Big Steps

Jeffrey had a big day yesterday. After dinner we were watching a movie and Jeffrey was walking along the couch between us trying to entertain himself. Mommy was feeding him pieces of these German fruit bars "Frucht Freunde" that he LOVES! She asked him if he wanted more and out of the blue he clenched his fists and put them together a few times. It caught Mommy off guard because she hadn't been signing with him for about a week and hadn't shown him the sign for "more" in quite some time. We asked him again and he repeated the guesture. It was so amazing to watch as he finally put the two concepts, hearing the word and making the hand sign together. He'll sign "milk" but I (Tricia) think that concept means eating and drinking for him right now and he won't sign it any time I ask him to, we're working on separating the two.

We've also posted about his obsession with The They Might Be Giants "Here Come the ABCs" and "Here Come the 123s" Songs before. One of them is a song called "High Five" Mommy has been trying to get him to give her five for a while we were listening to the song yesterday and she held out her hand and showed him once while singing the song and the next time he did it on his own. He's only given Momma high fives so far, but he'll warm up to everyone else.

While watching "Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom" Jeffrey stood up and took five distinct steps all on his own. After the fifth he deflated to the floor like a tire that had run over a large nail, but we were both excited to have been present for his first steps.

Shoes

Tricia has a serious shoe fettish, though she has not made nearly as many foot purchases while here in Germany. Her desire for good foot ware has worn off onto Jeffrey who now has a rack of shoes outside of his room. His drawer was becoming cluttered and hard to close so we took advantage of an unneeded rack that had previously been in the laundry room.

A Day at Playmobil

I had a great time with Jeffrey and Tricia at the Playmobil Theme Park. Jeffrey was in and out of his stroller as we walked around the park looking for the fun activities that he could be involved in. We will defintitely go back when Jeffrey can walk on his own.

We stopped in the Playmobil toy store on the way out and picked up a few souveniers. This is Jeffrey's new zoo animals and keepers. We set up our extra table in his room and Tricia has seen him playing with his toys on the table.

JMTC NCO of the Year

It is that time of year. The competitions are on and as the JMTC 2nd quarter winner I competed on Wednesdays and Thursdays board and field tasks for the title of JMTC NCO of the Year. I came home the winner and prepared to go back on Monday through Wednesday of this coming week to compete against the winners from other brigades around us. If I make it through that it will mean going on to compete at the US Army Europe level.

Playmobil Funpark

So a few days ago after Cory had finished training in the morning (for the JMTC NCO of the year competition, which I'm sure he'll post the results of later!) we decided to go to Playmobil Funpark just outside of Nurnberg. It's about an hour drive there and so we figured we had just enough time to go before I had to teach dance in the evening.

It will be funner once Jeffrey can walk around and enjoy things more. He loved the Noah's Ark land because they had these water filled tubs that they were supposed to drive boats in, Jeffrey just splashed in them and got everything really wet. Being the oh so prepared parents that we are, we forgot a change of clothes, so we just had to put sunscreen on him and let him spend the rest of the day diaper-clad. It was a fun trip, we stopped at the store on the way out and got Jeffers a zoo play set.

Dad and Lad walking the plank from the pirate ship. There were these cool rafts (you can see them in the background) you could take them and punt yourself across the lake. This place would so not be approved in the US...too many risks.
Swinging a little bit before we went home. Notice the non-clothes and just a pair of crocs.

Here we are in front of the castle. It was pretty cool, there was a climbing wall up one side, Uncle Jeff would have enjoyed it. There were also ropes so if you wanted to you could lay siege to the castle walls.

Here we are in front of a roaring "fire" waiting for our mug of apple juice
Jeffrey was sharing the wood chips with dad.
When you crawl in the wood, you're bound to get a dirty bum.

I just thought this was hilarious. He was sitting on the playmobil horse.
Climbing into the stagecoach. Jeffers has a 'buff' like on survivor. We got it in Austria when his head grew too fast!
The water canal things. Lots of fun.
Splash! Splash! Splash!

Song Review: What's the Rumpus?

I love Gaelic Storm. They're my favorite band! They have another new album coming out in July. (I'll have to get Cory to give it to me for my birthday because I LOVE them!) But they have one song out already called "What's the Rumpus?" It makes me giggle. I enjoy Patrick Murphy's ability to share a hilarious story and make it a very catchy tune as well. (Like "Don't go for the One" from Bring Yer Wellies.) I reminds me of the time I went to the concert with Paige. Such good times!

They also have another song that you can hear on the website called "The Night I Punched Russell Crowe." Hilarious.

Book Review: Hippolyte's Island

I started this book a couple of months ago, but Mistee sent me the last Twilight book so that distracted me and then I found The Host in paperback at the PX. But I finally got back to reading this book, and I finished this book almost a week ago. I got it because we really enjoyed another book that we read by the same author, The Tattooed Map. That book was much shorter and more illustrated than this one. But I enjoyed Hippolyte's Island also. I thought Hippolyte was a girl when I was reading about the book. He's not, he's kind of a cranky old guy. The book has ALOT of info about sailing that I'll be honest and say I glossed over, but the story at the core of the book was entertaining. The two books have a theme of "eternal travelling" about them. Interesting and good books though.

Bavarian Erdberen

Germans know how to grow fruit. And they know how to pick it. So we went yesterday to the strawberry field about 25 minutes away and picked our own strawberries, though Mommy's OCD about germs prevented us from sampling in the field, and then had them weighed and paid for them. Goodness they are good. We ended up with SO many I didn't realize how many we had picked until we had to wash them all. I also got a new baby carrier for Jeffrey it's the Maya Tie and it was great, it even worked as I did 5 thousand squats to pick strawberries though my thighs are not so pleased Today.

So I made Jam. That's right, I've now made my own jam and dang, is it good! It's in the 24 hour gelling phase now but I can't wait to have a PB&J with it. I do wish we could have gotten the "Less sugar" box of pectin, but we had limited options (and I can at least say that I know what went into my jam).

A couple of months ago, our ward did a service auction as the Young Men/Young Women fundraiser (EFY this year is in Denmark...how would that be?) And last year we got an AWESOME middle eastern dinner from our Relief Society president. This year we saved our whole budget for a romantic dinner for two made by my good friend Angela. Her son came and played with Jeffrey and took him for a walk and we had the most AMAZING 5 course meal ever.

Cory and I just kept stuffing ourself wishing we had more room to eat. The appetizer was spinach/Artichoke dip with bread, the we had a salad, followed by cordon bleu, rice, and carrots, Dessert number one was hot brownies and fudge sauce with ice cream on the top. Our later dessert was more of the fresh picked strawberries dipped in good German chocolate. Oh peeps, it was well worth every penny we paid.

This picture is more for Paige and I should have had Cory take a better one...see, I'm wearing skinny jeans! There's no way you're half as curvy as I am post baby so you should try them. (We threw a baby shower for our 2nd counselor this week, it was lots of fun!!)

And this picture is just because I think Jeffers and his gappy teeth are hilarious! (And he apparently thought something I was saying was hilarious!)

Stake Conference

Yesterday was our stake conference. Since Cory had to work, Jeffrey and I drove an hour and a half to get to the Stadthalle in Fuerth which is a suburb of Nuernberg (our stake center isn't big enough for our whole stake so we went to the town hall). On the way there I listened to the Ensign that I had downloaded onto my iPod. It was nice and almost all the spirituality I got for the day. I really loved this quote from a past Young Women's General President (Margaret Dyreng Nadauld) though,

“Women of God can never be like women of the world. The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity.”
(“The Joy of Womanhood,” Ensign, Nov. 2000, 15)

As for me not really hearing anything...I decided a long time ago before I had kids, that I would not chase them down the aisles in church. When I was growing up we sat on our benches and we listened, we didn't have toys or games or books. I remember drawing on dad's 3x5 cards and thinking that was the greatest thing ever. In addition to that, Steve and Sherri's kids are (for the most part I think) well behaved and don't goof off during church. I noticed that Sherri doesn't let the kids bring their toyboxes with them. In addition to that, our bishop has really tried to push reverence during sacrament meeting so I decided that reverence during church was mandatory.

However...it's a little bit hard to enforce those rules with your own kids when they see every single other kid around them running up and down the aisles and playing with their toys. Yesterday was an exercise in patience, I was up and down to the side of the row several times with Jeffrey. I even took him out once, but saw that was utter chaos (kids running up and down the stairs, kids running in and out of the elevators, etc) and decided I didn't want him thinking going into the hall was party time. My sister (of twinnies) said she gets the same thing, except people tell her to let her kids down to play. I guess I'll just have to catch the church messages in snippets and keep listening to the magazines.

Oooh fun story though. In the Friend (which I read for Primary) there was a story about President Uctdorf and the many church buildings he attended in Germany when he was younger. It made me think about the history of our own church building. A long time ago it used to be a bar/guesthouse (I'm guessing on the guesthouse part, but there's a lot of extra rooms upstairs where we meet) and Elvis came to sing there once. When we were cleaning out the closets upstairs for the primary we found the funniest shelf paper in the closets with people in 50s style clothing on it, probably not entirely appropriate for church, but what can you do? We don't own the building so we can't make too many changes I guess.

Pop and Tot

This is Pop, of Hop on Pop fame. Jeffrey got it for his birthday from Sugar and Bampa. He LOVES pop. Honestly he's not super interested in any of his toys, but whenever he sees Pop he decides to either wrestle Pop or hug him, I think they look pretty similar.

Getting ready to finally fall asleep. The kid's afraid he'll miss a party or something I swear!

He's also decided that he likes to fall asleep on my legs, you can't see it so well but he'll crawl to my feet and collapse. Nutty kid!

Step One of the JMTC NCO of the Year Competition

It is that time of year again. I am back in competition for the title of NCO of the year. Yestarday started the competition at the JMTC level with a physical fitness test and a shooting range. I performed 64 push-ups and 71 sit-ups in two minute time periods along with the two mile run event in 12 minutes 56 seconds. On the range I hit 31 of 40 targets. On the 25th and 26th of this month the competition will continue with evaluated tasks and the usually board proceedings.

New Jewelry

http://triciajewelry.blogspot.com/ If you check out my other blog you can see everything I've got for sale so far! Lots of fun spring things!

Eating Well

I had this friend in Colorado, Miki, who was a very natural girl. She was planning to have a natural birth (I think she probably did, she was due two months before I was) and she always would have "organic" food in her house. At the time I thought she was just a little extreme and "why would you need to eat organic foods they cost so much more?" Now that I'm feeding a one year old and trying to eat healthier myself, I understand why. I posted about my war against High Fructose Corn syrup which is in literally everything! But the more I look at ingredients on labels at the commissary the more I can see her point. What am I giving to my kid when I give him animal crackers? Yes it's something sweet that he'll enjoy but is it really that good for him?

I spent 5 minutes reading labels of jelly the other day. Even the "all fruit, all natural" jams have a HIGH amount of unnatural ingredients and an incredible amount of sugar. So I ended up paying more for organic jam from Italy because I can pronounce everything on the label. I can't say that it's the right way for everything all the time (I can't find organic chocolate yet) for me it just seems to make more sense to eat things that are closer to the state they were in originally. I am slowly becoming more and more of a granola girl (natural birth...cosleeping...canvas grocery bags...organic foods). That might change though when there's a Wendy's within 1.000 miles of my house though. I'll keep you all updated. ;)

Fun in Photoshop

Photoshop is a blast. I took a 15 minute break today and played around with a few photos that were on my laptop and came up with this montage. I will post this photo to the SnapFish album mentioned below.

Growing up.

I'm sad and happy about how quickly Jeffrey is growing up. Sad because I miss the days of just cuddling with him for so long. Watch the video to see why I'm happy!

Did you see a single bottle in the video? Nope?

That's right! NO MORE BOTTLES! We have washed the last one! Jeffrey sort of just weaned himself. One day I didn't give him any bottles and he was just fine with it, so we're done with bottles and formula and baby food. Though he eats some graduate food and like Paige, I feel the need to feed my child healthier than I eat myself (like try eliminating High Fructose Corn Syrup from your diet, it's in EVERYTHING!).

But he's such a cute guy. I can't help but laugh sometimes at the things he does. I can see him watching and trying to figure out how things work (mostly so he can get into them) but I love him!

Just a side note about the dressed up pictures, we actually bought those lederhosen and I bought the dress as souvineers of our time here in Germany. I think I'm going to wear the dirndle (with a different shirt) to church on Sunday.

Apartments...UGH!

I am done with apartment life. Besides the fact that I feel like I'm living in an animal cage because it's so small, I am just done with living so CLOSE to my neighbors.

Jeffrey crawls loudly and our lovely mock-hardwood floors carry the sound quite well. For the last almost year our downstairs neighbors have been gone but they're back now. (The daughter and her mother and the daughter's baby) The last two nights she's (the mother) come to ring our doorbell at 10:00-10:20 to tell us our "music" is too loud. The first night Cory told her we weren't playing any music and then she said there was "banging" he said that it might have been our son crawling. She was pretty rude and said, "well it's too loud." The next night we held Jeffrey trying to get him to fall asleep (dance days throw nap time off and he ends up wired until late) and the minute he got down to crawl she came rushing up the stairs and told me "it's too loud". I told her that he was crawling and what did she expect me to do about it. She was even more rude and said I needed to have "more control" over him. She also threatened to call the MPs. That's grown-up and responsible right? First sign of trouble, tell the teacher? I told her it was his house too and that he had just as much right to crawl as anyone.

So Cory when to talk to the daughter (who was much more reasonable), yes it is loud, but there isn't much we can do about it. I'll try and keep him off the floor after 10 but honestly, I'm done with apartment living. I'm done walking on eggshells because people think the world revolves around their apartment.

Let's all pray that Fort Carson's waiting list is too long and we get to live off post!

Miss Dashwood

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Jeffrey's Birthday Photo

For Jeffrey's one year birthday we took him out for a fun dressed up photoshoot. The photos have been posted to SnapFish for viewing and printing. Follow the link to see the show and order any prints that you like. http://macneilfamily.snapfish.com/snapfish