I especially love Chase taking everything in. He loves his advent calendar and the tree (it fell on him once and he hasn't touched it since). He is not quite ready for everything though. We tried gingerbread cookies this morning he just really wanted to eat the dough. So when we wouldn't let him he started crying. Also the frosting I tried to make didn't work out either - it just looked like it went on clear. Oh well there is always next year.

The finished product looks okay...

and tastes okay!

Thanksgiving - Normandy

As mentioned before we headed to Normandy for the Thanksgiving weekend. It was very sobering being on the beaches and seeing footage of the battles that took place there. We have a lot to be thankful for.


The beach near Arromanches. You can still see where the Mulberry Harbor and the bridge they made to send supplies to the troops were.

One of the German artillery bunkers.

The American Cemetary at Omaha Beach.

Walking Omaha Beach. I explained to Chase the significance. Obviously he doesn't understand but one day I think it will be neat for him to look back on the pictures to see he was there.

He just got a coat from grandma and grandpa for an early Christmas gift. He was a little unstable walking and he kept falling and getting sand everywhere. He eventually got the hang of it.

Point Du Hoc

There were a lot of bomb craters still there.

At one restaurant they didn't have a high chair, just a booster seat so we stole grandpa's belt. It worked great!

We were so excited to finally get our chocolate crepes. They weren't as good as the ones in Paris. We all actually liked the chocolate croissants better and stopped on the bakery on our way out of town. I was laughing when in the car Brad wanted his croissant and Mountain Dew!

Special Visitors

We are so excited to have Grandpa and Grandpa here for a week. We have been busy so here is a quick glimpse of the first couple days. Hopefully tomorrow we can relax a little because we are headed to Normandy for Thanksgiving. Hope everyone has a great Turkey Day!

Cambridge

London Eye

Trafalgar Square

Buckingham Palace

Stopping to play in the leaves!

Walking!

This was taken earlier this week. I would say he is walking (and falling) about 75% of the time. I went to the store this afternoon and was letting him walk around and realized I need to start working on "Come to mommy." Two times of getting out of line to go grab him for him to scream in my hands made that evident. Sorry for my super long yeeeeaaaahhhh in the video. Very annoying!

Gameday and Guy Fawkes Day

Sorry for the delay in posting. Our internet has been really slow. I attempted to upload pictures on Sunday but it was taking forever. Anyways last week was Guy Fawkes Day in the UK so we celebrated on Saturday. I had to wikipedia Guy Fawkes so feel free to as well :) Some friends from church invited us over on Saturday night for bonfire and fireworks.

Chase was getting tired so he didn't last long.
Watching the bonfire with dada.

He liked the sparkler though - he was too tired and cold to stay for the fireworks.

Under all of our coats we were wearing purple! We followed gamecast at our friends house and were so excited that KSU beat KU!! Go Wildcats!

In other exciting news Chase finally decided that he wanted to walk. On Sunday on his 16 month bday he could stand up by himself and walk 15+ steps. He still crawls a lot don't get me wrong but he can walk! I'll try to post a video soon!

Halloween

We took Chase to a kids party yesterday. This was on our way there....he was one tired little tiger! You probably think I don't let him nap. I do but he normally wakes up by pooping then won't go back to bed. It is so frustrating!

There was a cardboard box maze there that he loved! When 4 and 5 year olds would go in I was listen for crying but he never did and before long he would come out and go back in again!

Forget trying to get 3 one year olds to look at the camera. They were too interested in each other's costumes!

Ready to GO!