Happy Birthday Hailee

Hailee has been looking forward to her birthday. When we found out we would be spending another few months in Germany she was a little disappointed to not be able to spend her birthday with her friends. But as soon as she found out she got to be in Venice on her birthday she was excited. When I explained to her that Venice didn't have any roads only canals she was even more excited. Thankfully Venice did not disappoint and our little girl had a truly magical birthday weekend staying in a palace and enjoying everything about Venice.

I'll post more about our time there but I just wanted to write a little something about Hailee. She has been a big blessing in our family. She is sweet, caring, and the best girl in the world. She is the best big sister, the best daughter, and the best girl. Her brother absolutely adores her and always wants to play with her. Every day when we picked her up from the bus James would jump out of his stroller and run to give her the biggest hug.

Hailee is also growing up to be the biggest girl. Her dad has been teasing her that when she turned seven that she was going to be an 'old' girl and her whiskers were going to start coming in. To which she always responded "Oh dad, girls don't get whiskers." She didn't have any whiskers come in, but she is getting to be an 'old' girl in the sense that she is becoming more and more responsible. I can trust her to get things done and to do things without being told.  She is also getting big enough she doesn't need mom's help for things any more. Every year it seems she does more and more on her own, sometimes she is just growing up too fast. I sometimes still miss the little girl she was, but then all I have to do is look at the girl she is becoming and I am so happy. It is fun to watch her grow and become a beautiful little girl.

We are all so happy to have her in our family, she has a very special place in all of our hearts.  None of us would know what to do without her.

Catching Up

Since I lost my camera I won't have any pictures for this post, but there have been a few funny things that have happened that I want to remember. So down they go on the blog.  This really is just for our little family history and since I have a few minutes before our trip this weekend I want to just get them down quickly.

Soccer Family
On Saturday as part of our day we went down to the Adidas outlet. Before moving to Germany I had no idea that Adidas was actually a German company. We were enjoying our time there looking around and finding some fun things. Once we got back in the car Hailee exclaimed,"We're a soccer family!" We really are. We came home and enjoyed watching the Champions League final between Manchester United and Barcelona. It was a great game and in the end our favorite team one (sorry Jonathon). We let Hailee stay up and watch it and she was in heaven.

We also just got tickets to go to the Women's World Cup to watch the US Women team play. We can't wait. Hailee is really looking forward to watching the girls play. The last women's world cup she was just three years old, and she loved watching it then as well. I remember at one point a Brazilian had missed her penalty kick and Hailee was so sad with her. She said, "Oh she needs a hug from her mom, where is her mom?" We are all beyond thrilled to get to go to a US match.

Hailee has also started going to a soccer club here by our house. She is the only girl there (originally we thought it was just a girls teams) and was a little hesitant in the first practice, but she is really enjoying going.

Soccer Shirt
I'm not sure why either of my children has never really gotten attached to a blanket or stuffed animal when they were younger. With Hailee she liked to cuddle with my arm. James has decided his soccer shirt is his favorite thing. My mom gave James a soccer outfit for Christmas last year. Since we moved James has decided that he must wear that shirt every day. This proves to be a little problematic since he isn't the neatest of little guys. In fact he is quite a little mess sometimes.I have learned to appreciate the Tide-to-go pens. They really are magical.

We have gotten him a few other soccer shirts, which he will wear, but his favorite is still his white soccer shirt. I'm not sure what we're going to do when he grows out of it.

James and Potty training
James is doing phenomenal in the potty-training department. It really didn't take long for him to catch on at all. The only problem we have now is getting to the potty on time. At home he's great, it's just when we're out and about and the bathroom is too far away we run into problems. I still am keeping him in pull-ups when we go out for this reason.

We recently ran into a little bit of a problem at Hailee's soccer practice. He wanted to be out playing on the field. At one point when I was trying to find the right place for us, he stripped off his jacket and ran on to the field playing with kids that were 7 years older than him. he wasn't bothered at all by the size difference he just wanted to play. Once we found the right field and Hailee ran off to play he just about lost it. He kept trying to take off his jacket (it was a little cold that day) and run on to the field with the other kids. Afterall he had his soccer shirt on and he was ready to go. For some reason he felt that if his jacket was off he could play with the big kids.

At one point he needed to go to the bathroom so as soon as he told me I scooped him up and started heading towards the club house. He quickly said "Run!" We unfortunately didn't make it in time. He was just a little wet and I forgot to bring an extra pull-up with me. This turned out to be a problem a little later as he was tired and cranky that I wouldn't let him run out and play. As soon as I would stop him and bring him back he would get a little cranky and yell at the top of his lungs "I STINKY...I STINKY!"  Yes I felt like the mother of the year. But he survived not playing soccer, stinky pants and all. Thankfully we only had about 20 minutes left to wait it out.

Driving
I have a love/hate relationship with driving in Germany. Up to this point I haven't really driven at all.. But in our new place there are just something that are easier with a car. This last week I've had the car more often than I have in the past. While I LOVE driving our Audi around I don't love driving around town in Germany. I'm getting used to it, but the lanes are narrow. They are constantly changing from a one lane two two lanes and back to one again with no clear warning. The auto-bahn is another story. Once you get out of the city it's a lovely experience. I'm going to have a hard time going back to speed limits. I still love to take the train and for little errands that is still my preferred method of transportation., but I am enjoying learning my way around. Driving has helped me get my bearings a little better than when I was just taking a train.

One of the really nice thing about Germany is the rental cars. So far we have had a VW, a BMW, and an AUDI. So now all we need to try is the Mercedes and we'll have all the major German car companies. So far our favorites have been the Audi and VW. Todd told me to enjoy the summer because we will be keeping our Camry for the next little.

Potty Trained

James has been trying to convince me he was ready to be potty-trained for the last month or so. I quite honestly kept trying to convince him that he wasn't ready and wished he would just be happy to wear diapers. Since I wouldn't take him out of diapers he decided to take matters into his own hands. For a week straight he would take off his diaper after every time he went to the bathroom. Now this wasn't so bad when it was just pee (although we were going through so many diapers than we were before), where we ran into problems was after he pooped. The all to frequent call of "I'm stinky" had me running to see what mess I would find. Thankfully it was never too horrible, but after a week or so of this I was ready to begin potty training him. We found a little green potty at IKEA and started the process.

James was in heaven. The first time he went to the bathroom on the potty and we all cheered he said "call daddy!" Of course we had to share the good news with daddy. We took a few days of just getting used to the potty before we got serious about the full effort.

When the time finally came around it started out rather rough. He had FOUR accidents in a matter of TWO hours. I couldn't believe how much that kid could hold in. The day ended better with going potty on his own three times. He even told me when we had gone out to dinner and he had a pull-up on. He asked to go potty and he made it without an accident.

After that he was a pro. He had only one accident the next day (totally my fault because I was in the shower, he came and told me, but I didn't make it out in time). And has been going strong ever since. Even on the weekend when we dragged him all over. He always let me know when he needed to go. He is even pretty good about holding it until we can find a potty.

The only major thing we need to work on is his language skills. He is doing much better at talking, but when he needs to go to the bathroom he just starts pulling down his pants. This proves to be a little problematic when we are in public places. He just loves being a big boy.

Moving

The only sadness we had when we found out we were staying in Munich a few more months was that we would have to find a new place to live. Our current landlords had already found a new renter and couldn't get out of their contract (which they tried to do). It was a little stressful, but a little easier than last time since we knew the area a little better. The most challenging part is finding a place that will let us have kids. We figured this out the first time we were looking. We didn't want to have anything too far away from Todd's work and yet we still wanted to be close to public transportation.

We were excited when we found a place that is both close to Todd's work (less than 15 minutes even in 'rush hour' traffic) and a two minute walk to a tram line that takes us right down town in a matter of minutes. It didn't hurt either when Todd came to look at it and realized we were litterally right around the corner from the FC Bayern Munchen training facility. Before I had seen it, I liked to tease Todd that it was probably a terrible apartment in a 'great location.' But once we moved it I have fallen in love with the place. There are so many great windows as well as complete privacy (which is nice since James likes to streak around at times). We are also a block from a place where Hailee and James can take swimming lessons, gymnastic lessons, and other sports classes. The only drawback is we don't have a grocery store really close, but with a bakery a block away where you can get chocolate croissants and amazing pretzles, there isn't much to complain about. If we run out of food we can always enjoy the bakery.

Overall it's been a good move. We still miss the people we met in our last place, but we have really started enjoying our new surroundings in Munich. Plus we get the chance to learn another part of the city that is pretty fun.

Below are pictures of the kids sporting their new Bayern Munich uniforms. They were both thrilled to get new jersey's. I was thrilled to have another shirt for James to wear. For the last week and a half  he would only wear his 'soccer' shirt my mom had given him for Christmas. Now we at least have two soccer shirts to rotate.

Last Saturday we had to go to the training facility to check it out. Their younger squad (they looked to be about high school age) were playing a game. Todd, Hailee and James were thrilled to watch. We were unfortunately wearing the wrong colors, Hailee and James were both wearing blue like the other team.

James watching in his 'soccer' shirt.

Hofbräuhaus München

For Matt's last night in Munich we went to the Hofbräuhaus downtown for some authentic Bavarian food. They also have a lot of beer there since it's the original brewery of the King of Bavaria. It was also the location where the Nazi party was organized, but that wasn't mentioned on the menu with the rest of the history of the place.

I'm pretty sure that if there was every a place where the men's restroom line could be longer than the women's, this would be the place. There were a whole lot of men drinking a whole lot of beer. Their beer cups hold 1 liter at a time. I was amazed to watch the waiters there. They can carry 12 beer steins at a time. That is about 3.17 gallons of liquid, not to mention the heavy glass steins they use to serve it.

James really enjoyed his fanta and Hailee really enjoyed coloring her picture they gave her to color. Overall the kids did pretty good there. Thankfully it's a noisy place anyway so when James got a little noisy at the end, he wasn't making the most noise. 

The food was really good as well. Here are Todd and Matt enjoying their apple strudel to finish off the meal. We couldn't let Matt come to Bavaria and not have a taste of Bavairan food.

Just because...

James couldn't let Matt go home without some kind of crazy excitement, he decided to fall on the corner of the coffee table. He cried for a bit, but he was more upset that I was trying to stop it from bleeding. It was the first time he had gotten a bump like this that actually broke the skin as well. Thankfully it didn't require stitches or an ER visit (I still need to find out where the hospital is, at this point I'm just testing fate). Once I let him get down and run around he was fine. I decided to show him in the mirror what had happened to him (hopefully thinking it would make him a little more careful). I wish I would have taken my camera to take a picture of his reaction. He was thrilled! Actually thrilled and proud to see the huge bump on his head.

It is looking much better now, but he still has a pretty good size bruise on his head. I don't think I'll be able to ever get a picture of him without a bruise on his head.

Vienna

 While Matt was here we decided to take a weekend trip to Vienna. When Todd got back to work and told people what we had done they were shocked. Two of the guys in the group had never even been to Vienna because it is so far away. It is just over 4 hours from our house, so not far at all, but there was more to see than we had time for in one weekend. I wouldn't mind going back at all.

Just before this trip we found out we were going to be staying in Germany longer than originally planned. This brought on several challenges all at once. We had to apply for a work Visa for Todd and family visas for the kids and I (which required a lot of paperwork and getting documents that we had left in the US). We also had to find a new place to live, as our current landlords already had some one moving in right after we were suppose to have gone back to the US. Unfortunately for our trip to Austria, this meant the time I would have spent researching the area went to sorting out a few things for stay. We did manage to get a hotel before getting on the road to go.

The first place we saw when driving into town was the Schloß Schönbrunn. As we had nothing planned out, we decided to stop and check it out. It was well worth the stop. It was the summer home to the Royal family, the Versailles of Austria. We popped in for an audio tour of the castle. Hailee was thrilled to see where Sisi, a Bavarian princess who married the Austrian Emperor, live for a time. It was actually quite fun to see a place without doing any research on it. It was fun to just listen to the tour and see what history we could learn. The best room we went into was where the young Mozart came and played for the King and Queen. I've heard that story so many times, but never put this palace and the story together. The best part was when I heard it on the audio handset I turned to look at Hailee. She was just a few seconds behind me and her face, when she heard that this was in fact the room where Mozart had played, was absolutely classic. She was as thrilled as I was. 

The palace grounds were absolutely beautiful as well. Todd and I have decided that we need to have one of these tree lined trellises in our house one day. We've seen several around Bavaria and Austria, but this one was our favorite. The purple flowers hanging down were not only beautiful, but smelled absolutely divine.

I liked to tease Matt that he was my official photographer. I made sure to take pictures of the people, but I left all the landscape and architecture to him. The only problem was that he was so busy taking pictures (I believe he took over 1,200) that I had a hard time getting pictures of him. The kids absolutely loved having him come for a visit. Hailee was just three years old when she had last seen Matt, but I was amazed how quickly they took to him. From day one James became his best friend and I'm afraid that the kids were about to drive him crazy with attention. It's a good thing he has so many nieces and nephews, so he was used to kids mauling him with attention.

Hailee in front of St. Charles church.

The next turned out to be freezing. We started our little tour at St. Charles church, but quickly realized the kids weren't going to last long in the cold. Since we didn't know where we were going we decided to find a place where the kids could get warm. The best place we could find was McDonalds. The kids could get warm and Matt and Todd went to check a few things out.

I still can't believe how nice McDonalds is here. This is a view of the ceiling. It was in a beautiful building and they kept it beautiful on the inside. At least they make them a little nicer here than they do in the US. The other nice thing was they have free wi-fi so I could catch up on my Austrian history while we waited for the kids to warm up and the boys to get back.

Todd started feeling a little sick and James needed a nap so we got the car and parked in a garage a little closer to St. Stephen's Cathedral and let them both rest. Matt continued to look around when I took food back to the car. While we were eating a huge rain storm came along (so I'm 3 for 3 that it rains in Austria every time I visit). Matt got stuck in it, but for once I stayed fairly dry in Austria. In fact I didn't even know it was raining. After lunch and the kids and I went to a park across from where we parked and was surprised to see the aftermath of what looked like a pretty bad storm. There were tree branches everywhere, but the beer garden (as the park turned out to be) was still packed with people enjoying a little drink. Right after the storm passed the sun came out and things were drying out, but leave it to my children to find a puddle to jump in. They had fun splashing around the beer garden park.

It was a fun quick weekend and we didn't get to see everything, but I can't wait to see Matt's pictures. I'm afraid my book this year might have to be split up. I'm not sure 450 pages will be enough.