No words to describe..

And this kid hit her head tonight and got a REALLY big bump. Would you have taken her to the ER?

Brugges, Belgium

So we decided to have a productive Saturday and go and see something close by we haven't seen yet. We've heard really great things about Brugges, but hadn't been there yet. So we loaded up the kids, packed some food and movies, and drove 2 1/2 hours to this AWESOME city to have a really fun day. We did go to the chocolate museum, other than that though, we just walked around all day. It's one of those cities where you could just wander around day in and day out admiring how beautiful it. Oh yeah, and tasting all the YUMMY chocolate. This place is chocolate central. Loved it. The kids took really good long naps in the stroller which left Matt and I with time to go out to lunch (practically) by our selves, and do a lot of sight seeing (pretty much) without kids. When the kids were awake though, we just kept passing them chocolate and they were angels. :) Anyways, we got to add another country to our list of countries we've visited yesterday and had a great day.

This picture is for Kirst, Julie, and Nicole. SuperSta!

Park Time!

Sometimes I have more fun at the park then the kids.....What can I say? There was a ZIP LINE!

I Wish......

My laundry baskets always had kids in them instead of dirty laundry.


Here a funny little story:
We were in bed sunday morning when Hallie came bounding in (bright and early) to inform us the sun was up and it was time for breakfast. Matt held open the blankets and she gladly cuddled up to him. Cuddling with Hallie in the morning is our favorite. She's just the coziest. Except for when she climbs into bed with you at the crack of dawn and won't stop talking WHILE cuddling. So she kept talking and talking and we kept telling her to "shhhh and go back to sleep". Finally Matt said to her, "Hallie, if you can't stop talking....I'm going to kick you out of our bed". She jumps up on her knees with a horrified look on her face and says, "How DARE you say that to me!" We both burst out laughing. Who does she think she is? The queen of Sheeba?

It's good to have a best friend.

Hallie and Rhiannon just love eachother. They can play make believe for hours on end and it's very rare that they have a fight they cannot settle themselves. When Rhiannon comes over to play with Hallie I call her my babysitter, because I don't see Hallie the whole time she's here. They are so happy in their little world. Everytime we get ready to leave their house. or vice versa, the girls have their little trading cerimony. They always bring one stuffed animal with them to the other ones house and use it as a bartering tool. "I'll let you borrow (this) but what are you going to let ME borrow?" "Umm, no. I don't want that toy. How about that one?" Rhiannon's family was in Florida with us and we both got stationed here in Germany also....I think if we don't get our next assignment together we'll just have to ship Hallie and Rhi back and forth to eachother.

And since we're talking about best friends.....I love mine so much. (Even though he left a cupcake MESS in my kitchen that I spent all afternoon cleaning....I guess it was worth the mess for a little father daughter time.)(Do all Dad's spend their saturday nights making cupcakes with white frosting and pink sprinkles with their daughters? Or am I just REALLY lucky?)

It makes me so happy to be back home! However...we did have a really fun vacation.

We finally few in to Ramstein Airbase yesterday at 11:00 am after days and days of being stuck in Dover, Deleware. I'll get to that story at the end of this post.
We had so much in California for three weeks! Soaking in the sunshine was amazing, spending time with family was so much fun, and going to Kelly's wedding was absolutely beautiful.


Here's Hallie and I kissing Germany goodbye, getting ready for take-off.
This is the cargo plane that we flew on. Loved this flight. The kids had all this space to get to run around and have fun as we flew.

This is where we had to sit for take-off and landing. The little girl next to Hallie is Anabella. We met her and her mom on the flight and her and Hallie were fast friends. It was nice for Hallie to have someone to play with for all that flying time. They were on our flight coming back to Germany too. I'll get to that later.....

Chase spent a lot of time flying in his carseat. It was just easier to have him contained, and he would fall asleep easier when he was restrained. :)

Hallie's sleeping arrangement. We brought our sleeping bag and some pillows and VIOLA!

Chase being cute at Mimi's house.

We had so much fun getting to spend time with Kirsti and Navy. This in not the best picture of Navy....but she is such a cute girl. And Kirsti is the cutest Mom. This is at South Coast Plaza in front of Rainforest Cafe. The kids were in HEAVEN there getting to watch all the fake animals do their thing.

Ok, this was so much fun. These are all of my really good friends from high school. We all got together at Marci's house a few days before KElly's wedding and Marci's Mom made us all homemade waffles, vanilla syrup, whip cream, and strawberries. When we were teenagers we all used to spend the night at Marci's house all the time and her Mom would make this delectable meal for us for breakfast. I missed those waffles so much. It was so fun to get together and see everyone's kids, hear about their husbands, or their soon to be husbands.

We decided we'd throw our kids into this shot.

So Hallie stopped using her pacifier about 5 months ago, but before she did I promised her that we would throw her a party when she decided to give it up. When she did finally stop using it, she refused to have her party until she was at Mimi's house with Owen (her cousin). This has left her many months to make the plans for what she wanted at her party. Her requests: A pink cake, ice cream with whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and sprinkles, and a pink drink with cherries in it that you could bite off the stem. I met all her demands and we had a really great party. We had my whole family over and made a really yummy pink cake with cream cheese frosting. The Shirley Temples were a hit, and everyone loved putting together their own icecream sundays.

One happy girl.

Here is a picture of Kelly at her wedding. She looked gorgeous and I LOVED her flowers. Can you see the feathers mixed in there? So unique.

Kelly and I at the reception.

And again. See the hot chocolate in her hand? The reception was outside, so they had a hot chocolate bar where you could add all kinds of yummies to your hot chocolate. The reception was so fun. It's been a long time since I got out on the dance floor.

Here's Hallie and Chase enjoying one of our sunny days. The ate their doughnuts and chocolate milk outside on the patio with their cousin Alex.

So all my family came into town with their kids....and of course we had to hit up Chucky Cheese. And of course, David had to take Hallie on a Monster truck ride.

Loading up our luggage in the car to go home......Hallie thinking hard about leaving.

And soaking in her last few rays of sunshine.

We were all really excited to go back home and see Matt. The kids missed him like crazy, but I missed him even more. Three weeks is a long time to be away from you hubby. And it was hard to talk to him on the phone while we were gone because of the time difference.

So we left from Riverside on a cargo plane going to Deleware on Friday morning. We arrived in Dover Friday night and were told that there were LOTS of flights going to Germany. Too bad that every flight was either canceled, or they didn't release any seats to passengers....for THREE DAYS!!! So after the first night of sleeping in the air terminal (the kids sleeping, me sobbing crying to Matt and him trying to get me into lodging SOMEWHERE) Matt was finally able to get us into base lodging at about 5am saturday morning. I kept calling about flights and kept being told the same thing. No room for passengers. Finally I found out about a commercial airline taking military personel out of Baltimore, Maryland. So Sunday evening we took a shuttle two hours to get to the airport. There were more complications at the airport about a problem with my paper work, more crying on the phone with Matt, more Matt coming to my rescue and solving the problem, until finally we were admitted onto the flight. We arrived back home in Germany at about 11 am monday morning and were SOOO happy to get home (after the three hour drive back to our house) and get some sleep. That's pretty much all we've been doing since we got here actually, is sleeping. And of course getting my fill of cuddling with my hubby.

Aside from the awful trip home, it was a great vacation and SOOO good to see my family again. Even better to see my husband again though.....