Siblings

Watching these two develop their sibling relationship is so much fun. 

New Years Eve - A Murder

We were pretty excited to ring in the New Year with a dinner and a murder. We invited over a few friends and got to planning.

Since the Murder Mystery was Christmas themed, the decorations were all ready to go. Jason just needed to fix our little star that never seems to stay on top of the tree...

We made name tags and made sure the table was set to go.

Then it was time for the most important part - our guests to arrive! 

Or in this case, the suspects...

Gordon and Vicky

Kay and Shana (Yes, we are aware you cannot see Kay; it was all in character)

Constanza and Kiever

And of course...the hosts!

We are pretty fortunate to have friends who are such good sports. It was a fun evening. Turns out that Jason was the mastermind behind the whole thing and dragged two other guys into his crazy murderous plot.

When it came time to ring in the New Year, we did it Spanish style. Thanks to Constanza we learned that in Spain you eat twelve grapes when the clock tolls midnight; one with each toll. Well, we were fresh out of grapes so we subbed mandarine orange slices instead and loaded the live feed from Spain onto the computer. Eating twelve slices of orange in a short amount of time is not the easiest thing, but it was so fun to do something new. It is one tradition that we will probably keep. Thanks Constanza!

Of course there were fireworks, but it clouded over pretty quickly. And while there are certainly more fireworks here than we have ever had in Canada it still does not compare to the ones in The Netherlands. We will surely never forget the New Year's Eves that we spent there!

As the evening came to a close, we bid our guests a safe journey home and talked about goals for the New Year as we cleaned up. Perhaps we'll share a little more about those goals on another day.

We hope everyone had a wonderful time ringing in the New Year!

8 Months - Milayla

Our Little Lady is 8 Months old and to celebrate we took lots of pictures. Milayla gets pretty excited about picture time and was all smiles as Mommy snapped a few photos to test the lighting.

When the lighting test started taking too long, Milayla began eating her dress....

Then it was on to crying...(poor girl!)

Thankfully, this little girl loves to play with one of Atticus' toy cars. In fact, she loves it so much that Atticus has very proudly dubbed it 'Ayla's Red Car'.

Though the pictures don't show it, Milayla does more with that car than try to eat it. She squeals in delight when Atticus rolls out the car mat, and she is right along side her big brother as they build roads out of blocks to drive the cars on. On this particular occasion, holding this little car for a couple of minutes brought back plenty of smiles for pictures.

The last month has brought with it so much growth and change. Milayla never seems to lack energy and is always ready to play, read, move, talk and cuddle. She is really itching to get moving and can go every way but forward (which is mighty frustrating for her) though she has become very skilled at rotating herself to back into the object she is after. 

Her two bottom teeth have become quite prevalent and, if the drool and interrupted sleep are any indication, we should see some more teeth cutting through soon!

Not the greatest photo, but you sure can see those teeth!

And it would seem that we have another little bookworm in the family. With how excited Milayla gets about reading a book or going to the library, you would think that we had gone to Disneyland. It is so much fun reading to her and seeing how proud she is as she hones her page turning skills. 

she even enjoys the books upside down ;)

 She really is a delight and we love soaking up every little moment with her. She is always making us laugh and her love for all things music has filled our home with even more dancing and singing than there was before (and more good music is always a good thing). We sure are blessed to have her to love. 

Übersee-Museum

Following Christmas, Jason took a few extra days off work so we took advantage of some free time and took the kids to the Übersee-Museum which had been on our list of things to do since we arrived in Bremen.

Even though both Atticus and Milayla do pretty good visiting museums we cannot tackle an entire museum at once, though we did manage to see two of the exhibits in entirety.

Trying to get pictures with the kids where they are looking at the camera was a fun task as both kids were completely in love with all the different items there were to look at. There were a couple occasions that Atticus needed to be reminded not to push his nose against the glass...

Milayla got pretty excited about the display of instruments from Asia. 

Atticus particularly liked the old Celica, and was a little confused as to why a car was inside a building.

And both kids loved the little Japanese garden that had a pond with fish swimming in it. 

 By the time we finished the Oceanic and Asia exhibits it was time to head off for an overdue lunch. We all enjoyed a nice morning out at the museum. We will definitely need to find some time to go back and visit the other exhibits!

Atticus' First Day at Work

Jason had to run into work on one of his days off to pick something up so he took Atticus along to see the office. Lucky Little Guy!

They made sure to snap a photo on the cell phone so that Atticus could show Mommy and Milayla that he was at Daddy's work. He was pretty excited about it!

The 2nd Day of Christmas

The 2nd Day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

A full day of pyjamas!

The second day of Christmas (also known as Boxing Day) was a much needed day of rest for all of us. We stayed in our pyjamas all day which is something no one could recall us having ever done before. We finally opened up the presents, enjoyed leftovers and played games. Atticus was probably most excited about his long awaited Christmas Skype call to "Ampa Bob and Amma". Every time we went near the computer he asked if we were calling them (he is still a little too young to understand the time difference thing and think that calling at 2am is completely fine...).

Atticus spent a good portion of the day playing with his new car mat, and setting up his train tracks around the entire living room. Milayla hung out in her new door jumper. We thought the jumper would easily be her favorite gift, but alas, it would seem that she has far more excitement about her new books. That's not to say that she isn't excited about her jumper though!

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises is that Atticus has replaced his cool winter hat for a bright red, Elmo one (with matching mittens) that Great Grandma Hochstein sent him. Atticus and Milayla have had such fun with the mittens as Atticus puts on little puppet shows in the bakfiets with them.

And even Milayla got a new hat.

Thankfully the day was not all about presents and seemed to revolve more around relaxing as a family; a rare treat as we always seem to have something that we are trying to get done. Spending time together and seeing the smiles on these little people's faces is incredible and it was so nice to feel like the world slowed down for a day.

Christmas Day

Who would have thought we would enjoy Christmas being on a Sunday so much? It certainly made things a little busier, and pushed the presents to the back burner, but it brought so much more meaning to a beautiful day.

Upon waking up, we all got dressed for church while Daddy put his previously prepared breakfast casserole into the oven to warm up. Once we were all ready, we opened up our stockings which had our Christmas treats in them (Atticus was pretty excited about his own bag of studenten nut mix :) along with a few small gifts. After our morning scripture study it was on to breakfast. We finished breakfast, brushed our teeth and had just enough time to snap a picture before we headed out the door.

not the greatest picture, or quality, but when you only have time for one take...

Church was wonderful. There were special musical numbers and lovely talks given. It was a nice treat to be able to partake of the sacrament on Christmas. Funny enough, there was a family visiting from Canada whom, we learned, know both of our families (small world..). After church services we made sure to give seasons greetings to everyone and visited with friends (much longer than the kids would have liked..).

By the time we made it home and ate a light lunch we were all ready for a nap, but opened up just a couple presents first. Milayla took an immediate liking to her new stuffed giraffe and a book from her big brother while Atticus was beyond excitement at the sight of some new books.

While the kids napped, us responsible adults went to work to get the kitchen prepared for dinner. We prepared a lot of stuff in advance so it was mostly just a matter of getting everything out and organized. This year we experimented with three different kinds of perogy filling. Beyond perogies (and sauce!) we had rolls, roasted veggies, veggie sticks, salad and sauerkraut (Jason may have been the only one who liked that last one).

Spinach and Garlic, Red Cabbage and Apple, Spicy Cheese

Our guests began arriving and we got to work making perogies. Most of our guests had never even heard of them before let alone tried them (except for one of our guests who is a fellow Canadian) and we love introducing people to the deliciousness that is perogies.

While we assembled we talked, a lot, and snacked on far too many predinner sweets. Atticus snuck in another present to open and enticed everyone to the living room while we waited on a couple guests to begin dinner. Much to Atticus' delight everyone was pretty excited about his new train and tracks to add to his growing collection.

When the time for dinner finally arrived we were all pretty excited and crowded ourselves around the table but it would have to wait for just a couple more minutes while we snapped a photo. Unfortunately, there are still three people missing from the photo.

From left to right: Atticus, Jason, Constanza, Kiever, Elder Eggmann, Elder Whitehead and Janice. 
Missing from this photo: Laura, Milayla and Sofia

After dinner we watched The Nativity (the short one produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), sang carols and opened up gifts. Then it was time for dessert and games.

It was a fun day. The kids loved having so many people come to celebrate Christmas with us and so did we! The kids even got to talk to Uncle Chase, who is currently serving a mission in Arizona, before they headed to bed. And we got to talk to a few members from the English side of the family before we went to bed. The Spirit of Christmas was certainly felt in abundance as we gathered together to celebrate the birth of our Savior - what a wonderful blessing.