Our day at the camp

Well, we had a great day up at Jim and PK's camp for Gracie's birthday. The biggest news of the day ......Owen is sitting up on his own, FINALLY.

He isn't great at it but he can stay there for quite a while and play before toppling over. He isn't too crazy about it yet though, he is always pretty happy when he falls and he can go back to rolling.



Maggie had so much fun playing with all of her cousins.




This was the first time I had been to the camp and it is much more than a camp....more like a log cabin in the woods. I could even get used to that kind of "roughing it". The kids did surprisingly well for not having any naps.

Maggie had her fair share of cake, chips, and ice cream and she and Grandad were especially happy when Aunt Pat came in with her delicious chocolate chip cookies.




We all had alot of fun hanging out together. I wish we were all able to live closer so that we could do that more often. Maybe someday, but I guess for now we'll just have to settle for the times we are able able to meet up.

Nothing New

We are down to 1 week left here in WV to visit and like always it went by too quickly. This week we went to get the kids easter pictures done at the picture people and they turned out really cute. Maggie did great for the first time in months. Be watching for your pictures in the mail soon everyone!! I also hit the mall this week (alone!!) to cash in my gymbucks and add to my kids ever growing closets. Owen still isn't feeling that great, his cold is gone but he is just alot more fussy than his usual self. We are going to Lexington, KY on monday to see my friend Neila-Susan who is a pediatric nurse practitioner so I am anxious to have her give him a good check up and make sure his ears aren't infected or anything. We are also going to meet up with Matt for dinner while in lexington so the kids will be glad to see their Uncle Matt again before we leave. Thursday evening we had dinner at a mexican restaurant here with Mama Sue and Papa Whitey. Maggie had a great time with her Papa Whitey and they ended the evening with ice cream. Today we are going up to my uncle Jim's camp for my cousin Gracie's birthday party. Unfortunatley it's pretty rainy outside so we won't be able to get outside much but with everyone there it will still be a blast. Maggie has talked all day about getting to see Gracie again so she is super excited. I have missed Illinois alot this week, even more so after hearing that the playgroup girls had a mom's night on thursday! I am sure I will miss everyone even more after getting to Germany so you guys....PLEASE KEEP IN TOUCH!! I just found out that I am going to be able to get a US phone number while we are over there so that was good news since people here can still call us as though we live in the US and not have to deal with all the international stuff. I will let you all know it once I find out what it is. Joe called and our stuff is being delievered to the new house on tuesday so it will all be there when we arrive on friday. Maggie is missing her daddy alot and will be so glad to see him . But when she says she misses her daddy she always tells me that she misses her slide and her dora house too. (she knows that they are also in germany with daddy) well, we are about to leave so I will post pictures later.

Keepin' Busy

We had a fun time at Lori and JR's Saturday night and Lori's meal was DELICIOUS! Maggie had a blast with TJ on his trampoline and neither of them seemed to mind that it was freezing outside. It was good to get to visit with everyone and I was so glad that Jim, Pat and Frank also came over so that we could spend a little time with them. Owen enjoyed most of his evening being held and especially took to JR. Friday night I got invited last minute to go out to eat with some friend's for a birthday party and ended up getting to see quite a few friends from high school that I hadn't seen in years, so that was a lot of fun. We have been keeping busy visiting quite a bit and running some errands/shopping that need to be done before heading to Germany. Joe and I keep missing each other. The 6 hour time difference makes it difficult to connect up since the time that is best for him to talk is the middle of our day when we seem to be out. And then the evening when I have time to sit and talk is the middle of the night for him. I am hoping to hook up with him tommorow sometime so we can catch up on everything. From our bried conversations and emails things seem to be going well although he is very anxious for us to get there with him. He found out that in April he has a 4 day weekend at easter so we are hoping to take a weekend trip somewhere fun while mom is there so she can do some sightseeing too while she is there. Maggie is eating life up here at MiMI and Grandad's as you can see. She knows how to push all the right buttons and get an extra helping of cheese puffs or cookies!

Happy St. Patricks Day!!

We have enjoyed our first week here in West Virginia. Maggie and I have gotten over our cold/cough symptoms but Owen can't seem to get rid of his for some reason. We haven't gotten to visit much this week with Owen being sick, Patti K is in Europe so we will be glad for her to get home, lori and TJ have been sick too this week and Owen naps so much that everytime we think we're going to go somwhere he's fallen asleep again. Maggie has enjoyed going walking at the cemetary with MiMi everyday. They talked Owen and I into going one day but we didn't enjoy it as much as they do, too many hills! Today we all went out to Target and shopped a little before eating lunch at panera bread. The kids looked so cute in their St. Patricks Day outfits although I wasn't able to get a great picture of them. Mom informed me that amanda and I never had "leprochan outfits" when we were little. Hahaha. I found an old big wheel of mine up in the attic this week and let maggie try it out but she wasn't able to peddle very well and got so mad at herself that we just decided to come back inside. About an hour later a neighbor of mom and dad's brings over this brand new red rider tricycle in the box with the pole on the back so you can push your kid and said that maggie could have it, her little girl had outgrown it before they even got it out of the box. Dad put it together but it hasn't been warm enough yet to let her try it out. She will love it!! I wish we had gotten it sooner so we couldv'e taken it to germany with us but she'll just have to keep it at MiMi and Grandad's to play with when she visits. Mom has tons of toys here for the kids to play with, lots of amanda and I's when we were little and she's also picked up various new toys since maggie came along. Buy of all the toys Owen's favorite thing to play with is mom's back roller!! Figures. Tommorow we are going to have dinner at Lori and JR's house. Maggie will love playing with TJ and I think some others in the family will be there too so that will be nice to all get together. Joe called me today from Germany and was in our new house checking things out. He said it looked great and they had gotten professional cleaners to come in so it was in move in shape he said. He is figuring out the lay of the land it seems. Well, i will update more later.

Goodbye Peoria!!

We have said goodbye to Peoria for the last time now and have arrived safe and sound in West Virginia to visit for a few weeks before the big trip to Germany. This past week was a whirlwind of signing papers, packing up, making phone calls and trying to keep my sanity with 2 babies in a hotel room. To top it all off the kids and I were sick pretty much the whole week with cough/cold symptoms so we didn't get to visit with everyone before leaving like we'd planned. We did get to have dinner with the hammelman's thursday evening which was nice, but sad. I got some really cute pictures of maggie with the girls but am waiting for Joe to email them to me from Illinois so I can put them on here. Mom came down thursday night and kept the kids for me friday while I got my hair cut and ran some last minutes errands before we headed out saturday morning. Joe leaves thursday morning for Germany so I am hoping he is able to get everything ready at the house before we arrive in a few weeks. It will be nice to get into a house again with all our things and have a more normal life for the kids.

Hotel Life

So living in the hotel isn't totally horrible. There are several rooms so both kids can nap everyday in their own rooms which is my rest time also. I also could get used to getting up every morning and eating a great buffet breakfast, not made by me, and then coming back to my beds being made, towels picked up, and the floor swept. We are also enjyoing having a pool and hottub at hand. I took the kids yesterday morning for about an hour and then we all went again last night. This weekend we headed out for lunch around 11 and decided we would go up to Chicago to the outlets for the day. We had a great time and I got alot of cute clothes for the kids plus a few things for me and of course Joe got several new items to add to his ever growing closet. We had a pretty good time, although Maggie was a total terror. She wanted to run around the whole time and would not stay with us so everytime we would pick her up she'd scream bloody murder. I spent half the time trying to find a bathroom that wasn't packed so I could spank her but they were all filled with people who were already starring at me as though I had kidnapped her or something. Not to mention the fact that it is like 20 degrees colder there than in Peoria so we had not dressed accordingly. It was a fun trip anyhow and nice to get out of the hotel and do something different. Today we went to playgroup which was fun. Maggie had a good time playing. Owen is loving his voice latley so he was pretty loud the entire time. I have noticed that if we are in a place where people are talking he gets louder and louder as if he's trying to be the loudest person there. (Gets really bad at restauarnts) I had a good time talking with everyone though aside from his babbling. We are at the house right now doing a load of laundry and then are heading back to the hotel for naps. I am going to Mary's tommorow to watch Emma for her in the morning and then Thursday she is watching the kids while Joe and I go to "counseling". We have to go through it before we move out of the country. I am wondering why we're even bothering. Seems a little late now since our house is sold and our stuff is in route to Germany. I mean, what are they going to say???? We shouldn't move??? And then what, I would almost rather just not know if they don't think we're up for the move now. :) No other big plans this week. Joe's family is coming up this weekend to visit before we leave so hopefully we'll find something fun to do. We are thinking of maybe going to the childrens museum in bloomington.

Big boy haircut

The kids went to get their hair cut this morning and it went pretty well. Maggie did great and they gave her a cookie when they were done for being such a good girl, so she was in heaven. They just trimmed her hair up in the back so it isn't really very noticable that it was cut. Owen on the other hand looks so much older. She really gave his a good shape up and although I don't think it solved his crazy hair problem, it does look alot better.
We went over to Mary's after that for about an hour and let the girls play before coming over to our house to catch up on some laundry. Maggie is in the bathtub right now and I didn't remember until I put her in that I only have one towel here and it's dirty. So it is being washed right now. She won't mind though since she'd stay in the tub all day. Here are a few pictures of her playing with some dolls in the kitchen. She got creative since she didn't have any other toys and made this box their high chair!!

Moving Day

Today was moving day, the trucks arrived before 8 and began loading "our lives" up into a big semi to be shipped off to Germany.
We began staying in the hotel last night so Joe came out this morning while the kids and I slept in. At least that was the plan.....Maggie slept until 9 but Owen decided he wanted to get up at 6 which meant that I too was up at 6. The kids and I came out to the house around noon, just in time to see them pack up the last of our stuff and stick it on the truck. I am not the real emotional type, but I must say that yes, I was very sad. As I walk through my empty house I see every place that my babies did their "firsts" and know that Maggie nor Owen will not remember this house at all. So after my "walk down memory lane" we packed up some more of our clothes and headed back to the hotel. Maggie thinks that the hotel is Germany and everytime we pull up she says, "Germany, right mom?" I have just begun to agree with her that yes, this is germany. Yesterday as they packed up the rest of our stuff she took a nap in her room for the last time on her blanket in the floor. I couldn't believe she actually fell asleep in there. Owen also took his nap in his carseat in my closet. :) It was the only dark, quiet place I could find. He slept great for over an hour. Today is my birthday and Joe had a great idea for my birthday...He got me tickets to the Toby keith concert that was in town yesterday. It was to be a surprise....but he ended up telling me so that I would be ready. Well, yesterday was qutie an exhausting day needless to say and I just really was not up to going. He was going to let me and Mary go and he'd stay at the hotel with the kids but I just opted out. I would have love to have gone under different circumstances....but I just really wanted to get to bed. So he ended up giving away 4th row tickets to Toby Keith to some couple walking down the street in Peoria. Hope they enjoyed the show. Thank you honey too......that was very sweet of you to do that even though it didn't work out. Tonight we just picked up pizza and headed out to our house to finish getting all of our clothes packed up. Mary and Mark were kind enough to offer their table, plates, and cups and let us come eat at their house so we didn't have to eat on our floor. They also had gotten me a DQ reece cup blizzard cake for my birthday and it was DELICIOUS!! We hung out with them for an hour or so before getting our stuff and going back to the hotel. Tommorow the kids are getting haircuts and then we will head out to the house to do some laundry and probably go visit mary and the girls a bit.

Packing Up

The movers have been here for two days now packing up all our stuff for the big move. It's basically been a mad house around here. When they first began yesterday Maggie had a total breakdown at the sight of all her stuff getting boxed up. The man began taking her slide down and she screamed at him, "your breaking my slide" over and over.
When they hit her room I sent her over to Mary's for the morning to calm down a little. I also busted out a next year christmas gift to ease the pain of dora going in the box. She has now adjusted to the moving crew being here when she wakes up and if you ask her where all of our stuff is going she says "Germany." Today was even more hectic than yesterday. The lady buying our house decided to send out her inspectors this morning....and there wasn't just one of them, four different men and she came to do the inspecting. So along with 3 movers, tons of boxes, Joe,I, and our two kids it was crazy. The kids and I left around 10:30 or so for Maggie and I's doctor appointments for check-ups. It went well and Maggie got a few more vaccinations in her before leaving. She did really well, only cried a second and then told me she wanted to go see Joe and show him her boo boo. I got Owen weighed while we were there and he weighed in at a whopping 15 lb 12 oz. He is still only in about the 5% but he's gained a pound and a half in a month. I guess solid foods are agreeing with him. We are staying here tonight which will be our last night in our house. It is so so sad to me but I have been so busy which is good since I have no time to think about it. Everything will be boxed up aside from our beds and joe and I's bed will just be our mattress on the floor. The moving and traffic through the house hasn't seemed to bother Owen any as you can see. He has been sleeping away great, taking his usual 3 naps a day despite all the noise. The four of us are living out of one closet which is where we stuck everything that isn't supposed to be packed up. Between clothes, shoes, diapers, make-up, etc it is a mess, I will sure be glad when we all have our own rooms again!



As of tommorow we will be staying in a suite at the marriot in peoria. It has 2 bedrooms, a living room and small kitchen so they say so it shouldn't be too bad. Plus an indoor pool will be alot of fun too, we are hoping Mary and her girls will come swim with us some. Well, I am off to check out the packing and see how things are coming along.

Getting Ready

The movers are coming on Monday to begin boxing all our stuff up. They say since it's an international move it will take about 3-4 days to get it all packed. We have not been doing much around here despite the fact that we are moving to Germany in a month! Our neighbors gave Maggie a slide of theirs that she loves since there kids have pretty much outgrown it and so she spent the majority of the day playing on that.























Owen took a nice long nap this afternoon and Joe and I thought he looked so cute we couldn't resisit taking his picture snoozing.


























He also sported his first baseball cap today and looked adorable I must say. He does look a little terrified in the picture I know, but i thought it was cute since you can see his two teeth on the bottom (if you look really hard!) I had a great day with Mary today, we went shopping and didn't do too much damage! We shopped a few hours and then came home to rest up before we all went out to eat tonight. We went to Avantis and then went back to Mark and Mary's for the evening. It was fun hanging out with them but I was so sad tonight after getting home and thinking about not getting to hang out with them all summer long like we usually do. Mary and the girls will be seeing alot of Maggie, Owen and I though in the next few weeks since we will be staying in a hotel and have nothing to do all day we plan on visiting there often! The lady who is buying our house came today to measure windows and pick up the contract. She ended up staying over an hour just checking out the place again and "imagining her furniture in here." Tommorow no big plans other than going to walmart to stock up on things before the movers come such as batteries, medicines, cleaning products I like, etc. Maggie will be excited to see all her friend in sunday school too since we haven't been to church in over a month with all our traveling.

Great News!

We sold our house this morning! She called and put a bid in and we accepted it, now we just have to meet with the lawyers to draw up the contract and it will be a done deal. That is great to have that off of our chests, now if I could just get my house halfway organized for the movers coming on monday. We haven't done much at all this week aside from trying to get things in order for the move. Owen and Maggie have not made that very easy for me to do, I guess coming from WV and getting 24 hour attention back to Illinois where it is just me all day has been an adjustment. Owen had his first taste of mango this morning and it has made the favorite list. He is alot like maggie in that he prefers the fruits over veggies. He also has begun to LOVE his voice and the louder it is the better. Since Maggie also loves her loud voice it has made for a very loud house. I have woken up at 5 am the past 2 mornings to Owen babbling "babababababa" in his bed thinking it's time to get up. Thankfully my wonderful husband got up with both kids this morning and let me sleep in until about 9 so that was great. No major weekend plans, we are hoping to get to go out to eat with Mark, Mary, and their girls this weekend so that will be alot of fun.

Happy Valentines Day

Hope everyone had a great Valentines Day. I began my day very tierd since Owen did not sleep well at all last night for some reason. He was up before 5 babbling and talking as though he thought it was time to get up and he wouldn't even nurse himself back to sleep. Anyhow, at 7:15 Maggie was up and wanting to start her day and since we had a lady coming to see the house at 10 I figured that I may as well get up and get rolling. We cleaned the house some, ate breakfast and then Maggie headed over to my neighbor Mary's to go to playgroup while I showed the house. The lady seems very interested and is supposed to let me know by the end of the week. She is a bird rescuer for Peoria and it makes me cringe a little to think she will have all 20 of the birds she told us all about in my house, but I suppose if it isn't my house anymore I shouldn't care. Joe got home from work early today so we headed out to eat at chili's for a nice, romantic valentines dinner. haha. Between Maggie talking the entire time and Owen trying to babble above all the noise in the restaurant we decided we should have just stayed home. We dropped some stuff off at goodwill and stopped at Kmart to get the Wizard of Oz for maggie since she fell in love with it at Mom and Dad's house and won't stop asking us to watch it. Unfortunatly, their movies were getting reorganzied so it was no where to be found so that will just have to be another trip to Walmart I suppose. We didn't leave there empty handed of course (quiet mom!:) I couldn't leave without the first season of grey's anatomy which just came out on dvd today along with a few other random things we picked up. I had bought the kids the cutest valentines outfits from baby gap to wear today and wouldn't you know it I left maggie's at mom's house while we were there so she had to wear her backup outfit today, not that it mattered because as you can see she stripped down when we got home and these are the few attempts I got of getting a picture of her today.
























































Owen of course was his agreeable self smiling away at the camera. He also has mastered rolling both ways now and gets so excited everytime he does it. Well, I am off to bed hoping to get more sleep than last night.

Our New House

We officially have a house in Germany now. It was basically the only house that they could find for Joe to look at, all the rest were flats and we didn't want to live in one of those so it was between this one and another one which was no where as nice. The great news is everyone can come visit us anytime because we have tons of room. It has 7 bedrooms and nearly 4500 square feet.
Joe says it is really nice and from all the pictures he sent I agree with him. I am glad I don't have to worry about whether or not we will have room to take all of our stuff from here since I can just make one room a storage room. The kids and I have just been visiting some of my friends around here, although Maggie has opted out of a couple visits and decided to stay home with MiMi and Grandad. Yesterday we went to my friend Kari's house who has a little boy around maggie's age and she is due anyday with her 2nd baby, a girl! He and maggie played for a couple hours pretty well, as well as 2 year olds play together that is! haha. Anyhow, it was great to see her and get to catch up some. Today we are off to visit somemore and get everything ready to head back to Illinois this weekend to see Joe. He went to an american futbol game (soccer) yesterday in europe somewhere and loved it. He called me at halftime and I couldnt' hear much of what he was saying because everyone was yelling and chanting whe entire time, but I gathered he was having fun. We are all so excited to see him. We will have tons to do when we get home before they come to move us out so I am hoping the kids adjust well to being home and behave!

Wedding Fun

We had a blast this weekend in Virginia at Olevia and Durell's wedding, and boy was it a wedding. If you read the book by Emily Post (i believe that is her name) about how a wedding should properly go, this wedding was the example in the book. It was so nice, and the reception was a blast. I was totally a nervous wreck through the entire service though, Owen didn't make a peep of course but Maggie was totally sleep deprived and I was just waiting for her to bust out to yell at Amanda or something (who was in the wedding). Anyhow, mom and Tres took her and stood in the back so she could be easily removed if needed but she did great. The reception was Maggie's favorite part and she danced non stop for probably 2 hours. We could not get her away from the dance floor.

TJ (my little cousin) joined her the entire time for dancing and stole the show several times. They had so much fun dancing and of course Amanda and Tres were out there showing all of thier moves. We didn't leave there until close to 11 that night and Owen of course was out by 8 or so and slept the entire evening. It was so nice to get to see the whole family and spend the weekend with them. Maggie also made a new best friend in her cousin Gracie who is 5. She followed her around and wanted to do whatever she was doing so they had alot of fun playing. It is hard to tell when we will all be together again like that with us going to Germany and amanda and tres on the cruise so we attempted to get a picture of all of the great grandchildren but Maggie was not in a very cooperative mood. We got one but she of course is crying hysterically. She is totally not into getting her picture taken anymore, so I knew that is what she would do. She was so exhausted by that point and had been good that I didn't really care so much, it probably got on everyone else's nerves more than me. After the reception we headed back to the hotel to have a surprise birthday party for mom with, of course, more cake! She was totally surprised....Happy Birthday Mom! This week is time to rest up and visit a little more to people close by before heading home on saturday. Joe's flight gets in saturday around 8 or 9pm so we hope to get to the airport to meet him. Maggie will be so happy to see her daddy. She is talking so well now and repeats everything we say. We were in the living room yesterday and she gave me a toy of hers because the tail had fallen off of it. I sat it aside and said, "what a piece of junk." She grabbed it and tossed it and repeated, "ole piece of junk." It was so funny, mom and I cracked up. Well, I am out of here to go return some things up town. Maggie and Mom are headed out to see Mama Sue and Papa Whitey while Owen goes with me.

What we've been up to

We have enjoyed our first week here in WV with everyone. It's been very busy, with getting ready for our trip to Virginia to Liv's wedding and amanda's surprise birthday party thursday evening. Not to mention my 2 trips to the Picture people to try to get valentines pictures. As you can see from the pictures the kids, especially Maggie, are having tons of fun with Mimi, Grandad, Amanda, Tres, and of course the rest of the family. Major news!!! Owen got his first two teeth. His bottom two came in this week but he won't let you look at them, only feel them. So i have yet to get a picture. I put Amanda's hair in curlers the other night and Maggie wanted her hair done in them also. I couldn't believe she let me put them all over her whole head, but she did. It actually made her hair even straighter....???

She had fun playing with dough that MiMi was making for bread, and then decided to try to eat some of it. Owen has been his typical smiling self. He doesn't care who has him as long as he is with everyone and can see all the action. :) We had some big news this week. My house was beign shown by a realtor on Thursday and I get a call from him while I am at the mall saying my basemnt is flooded and the carpet is soaked. We have never had any problems with water at all so it figures that this would happen while our house is for sale AND Joe and I are out of town. Well, I call Mary who has been trying to reach me adn she verifies that the basement is wet. So being the WONDERFUL neighbor that she is she lets all the millions of people i call to come fix it in my house all day. Not to mention the whole weekend! Mary, i owe you major and I will pay you back for everything you did for me while I have been gone. I promise! Turns out what happened is our sump pump went out and so the water just backed up and flooded the basment. He says it had to have happened like saturday and we left friday. I do recall telling Joe friday morning that i thought it smelled bad down there but he didn't smell it so i just dismissed it as nothing. I am sure that was the beginnning of it all. Mary also said she was over there wed. and thought it smelled too but thought maybe the trash hadn't been taken out or something. OH well, the restoration people have been in there all weekend taking out carpet and drying it out and he says it is totally better now. We just have to finish up reinstalling carpet when we get back and it should be back to normal. Mary informed me last night that they have had about 10 of those huge heater fans in my house for 4 days going so my electric bill is probably going to be unreal. Hopefully i can turn that in to the insurance too. The funny thing is the person who was veiwing our house still is very interested despite all of the water. I also have another lady who wants to view it when I get home and is glad that carpet got ripped up b/c she has birds and wants to put hard floors downstairs so she can keep her birds down there. (weird) Thursday night Tres had a surprise birthday party for amanda at benningens which she loves. Almost the whole family was there and a bunch of other friends too. She was totally surprised and Maggie had fun playing with Allie, Liv, and Wil. She was especially fond of hanging out with Wil. After eating she persuaded (which was not difficult) her Grandad into taking her to build a bear, which is right there in the mall. He was going to get her the frosty doll to build, which is what we all thought she wanted.
But she wanted the karen doll (from the frosty movie) and would not change her mind. So he bought that for her and she drug her all over the mall that night, even dropping her over a banister to the bottom floor. luckily we made it home with karen. well, we leave in the morning for virginia to Liv's wedding so I will update from that when we get back.