A few things from my iPhone in April

I'm working on kicking my iPhone picture-taking-addiction, I really am. But in the mean time, enjoy these photos from April (and yes, we were still in our winter coats in APRIL). 

I am grateful for children who make the most of boring trips to the mall and enjoy the little vehicle section. None of us are shoppers, so it makes a world of difference that the kids are so positive about being there (it helps that we keep our shopping trips short and infrequent so these things really are a novelty). 

Milayla is pretty comfortable behind the wheel, even with an eery Mickey riding in the backseat. 

 In hopes of Spring we bough some new shades and had way more fun trying them on than most people probably do.

I've started up vocal lessons in a building with the craziest identity crisis I have yet to see. The exterior is in the original, rather ornate gothic style (not completely sure if it dates accurately back to the 15th century, but I know the surrounding buildings do). The stairway and hallway all look like they were renovated in the 70's complete with deep brown tiling on the floors - and walls. Then you step through the doorway into this white abyss. The sensation of walking through that doorway almost feels like you are falling. Crazy. Seriously. Fun acoustics though.

 The sun has been shining enough to get in some serious play time and the park. Thankfully, as I am writing this, I can confidently say that all of our winter gear has been packed away - spring is here :). Of course, in Bremen that means I have also brought out the kids' rain boots, mud pants and rain coats - but hey, with happy, sunny days and no more freezing temperatures - I'll take it!

Which brings me to rainy days. They happen, a lot. And since we bike around to get places, it isn't always as simple as heading to something indoors (like the museum). It does mean that we have plenty of fun doing Mommy School, running experiments, and taking funny pictures/video to send to Daddy at work during out free-play time.

And, of course, there are plenty of trips to the library. I'm kind of in love with how much the kids enjoy the library. And I love getting to watch the puppet shows that they put on there. Sorry that the pictures are a little blurry, these puppet shows are pretty high-energy.

And, last but certainly not least, the kids wanted me to make sure that I put on pictures of a few of the crafts they did to kick off Spring (and Easter, in this case). They were pretty anxious to make sure that the Grandparents got to see their awesome colouring AND cutting. So be sure to 'oohhh' and 'ahhh' because these kids put some hard work into their crafts.

I have a few more on my phone, but those are going to have to wait for another day because I have a sick little girl that I get to cuddle the afternoon away with (and that is infinitely more important). 

Birthday Girl!

Milayla turns 2 today. How did that happen? 

Hard to believe it has already been 2 years since she first entered the world.

 She is pretty excited about it though, and so are we because it is a celebration of having her in our family, and that is something that we consider a great blessing. And we love her so much!

While it is definitely not possible to pack how much we love this little girl of ours into just one itty-bitty blog post but I'm pretty sure between all the nonstop hugs, kisses, time together and hearing how much we love her that she gets the point. And I hope she never forgets that point.

This last year has been an adventure for all of us, especially for Milayla, but that has never dimmed her beaming personality or the joy that emanates from those big blue eyes and beautiful smile of hers.

We have picked out some family activities to do with Milayla that we are pretty sure she is going to love (will post pictures later), so while we are off showering the birthday girl in attention you can enjoy reading 10 (of the MANY) reasons that we love Milayla.

1. She is incredibly sweet. There really is no way to describe her sweetness that will do it justice.

2. She has a massive amount of determination packed into her little toddler-sized body. 'Where there is a will there is a way' seems to be the motto with which she attacks tasks that are just slightly out of her current abilities. And I love that she keeps trying until she gets it!

3. She is helpful. She has just hit the 'cleaning phase' and I hope it never ends. When the time comes for chores she grabs her cleaning cloth and gets to work (without even needing to be asked). And when we tell her that it is meal time she marches on over to the kitchen and starts helping with the plates and place mats. It's wonderful!

4. She loves music and is creative. Dancing, conducting music, playing the piano, bedtime songs with Mommy, action songs, family singing, music at church; any time with music puts a smile on her face. It's great!

5. She holds her ground. Perhaps this is just the Momma in me overanalyzing simple situations, but Milayla seems to have a knack for knowing when to hold her ground and when to just walk away.

6. She is affectionate and thoughtful. Hugs, kisses and cuddles from her are absolutely lovely. And when she whips up salads or smoothies in the play kitchen she always offers them to others first. And bedtime cuddles for the reading of her favorite book (which is 'More More More' at the moment) are a favorite thing around here.

7. She shares. Snacks, toys and hugs are meant to be shared, right?

8. Those eyes and that smile. Man, do they ever sparkle and light up a room.

9. Her outgoing nature. While she does know when to stay close to Mommy or Daddy, she has no issue heading into a room with new kids and making friends.

10. She's smart. She makes connections between objects easily. She has been using her baby sign language to answer more complicated questions.

Bonus: She's just awesome!

I could really keep going, but what it all comes down to in the end is that we are just crazy about this girl and are blessed to have her in our nutty little family. She's incredible and we LOVE HER!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MILAYLA!

Atticus & Milayla update

Okay, so iPhone is not exactly the best way to capture life's wondrous little moments, but often times when I want to snap a photo to help preserve the moment, my camera is much further away than my phone and I would not want to miss the moment for the sake of having my camera. That makes sense, right? 

Well, when it comes to these kiddos, life is full of moments that I wish I could capture on camera all the time. The other downside to using the phone...blurry children. They just move too quickly :).

But I did manage to capture (to some degree) when they decided that Atticus was going to wash Milayla's hair in the bath. They were both pretty excited about the idea. Check out those big, blurry, smiles.

It was when Atticus started demonstrating how he was going to wash her hair that Milayla started to look like she was having second thoughts.

But they went forward with their plans anyway and Milayla took it all in a very patient, cheerful, stride.

As successful as the hair washing was, I think it turned out to be a one-time-only kind of deal especially considering that Atticus has declared that he is much too big a boy for baths and would like to only shower now. Keep in mind, he's only three. Pretty sure he's turning 14 in June and not the alleged 4.

And then there is the fuzzy picture of my closest. This is where I would find the kids running off to so that they could stash all the lovely things that they thought Daddy would enjoy for his birthday. They put some of their favorite toys and books in there, I was so impressed that they were able to go without them for over 2 weeks while they waited for Daddy's birthday.

And then, if you can believe it, I actually captured a couple photos on a real camera. Like this one of Milayla taking off with Daddy's shoes. She loves trying on everyone's shoes but I think it has more to do with the idea of heading outside than it does with the shoes.

And I snapped a quick photo of these two kiddos when they went on their "train ride". Milayla looks really impressed, doesn't she? Atticus had tried to explain the idea of facing forward to her, which did not go over too well.

I really need to have my camera out more, but I feel like it hinders my ability to be truly present with the kids, hence why the convenience of the phone is so much easier. I guess it's all about balance. At least I caught a few moments and I know the rest of those moments are stored away in a special spot of my memory somewhere :).

2013 April General Conference

We like counting down to things around here. It just adds that extra aspect of anticipation that makes a world of difference when trying to get little kids excitement about an upcoming event. Visuals work wonders! Typically, we do a little more comprehensive of a countdown to General Conference, but with Jason's Birthday, Easter and Conference happening on consecutive weekends I did not want the count downs to overlap and just get confusing. So a nice, 5 evening countdown it was.

I picked 5 different talks from October General Conference that stood out to me. Restudied them. High lighted things I felt were applicable for us and put them on little coloured cards with a small illustration that I felt would be a good cue for the talk (and a good little visual for the kids).  I'm certainly not an artist, yet my little doodles seemed to do the trick. So, with the talk summaries tucked away in numbered envelopes I hung them on the wall next to the dinner table with the pictures of the general authorities underneath it. And each night, at dinner time (since dinner time affords us some pretty undivided attention from the kiddos so we use it as best we can), we would take a look at the next talk and find the picture of the person who said those wonderful things. The whole thing went brilliantly. The kids loved it and even retained some of those little pearls of wisdom, not to mention it was an awesome review for us adults :). 

When General Conference rolled around, the kids each had a little General Conference notebook, and a couple coloring pages from the Friend. I know some families do things a little more elaborate but just a couple things that promoted listening seemed to do the trick for us here. In the end, Milayla spent nearing every song conducting and most of the talks trying to find the corresponding picture on the paper on the wall.  

I recorded a video of Milayla conducting because we happen to think it is one of the sweetest things ever. She loves music. She tinkers away on any instrument that she gets her little fingers on and it's not just banging away; she tries to be quite deliberate about it. In any case, hopefully I can figure out how to upload the video (though shortening it may be asking a bit much...) 

(I FIGURED IT OUT! Yay! I love the faces she makes.)

As for Atticus, he loved listening for key words in each talk and drawing the speakers. 

Because of the time difference between here and Salt Lake City, the kids needed to head to bed on Sunday night before they got to hear President Monson speak and they were pretty sad about that, but I think the anticipation made it even better for them. They both sat through President Monson's entire address - now, that was a blessing :)!

Now, typically we would be busy making cinnamon buns amidst all these conference sessions, but not this go around. We simplified (something we've been trying to do a lot around here). Jason found a Gelateria not too far from us that makes Sorbet with only fruit and water and pitched the idea that we celebrate conference by going for ice cream. It was an easy sell; a treat we could all eat, an outing as a family, and an opportunity to talk a little bit about conference. Yes, please!

We didn't tell the kids where we were going beforehand, so they were pretty anxious to find out. Atticus was just excited that he was going to get to bike down there. He is getting so good on his Laufrad and has been pointing out to us nearly every time he gets on his bike that he is good enough for pedals. Perhaps there is a new bike in his future, his birthday is coming up...

Milayla went in the stroller, though she would have preferred to walk - or to ride a bike. She is just anxious to get on a bike and get moving. She is going to be one happy girl when her birthday rolls around...

In the meantime, she is pretty patient and makes the most of the stroller when we are traveling a little too far for her to walk. 

And after a very looooooong journey (according to Atticus), we made it. I don't know what kind of machine they use to make blueberries and water taste so delicious, but I love it. 

Milayla was not too pleased about the ice cream. We really never have it around here (though she is quite fond of green smoothies!) and I think she was a little surprised at how cold it is. 

 Certainly no problems or complaints from these boys though.

While enjoying our treat we each talked about our favorite parts of conference. The kids picked the music - big surprise ;). Though, Atticus went on and on about how we got to watch President Monson just like when we saw him in person! So perhaps that was his second favorite part; watching and listening to President Monson. I know I feel pretty blessed to listen to the words of a living prophet and to have the technology at our fingertips that allows us to hear those words no matter where we are living. I am so grateful for that. And I am so grateful that conference is every 6 months. I never quite realize just how much I need it until I have an entire weekend packed full of inspiring and uplifting talks that help me to be a better person, wife and mother. 

And with our ice cream complete (and our insides sufficiently frozen), we snapped one more picture and continued our conversation on the way home. Jason and I always seem to come up with lots of wonderful ways to enrich our marriage and our family that we fine tune and put into action. We're definitely not the best about putting them into action, but we're trying and getting better at it!

Yes, we are siting outside, bundled up and eating ice cream. We felt sufficiently crazy Canadian while doing it. Though, I think our Canadian friends and family would laugh at us if they knew we bundled up like this and it was above 0 degrees Celsius.  

 And of course, upon arriving home Milayla had to make it up all three flights of stairs on her own. Her determination is adorable. It doesn't matter how she has to get up those stairs, she is making it up them and will conquer them. She is pretty good at walking up the first couple flights, but the third one sometimes ends up more of a crawl. Particularly sweet is that he big brother stands at the top of the stairs cheering her on. Making it up all those steps is a BIG accomplishment and we are pretty proud of her.

 And then another conference weekend had come and gone. We've set a plan forward to do better at reviewing conference talks this go around. Jason and I will be rewatching and relistening to them in the coming weeks and talking about them more. Then we are planning on having more family home evening lessons focusing on conference talks that we feel would be good for our family to learn about together. I'm excited. So much goodness! I love the gospel.

Easter Weekend - Monday

You know those days where things work out so unbelievably perfect that you know your choices for what you did that day were guided by a source far greater than your own? I wish we had more of them. I wish I had the inner stillness requisite to feel those inner promptings all day, every day. I'm not there yet, but I am working on it. When we were trying to plan our Easter weekend, I was pretty stumped when following through on our tradition of heading to the Keukenhof gardens in Holland did not feel right. I wanted to push forward, but I didn't and I am so glad that I listened to that feeling of needing to stay here. The result was a wonderfully harmonious, pleasant, memorable, friend-filled Easter weekend that I know the kids enjoyed every minute of, and so did we. 

Easter Monday was the perfect way to wrap up the weekend. It could not have gone better. The sun was shining, the kids were enthusiastic and excited about the surprise outing and we were all well-rested (which feels like a rarity some days around here..). 

Since we weren't going to be in the Keukenhof gardens in Holland we still wanted to keep with the tradition of being in a garden so we headed to the Rhododendron park here in Bremen. 

Of course, the flowers weren't quite in full bloom there, which was fine with us since we had figured that would be the case and planned to visit the Botanika indoor gardens that are nestled within the Rhododendron park.

The kids (and us) were pleasantly surprised when they learned that there were chocolate eggs hidden throughout the garden that they could find. So with baskets in hand, we set out to explore the lovely flowers. 

They even had some animals that we could visit! Bunnies, hens, roosters and even tiny, freshly born baby chicks. What a great chance to talk to the kids about new life!

The kids loved visiting the animals. And we loved the amazement on their little faces.

Though, that said, neither of the children were particularly keen on petting the bunny.

Jason did though :).

Atticus was more concerned with celebrating his success of finding the first chocolate egg. Yep, he's pretty excited.

The flowers inside were stunning. Atticus asked about the types of flowers and Milayla loved finding out the different colours of each flower.

They had the place set up in a nice, adventure sort of way like we were exploring the lands that these flowers come from. Anyone up for heading to Burma?

What about Mt. Kinabalu?

Since this was our first time visiting the Botanika, we really didn't know what to expect and were really excited to discover that they had other features that made it feel like it was partially a museum as well. The details in all the displays were lots of fun to discover. It gave us a few opportunities to talk to the kids about different countries, cultures and religions. So fun!

Pretty sure that we explored every nook and cranny of that place.

And just when we thought we were done it turns out that there was a wonderful little science centre/museum building to finish it all off. It was perfect, with lots of interactive learning centres. And when it was all said and done, Atticus could not resist asking for a rolled coin with flowers on it. He is starting quite the little collection of coins from places we have visited.

Milayla was pretty content to keep exploring while Atticus rolled his coin. I love watching Milayla run around, it is so cute. 

Before we headed off we sat down with the kids for a few minutes and talked about why being in a garden on Easter weekend can remind us of the Saviour. It was a nice, little chat.

And with that we were headed back to the bikes (snacks in hand) for a sunny ride home.

I really cannot emphasize enough how much we enjoyed this outing or the rest of our Easter weekend. It was special for us, yet nothing over the top or too complicated. The kids really enjoyed it and were able to grasp more about the spiritual aspect of Easter as they learned about Jesus and we were even able to share it all with friends. I'm so grateful we listened to that gentle prompting to change our plans from the usual outings this year, because what resulted was an Easter experience perfect for our family and has us all feeling a little bit closer to our Saviour and looking forward to next year. I love Easter. And, most importantly, I love my Saviour.