Auntie

Nessie and I are so excited! Kara is coming on Thursday. Nessie has been missing her auntie so much that when we skyped with Kara on Sunday, Nessie saw her auntie on the computer screen and was so excited she crawled across the carpet to say hello to the camera :) We are both very much looking forward to Kara's visit. Nessie is aware that Kara is going to crawl with her, and Nessie is going to show her auntie how to do raspberries and how to swim properly as well as how you scream when you want something and then you always seem to get it :)
Well, I am guessing I am more excited to catch up on talking and spending time with my sis. We always seem to have such a great time, and of course there is time reserved in our schedule for all three of us girls to go shopping :) after all, we have to keep the economy going and shopping in the US is a whole lot cheaper than it is in Europe :)

Anyway, we are super excited! Ness has changed so much since my sister's last visit in February when Ness was only a couple months old, not mobile and not vocal :)

Park

Nessie loves playing at the park. It's a good thing we live about 2 blocks away from one :) It really should be our daily routine after getting home from work/daycare and dinner, but sometimes we run out of time to go outside. The last couple of days I have made an effort to get out with her. She loves swinging in the baby swing as well as on my lap in a big swing. She loves the breeze when we are on the big swing and squeals :) What a funny little kid. Yesterday, we even went down the slide a few times, she didn't love it, but she didn't dislike it either, I think she was confused as to what we were doing :)

She also sat in one of the toys at the park, and while she didn't bounce in it like she was supposed to, she had a great time blowing raspberries and just having a good time. I love this weather, today is going to be yet another perfect evening for a stroll to the park. One great perk of playing outside for an hour is that it makes bedtime a breeze. Not that she is a difficult kid to put down, but yesterday after all the play at the park, it took all but 10 minutes for her to cuddle and fall asleep! I love spending evenings with her, she is so funny to watch. At one point she rested her head on the swing, that was rather funny, I don't think it was comfortable, but she kept trying to put her head on the metal chain that was holding up the swing. She did give up eventually as i am sure she found the thing hard and not working as a resting spot for her noggin :)

Natalie

She is my pride and joy! I can't believe we are so blessed to have her in our lives. Anyway, her latest favorite thing to do besides being super clingy to me, which i don't mind most of the time is crawling over to any drawers and start pulling them open and then pushing them shut. She can continue this activity for at least 10 minutes, and is quite entertained, we just have to be careful with watching her fingers, as she already has shut one drawer on her fingers and that wasn't very pretty. She is so much fun. Ness loves crawling and we love watching her little bum being up in the air and her trying to move her tiny little legs. She is very good at what she does, she can crawl with both her legs moving, quite talented that kid I must say :) She is also rather fond of dad's stereo, we are foreseeing a broken stereo before she is 3 :) but hey, from what I understand Matt burnt out his dad's stereo, so maybe it's in the genes :)

Happy times....

Now that we have established that keeping my blog current isn't my thing, I will do my best to update it more often, although I am still not sure if anybody reads it :) Anyway, latest news...I am pregnant!!! About time :) Just kidding. Anyway, we have always wanted kids and we hope to have 4 of them in the next few years.

Matt and I were in Puerto Rico on our spontaneous vacation when we found out that I was pregnant. I was late by a couple of days, so I convinced Matt that we should buy me a pregnancy test at the nearby Walgreens. We did, buy it that is. However, I didn't take it right away, instead that night we sat on the patio and drank wine :) The next morning we were scheduled to go scuba diving and were supposed to wake up at 6:00am. Well, I was supposed to wake up at 6am, Matt's alarm was set for 6:30am.
The very first thing I did when I woke up was pee on a stick and immediately got a positive result saying that we are in for a wild ride that nobody is ever ready for. Of course instead of me waiting until Matt woke up, I jumped on the bed and woke him up by handing him the stick with positive pregnancy result and saying "I am pregnant". He literally jumped out of bed, took the stick and stared it for a minute and said "are you sure? wow" I guess the guy did just wake up, so I should have given him a minute to process the information. Anyway, off we went to scuba dive, even though my experience with scuba diving didn't go that well, let's blame it on the pregnancy. I got sick on the boat multiple times, and little did I know that being sick would be my state for the following 11 weeks.

Anyway, from that day on things started to change around our household...from me abandoning the chores and sleeping 14 hours a day at a minimum, to us buying new furniture for the house such as crib and changing table. Oh, and I no longer am interested in shopping for clothes for me, now all I can think of are all those cute clothes for the babies that are out there!!!

Fun times, fun times indeed!!!

Wow, it's been awhile....

I am not all that big into blog writing...obviously...but once in a while I feel like just sitting down and pounding on a keyboard to try to get my thoughts out onto i'd say paper, except it's a screen....
Right now if I tried to get my thoughts out onto a screen it would be ugly...i have about a gazzillion thoughts, all of them are unfinished, most of them are not logical...anyway, it's been some two months or so...
I went from absolutely adoring my job and the company I worked at to despising the company and the personality they are trying to nurture in me. I won't give in. I am who I am and for that I am great at what I do, at least I think so....And as of about a week ago, my boss agreed w/me entirely. Anyway, my job at this point is just that...a job. Now I am focusing on other things in my life, being happy, loving my husband, enjoying my puppy and trying to keep up my house clean.

Flight Delays are no fun...

Thanksgiving was fabulous. Matt's folks came into town and his siblings came over. Matt's mom helped me cook and we had a great Thanksgiving meal, it was great to finally be home for Thanksgiving after the last couple of years, when I had to spend holidays thousands of miles from home. I love hosting events and I love having family around.
But this Thanksgiving is even more special because not only did I get to spend it at home w/Matt and Brovi, but the next day I headed out to Europe. I have to go to France for work, but I only have to be in France for 2 days for work, but since I have to go to Europe anyway, I asked work if I can go to Germany during the same trip and visit my sister. My work had no problems w/such arrangement, which is awesome. So, this Thanksgiving holiday I get to spend w/Matt's family as well as w/my sister and her hubby in their new apartment in Stuttgart.

I am very excited to get there, but as always when you are counting minutes until you are at your final destination, something gets in the way....I was flying from Minneapolis-to Cincinnati-to Paris-to Strasbourgh where my sister will be picking me up. Well, I made it to one flight w/out delays....However, when I got to Cincinatti, well, things didn't go as perfectly as I was hoping. I was hoping to get on the flight, I was hoping for the flight to land early in Paris so I can make my next connection (only had 1 hour between flights). Well, instead, my flight to Paris got delayed by 2.5 hours...Needless to say, there is not chance I can make my connection now, so I am on the next flight to Strasbourgh....The reason for the delay is maintainance of the plane, so I guess I shouldn't complain, because I would much rather board a safe plane than take a risk...But I am a bit disappointed by the fact that I have to wait a few hours more until I see my sister.

Oh well...Thank God for iPhone, computer and interent connections at the airport, although I had to fork up some money for the latter, but it was only $7.00 and I say that's worth it, otherwise I wouldn't be able to write a few emails, check work emails, facebook, and chat w/my sister as much as I wanted to :)

Looks like I should head over to the gate area (had to leave the area because there is a shortage of electrical outlets at just about any airport, and my computer's battery doesn't last forever). I hope for the plane to show up soon so I can take a nap soon and so I can get over to Germany, spend some time w/my sis, drink beer, wine, visit a few Christmas markets and do all kinds of other fun stuff!!!

Cheers!

PS: Hope everybody had a fantastic Thanksgiving!!!

Training

Well, we have had our puppy since September 9th, 2009....
He is a mini labradoodle and is incredibly smart. He is housetrained at the age of 4 months (w/very occasional accidents) and he knows a few commands (shake, sit, down, come). I say that it's because both poodle and labs are very smart breeds.
Anyway, as soon as I agreed to have a puppy, I realized that it would take a lot of time to train the dog, take it on walks, attend vet appointments, etc. However, I didn't quite realize how much time you have to spend on training. See, I thought I would go to training class, they will teach the dog what to do and then I would reinforce it during the next couple of days and voila....Wow, was I living in a dream.

We's already been through one obedience class and we are on the next level and even though he is doing great, oh my goodness, he requires a ton of time.

Unlike my assumption of what training will be, we go to class once a week, the owners are taught the tricks and behavior that dogs need to learn, the owners are trained on how to communicate w/their pets to obtain the right behavior and then the class is dismissed. We are given homework, where we have to train our puppies EVERY day...Yes, we have to dedicate about 30 minutes every day to train our dogs! It doesn't seem like 30 minutes is that long, right? Well, when I wake up at 6am (keep in mind, I am not an early person), then go to work, come back for lunch only to take my puppy out for a break and a quick walk, and then head back to work until evening at which point I rush back home...take my puppy to the off-leash dog park for an hour and a half (or until his energy runs out) and then come home...Brovi loves attention even when he is tired, so we usually play for about an hour after we come home...So, during the whole day the first time I get to sit down and just relax for a few minutes is at about 7:00pm....by then I really have no motivation or energy left to try and train him on any tricks or obedience....Well, last week has been not so good, we haven't done much training....But usually I try to make a point during the day to dedicate sometime to just training....Next week will be better!!!