Happy Halloween!

Halloween

We took Colin on base to go trick or treating for the first time. He had so much fun running around and checking out all the kids and decorations. He only went to maybe 5 or 6 houses but he ran up and down the road wearing himself out, which made me very happy! He had a few little pieces of candy in his little banana peel treat bag at the end of the night. Shel dressed up in his chicken suit to go trick or treating with Colin. At first Colin wasn't so sure he liked his Daddy in that funny chicken costume, but he got over it and let Shelby hold and carry him around.

Today I ran upstairs to go put some stuff away and when I was up there I could hear Colin downstairs laughing hysterically. When I came back down he had broken into the coat closet and taken the wooden stick that we use to "lock" the door from sliding open. The doors slide and we keep them locked so Colin can't get in there and throw the closet contents all over the house. He had taken out the stick and was running around the room very proud of his mischeif. Kalia was chasing him and playing by trying to steal the stick from him. This went on for a while before he got tired of the game. Here is the video I took...

Monkey on the Loose!

Monkey on the loose

Yesterday I took Colin to the pumpkin farm in his costume to take some pictures. He loves to play with pumpkins and leaves and had a blast running around checking stuff out. Of course he was far less interested in looking at me when he had all that other fun stuff to check out. I thought it would be a good practice run for Halloween in his costume to see how he would act in it. He could have cared less about the costume, however I cannot say the same for the litte dog that lives at the pumpkin farm. The dog was apparently afraid of monkeys and barked at Colin. Colin, used to his own bad dogs, wasted no time yelling at it like he helps mommy do when our dogs bark, lol.

Wednesday Wonder

As in I wonder what in the hell he was thinking! LOL
Colin was full of cuteness and picture opportunities today. This is the dog bowl stand, their metal bowls sit down in the openings. Colin took the bowls out and played with them for a bit and then decided to climb inside the hole and play. When he got stuck, he got mad and then fell over and I tried not to laugh at him as I rescued him.

Wordless Wednesday

Craft Weekend

This weekend I got to leave the boys behind and go scrapbook. I haven't touched an album in close to two years between moves and everything else, so poor Colin's album was still in the box! I went all day Saturday and all day Sunday and got so many pages done. Colin had a great time with his Daddy, they played outside and cleaned up the yard, went swimming, went to the store, had lunch out together, and Colin even went to work with Shelby for a little bit.









The weather last weekend was amazing, sunny and gorgeous. Two weeks ago we had a very cold snap, followed by some rain and when all that cleared out the leaves were incredible. Everything that hadn't turned colors yet has now and it's beautiful. I will try to take some pictures. I'm holding out for sunnier weather.



I included a couple pics of the pages I did, you can click on them to make the image bigger. :) It was so nice to get a whole weekend of nothing but scrapping and to get some real progress made on Colin's baby album.

Wordless Wednesday

Bumps and Bruises

Now that we are walking this kid is one giant bruise! I'm so glad that we got good one year pics before all this and that he heals fast! These are from last week and I forgot they were on my camera. They arent the greatest of pics but you can see just how beat up the poor kid is :(
**Tip if you click on the picture it will open up larger in a new window.



Note his right eye and black and blue, his left eye has a healing scratch on it, his forehead has a bump and bruise and up near his hairline is another scratch and healing bump!

The Tradition Continues

Colin and Daddy's "thing" is to visit the Hooters around the globe and they made another stop here in Germany :)

Here is Colin at 3 weeks old at the Hooters in Atlanta


And here is Colin at 7 months old at Hooters Seoul


And here is Colin Saturday at Hooters Neunkirchen

Gartenschau

Gartenschau Fall 09

Today we went to the Gartenschau Park in Kaiserslautern. It's right in K-Town, is a great park to take Colin to and it's gorgeous. It only costs a couple Euro to get in and there are several cool playgrounds, mini golf, food pavillion, beatiful flower gardens and huge life sized dinosaurs all around the park. Each season the gardens are redone with incredible flower displays. For fall they have a big Kurbis (pumpkin) festival and decorate the park with pumpkin displays. This is what we went to see today. Colin loves pumpkins and had a ball checking everything out. He loved being able to run around with his awesome monkey leash backpack from his Auntie Doo-Da. They made all kinds of amazing things with the pumpkins. Once again it was definitely worth the time to go check out, I love this place!

Poo Poo

While Colin was in the bath tonite I was getting his jammies all laid out and ready and also putting away some laundry in his room. I was listening to him splash and play so I knew he was ok in there. When I returned to the bathroom I found poop everywhere. He had pooped in the tub and then decided to play with his little presents. He smeared poop all over the tile and tub and when I walked in he beamed a huge smile at me and held up his little toy boat to show me his work. He had been fishing little turdlets out of the water and loading up his toy boat. YUCK! He was very proud of his work though. For a split second I contemplated photographing the scene but then decided that 1. I should probably remove the kid from the crappy tub stat, and 2. only a mother would appreciate pictures of their kid playing with poop. So I scooped him up and off to the shower we went to hose down and soap up. Then, as if the situation could be any more, for lack of a better word, comical...he starts saying "poopoo" "poopoo" while he's in the shower. He has never said it before and it was a total fluke I'm sure. However, his timing was impeccable and I couldn't help but laugh.

Wordless Wednesday

Family Pics

Pro Family Pics

Back in August I had my photographer friend Kelly do our family pictures and pics of Colin for his first birthday. I'm finally getting them up here to share now :) Colin has already changed and grown some more since these were taken. Enjoy!

Weekend Getaway

Heidelberg & Nurnberg Weekend

Friday morning we headed over to spend the weekend in Heidelberg. Shelby had three days off and it was our eight year anniversary so we decided to get away for a few days. After checking into the hotel we headed downtown. Heidelberg is one of a few cities that were not leveled by the air raids during WWII. It's a big university town that sits on the Neckar River. Before we could do anything we had to find parking, which was not easy in the Jeep. We drove the Jeep instead of the Durango because we were going to head over to a 4x4 park on Saturday to go offroading. The Jeep is too high to fit in any of the parking garages so we had to try to find street parking, which had us driving in circles for a while but eventually we lucked up.

First thing we did was head over to Heidelberger Schloss (that's German for Heidelberg Castle). It is huge and gorgeous! It was built around 1214 and since then it has survived two lightning strikes that caused fires, wars and other deconstruction and rebuilding efforts. The grounds and the view were especially pretty with all the colored fall leaves on the trees. We walked around the grounds and did a self guided tour where you listen to information on these funny looking phone things. After touring the castle and seeing more of the city part of Heidelberg we ate dinner at a German restaurant. We had potato salmon soup and stuffed mushrooms for appetizers, Colin LOVED the mushrooms. I had Rinderfilet Madagaskar (steak with a pepper cream sauce) and Shelby had some venison dish with sauce on top. Mmmmmm!

Saturday we discovered that the 4x4 park was a lot further than Shelby thought it was. It turned out to be 2.5 hours from Heidelberg. We decided to go anyway because it was raining outside and walking around the city with Colin in the rain wasn't the best idea. When we finally got there the stupid place was closed! Apparently some company had paid a ton of money to rent the place for the entire day and it was closed to the public. Shelby tried telling them we came from Ramstein which was 4 hours away but they didn't seem to care. SO we drove all that way in the gas guzzling Jeep and burned up a ton of Shel's gas rations for nothing! :(

Since the offroad park was a bust we went to Nurnberg. It is another interesting city with stuff to see and is a known toy capital for Germany. We went through the Handwerkhof and saw a bunch of hand crafted toys, pewter sculptures and wood stuff. It was all very neat. Then we went to the Nurnberg Toy Museum which sounded cool in the guide book I bought for the town. There was a play area for kids and we thought there would be a bunch of fun stuff for Colin to see there. This too turned out to be a big bust. The museum was three floors worth of antique toys that were all behind glass. Toys back in the day were ugly and boring! It looked like a flea market, lol. There wasn't anything interactive to catch Colin's interest. The play area was a room with a bunch of toys and games for kids to play, not quite the playground area we were hoping for. Colin didn't seem to mind though and took advantage of the opportunity to run around and burn off a little energy after being stuck in the car all day. After grabbing a bite to eat we set off for the three hour ride back to Heidelberg.

Sunday morning we packed up and visited a bazaar on one of the bases in Heidelberg. There was a bunch of neat stuff there and I was able to get my flu shot without having to go sit forever at the stupid immunization clinic...score! LOL. We got some delicious Italian wine, a handstitched suede coin purse for my Euro, and a few other things. Then it was time to head back home. We took a different route than we did when we came over and it was so pretty. I love all the fall leaves on the trees and the colors all over the mountains.

PS

Today I added more pics to the Colin & Kalia album from yesterday's post. If you read the post yesterday check the album again for some more :)

Puppy Play & Misc

What happened to last week? I just realized I haven't posted since last weekend, man this last week went by fast. Shel had Friday and Saturday off so we had a sitter Thursday night and went out. Friday we went shopping for building supplies so Shelby could build us a trash can cover. Over here you have to recycle everything and you have to have three trash cans to separate it all out. Trying to keep Colin out of one trash can is a pain in the butt, trying to keep him out of three...impossible! So we researched one big trash can with different compartments but what we found was insanely expensive and unable to be shipped from the UK to Germany. Solution...build our own. So Shelby built a very nice trash can cover and then immediately sold it. LOL. Yes he listed it for sale and right away had a lot of interest so now he's building more to sell. Here is a picture of the first model...which has already been improved upon.




Saturday we took a long walk with the dogs. The leaves are all turning here and the weather is definitely cooler now, it's gorgeous! Speaking of the dogs, Colin LOVES his dogs, Kalia especially. He makes a beeline for the dog bed every chance he gets and laughs as he rolls around in there with the pups. Over the last few day I took a couple different shots of them together. They are so sweet!

Colin & Kalia