Portugal {Part 1}

This post is long overdue. I have been so busy with photography, I feel like I haven't had any time for my own personal stuff, sleep, being a good mom, etc. etc. I am happy to say that I am a lot more caught up now!

Our good friends from that we met in Ohio recently moved to England. As soon as they had their moving arrangements, we started planning a trip to Portugal together. We have to take advantage of the time we are so close to each other!

We rented a house in the small town of Vale De Parra. It is supposed to be walking distance from the beach, but it would have not been very fun and taken us a very long time to walk to the beach with 6 small kids. We both rented a car and were able to explore at our leisure.



The house had a pool and the kids were really excited about it. I never got in the entire time we were there because it was freezing and it wasn't HOT outside. Warm enough to be outside and enjoy it, but not hot enough to want to jump into a freezing cold pool! The kids didn't care!











Meika has become obsessed with hooded towels and robes. She would wear just only this all day if we would let her!





Our first day was mostly hanging out, catching up on sleep (the Huber's got in very late!) and the girls swam in the cold water. Later that evening, we drove down the road a couple minutes to Praia de Gale. This was our first beach we went to and it was amazing.







It took a little while for Norah to adjust to the salty water and itchy sand. Her skin kept "stinging".



Meika was pretty afraid of the water and stayed away. She just wanted to play in the sand!

















It ended up being a really fun evening on the beach. Supposedly it doesn't rain too much in Portugal. Of course in our forecast though, we had a handful of days with rain. The next day looked to be the worst, so we decided not to go to the beach and see the Silves Castle. The castle is on a hilltop in the center of town. The kids loved running around and exploring. However, it was not very kid friendly with deadly drop offs galore. We had to keep the kids super close by!









Looking out from the castle

















Kids playing hide and seek in the ruins...



Yummy lunch in the town of Silves. Kind of crazy with a 1,2,3,5,6 & & year old!!



Walking the streets...

Halloween

This year Halloween was kind of an afterthought. I have been so busy with photography and Abe has been super busy at work, that we just didn't have too much time to think about it. Luckily Norah was excited to be Wonder Woman and use a costume we already had. All I had to do was make her little power "bracelets" and make her a little crown. Meika dressed in an old kitty costume and Adeline requested to be a pirate. I did have to order hers ahead of time, but that was the extent. The week before Halloween we went to Portugal (that post coming up), so Abe carved some pumpkins with the girls before we left. Of course when we got back, they were completely rotted and melted to the ground.

On Halloween night, we attended the Trunk or Treat they have on base. We brought our Dutch friends and it was really fun watching them. They thought that it was a really fun experience and feel like they have a taste of America. I laughed when they said that though, because I still feel that that was far from a taste of America! The girls had a blast. Even Meika was participating and loved getting treats in her basket. I think she walked majority of the route too! I thought Norah must have been sick or something. She acted like she wasn't feeling good and made one of us hold her the entire time. By the time we were done, she completely cheered up. Later we realized that she wasn't sick, she was just completely afraid of all the scary costumes! Poor thing.

Here are a couple of pictures we took before we left for the event.









I can't wait to celebrate Halloween back in the States. It will be fun to go door to door and do the traditional Halloween stuff. Germany is catching on to Halloween a little bit, but it is very sparse here. Weird to think that next year, we will be celebrating Halloween in America!

Summer Evenings

We loved our summer evenings. I took some pictures towards the end of August and am just getting around to them. The girls spent most every evening running around the backyard, jumping on the trampoline and rolling in the grass. Adeline and Norah would play for hours on the trampoline and sometimes bring loads of stuff out there and play "family". We enjoyed sitting outside and watching them play.







super blurry picture, but I couldn't help but sharing...

Our first visits from the Tooth Fairy

Back in September, Adeline told me that her bottom tooth was wiggly. I figured that she was just saying that, because this was not the first time I had heard it. For months Adeline had been wishing that she would lose a tooth. I think seeing all her friends at school was making her antsy. I decided to humor her and wiggle it. Sure enough, it was wiggly! It took a couple weeks to get it really wiggly and it was to the point it would fall out at any moment. We happened to be at our local ice cream shop and Adeline really wanted a second scoop of ice cream after eating her first. Abe told her that if he could pull her tooth out, she could get a second scoop. Talk about peer pressure! Abe ended up pulling it out and Adeline had an audience because some friends were with us. She was so excited!




That night, she wrote this note to the tooth fairy.


A handful of weeks later, Adeline's other bottom tooth got wiggly and she ended up pulling it out herself at recess. When she got off the bus, she refused to smile and kept hiding her mouth from me. She searched through her backpack and then with a big grin, pulled out a baggie with her tooth in it. Such a silly girl. Here is her other note to the tooth fairy. Pretty sure the tooth fairy is not the greatest artist since she was put on the spot!



Her losing her teeth is a big reminder to us of how much she is growing up! Please stop!

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!