Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Now, sit back, grab a cup of coffee, tea, whatever and relax because I have a feast of pictures to share with you!

As you all know, we spent Thanksgiving at church. Everyone brought in dishes and missionaries came from all over to celebrate and be thankful for all the blessings God has given us. And boy are the blessings overflowing!!



I managed to get a picture of the kiddos all sitting together right when we got to church that morning... before they started running around and getting their clothes all out of whack.

Everyone is sitting down getting ready to eat.



Elizabeth too!



Then after we filled all our tummies, the Pastor called everyone to sit down and we listened to children sing songs. They did such a great job!!



Click on the video here to listen!!



After the children sang, we did some singing ourselves and then listened to a Message given by one of the Missionaries joining us. A great message about being thankful in ALL that we do and how important it is to ALWAYS thank God, in good times and bad.





After our tummies were properly filled, and our songs of praise were raised, then the silliness began. The auditorium had been cleared the day before and some game tables set up, with lots of room for the children to run around.





One of the missionaries brought his balloons and made a bunch of hats and swords for the children to play with.









The men stayed closer to the food for 2nd, 3rd and 4th servings, while the girls gathered around the piano to sing songs.



OH! But the pictures dont end just yet!

The next day we got up early to meet up again and take a trip into the Stuttgart center to the Christmas Markets!! YAY!



Boothes and boothes of homemade goodies, chocolates, sweets, candles, and decorations!







The boys even met a street performer haha!



At the end of the market, they had an ice skating rink and rides for the kids. We didnt get to ride any, unfortunately... except for this one we saw on the way down... we ran out of time before we had to meet up again and leave. It was a good exhausting day! We had a lot of fun, enjoyed some fun company and got a little Christmas shopping done!

Her First Baby!

This weekend was our annual big clean of the church. Everyone met at church on Saturday, grabbed a scrub brush and got the place sparkling clean to get ready for our big Thanksgiving feast. As always, we had a good time (who says cleaning cant be fun?), worked hard and the Pastor treated us to KFC for lunch. :)

While we were there, one of the little girls let Elizabeth hold her precious Annabelle dolly. Elizabeth fell in LOVE!! She has dolls at home but they're all cloth. She never paid them much attention so I thought she was still too young to be interested in dollies. BOY! was I wrong!! She just wanted the 'real' dolls, that's all. So of course, I broke my rule that we dont buy anything for ourselves this close to Christmas and we took a trip to the store and got Elli her very first "real" dolly. She loves her so much.... even holds her properly!


And here she is with her "beebee" waking up from a nappy. :)


The boys have off from school this week. I'm only making them read each day and then they have the rest of the day to themselves. Tomorrow, we're going to work on making their own ornament to put on the Christmas tree. It's going to be our new tradition, they're going to make a new ornament each year. Something for them to look forward too: looking for ornaments in the box from years past, and making new ones.

Thursday is Thanksgiving, I'm sure you're well aware. We are going to spend the day at church with everyone, and missionaries from all over Europe, stuffing our bellies full. The children (including the boys) are going to be giving a "concert" for everyone. I will do my best to remember the camera! HAHA! The boys have been practicing hard. I told them, I want to HEAR them singing and not "mouthing" the words. So keep a look out for updates, I'll post our Thanksgiving pictures here.

PS I volunteered to make a turkey, so pray that I dont mess it up in our itty bitty German oven. Better yet, pray that it fits! LOL

Happy Veterans Day

Well... Happy day before Veterans day, really... or in other words, Happy Birthday Marines! :)

We have tomorrow off from school (because Dennis has off) so today we did an "easy" day in tribute to all the Veterans that have fought for our freedom. The boys each made a Lapbook. They learned what a Veteran is, what the difference military services and their mottos are, they listed some people that they know who are Vets, and even some facts about the flag and how it should and should not be treated. We had a fun day putting this project together. Then, we went online to OurMilitary.mil and sent both of the boys sent a message to the troops to let them know we care.

Just Catching up

I cant believe it's already November! So far, the fall here, this year, has been a lot more mild than it was last year. I remember freezing this time last year. It's still been pretty cool though. Pretty soon the Christmas markets will be opening up and I cant wait! At least this year, I should be able to go now that I can move around more than I was able to last year. hehe

It's late here and I should be getting to bed. I just wanted to take a minute and catch you all up on what we've been doing lately.

Mostly, just doing school. You can hear a resounding "Boring!" from the boys when that is mentioned. LOL This week, the boys are going bowling with the cub scouts on Thursday. They are having their annual Bowl-a-thon so they will be able to have some fun with some friends and try and knock down some pins somewhere in between.

School is going well, a few bumps in the road now and then but for the most part the boys are doing great and I'm really proud of them!

Studies:
Bible: we're finishing up learning about Joseph (Old Testament) and about to start a study on Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims for the obvious reasons
Language/Reading: Sean's been working on creative writing and writing letters (keep your eye out for emails from him now and then) and Ryan is doing great with his reading. He's very proud of what he's accomplished, I can tell. He's trying to read EVERYTHING now lol. (shh! I even caught him and Sean reading a book up in their room.... on their own!! gasp!)
Math: Sean is learning the dreaded fractions but they don't phase him at all. He's got it pretty much down! Ryan has been learning to count money and measure with a ruler - doing wonderful!
Science/History: This is what the boys call the "fun" part of the day. We are still learning about bugs. It's quite in depth and a lot of fun. History, we've just started learning about the first settlers in America, including the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving.

Well that's the quick run-down. I should probably head to bed, Elizabeth will be waking me up soon anyway, I'm sure.

Good night, stay warm!

Elizabeth (10mos)

Can you believe it? Elizabeth is 10 months old today! UGH! Time is flying by WAY too fast. She has decided that she is not a crawler, that getting on her belly stuff is just NOT for her. Instead, she sits up (like a lady) and scoots on her bottom everywhere she goes... and BOY does she GO! Her little hands are into everything! If she can reach it, she tries to get it, which also translates to eating it. She likes to keep mommy, daddy and her big brothers busy chasing her around and keeping every little fuzzball out of her mouth. Yuk!!

Elizabeth is a talker! She can babble in complete sentences now. She will tell you the most amazing stories, if you could understand her own secret language. Her favorite animals are doggies. Copper brings her absolute joy, and any other doggie she sees in books, on tv or just out and about in town.

Her favorite TV personality, without a doubt, is Elmo. She just loves Elmo! Why? I havent the foggiest idea, but she does.

She also loves to be read to. She has a favorite book that counts to 5 on each page and she will ask to be read to over and over and over and over and over and... well you get the idea! :)

Here are a few videos of her that I took this weekend. Don't mind the stain on her shirt, she just had her dinners and we were just about to head up for bath time :)




This second video is her playing peek-a-boo with her blankie. 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!

Our Mini-Alpine-Adventure

I'm going to try not to be too wordy because I have TONS of pictures to share. We just got back from our quick mini vacation to Berchtesgaden, Germany. It's a little town in Bavaria, just minutes from the Austrian boarder, nestled in the Alpine Mountains. A beautiful place!! My pictures do not do it any justice at all!

We stayed here, it was a nice hotel, there were some quirky things about it that I wont bother going into now, but it gave us a place to stay and they had a real good breakfast in the morning. :)



Elizabeth ended up getting a pretty bad cold on our way down to the mountains and that night she got a temperature of almost 104. The next day, she seemed to be feeling better: no temp, better mood, still runny nose. So we decided to take it easy and just do a few things around the town.





The town was adorable. All of the houses were something out of a picture book. It's like they had a local law that everyone had to have flowers in their windowsills. haha!







The houses that didnt have flowers had elaborate paintings framing their windows. It was really neat.



This building here in particular has a painting with the dates from World War 1 and 2 and underneath, inside the archways, there is a memorial with a list of names.



OH! This picture here was taken because we thought it was pretty funny. I'm not going to tell you what it was that had the boys giggling. You might have to click on it to make it larger to be able to see it, but take a look!



We found some fun little "ride-ons"for the boys during our walk. This scoop truck thing was a blast!



Then we found a nice area called the "Sonnenpromenade" on the side of a hill so we enjoyed some ice cream with a great view of the town.





On day 2 of our trip we went up to Kelsteinhaus (The Eagle's Nest). This was a house built for Hitler and where he would have meetings with heads of states and such. The bus ride was a nail biter though! They require you to park and take a special bus up the mountain because the road is so windy and very narrow. There were quite a few times I just had to close my eyes!





The bus dropped us off here. Then we had to walk through this big tunnel to take a brass elevator up through the heart of the mountain into the house. For some reason, this reminded me a lot of Willy Wonka's Elevator... dont ask...



The view up there was spectacular though! I tried to take a panoramic picture (and piece all the pictures together). I'm not sure if it will work and you'll DEFINITELY have to click on this one to make it larger. I'll put the panoramic picture here on the bottom so you can view that last.



It was a bit chilly up there and a lot of clouds but worth the trip.



This cross here is the top of this mountain and looking down on the Kelsteinhaus.



This is the view from that cross:



We went inside the house, which is now a restaurant, and had a nice lunch infront of the fireplace (which was not on) haha!



Then we made our way back down the mountain and went over to Lake Königsee. If you are a Sound of Music fan (as I am), this lake is featured in the beginning credits as the camera is flying over. This is the big lake with a tiny red topped church on the shore. Unfortunately this is the only "Sound of Music" site I got to see this trip, but we'll be going back to Salzburg another time, I'm sure of it.

This is a quick picture of the Waltzmann - the giant mountain that oversee's this area. Apparently a popular skiing spot as well. I managed to catch it when the clouds parted for a split second, you still cant see the top of it in this photo though.



You can take a cable car up to the top of that one but with the weather going downhill we took a, what we thought would be quick but really was long, boat ride on the lake. The tour guide only spoke in German so we didnt get to understand most of what he was saying but at one point they stopped the boat and played a trumpet so we could hear the beautiful echo through the mountains. NEAT!



Oh! I'm proud of this picture here: This is the St. Bartholomä - the red topped church on the shore of the lake. The weather was not cooperating for good pictures, but this one turned out!



After that, we headed back to the hotel to end our day and get ready to leave. It was a quick but fun trip!



Here is the promised panorama from the Eagle's Nest - it's not perfect but gives you a nice idea :)

Click on it!