July 2011

At the beginning of July our church had it's annual picnic out at Sonnenhof. It's a really beautiful farm setting. There are lots of animals that the kids (and some of us adults) enjoy. Our church rents out an area where we have an abbreviated church service and then afterward we have a potluck and each family brings their own meat to grill. It's really a nice day.

Elly enjoyed looking at the pigs...

and the goats...

and the pigs again...

and the biggest pig of all...the Mama of all the little piglets running around.

We had some beautiful summer days through July. Elly had so much fun playing in her pool. I love having the patio right off of our kitchen because I can have the doors open and Elly can play to her heart's content while I work in the house. That's one part of our house that I do really like.

She LOVES the kids that live next door. She was talking to Aiden in this pictures. You can see the pure delight on her face :)

My little cover girl :)





Sam joined the MWR softball league this year. It's almost funny to say that because it sounds a little too professional :) They didn't win any games (unless you count the two that other teams had to forfeit for lack of players) and it almost became a joke of sorts. How badly will we lose tonight? What was great though is that most of them had wonderful attitudes about it. They were out there having fun playing a game. Sam was the pitcher and did pretty good, if I do say so myself. Elly and I had a lot of fun watching them.




Ready for another walk one evening. It was rainy out so Elly was able to wear this cute little raincoat Oma and Opa sent to her. She loves her raincoat.


Sam and I have often talked about buying this little plot of land that this old house sits on. We just love the the look of this house and have no idea if the land is even for sale, but we like the idea of being able to built a little house in this area. This sits on one of the prettiest little streets in our town. We walk by it quite often.













There is no doubt in my mind that I have a little girl. She LOVES to play with hair, act like she's putting on makeup, watch herself in the mirror, go shopping, etc. This particular morning she wanted me to put all of the rubber bands in her hair and this is what we came up with :)


One evening toward the end of July we had some friends that are PCSing back to the states soon over for dinner. Anna and I met in the Pregnancy Support Group, so we've known each other pregnant and through having little ones up through the last couple of years. Her little girl is about 5 days younger than Elly and they have a baby boy who was about 7 months old in these pictures. To contain the littlest one we put this fence up on the back patio, but the girls ended up liking it better than he did.


Elly just loves little Liam!

Elly and Lily

And that about covers July. Slowly but surely I'm getting this caught up. I'm off to work on August now.

4th of July

We had a nice 4th of July this year even though Sam had to work...yet again. He didn't have to report for work until later in the afternoon so in the morning we took Elly to a little playground in our town. She loves playgrounds and begs to go almost daily. I take her sometimes, but Sam takes her more often and it's a real treat for her to have both of us at the playground with her. It was a fun and relaxing morning. I love watching Elly have fun.








That evening, Elly and I went out to Patch to meet with Sam. We planned to do a little cookout when he got off work around 6:00. Elly and I walked around and looked at the different vendors. By the time Sam was off the clock we played with the idea of just getting something to eat there because it was getting late and seemed like a lot of work to get everything out and ready. In the end, we figured since we had the food in the car so we might as well do what we originally planned. We took up residence under the vacated tent that MWR had used, so we had our own little area. We had one of those small disposable charcoal grills so it took a LONG time to cook the steaks. By the time they were done it was dark and the fireworks were about to go off. It was a fun evening though. We had some friends stop in to visit and share the food.

I wondered how Elly was going to do with the fireworks. The last time she saw any was in Florida and she did not like the noise. She was a little unsure at first, but watched the entire show and in the end I think she liked it, since she kept saying "More!".

June 2011

We got back to Germany at the beginning of June and tried to get back into the swing of our lives here. It's strange to be gone for so long. I always wonder if Gabby is going to know me and she never disappoints. She is so aggressively loving when we get back from a trip. We can't go anywhere without her following us, meowing and purring the whole time. Those first few nights at home are interesting because Gabby just won't leave us alone and has to be near (on top of) us all night long. I don't have any proof that cats have dreams or nightmares, but I would suggest that Gabby does. Usually, after we've been gone a long time we'll hear her in the middle of the night meowing somewhere in the house ~ long, mornful meows. I have to call for her and she realizes we're home and all is right with the world again. She's such a baby.

Our roses were in full bloom when we got home. I just love our rose bushes!





Alot of evenings we'll go for a walk around our town. This evening Elly was ready to go and of course had "baby" in tow. We walked through the town cemetary, which is always interesting. We try to keep Elly quiet and respectful as we mosey through. Sam always comments that he wouldn't mind living right beside a cemetary. No bothersome neighbors and it would certainly be quiet. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't choose that though. It's peaceful to walk through, but I wouldn't want to live right next to one.












I ordered some training panties for Elly. I figured I better be prepared before attempting to potty train her. She found them really fun to play with and tried to get them on. I had been talking to her about going potty in the potty chair. I didn't have any plans to get her potty trained until we were settled back in Germany though. In a way she still seemed like my baby and it just didn't seem like she was old enough to be going potty like a big person already.

Since I am sooo far behind in this blog, it seems funny to be talking about her learning to go potty. It's the beginning of October as I write and it's been 6-8 weeks since I've changed a poopy diaper. I haven't worked too hard with her. She's pretty much potty trained herself and I'm now just waiting until after we have company in a couple of weeks to get her totally out of diapers. I figure it'll be a lot easier travelling without having to stop for potty breaks whenever she feels the need.

Elly's love of playgrounds continues. She LOVES it when we take her to play at one of the on-post playgrounds.

She was just discovering the swings at this point. She found it fun to lay on her belly on the swing.









One Saturday morning Sam took us to a strawberry patch to get some strawberries. For several years I'm mentioned wanting to find out where to pick them. Little did I know how easy it was to find. We picked about 1 1/2 gallons of them. I LOVE strawberries! I made up one batch of strawberry jam, but then realized I didn't have enough jars to make anymore, so I froze up the berries and will finish the jam making when I get my jars from Amazon.

Elly wasn't sure about picking them at first. She has a thing about touching alot of foods. I think that has something to do with how picky of an eater she is. She doesn't even want to touch the food. Anyhow, toward the end of the day she was picking some berries too.

A sink full of yummy strawberries!

Making the first batch of strawberry jam.



It seems like we often take pictures on Sunday mornings before heading out to church. That's a great example of how one-sided blogs can be. How we put out there just what we want people to see. More often than not we do not look all put together and picture ready. I guess that's why we like to take advantage of those times we're actually dressed and look put together. Those of you who actually know me know that usually when I'm at home I'm in sweats and a tee shirt with my hair in a pony tail. It's all about comfort :)





Another day, another walk around town. We love how there are so many different trails that we can take. We've lived in this town for 3 1/3 years and we're still discovering new trails that we've never been on before. The trails are so nice too. Most often they are paved walking trails and just beautiful. I love it when we come across goats or sheep along the way. Elly enjoyed looking at the goats this evening.












Our poor little fruit trees :( We have two cherry trees (one sweet, one sour), one nectarine tree, one plum tree and one apple tree. We have yet to harvest anything worthwhile. The very first year we had our apple tree it had 2 apples on it (we bought it that way) and they were so delicious. One year it had hundreds of blossoms, but never produced any fruit. This year it has two apples on it, but we'll see how they turn out. Usually, it seems bugs or slugs get to the fruit before we do. We've gotten just a couple of plums other years and the nectorine tree has never produced a thing. Here is the "harvest" from our cherry tree this year. Impressive...don't you think?

Our two apples...still growing.

Another Sunday morning. We didn't go to our regular church this particular morning. We went out to Patch because Dr. Ravi Zacharias was going to be preaching. I was looking forward to hearing him because I remember listening to his sermons on the radio through the years. He did not disappoint. It was a great message. Sam was sweet and stood in line with me to meet him. He was very nice and we were able to get a picture with him.



Well, that wraps up June. If I could just spend a day on this computer I might actually get caught up one of these days. I'm off to work on July. Until next time...