A Year in Review

I made a video today of pictures that we had taken through the year.
I set it to music to make sure you have your headphones or speakers ready. :)

So much happens, yet a year goes way too fast!

Enjoy the video! :)

Will it ever be picture ready?

That's the question of the day! Hahah! We're still working on getting the house put together. We're mostly done, except for a few boxes here and there (most of them in our bedroom - the last place that ever gets unpacked). The few we have left here in the living room we've kept around as a barrier to keep Elizabeth "contained" until we can finish getting the dining room area baby proofed a little better. LOL

This week, the packing has slowed quite a bit because we have a sick bug running through the house. So far Elizabeth and now Dennis have been the only unfortunate victims. Nothing too bad, just a head cold, you know how miserable babies can be with head colds though.

We're back on schedule with home school. It's been a struggle getting back into the old grind again - for all of us! Slowly we're getting used to being on a schedule though. I've added a German language course for the boys, now. We listen to an audio adventure that has a few German words sprinkled through it for vocabulary and then it asks questions at the end. It's fun, and better than dry workbook stuff.

For History, the boys have been studying Early colonial/pre-Revolution life and we are watching this really neat series I got on DVD called Drive Thru History. The host drives around to all the historical places and explains the events that went on. It's got a nice fast pace to it and is really entertaining. The boys complain but they would anyway even if SpongeBob was teaching history. HAHA! They prefer it over reading out of the textbook at least.

For Science we've given the Flying Creatures book a rest for a bit. Sean is reading about different masses - this week he learned about air and water cycle, clouds, etc. Ryan is learning about his 5 senses and his body. I've broken them up for a while, for Science, (we were studying all together before) to give Sean some independent study time.

OH! And Elizabeth, she's learning the parts of a face (haha) and learning how to walk! :) She knows how to stand up and will stand on her own for a few seconds until BOOM! She also cruises along the furniture walking. Not too much longer now, she'll be toddling around!

Well I just wanted to check in real quick since I havent really had time to write lately. I will check in again later, hopefully with a few pictures. TTFN! (that's Ta-Ta For Now for all you who are not fluent in Tigger-speak ;) )

Settling in

I'm just popping in here real quick to let you all know we are moved in and getting settled into our new apartment. We just got around to setting the internet up tonight and have about half the house unpacked. Surprisingly we haven't had much problem fitting into the apartment here. The boys have already met our next door neighbor (they have a young boy around their age, maybe a little older) and have met a few other kids at the playground.

Moving into the house has been great. I cant say the same for our moving out of the other house. UGH!! What a disaster, probably one of our worst moves to date! I wont get into it now or I'll just get all upset and mad all over again but just pray for us! We could use it! I think Dennis and I have already resigned to give it over for God to handle, frankly He's the only one who can. I'm sorry to be so cryptic, I just really dont feel like going into detail about it.

We will post pictures of the apartment soon (hopefully) as soon as we get the rest of this stuff unpacked... and find my camera. haha!

The Heat is On!

BRRRRRRRR!! It sure is cold here in Germany this past week or so! I think it's even been snowing in some places. Here, we just have that ice cold rain. The kind that when you feel a drop hit your skin, the cold sinks right in to your bones. *shiver*

We have some big changes coming up here for us. Earlier this week, we went to base and looked at one of the empty stairwell houses (that's basically an apartment) that housing said they have available if we want it. We've been toying with the idea of moving on base lately because of our car problems, the boys and I not being able to do much during the week, etc. When housing told us they have a lot of apartments available, we started seriously thinking about it. It was a tough decision though, it's hard to give up having a HOUSE with a backyard and located in such an adorable little town. I love driving by those medieval-type walls. The base where they offered to house us is actually one of the bases that's further away from everything but is in a beautiful part of the city (Stuttgart). Actually, it's right next to the hospital where I had Elizabeth. We joked that if we had another baby, I could just walk over to the hospital. Haha! Anyway, Dennis will still have quite a drive to work, on top of that, he'd have to drive through the city. The positive side of that is Dennis has quite a few co-workers that live there as well that he could carpool with if needed, and there is also a base shuttle bus that runs between the bases for backup transportation so our car wont have to go through as much wear and tear as it has been experiencing. The base where we'd live has its own library, px/commissary (all smaller than the main one), arts and crafts center, etc etc. The boys would have children to play with, giant PLUS. BUT we lose our fenced in back yard - which means taking Copper on walks in sun, rain, sleet, and snow. LOL These were all the things we had been weighing.

(psst, I took pictures when we went to go look at the apartment, if you want to see)

We've decided to take it, the apartment is gorgeous and we're getting a ground floor. We've been doing a lot of praying and we're sure this is the right move. We're not going to be moving until after the holidays though, that's good because it gives me time to get through all the busy part of the year and get our stuff downsized a bit and ready to move. We are getting a 3bedroom, unfortunately they didnt have any 4bedrooms available. I think we'll fit just fine, it's just the boys will be losing their playroom so we need to get rid of a lot of their junk. That needs to be done anyway!

Well that's about it, for the Doughy News! School is going great! It's been a very busy week for us, I'm thankful that the weekend's here!