Some photos, boy I'm really behind!

Well, I've had so many photo ops lately that I've had a hard time choosing which to post! I decided to just jump in and post a few tonight and will do more tomorrow!

A couple weekends ago, I took the boys to the Dinosaur Park. Aziel wanted me to take a photo of him with some pumpkins:

Elijah posing after sliding down a big slide. This is classic Elijah, he's very "artistic", even with his poses. haha!

Tiny Zeelers, next to a giant Wooly Mammoth.Isaac and Eli playing with my favorite dinosaur - a Triceratops!

Back at home, the boys took advantage of a new prop to play with while I was cleaning one day. "The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round..."

Some candids from the park down the street from our house:
Right before Eli smacked Aziel in the head by accident...
Isaac's kindergarten:
We had told the kids we were going to take them to the circus that was nearby. It was a small tent with horses and goats (no elephants or flying trapeze or anything like that). When we got there, we discovered that it was going to cost our family 50 euros (like 70 dollars) to attend. To see HORSES and GOATS.

I felt soooo bad, but we had to teach the kids a life lesson about money that day. We left and went bowling instead. But here's the kids looking (for free) at the horses grazing outside.

The twins moved into their "big boy" beds the beginning of September. They are doing just great with the transition. :)

Will post more tomorrow! Sesame Street Live and the Pumpkin festival to come.

September autumn photo session

Today while the kids were out playing, I decided to have a spontaneous photo session, and I caught some GREAT memories! Like this one:

Only Aziel is actually looking at the camera and smiling, but the other boys are just being themselves! It's so much real life for us! I love it.

Aziel found flowers and brought them to me. It really captured his sweetness. He's such a serious, quiet boy for the most part, but also loves to figure everything out. His thoughtful personality is blossoming right out of that stubborn side! He is so snuggly too.

Elijah's mischievous grin. He just bubbles over with enthusiasm and love for life! He's always giggling and running with a bounce in his step. He is a loud, silly kid!

He's also my mama's boy.
Isaac is so playful and inquisitive. He never ceases to amaze me. He's one of the bravest, most adaptable people I've ever met! He's been through moves to foreign countries, gone through deployments and then readjusting, and he's gone to preschool as a minority. This kid impresses my socks off.

A few poses:


Isaac making a face:

Aziel was posing for me so well today!

This is my life! I love it.

The crazy week...

Last weekend, we had a few memorable things go on in our household. On Saturday evening, there was a street BBQ, in which everyone on our block was invited to get together and get to know each other. We went and met some of our neighbors, the kids had a blast staying up late and playing with the other young kid there. Sammie made her rounds with the other dogs and enjoyed getting attention from other people. While we were sitting around, she jumped into my lap and I was petting her. I noticed a bump. I rummaged through her fur to find an engorged tick. BLECH. So gross. I did not feel like sharing this discovery with the neighborhood, so we carried on like nothing had happened... When we got home, Martin and I discussed who would be removing the little bloodsucking parasite. Neither of us wanted to and we decided to deal with it in the morning, since it had most likely been attached for nearly a week (Black Forest trip) anyway.The next day while Martin was out and the kids were napping, I did it. :) I'm so proud of my toughness. haha...

Then Sunday evening, we took Isaac in to the ER because his ear had been hurting a lot. He went home with a weeks worth of antibiotic... And it worked great! :) Aziel ran a little fever that night as well, but they've all bounced back quickly.

Our Taurus is on the fritz. It's overheated and died twice this week, and now the driver's side window won't roll up! If it rains, it will rain in our car. Good thing I will be done with work next Friday! We will soon be down to one car.

I scrapped a few new pages. My style is slightly evolving. I think I'm getting better at drawing the focus to the photos then the elements. Let me toot my own horn, lol. I've also been playing around with different fonts, word art, and photo effects. Next up, I need to beef up my journaling and start trying out RAW photography. Supposedly you can do SO much more with it with photo adjustments and stuff. When I say "stuff", that means I really don't even know, but I would like to learn more! :)

Credits: Composure Plus by Taylor Made designs.

Sorry about the kissy picture. We just don't get very many photos together, and I liked this one...

Credits: Happy Garden by Weeds and Wildflowers.

Vacation to the Black Forest

Vacation! We left on Thursday around 7:30am to go on our 4 day vacation to the Black Forest in Germany with our friends Jannis and Meike and their 4 yr old daughter Zoi. It was a 4 hour drive, mostly uneventful other than the normal crazy Solano interactions. The kids were fascinated by the windmills. Elijah would squeal “Castles!” whenever he saw one popping over the horizon. He’s called windmills “castles” for almost a year now and I don’t know how to fix that. Not that I really want to, because we think it’s funny! Isaac pointed one out that was close to the road and exclaimed “LOOOOK! The windmill is following us!” I forgot a knife to make PB sandwiches, so I had to use a carrot instead…

When we got to the bed and breakfast that our friends had booked, we discovered that it wasn’t quite what we had expected. The website advertised a completely fenced yard, a petting farm, free breakfast… The promised “fenced in yard” was indeed there, but apparently it was only for the hotel owners 5 dogs. It was a farm, but we couldn’t go near the animals. (We found out when we checked out that the bread and jam and coffee breakfast was 5 euros a person, not free.) The house was decorated with creepy porcelain dolls and witches. Weird. The kids got in trouble for playing in the well, we were informed that the water is too cold for them, but I think they didn’t want their beautiful perfect green grass patch to get ruined! We had only been there an hour when the lady yelled at us to watch our kids because one of them had let one of her dogs out. I couldn’t believe it. That set the stage for a slightly uncomfortable stay there…

Our room:

The twins fighting over a flowered bedspread:

There was nothing for the kids to do, no place to really let them play, so pretty much any time we spent at the hotel, Martin and I were getting irritated with the kids who were just acting their age. They were jumping from bed to bed, squealing, fighting… Sigh. Jannis and Meike had brought their big Doberman Aris. They were equally as disappointed and confused about our accommodations, but since we had registered when we came in, they did not think that we would be able to get out of paying for the whole time, even if we left early. Anyway… our kids were going bonkers. We had to get out. So get out, we did.

Isaac and Zoi at the first restaurant we ate at:Jannis and Meike:Elijah eating cucumbers. He loves them.

We went to a lake called the Suchtsee. We walked around for a few hours, it was gorgeous! We found a nice little pizza place and the people there were very nice.

Aziel saying "I don't know":
Isaac posing silly:
Koutras family: The boys throwing rocks: Martin and me: The boys: We went back to the lake on Friday and swam the day away. Just fantastic! The kids had a blast swimming and playing. That made up for the sorry bed and breakfast, haha!

All of us chillin' at the beach:

Eli was so tired that he fell off the bed and didn't even wake up!

On Saturday, we woke up to find that it was pouring rain. We did not want to be stuck at the hotel. There was absolutely nothing to do other than try to get the kids to watch the portable DVD player that we’d brought along. We eventually decided to venture out and find an ATM so we could pay when we checked out the next day. When we got to Todtnau, the closest town with a bank, it wasn’t raining anymore and there was an outdoor market. Aziel making a silly face for me:There was a little waterfall, and we were going to try to hike up to it. Jannis hitched Aris to the stroller and he took off pulling the twins up the hill. It worked really well until we got to a huge flight of stairs. We didn’t make it to the waterfall. Double strollers are tough going up stairs!!!

Next, we went to a huge “slide”. It was built into the side of a mountain. Kind of hard to see but here's the "slide":Reminder here, Martin is scared of heights. Terrified. So he was more than happy to stay down in the van with the twins who were too little to ride, and to watch Sammie and Aris. I managed to talk/bribe Isaac into going with me, even though he was nervous. We had to go on a lift (like a ski lift) to the top of the mountain. Isaac asked why we had to be up so high, he was pretty freaked out! I had him pretend we were birds flying and he and I flapped our way by the trees on up the hill. Then we got to go down this gigantic slide on a sled type thing. It was almost like a single car roller coaster. Really fun!!! Isaac loved it and talked about it for hours.

After that, we took the kids back to the room for naptime. While they were napping, we found out that we could check out early since it was raining and there was nothing to do. We were soooo happy. Haha. Our vacation was cut short and we were all relieved! Funny…

The drive home went pretty well. The twins sang for quite awhile. This is a bit of what we heard:
Elijah: “Whad want?”
Aziel: “Whoa, whoa”
Eli: “OK.”
Together: “Whoa, whoa, whoa you boat zenlee ow nasteeeem. Mewwy, mewwy, mewwy, mewwy. Lime is but a deem. Wok, wok, wok you boat zenlee ow nasteeeem. If you see a cwokadial don agit to scweeem. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!”
Elijah: “Whad want?”
Aziel: “Whoa, whoa”
Eli: “OK. Whoa, whoa, whoa”
Aziel: “NOOOOO!”
Elijah: “Whad want?”
Aziel: “Whoa, whoa”
Eli: “OK. Whoa, whoa, whoa”
Aziel: “NOOOOO!”
Elijah: “Whad want? ABCDEFG?”
And so on it went!

Elijah kept repeating the GPS instructions: “Turn right, mama. Turn right.” He said “mama” a million times on the way home. I think he just wanted to make sure I didn’t forget him!

We also accidently drove through France on our way home. What an adventure! But we made it safely home with a bucketful of memories. I love how Martin put it: If our vacation went perfectly, what stories would we have to tell?

I chopped my hair

What do you think of it? :) I think I got rid of 5 lbs of hair today!

Trip to the zoo

This weekend, Martin and I got a sitter for Friday night so we could go on a date. We went out for Mongolian BBQ, and then went grocery shopping. haha... how romantic is that??? Our sitter burned the popcorn really bad, so we were greeted with a lovely smell when we got home. But we did have fun.

Saturday, we went to the zoo for an unofficial field trip with some other kids from the twins room at daycare. The Siegelbach Zoo is small, but does have tigers and monkeys. The kids were most impressed by the raccoons, ducks, and llamas. They wanted to feed all of the sandwiches that we had packed for lunch to the animals.

Here is my lovely photoshopped picture of the boys at the zoo. Can you guess who I added in?

And a few new scrap layouts I've done recently...

Credits: Life is Good, A Better Me, Happy Garden by Gina Marie Huff (Weeds and Wildflowers)