Norah riding her 2 wheeler

Norah has been working on riding her 2 wheeler princess bike.  Ever since she turned 2, she got a Strider balance bike and mastered it pretty quickly.  She is a little speed racer on that thing.  It was apparent that she would do fine on a two wheeler.  She had already learned the hardest part and that was to balance.  We got her on some tricycles first and then put the training wheels on this bike and let her pedal around for a bit so she could learn how to pedal.  Norah is a pretty big shrimp, so we had to wait until this last summer to try her on this bike so she could touch with her tippy toes.  She still has to practice starting all by herself, but she is a champ!

Germany 2 Year Anniversary and Durbury, Belgium

October 11th marked 2 years of us moving to Germany. It really scares me how fast the time flies by. At first I was a little anxious having to be overseas for THREE years, and now I am frantically trying to plan our last year of vacations and must do/see's so I don't feel like I miss out. I am coming to the realization that no matter how much we get to do and see over the next year, there will always be so much that we don't get to see. As long as we make the best of it, I am ok with that!

It's funny when I think back to our first couple weeks here. It pretty much consisted of exhaustion, crying (on my part), and wondering what in the world had we got ourselves in to. It was weird driving around and thinking, "We live here?" Everything was so foreign to us. The architecture, language, celsius, kilometers, culture, currency, driving... I could go on and on. I felt completely lost and confused. I am very comfortable feeling uncomfortable now, if that makes any sense! I often have to remind myself when I am doing my usual stuff during the week that I am in a really cool place and I am not living a "normal" life right now. I have to say that for the past two years I have been trying to connect with Germans in some way. I realize this is a generalization, but Germans don't want to be connected with for the most part. Our neighbors are all friendly, but they don't care to talk to us or know anything about us. I really wanted to try and learn the language, but I have no time to learn the language. I feel like life with my three kids is crazy all day long and an extra moment I get, I am editing! In my experience, some of the Germans get annoyed that we don't know the language. I totally understand that, but at the same time we are not here for very long and it's so easy not to learn it. The dutch people all speak English perfectly and I am there more often than I am in Germany. I compare this for when I went to Costa Rica for 5 weeks during college. The people are so incredibly friendly and you WANT to connect with them and it makes you try harder to learn the language. I do not feel that at all here!

In a nutshell, we have loved our experiences over here and look forward to many more over the next year. Although we haven't made very many German friends, we have made friends with a really fun Dutch family. I will be so excited to move back to the States and have so many of the small and big luxuries of life back that I really miss. However, I will always cherish our time here!!

Two days before our two year anniversary, we took a day trip to Durbuy, Belgium which is a small medieval town. Abe works with a Belgian guy and he recommended that we go there. We were not disappointed! The drive was about 1 hour 45 minutes each way. I loved when we started getting close because the architecture and the feel of the towns change. Our German towns are neat, but I don't think they compare in charm that these towns have. Durbuy is French speaking and it has more of the french feel (at least what I think of!).

We started of by parking and walking into the little town of Durbuy.



It immediately is so charming!



From this spot, it split off in a couple different directions with the most darling streets I have ever seen.



I couldn't resist taking some pictures of my kids on this street!





















At the end of the town, it comes out to this ginormous rock. It looked like they may light it up at night or something, but I thought it was pretty neat.







We decided to start walking back to the car. There is a river that runs right next to the little town center. We crossed over the bridge so we could get a good view of the castle and walk back along the river.



Norah being silly of course!







The girls enjoyed collecting rocks and throwing them off the bridge.

Cheer "camp"

Last weekend Adeline attended a cheer camp. She had to attend the camp for about 4 hours on Saturday morning and then they got to cheer during the football game that afternoon. To be honest, I wasn't super excited about her doing it. Last year she asked to do it and I never signed her up. This year, she was adamant that she wanted to do it and pleaded with me to sign her up. Adeline had a lot of fun at the camp and was able to spend time with her friend Dani. When I came to pick her up before the football game, she said "they are REAL cheerleaders mom!" It's pretty funny how little girls idolize cheerleaders.




Adeline cracks me up. She gets really excited about things, but she can get very shy. I think it was a little hard for her to stand in front of the crowd and cheer. But, she did it because that is the determination in Adeline; even if she didn't feel comfortable!









It made it even more fun that her friend Katelyn was there watching!