The Nursery!

The nursery is mostly ready! I have a star lamp (missing a light bulb) to hang on the wall, but that is it. Isaac's diaper bag is even packed. The theme of all my nurseries has been based off of famous painters. Isaac's painter is Van Gogh. The paintings I chose are "Starry Night," "First Steps: After Millet," Starry Night over the Rhine," and "The Church at Auvers." I picked pale yellow, light blue, dark blue, and sage/Army green to draw out of the paintings to use in the room. I painted each matt one of those colors as well.

I found used German furniture and found some German bedding with the pale yellow and light blue for the crib and the "crawl blanket" (called a Krabeldecke in German.) The duck in the crib is the knitted stuffed animal that we got in Belgium.


The floor blanket is in the corner in the next picture. I found some camo pieces with the same colors in them too, like the Boppy cover in the next picture.


Then I painted the letters in Isaac's name in light blue with dark blue sides.


The crucifix in the next picture (above the door) is from our trip to Florence, Italy.


I guess that's it. Here is a picture of the book shelf with the baby toys in the corner, and a picture of the room from a different angle. It's hard to keep books in his room. The girls keep running off with them, except for the really baby-ish ones.

Baptism Gown

Here is the baptism gown we got in Bruges, Belgium! I haven't sewed on the lace pieces I have shown below yet. Everyone assures me that the boys can wear the same gowns that girls can, but I think that Hannah and Genna's gown was just too frilly. This one reminded me a bit of an altar boy's gown with a little extra lace, perhaps.

Here's a close-up of the lace detail:

Here are the lace pieces that I plan to sew onto the gown:

Pretty girl...a little hung up on clothes though!

Here is Genna wearing her new rain coat even though it isn't raining (and it was hot!) She loves to dress up and tries on about 10-12 pairs of shoes on everyday and walks around the house in them. They're not all her shoes, she tries on all of our shoes. Hannah's are her favorite. I should snap pictures one day each time she changes shoes. The funny thing is that she has always loved shoes. When she was just a baby she would do anything to get a hold of her shoe basket and chew on her shoes. I let her since she didn't actually walk in them, but once she started wearing real shoes that got dirty I had to move the shoe basket out of reach. :) Now that she learned to take off and put on the shoes by herself, it has been a never ending shoe fashion show with her. Amazingly enough, she almost never gets them on the right feet! You would think she would get it right at least half the time by chance, but it is not so! It doesn't faze her though, if someone mentions they are on the wrong feet she just plops down and switches them. It's a bonus for her because she gets to take them off and put them on again!

Bruges, Belgium

This was maybe my favorite of all our adventures in Europe to date! It was such a relaxing trip! We were only there part of 2 days, but we were able to see most of what we wanted. We first went to the Choco-Story Museum, which is the entire history of chocolate starting with the Aztecs and Mayan's use of the cocoa bean all the way to the present production of chocolate in Belgium. There was a demonstration of how the Belgian praline is made at the end of the tour and samples, of course.

A statue carved out of chocolate

A statue of the Madonna and Child made of white chocolate

The demonstration

Then we went on a boat ride in the canals. This was so fun! We rode past swans and all kinds of historic sites and buildings. There were houses backed right up to the canal with little verandas. That would be so fun to live right off the canal like that!

Above is a picture of our view of the verandas backed up to the canals

I loved the swans!

We went to Mass in a Jesuit Cathedral. It was beautiful!

Then the search for mussels began! Brian was absolutely determined to eat mussels and everywhere we went they were sold out of them. Finally, we found them and he enjoyed them thoroughly! I, on the other hand, could barely stand the smell. :)

Before

After

Then there was the beer which I, obviously, could care less about. However, Brian was obsessed with them. Here is his picture diary of Belgium beers.

Here I am big and tired

While Brian went up the over 300 steps to the Bell tower with 47 bells, I was able to do some shopping and it was so much better than anywhere else so far. I got a chocolate dog for the girls and some rain coats too. Since this area of Belgium is also known for it's lace, there were baptism gowns everywhere. I finally found one that Brian agreed was not too girly (girls and boys in Europe wear the same gowns) and bought it along with a lace cross and Madonna and Child to sew onto the gown. I will put pictures of that soon (along with the nursery which is almost complete).

The Bell Tower

A view from the top of the Bell Tower

Altstadt Fest in Trier on Saturday

We went to Trier's "Old Town Fest" on Saturday with my parents. It was very hot for this area, so I had a tough time being so very pregnant now. We listened to music, ate some sausage, ate some ice cream and crepes, let the kids ride a couple rides, and saw a few sites all in an afternoon.

Here are some pictures of the girls listening to music:

One of the rides:

Genna pooped out on us:

The girls get balloons (Hannah picked Snoopy and Genna picked princesses):
A couple of the sites:

Our Play-dough Family

We had some fun play-dough time earlier this week. Here is our family in play-dough: Mom with Isaac in her tummy, Hannah, Genna, and Dad.

Welcome, welcome, welcome!

We welcomed my parents this week for their first visit to our home in Germany! The girls couldn't be more thrilled to have a constant audience and extra playmates as well! I am glad to have the help and the company too!

We also welcomed Hannah's new fish into the family this week! His name is "Watermelon House!" Brian took the girls to pick out a goldfish this time instead of a beta. We didn't think it would be a good idea to have two fish so we decided it would be better to just let Genna help name him. Hannah chose "Watermelon" as the first name and Genna chose "House" as the second or middle name. (All our pets have middle names. Brian thinks it's weird.) Here's a picture of our new pet.

Trinity

When Brian's good friend, Jeff, visited recently he requested I put some pictures of our 3-legged cat up on the blog. Since I am in a blogging mood today (as you may notice) and Trinity reminded me of this request by climbing into this box behind me, I decided to fulfill his request.


Well, many of you know the story of how Trinity came to be our 3-legged cat, so I'll give the shortened version for those who don't . Brian had a stray clinic when we lived in New York. Someone brought this kitten in that had been thrown out a car window. Brian determined there was too much nerve damage to save the leg and amputated it. He brought her home to recover, and she never left! We are not "Cat people" really, but Hannah and Brian fell in love with her. Brian promised to be the primary caretaker since I had my hands full with the rest of the family (and Genna was on the way.)

So here are some great photos of Hannah and Trinity. Genna is Murray's (our dog's) best friend so I don't have any of her with Trinity, just with Murray. I guess at some point I'll have to put him on my blog too, but he is on my bad side at the moment (being way too protective of me which he does every time I am pregnant.)

My goodness, by these pictures, you would think we never let Hannah out of the house either!


Here's the picture of her today in the box...