Getting Closer to Crawling

Silas has been in the stage of sitting and playing with toys and staying in ONE SPOT! But this stage (of which I thought might never end) is actually quickly coming to an end.

Hey - what's in here.....reaching for something and ended up on his tummy...then scoots backwards...occasionally will roll back and forth to get something around him.


Let's try again....sitting and reaching....oh mommy moved it further away....I really want it....reach, got it!


All this trying to crawl business wears me out!

Cornstarch and Water - What FUN!

Twice a month I have the great priviledge of attending MOPS at our church. MOPS has been such a blessing to me here the past months. The moms are both American and German. I so look forward to those mornings with these other moms, sipping coffee and enjoying great food and fellowship WITHOUT kids for a few hours! IT IS GREAT!

The theme for MOPS this year is THE HOME FACTOR. We've been going through the rooms of the house - and touching on things throughout the home (of course). This week we were in the Children's room and one of the moms talked about being intentional with our kids in what we do with them, and how they play. She had some great ideas for learning activities for kids - and teaching kids basic skills while they think they are playing. One of the things she showed us was how to make was this goey stuff which is basically cornstarch and water. It is so weird - and so cool! It looks wet, yet feels dry - it is hard, but turns runny - it is so neat! And the kids LOVED it. And the best part is it dries - and so is actually very easy to sweep up when the kids are finished playing! Some of you may have heard of this before - others not - either way - get out the cornstarch, add some water - and HAVE SOME FUN!

Syd is mixing it up - goey - drippy - messy - and mom is letting us do this - WOW!

Here it is hard....just wait.....it turns goey - HOW DOES THIS WORK?? I don't know the scientific facts - all I know is it was fun for my kids - and I actually had the ingredients here in Germany!

So moms out there - give it a try - and let me know what you think (or better what your kids think!)

Saturday afternoon at the Spielplatz (playground)

Today (Saturday, February 23) was a beautiful day here. We took a short walk to the spielplatz that isn't too far from our house. The kids enjoyed the swings, slides, but mostly playing in the sand. Silas had his first experience with sand....he wasn't sure what to think at first, but then he kept digging in...he even tried eating a leaf - but that didn't taste so good!


Building sand castles....or roads, airports, anything really...

Swinging like a little monkey - Shaylee and Sydney

I couldn't get these pictures to cooperate with the other sand ones - so they are down here - oh well....Silas in the sand.

More swings - the big round swing is really fun....perfect for Silas - no worries about falling out - just falling over! Silas really enjoyed swinging - he would laugh and laugh!

Sunday Stroll

This afternoon (Sunday, February 17) we decided to get out of the house for a bit and take a nice scenic stroll. A few weeks ago Jer and Shane had biked up to a little chapel on a high hill and said it had a magnificent few of the surrounding area - so we decided to drive up there - and then take the walking path up to the chapel. It was a steep road - and I was impressed that Jer and Shane had actually made it up there on their bikes previously. The path takes you right through grapevine laden fields - it was very scenic - and such a nice sunny day. We have all been suffering from colds with fever - so it was good to get out and get some sun on our faces and fresh air in our lungs. Germans really enjoy their Sunday (or basically any day of the week) strolls. I call them strolls because they just seem to take their time and enjoy themselves. If they were going out for a walk or a run - they would be decked out in full exercise gear and be on a mission. Where as when they stroll they are just out enjoying the weather, the scenery, and life I guess. So we did too.

Shane's Bithday!

Shane had a few friends over on Saturday - to celebrate his birthday. Here they are getting ready to play "lazer tag" as they called it. Really its just yarn strung across the room and they each had a different color that they had to unwind across the room and get to the end of their string first....without getting too tangled in eachothers string. They had a great time - but I think they prefered pretending the strings were lazers they had to manuver around!

Just clowning around! - Friends are Tynan, Tab, and Alex - enjoying a round of Lego Create it!

The Birthday Boy!!!!

Shane is 7 years old today! WOW! My little boy is growing up fast! We woke him up early so that Daddy could see him open one of his presents. He got a Star Wars Lego Set - and has been playing with legos since opening it (beside the hours he was at school).

Here Shane is with his ROCKET cake - this cake took mommy a lot of time (due to running out of frosting and needing to go to the store, but having to wait until the girls woke up from naps before I could go) and LOVE (due to missing cake decorating frosting bags that I don't have here in Germany and I kept breaking the plastic bags I was usings as well as the parchment paper I tried to use - I had frosting everywhere but on the cake - I was quite frustrated) - but the cake is finished and Shane likes it. Thats what is important right? Soon it will be eaten and it should taste good!! Cake and Icecream always taste good right??!!??

Silas - 9 months

Silas is 9 months old already - I'm not sure where those months went - isn't he sweet - I sure think so!

Amsterdam

This past weekend we went to Amsterdam - you'll have to read the previous 2 posts to understand more about our trip.....

On Friday morning Susie had offered to watch our kids while Jeremy and I had some time to ourselves! So we took the tram into Amsterdam and hit a few museums! How wonderful to have some time to walk around Amsterdam, enjoy lunch at a cafe, and enjoy art without the children! We went to the Rijks Museum and the Van Gogh Museum that morning.

Jer in front of the Rijks Museum - JUST THE TWO OF US!

Later that afternoon we returned to Amsterdam with the kids. We fed the pigeons in Dam Square. The pigeons came right up to us - landed on us - ate bread right from us - the kids loved it!

Friday evening we also took the kids to the Anne Frank House. After our tour it was getting dark - so we enjoyed seeing the lights over the canals...who would have thought we'd be walking around Amsterdam at night with 4 kids. I don't think we were too close to the Red Light District?!?

Saturday we went on a canal tour, what a great way to see Amsterdam - and learn about its history too. One fact that I learned was that the reason the houses are so tall and narrow is because they were taxed on how wide the house was - so the narrower - the less taxes.

On the boat...


The canal tour was great - but hard to capture everything on camera - you'll have to just visit Amsterdam yourselves!

And last but not least - a picture of the kids at TUN FUN - they went there on Saturday afternoon while Jeremy and I hit one more museum (The Dutch Resistance Museum). The kids had a TUN OF FUN - and we enjoyed ourselves reading and seeing history on WWII.

going down the big SLIDE!!!!!!!