yes…he made toast. Or something that resembles toast:

Here is a project that my mom helped me with for Drew’s room. We used her Klick-N-Kut to cut out all of the train shapes and I used a digital scrap kit for the sun and clouds. I think this turned out adorable!

There is not many but I got some pics of the kids with my niece.

Drew is wearing his jammies, swim goggles, and Peter’s socks that are rolled up. Yes- he is a dork!

Hi, Peter here again.

A couple weeks ago I travelled to Germany for work (I was teaching a class to some HP employees there). Most of the week I didn’t have a car and I was busy working anyhow, but I did take a few pictures to share, mostly from the first day I was there. As always, click on the picture to see a higher-resolution version.

Enjoy!

Here was a small town southwest of Frankfurt. I was struck by the mixture of old (architecture, church) and new (wind turbines). There were wind turbines everywhere. I believe (but am not sure) that Germany and France both get their power 100% from nuclear and wind sources. Also near the town was a vinyard (lots of those in this area) and in the distance you can see the bridge/viaduct of the Autobahn I was taking.

Speaking of the Autobahn, here is proof of about how fast I was able to sustain:

(That’s about 115 miles an hour. The BMW I was in didn’t feel like it could go much faster than that. And it was starting to get a little faster than just about all the other drivers at that point.)

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Since I had a car for the day, I drove to Baumholder “on the way” from Frankfurt to Stuttgart. (I also drove past Ramstein Air Base - literally a couple hundred feet under a C-17 Globemaster III coming in for landing.) I went to visit a “family business:”

This is the Bier Blacksmith. The translation on the plaque loosely reads:

Historical Bier (Hoof and Wagon?) Blacksmith / Built in 1840 by Carl Bier. Passed in 1870 to son Christian, then in 1902 to grandson Karl and in 1937 to great-grandson Karl. / After 133 years, the fully functional (master and?) family business was closed in 1973. / “Westrich” Homeland Society
(If someone can help me with the translation, let me know.) I don’t know if this is my great-great-great grandfather or not (I think not…my mom will know).

Carl’s house was across the street:

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Most of my trip was in and around Stuttgart, which is a nice enough city (all of Germany is pretty nice, neat and clean) but not much of a touristy town. It is the home of Mercedes, Porche, IBM and HP among others, though. Here’s a picture of the train station. (Note the Mercedes logo on the clock tower)

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Finally, a first for me - on the way home from Frankfurt we were bussed out to the plane and loaded out on the tarmac. I had walked to small commuter planes before but never something this size (comparable to a 777):

(Watch that engine intake! At least the stairs were covered - but it wasn’t raining that day anyhow.)

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Finally, on the trip home we paced another plane for a good hour over the Atlantic, very slowly overtaking it. This was a picture out my window somewhere between Ireland and Greenland:

That’s all! Thanks!

Hi, Peter here! I was recently “reminded” that I never posted pictures from the last couple of days I was in Europe last February. So here they are. Except for the first one, these are all from my side trip to London. I was pretty busy working the last few days I was in Paris and so I didn’t really get many pictures, and none of them were “blog worthy.”

The weather in London wasn’t the best (it was February) - kind of cloudy and drizzily - but I still got around pretty well (not bad for 5 hours, I think).
Enjoy!

Train station in Paris

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Leaving the Underground in London at Piccadilly Circus
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Walking down Piccadilly; in the left picture (among other things) is the Royal Astronomical Society (two former presidents: William Herschel and Arthur Eddington) and an icon London Taxi. In the right picture is “the” Ritz and an equally iconic British phone booth.
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I ate lunch at the original Hard Rock Cafe. Among the memorabilia were some outfits worn by the Beatles and a gold record by Bob Dylan.

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The London Underground (”The Tubes”) - Mind the gap!

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I walked down to the Thames and London Tower (the Castle/Fort structure). Then I walked across the Tower Bridge (and back). The cool looking building in the background of the middle picture is the “Gherkin” - it’s an office building.

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One for Charlie

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I then went over to Parliament. The lamp posts have gold-leaf crowns on them. Here are some pictures of the clock tower (aka Big Ben) and the Houses of Parliament (aka Westminster Palace).

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Just around the corner is Westminster Abbey. I have several pictures (didn’t have time to wait in line to go inside).

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Here’s St. James Park. The building at the far end is Buckingham Palace. Westminster Abbey is about two blocks behind me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that Downing Street was right behind me, too. Missed visiting #10.

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Buckingham Palace. I saw the guards marching but the famous “Changing of the Guards” only happens once per day (I think at 10am) so I didn’t see it. The Queen was in the Palace (the flag was flying on top).

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An old-fashioned double-decker bus! This model seemed pretty rare; I saw lots more of a much more modern model driving around.

That’s all! Coming soon - pictures from my trip to Germany!

Here are some pictures of the boys from out in the backyard this evening:

Drew had a blast kicking the ball around the yard. I think we might put him in soccer this fall!

Check out Drew’s face as he went into the water!

Ryan’s cheesy grin.

Yes…Drew has his head in the water.

He is so proud that he got his hair wet. Well….at least the front of his hair.

Ryan starting to get mad that he cant walk off with the water hose.

Ahh..the full blown tantrum.

He just splashed water in his face. He didnt like it…AT ALL.

He had a BLAST playing with the water hose…..UNTIL…

he splashed himself in the face with the water. He did this quite often. You would think we would learn after the first 2 or 3 times.

Just lookin cute!

Here are some pictures of Ryan tummy surfing down the stairs.

Drew always wakes up before us and I’ve told him that if he is hungry he needs to come tell us so we can get him food. Well….. he is Mr. Independent now and decided he wanted pudding. This is what we came down to:

And then we opened the fridge…..

yes…he “made” pudding. That is just the pudding mix in the bowls that he put in the “fridgeator”. We got a good laugh out of that this morning!

Yesterday we went swimming in our community pool with Blake, Elicia, and Taylor. Drew had a BLAST! We put floaties on his arm but he wouldnt go off and swim by himself. He held onto Peter most of the time until he got into Ryan’s float ring and discovered that he could go off by himself with the ring AND the arm floaties. Then by the end he was swimming with just the arm floaties by himself! Ryan didn’t have as much fun as the rest of us did. He wanted to run around the outside of the pool rather than being in the water. This was the first time he had been in a big pool so he was scared but hopefully he will get used to it!

And… Ryan has now learned to come down the stairs by himself. But instead of backwards crawling down the stairs, he backward tummy surfs down the stairs. Its too cute! And his new work is “bonk”- like if he hits his hands on the table or his head against our heads he says “bonk”.

So Drew is Mr. Independent right now. He will NOT let me help him get dressed. And he pulls out many outfits before he decides on which one to wear. And he has decided that he has “light time jammies and shirts” and “night time jammies and shirts”. Its quite annoying actually. This morning he was putting on the jammies that he wore last night and I asked him if he wanted to wear something else since those were dirty and he said “No mama, these are PERFECT for me”. LOL!

And the big news from Drew is that he poopied on the potty for the first time today!!!!! We are so excited! We called Dada, Bebe, and Grammie to tell them!

Ryan just cut his 12th tooth. He has also learned to climb up the stairs but refuses to try and come down on his own. He said hi now but it sounds like “ya”.

Here are some of the thigns that Ryan learned to do:

throws the ball

drinking from a straw

tries to use a fork or spoon to eat but all he really does is dips it in the food and then licks the fork or spoon.

mimicks talking on the phone.

climbing on sofa

climbing down from sofa

words he is saying: wow, da (dog), ba (ball)

He also just cut his 11th tooth last week but that goes under his 14 month milestones!

Here are 2 short videos of Ryan. I have more but they are too big to upload.

sorry I cant get the videos to post. Will keep trying!

Last week Ryan had a blast playing in the sprinkler while Peter was watering the lawn:

Fun in the sun and water

This is in the pool in our backyard. It was Ryan’s first time in the pool.

I was teaching Drew to blow bubbles in the water. He HATES having his face in the water so Im trying to work with him to get him more comfortable.

I just love his buddah belly!

Playing at the water park

The red bucket had just dumped water on Drew

This is Ryan walking under the big buckets and he never got water dumped on him.

I know I haven’t updated the blog with pictures in a while- sorry! But I am making up for it now!

Here are pictures from our trip to Baton Rouge to visit Grammie and Poppop and Kenny, Shawn, and cousin Eric:

Chillin’ with Poppop

Ryan and Grammie

Ryan eating a lemon

Drinking from a straw

Drew and his silly mask

Drew coming back from a walk with Grammie

Drew, Ryan and baby Eric

And here are pictures from Drew’s last day of preschool:

Drew and Ms. Kim

Drew and Ms. Tamra

SPLASH DAY!!!

Drew going up the big water slide

He got really scared at the top and so he came down with one of the teacher’s little girls. Note his look of sheer terror.

Here is he soaked from the splash pool at the bottom of the slide. He was NOT happy about it.

Playing on the jumpy

things are going pretty well here! We are still unpacking and I think that might take us forever!

Ryan has cut 2 new teeth- 2 molars on the top. 1 on the right and 1 on the left. Ryan is saying mama but its more like mmmmmmmm ma. Which is pretty funny to me because he was copying me on that. He was saying nana when he tried to say mama and I would tell him to say “mmmmm mama”. So he did learn to put the m in there but it just comes out as mmmmmm ma. He also said “ba” for ball today as he was reaching for one! And he is no longer walking he is running. This boy wears me out!

Drew is almost done with school for the year. Next week is his last week and then he is out for the summer. Then we will work on potty training. UGH. Not looking forward to that.

Here are some new Drew-isms:

Taco Banana (Taco Cabana)

Freeekles (Fuddruckers)

He also told me yesterday that he didnt need to wear a bra right now because he didnt have boobies. (I dont have words for that one)

We got moved into the new house on Saturday with help from my family. We couldn’t have done it without them and we can’t thank them enough. Between all of the stuff in the old house and storage it took us 10 hours to get everything moved over. Of course, we are still not unpacked- Im not sure that will totally happen for few months now. The garage is packed full. I think we need to get rid of some stuff!

I am totally loving my kitchen and all of the cabinet space that I have! Drew loves the new house- especially the stairs. Neither one of the boys have been too traumatized by the move which is definitely good. I was afraid night time would be a big deal and they wouldn’t be able to sleep.

We were without internet access from Saturday until Tuesday and I was *dying* without internet access. Our phones got hooked up on Monday so we are all connected and back in touch with the outside world.

Ryan is doing another cute thing now- he gets the phone or something that he thinks resembles a phone and puts it up to his ear and then walks around as if he is talking on the phone.

thats it for now. When we get the house organized I will post pictures so everybody can see!

Im typing this as Ryan is blowing raspberries with his head on my shoulder. Now my shoulder is all wet! LOL.

Ryan waved bye-bye for the first time on Monday and he has learned to drink from a straw! YAY! I dont remember if I put this in a previous blog or not but he learned to clap a few weeks ago and then we say “touchdown” he puts his hands straight up above his head as if he were signaling for a touchdown. Its really cute!

First of all….Peter and I have a new nephew!!! Kenny and Shawn had a little boy on April, 23rd! It was a surprise since they didnt find out the gender. They named him Eric James and he weighed 7 lbs 11 oz and was 20 inches long. Shawn and Eric got to go home yesterday. I will post a pic of him a little later.

Secondly… our house is SOLD! Closing was yesterday and all things went smoothly so for the next week we are no longers home owners, we are renters! We are renting the house back from the buyer until May 5th. The closing for our new house is May 1st! YAY!

I took him in to have his pictures done today.

Today is Ryan’s birthday and he celebrated by going to the doctor and getting shots. Poor dude. He weighs 22 lbs 7 oz and is 30 1/4 inches tall. He is 48% for weight and 50-75% for height.

He is also walking a whole lot more although he still crawls- just depends on his mood. But he getting alot sturdier and walking longer distances. He also said “mama” for the first time this weekend. SOOOOO cute!

Here is a really cute picture that I got of him today:

Drew had his 3 year well check today as well and he weighs 28 lbs 2 oz and is 36 1/4 inches tall. So while he has finally gained some weight he is still small. He is 10-25% for his weight and height.