Short post with no photos...

Just letting my family know, we are all sick, and the doctor diagnosed us all with H1N1 this morning. :( We'll be starting meds as soon as the Base Pharmacy is open. Yuck.

Martin's mom and aunt are coming in to visit for a couple weeks starting on Friday, so the house will obviously not be as clean as I had planned. But that's the way the cookie crumbles!

Just October happenings...

Not too much exciting has been going on. I started babysitting a couple of girls after they get done with school, so that's just a couple hours a day.

A story from a few days ago... Isaac wanted some of my hot cocoa, but I told him it was too hot for him and subsequently chugged it down. When he realized it was gone, he asked "Awww, Mommy? Why you didn't give me some?" I told him it's because I'm a mean mommy. He told me "No mommy. You're a nice mommy." What do you think I did? I ran straight to the kitchen and made him a cup all of his own!!! Oh boy, I sure am a sucker for flattery...

Here's what a typical evening at my house looks like...

Last week, we made fall cookies. The boys had fun with rolling dough, cutting cookie shapes and decorating!

He's concentrating REALLY hard, note the tongue...

Should've rotated this picture, but you get the idea:

OK, enough of that. On to more "manly" things. How 'bout some photos of the guys building stuff?
Isaac being silly...
Elijah is reaching way up to give thumbs up.

Boys looking at a worm.

I love this photo!!!

Guess what the boys were looking at:
A ladybug!
Some extreme close-ups. They are just a bit distorted from the camera lens...

Here are a few of my favorite photos that I've taken recently:

That's all for now! :) Have a lovely day.

Isaac's 5th birthday

Finally made some time to share some photos from Isaac's b-day and party, which was 2 days after his b-day.

Isaac woke up (at 5:30, yuck! haha) to a bunch of balloons in his room!
After he found some pants, he dashed downstairs to discover birthday presents! Yay! He was SOOOO excited!
Then he ran back upstairs to get his brothers so he could open the gifts. Elijah and Aziel gave him excited b-day hugs!
A gift from Auntie Anna! All the kids love it by the way. Thanks! :D

Playing with some of his presents:

We had birthday cupcakes and pancakes for supper. Isaac's choice. :)

Two days later was Isaac's party. He invited several children from his German kindergarten. We ended up with 15 kids in attendance, including our own. Wow. You should have heard the noise level! In English AND in German! :)

Here's a photo of Isaac's cake:
Decorating for the party!

BUSTED! Good thing I took that other photo beforehand... Nice going Eli.

Some candids from the party.

Pinata time! Everybody got a turn.



And cake time. Nobody even noticed the "Eli nibbles" on the side. :)

After all the kids were gone, we hung out with our good friends the Koutrases for awhile. Here's Meike and I. :)

And the twins and Zoi, still in party mode:

There was one gift in particular that got played with a LOT. It was a Whoopie Cushion. Perfect for a 5 yr old. Isaac is demonstrating here:

Isaac had a blast and really enjoyed it all. I, for one, am glad that he will not be having another birthday for 355 more days however. ;) Exhausted but happy!

Some pages

I've been a mad scrapper the past two days! When the kids go to bed, it's my time to play! :)

Here's a couple from the pumpkin festival:

Credits: Doodle flowers, Papers from A Better Me by Gina Marie Huff

Credits: Funky Fall collab (Inspiration Lane), Elegant WordArt by Bethany

And one from a photo of the boys from two days ago:

Credits: No Girls Allowed by Creations by Rachael B

And one from the dinosaur park a few weeks ago:

Credits: Rawr by Amy Sumrall

And another one, can't remember if I've posted this one before. It's one of my favorites:

Credits:Credits: Doodly Patterns papers by Gina Marie Huff, screws from No Girls Allowed by Creations by Rachel B, red paper and chicken wire by me (Share Joy)

Sesame Street Live!

Two weekends ago, the USO sponsored Sesame Street Live! The organization brought the show to us here in Germany - for FREE for U.S. servicemembers and their families. Simple thing, right? It's just a kids show. But it is soooo nice to be remembered WAYYY over here across the ocean. There just aren't things like this for the kids very often - unless your kids speak German!

We got to the show early. I wasn't sure how we were going to entertain the kids while we were waiting for the show to start, but I didn't need to worry. The sweet USO people gave every child a bandana and a super cool spinning Elmo toy. It incorporated every child's favorite activities all into one toy - button pushing, motion, lights, and Elmo! I found out later that at Sesame Street Live shows, these toys run $15 a pop. That's $45 worth of free toys PLUS whatever the ticket would have cost. Wow.

The show began!
And guess who is enjoying it the most? hahaha...

The little blond girl is Isaac's friend from German kindergarten, Zoe.

I wish I could begin to describe the magic that the evening was. It was displayed all over each of the boys' faces. The photos just don't capture that!

Isaac got to meet Grover in person.

And Aziel too!

Elijah was too scared to meet his heros in person.

After the show, the kids went up to shake hands with all the characters. Aziel didn't want to leave the stage. He parked himself right in front of Cookie Monster and kept his little hand up until Daddy picked him up to go.

Afterwards, we went to Burger King with Zoe's family. It was just one of the "funnest" nights I've had in ages!

Sesame Street also gives out a kids deployment DVD regularly. It's really quite touching to hear Elmo talk about missing his daddy, and then seeing Elmo's daddy come home and sing about how proud he is of Elmo... I get all choked up. When Martin was deployed, we watched it sometimes, but not a lot. I caught Isaac crying one time while watching it, and it was really hard... anyway... I love Sesame Street and the USO. They do such fantastic things for the military families. :)