Every season I say "Oh my God this is the most beautiful season in Germany!" It's just a gorgeous place year round I guess. Spring has finally hit and trees are budding out all over, flowers every where, the birds are singing from sun up to sun down. I love it. There are cherry trees and some other white blooming tree (Dogwood I am thinking) dotting the hillsides all over. It's so pretty to see the green pastures with the light green trees starting to grow in and then little spots of white mixed in there from the other trees. I took some pictures of the blooms in my yard today, I'm so excited to be here to see things come up all over the place this spring. Last year we moved in June 1st and missed a lot of it.
This other album is some random pics of Colin and the bunny enjoying the warm sunshine outside in the yard. Colin loves helping Daddy move the cars. He knows exactly where the keys go and then will turn on the lights and play with the shifter. He had fun today swapping cars around in the driveway and helping us clean out my car.
Boys, boys, boys. Today Colin was running up the sidewalk to the house and tripped right before he got to the stairs. He went flying, face first, into the stairs and took the corner of a stair right to the forehead/eye. I was working but Shelby was home with Colin when it happened. He said it was ugly so off to the ER they went. At the ER they were turned around because the hospital was being evacuated for a bomb threat. That is the only military hospital in the area so when that was a bust Shelby had to try to call the insurance to get authorization to go to the German Krankenhaus (hospital). With busy phone lines and no one answering it was faster for him to just drive to the insurance office and get the authorization in person. Once he had the papers he was off to the German hospital to try to get the poor kid examined. The docs gave him the ok after their exam and thankfully he appears to be ok. He has been very wobbly and off balance here and there, we are thinking he may have a small concussion as dizzy spells are a symptom. Shelby is off Thursday & Friday so we'll keep a good eye on him. He woke up from his nap a little more bruised and swollen than he was in the pictures in the album. He's gonna be black and blue for a week or two from this one :(
Colin was home with Shelby today and they had all kinds of fun. They played outside this morning and then came in for a little break. Colin helped Daddy clean the living room up, they took a walk to the glass recycle and stopped off at the playground on the way back home. Later after I got home we took another walk and when we got to the intersection on our street we had to stop and wait for a herd of sheep to run by! lol
Shelby is so good at taking lots of pics and videos when he has Colin.
Friday we had to get the yard mowed and ready for the big BBQ on Saturday. Colin was very interested in what Shelby was doing while watching him with the weedeater. When that part was done and Shelby was ready to mow I took Colin outside with his mower and he was in heaven. He followed Shelby all over the yard pushing his little mower along side. He was so funny because he had to go in the same direction as Shelby. No matter where Colin was, when Shelby got to the end of the yard and was ready to turn around Coling would frantically turn his little mower so that he could be mowing in the same direction as Shelby.
The yard is looking really good now. All the trees are budding out and things are growing and popping up everywhere. The flower bed garden is all planted and cleaned out now and the wildflower garden is starting to show signs of various things growing in. The BBQ went well, the weather was gorgeous. Shelby and his friend/coworker were up at 6am getting all the meat (ribs, chicken, pork roasts) ready to go on the smokers and grill. Skylar brought along his dog Bailey, the Boxer we puppy sat for over New Years. Colin was super excited to wake up and see a dog downstairs, even more excited to see the guys were going outside so early and he was ready to go with them. He was begging for outside all morning long. There were lots of kids running around and a bouncy house thing in the yard so he was wore out by the time bedtime rolled around.
(We did have a blast at the park today on base before the commissary but I left my camera in the car (duh) and was not about to drag the poor kid kicking and screaming away from the playground to get it. So no pics from today. Good news is I think we are hitting up the gartenshau tomorrow for some flowers and more park fun. I'll remember to take my camera for sure!)
UPDATE!! OK... so here's some redemption. This is what happens after a fun day at the park :)
I also tried to take pictures of my eye but they turned out like mug shots and I'm not posting them for the world to see. What happened to my eye you ask? My darling son heaved a truck at my face and nailed me in just the right spot. Cross your fingers I'm not sporting a black eye for the big squadron family fun day BBQ that's at my house on Saturday....grrr! No time out was necessary as me bursting into tears was punishment enough. He frantically called "mommy" about 50 times as he patted my arm and hugged me, I think I scared the crap out of him. Eye for an eye (no pun intended) as the truck flying at my face scared the crap out of me!
This weekend kicked off my spring break. I worked late Thursday and got the last of my school work done and submitted. All I have to do now is countdown the 10 days I have left of student teaching and wait for my diploma to arrive in the mail! I can't believe it's almost over. I had Friday off and the first thing I did was sleep in! Shelby worked a mid so he slept for a few hours in the morning when he got home and after he got up we headed to the store for plants. One of the big projects on my spring break to do list was to get the vegetable garden planted, the yard cleaned up some and the flower gardens cleaned out and planted. Friday I planted the new flowers I bought, along with some seeds and bulbs. We cleaned about half the weeds out of the big flower garden in the back yard and planted some gardenia bushes in the front yard. After that we planted the vegetable seeds in the garden, staked all the rows and covered the area between the rows with straw. Saturday we did some more weeding in the big flower bed in the backyard and mulched it, cleared an area in the back for grapes, pumpkins and gourds and planted those too. Believe it or not I did not take any pictures of the work we did, but Shelby did snap a few today. He was hoping the sun would come out today so he could go get better shots, but for now this is all we got...
Today the weather was cooler and cloudy so we didn't do any gardening. An old friend Shelby worked with in Tucson was passing through Ramstein on his way downrange so we met him for lunch and caught up. Of course when we got close to the planes on base Colin went nuts
Since I am home for spring break I decided it's finally time to kick the bottle habit with Colin. Once he hit 12 months I started giving him a bottle only at nap and bed time and it's been that way ever since. He was not really attached to the his bottle and I was never worried about weaning him off of it. I almost decided to give it up about 2-3 months ago and changed my mind. I knew it was a good time because he wasn't attached and when I ran out of formula for a day or two he didn't even care that he didn't get a bottle. Then he got diarrhea from teething and I was worried about him not eating right and dehydrating so I started back on the bottle thinking I would just do it until the teething runs were gone. And here we are...lol. In the last month he has really taken a liking to his "buh-buh" and happily runs to his crib and climbs to get in when he sees the bottle in my hand. Nap time today never did happen, he cried and threw a fit for a while, then gave up and sang in there to himself for over an hour. He played for a long time before starting to cry again for me to come get him, since it was getting late I didn't want him to nap then anyway for fear it might ruin bedtime. So come bedtime I knew he was tired because he didn't nap. We got his PJs on, read a story and I sat him in his crib, he looked around and saw there was no bottle in there waiting for him and he wailed. Poor guy. He was MAD. It took him about 15 minutes of screaming before he wore out and went down. I feel so bad. I know he can't be 4 and still have a bottle at night, but is it really so bad for him to have one now? At four I can explain to him why he can't have one, at this age he just looks at me like I'm torturing him and he's totally confused about why all of a sudden Momma fails to provide one of life's little pleasures. Hopefully it gets easier each day, I feel so bad for the little guy. Here he is this weekend after making a mess with his drink and meal and being dirty as can be...
Happy Easter...same thing. Shelby worked again so Colin and I slept in some and hung out this morning. We made deviled eggs and strawberry pretzel salad to have with dinner later on and played the rest of the day. It rained off and on so we weren't able to get outside much, which was upsetting for Colin. After dinner the weather had cleared up enough to go outside and finally hunt some eggs, Colin had fun with it. He found all the eggs and was very excited to be out and running around. We didn't do an Easter basket this year because he doesn't understand it anyway and he gets plenty of candy as it is. He has a couple gummi bears and 2-3 M&Ms every day, more when he sneaks into the kitchen, uses his four wheeler as a ladder, and steals a handfull from the candy basket on the island. Sorry the pics are not the greatest, it was almost dark so the lighting was lousy and he refused to look at me...turkey!
Shelby had to work so, against my better judgement, I took Colin to the base Easter egg hunt. I knew it would be packed and there would be plenty of obnoxious parents who don't want to follow the rules and end up setting horrible examples for everyone's kids. It was packed but it started at 11, we arrived promptly at 10:55, made our way to the 0-2 year old section and didn't have to wait at all since they opened the gate right as we walked up. Unlike most of the idiot parents there, I took Colin to the far end of the area instead of stopping at the first egg on the ground right in front of the gate with a herd of people trying to squeeze in. We managed to get 4 eggs before they were all snatched up and Colin was super excited about them. Mission accomplished. Once the eggs were gone in his age group area we went right back to the car and got the heck out of there. I parked at 10:55 and was back in the car by 11:15, we got in, hunted eggs and we were out....toooooo many people and it was muddy from all the rain we've had.
After the egg hunt we went and got McDonald's for lunch and went up to the tower to visit Shelby. Colin is SUPER into airplanes right now in case you forget. Before we even drove across the runway to get to the tower he spotted them parked on the ramp and started going nuts. When we parked at the tower there was a KC-135 that was running their engine pretty close to the runway and he about went out of his mind. He was so excited. He was hilarious in the tower running around and looking out the windows and shouting "airplane" over and over again. He had one of the phones in his hand chattering away on it and pointing to the planes. Future controller perhaps. He had a ball and slept good when we got home.
I'm a mom to three boys, a furry Boxer kid and two crazy black cats. I'm caring, loving, stubborn and passionate. I'm a Capricorn and a Florida Gator. I have a Bachelors in Elementary Education and a Masters in Early Childhood Education. I'm a born teacher. I've traveled the world and lived in 8 different cities in 4 different countries over the last 13 years. Germany stole my heart and I can't wait to move back. Now living on the island of Guam in the Pacific, I get to call an island paradise where most people only vacation my home.
