Christmas 2009, New Year 2010

Our holiday season involved some sickness, but other than that was good. Mike was off from about 2 pm on the 23rd until Monday, Jan 4th. So we all enjoyed having him home (even if he was sick the majority of that time). These first few photos were what we used on our Christmas cards. They were taken about a month ago, but I didn't want to post them until Christmas cards had been delievered. I loved this picture of the boys with Santa. In the smaller one, they're both kind of checking him out. In the bigger, Ezra is good to go, but Jonas still isn't sure. This is a picture of our family at the Candlelight service at church on Christmas Eve. Ezra watching Polar Express on Christmas Eve. Here's a few pictures of the boys opening their gifts on Christmas morning. Ezra still wasn't too enthralled with the present opening. When Mike went to wake him up, Mike said, "Ezra, it's Christmas. Do you know what that means?" Ezra said, "Open presents?" But once we got downstairs he latched on to one of his stocking stuffers (Santa on a tricycle), and was very interested in opening things. He want to play with the stuff that was unwrapped, but wasn't too concerned with the unveiling of the presents.
















This was a tent and tunnel that Nana and Grandpa sent. It might have been the biggest hit this year. I thought this picture was funny because it shows them checking out each other's stuff. Isn't that just like siblings?












You might notice that they also received a Christmas Eve haircut. :)



Our friends, the Molls, invited us over for Christmas dinner. We had a brisket, cheese fondue, and tiramisu. Yum! After we put the kids to bed, we played Settlers of Catan. Mike and I had never played before, but Mike won. It was pretty fun. Mike and Jonas watching fireworks on New Years Eve. The kids went to bed at the regular time, but Mike and I stayed up to watch fireworks from the comfort of Jonas' bedroom window. Jonas woke up of course and watched them with us, but then went right back to sleep. What a good boy! Mike woke Ezra up, but he did NOT want to watch.

It's a ______?

G I R L !!

Here are some pictures of the ultrasound pictures.

Sweet baby face. I think maybe she's going to look more like Ezra.

Very definitely a girl!

Picture of her arm and profile.












Little baby foot.


Ezra and Jonas holding pictures of their little sister.





















Baby #3 at 5 weeks. The day we found out I was expecting.










Baby # 3 at 22 weeks.

Look for a comparison picture next week!


I thought the boys looked handsome in their vests.





Silly Jonas, gnawing on some corn. Yes, he's wearing a spaghetti noodle in his hair.











I went to a Book Club dinner and ornament exhange at a really nice restaurant way out in the woods. Rachel and I rode together and as it turned out, we had a lovely dinner for two. Not sure where the other girls were, but a moment to ourselves, sans kiddos, is never wasted. I'm sure no one cares about seeing pictures of this, but I thought we both looked particularly pretty so I wanted to share. :)

Thanksgiving and snow

Finally, after all those cruise blogs, I am back to the normal routine of posting random pictures and videos. :) The first pictures are from Thanksgiving dinner (a few days early) with our LifeGroup. They are our closest friends here in Germany and we love them dearly. This is just a few of our kids. Oddly enough, 4 of the 5 families are represented by 1 of their 2 children.


This is a picture of our uneventful dinner on Thanksgiving day. We had all our favorites and it was yummy!










Here is Ezra helping to put the angel on top of the tree.


We had our first few inches of snow this past week. The boys had a lot of fun playing in it.



Silly smiles.











A baby update. We have an appointment to find out the gender on Dec 23rd.


This is a funny video of Mike and the boys. Ezra was saying "tunnel".



Big boy Jonas eating oatmeal with a spoon.

Crete

As you have probaby seen from the pictures, we did not see many "pretty" parts of Greece. Our cruise didn't stop at some of the more scenic places like Santorini or Mykonos. Obviously I knew that when we booked, but I guess I didn't think it would make that much of a difference. It did! I think we probably missed an opportunity to "go scenic" in Corfu. In the other places, I would not have wanted to give up seeing the historical sights to see something more scenic. So, Crete was our last opportunity to see pretty Greece, and I was not going to let it slip by.

I'm standing funny in this pic because I didn't want the waves to get me while I was posing for the picture and not watching. They DID get Mike. Ha!











In a Greece book we had borrowed, I found a beach that I wanted to take a taxi to. We asked the taxi driver to take us to Vai, and he said it was 3 hours away. Boo! So I told him that I didn't care where we went, I just wanted to see something pretty. He took us out of the city to a place called Aghia-Pelagia. It was a very small beach, but I guess it mostly satisfied my need to put my feet in the water at a beach in Greece. We snapped a few pictures, and got back in the taxi.
He asked us if we wanted to see citrus groves or olive grove. I said citrus, so he took us to a town called Fodele. It happened to be the birth place of El Greco-the famous painter. Again, we took a few pics, got in the cab, and went back to town.

Our first stop in town was the tomb of Zorba the Greek. I don't much about who that is, but apparently he's big stuff to the Greeks, and people of Crete especially. He and his wife are buried here. I think legend says that Zeus was born on the island of Crete. The taxi driver said his profile could be seen in the mountain. Next, we went to an old church. The smaller one, the driver said was 700 years old. The bigger was was built to accomodate the increasing size of the city.
Then we went to the market/shopping area and picked up a few goodies. We got some olive oil. At every stop, the people claimed to have the best olive oil, but the driver said Cretan (?) olive oil won second place in big olive oil competition, so that sounded impressive. This was Lion square where we enjoye some ice cream. I am forever sampling ice cream and coffee nearly every where we go. :)











This was a meat market we passed. Yuck.

Had to get a video of the beach.



I took this video over our balcony. Pretty cool huh?



And that is officially the end of our cruise pictures. Whew! Saturday we spent the day with friends in Aviano and then flew home. Mike's car died on the way home Saturday night and we had to call the Staffords (friends who kept the boys) to drive an hour out into the woods at 1 am to come and rescue us. The boys were a bit groggy when we picked them up, but on the way home, every time I would turn around to savor their precious faces, Jonas would give me a big grin from behind his pacifier.