House Pictures

Slowly, slowly, slowly things are coming together. We worked long into the nights for about a week and then were burnt out. Leevi had to finally start work and I felt like I wasn't very productive during the day with the girls. I felt guilty ignoring them and would stop and take the girls outside to play. We still need a futon for the guest room, a bookshelf for the hallway, and a new t.v. (ughh...ours didn't make it in the move or its too old to have the proper international conversion. Something about the hertz level being wrong and the color is off. Hailey wonders why Dora is orange! If we keep using it eventually it will just burn out so we are debating whether to store it in the basement for 3 years and cross our fingers that it will work back in the states or just get rid of it.) I also might convince Leevi to do a little painting...an accent wall here or there. At the Self Help store we can get paint and all of the supplies for free!!!!

Leevi has worked hard to get the grass green and has trimmed the bushes and dug up some dead plants. The neighbors across the street move out on the 10th and have asked us if we want their flowers! Of course we do!!!!!!

Living Room

Toy AreaDining roomGoing upstairsPlayroom

The Girls' room

Master Bedroom

Guest bathroom

Hallway to Basement

Basement storage room

Weight room in basement

We still have little piles like this scattered about...

And the office and the linen closet are the last areas that we need to tackle...

Summertime!

We are really enjoying the backyard and the closeness of the parks and open commons area behind the house. New neighbors moved in across the back with a 2 yr old boy and almost 4 yr old girl. It's weird to think that we won't be able to play outside year round like in Hawaii. So we are taking advantage of the sunshine and go outback most of the afternoon everyday...the only problem is that they both manage to get soooooo dirty!!!! I swear by OxiClean! Once we venture out, we are stuck out there until bathtime! :)

Hailey

Hailey is loving our new house and the new friends she is making in Germany. She had a tough transistion probably because she could sense our stress from the move. She misses our friends in Hawaii and asked me if I thought Colin still loved her. :( I'll finally start looking for a preschool now that we know what town we are living in. The one on post is full (and really expensive) so she might be going to a German preschool.

She snuggled Kailee down for a nap. Blackberry picking on a bush behind our house...Leila even picked one right off the bush with her teeth! :)

And a few tidbits....

Hailey picked out a pair of kids dress up shoes and said, "these are the shoes I'm going to wear when I marry Colin!"

One night Hailey was having me tell her stories from my childhood at bedtime. She was begging for one more and I said I'd tell her a story about a little girl who was grumpy one morning because she wouldn't go to sleep when her mommy told her to. Hailey replied, "I know that story is about me, Mom!"

Hailey got sent inside for a timeout when playing out back one evening. Usually I'll let her stay there until she chills out and decides she has calmed down. When she hadn't come back to ask if she could say she was sorry, I went inside to check on her and she had fallen asleep (at 5:00!) When she woke up at 7:30pm the first thing she said was, "That was too long to make me stay in timeout"

Kailee

Kailee has us scared that she's going to give us a run for our money with the terrible twos! Hailey was cake through age 2 and didn't give us many problems until 3ish (and at that point it could have been because a certain someone had arrived) :) Kailee worships Hailey and until about a month ago, Hailey could do no wrong. Now....Kailee has realized if she screams loud enough she'll get help if she has an opinion on the play at that time. We have really been working on Hailey not being so controlling and Kailee asking for help instead of screaming.....we've definitely made some progress now that we are back to a normal lifestyle! :)



She is totally into the make-believe play (babies, cooking, doctor, etc)

Ughh, crashed again! Long day of swimming outback and then the kids came inside to watch a movie while we got dinner going...left unattended, she snunk a nap in on us! I let her sleep about an hour and then woke her up so she could eat. She wasn't hard to get back to sleep that night because they had had such an active day outside.

Quite the getup!

We were heading out the door to register at Tricare (which was only a 12 minute walk from our house...at Hailey's pace! Doctor appts are going to be cake!) Kailee grabbed a bag and her baby and the baby sling.

The sentences are starting to flow...she definitely communicates well with one-word questions/answers and is very proper when saying thank you "thank you, mama!, thank you, yah yah!" :) Its cute to hear her piece together a thought...this morning it was "I'm all done. I want to go downstairs" I knew what she was saying, but could probably only make out "all done and downstairs"

Happy 4th of July (2 weeks late!)

We had a fun relaxing 4th of July before the big move started the following Monday...we spent the weekend cleaning during the day and then went to the carnival on post Saturday night with the Kents and then watched the fireworks from the hotel post on Sunday.

Nora, Hailey and David

4th of July carnival


4th of July soccer

Our Newest Family Member

We've been without a 2nd car since Leevi's deployment back in 2009. When he got back he was able to use my car and his motorcycle to get to work for the few months before we moved. The military will only ship one car with our orders so we knew we'd have to get something after the move. I like the idea of a truck as long as our family can fit in it too. Leevi was excited about this one because there were only 1500 made for this year.....oooooooooo! :) It arrived in Germany the week he and Hailey were gone and I wasn't about to pick it up myself! :) Actually, Leevi had to take a 4 hr train ride to a port to pick it up and then drive it home if we wanted it about 3 weeks before it would have been delivered. Which obviously worked out great because it has come in handy for the move! We love it and now we have a new baby to pamper.

Kailee's Sleep Schedule...

We are trying to figure out Kailee's new sleeping needs. A few weeks back while we were at the hotel she had been fighting me on taking a nap. Since she's not in a crib it was quite the ordeal because she wouldn't willingly lay in bed without me and I was "wasting" time laying with her for up to an hour while she was trying to fall asleep. And when she did nap, bedtime that night was ridiculous and she was staying up until between 10-11pm!!! The week Leevi and Hailey were gone I decide to try and see if she could make it without a nap and just make sure she got to bed by 6:30-7pm. It seemed to be ok. She can usually make it to bedtime without a major meltdown but some days she just crashes.... This was the evening I took the girls to Toy Story 3. We had come in from the park to take baths and eat dinner and then walk over for the 7pm movie. Kailee crashed once she was out of the bath. Hailey thought it was the most adorable thing and couldn't leave her alone!

She had woken up early one morning (maybe 4am??) She was playing on the floor in the room where Leevi was sleeping...eventually she just crashed

And this one is the oddest...Leevi was making dinner while I unpacked upstairs. Kailee got upset at Leevi because he wouldn't let her go outside. She attempted to come crying to me but never made it. I thought she had gotten over it and gone back to playing and Leevi thought she made it upstairs. When he came to call me for dinner, this is what he found!

Loving the House, BUT definitely OVERWHELMED!

The movers came over a week ago with our 11,000 pounds of household goods and we are slowly making a dent in unpacking. We are so close to being done but still have A LOT of little things to organize. A 4 yr old and an almost 2 yr old can really impede the process! :) I'm stressed that we aren't finished and just want an organized daily routine again! We do love the house though...I really like the layout and the downstairs living room, play area, dining area turned out to have more room than I anticipated. The kitchen has tons of storage and the office furniture is there, but not organized yet. The bedrooms also seem larger than they looked when empty. No problems at all with the bedroom furniture fitting. The playroom is great and Leevi finally found some bedrails to get the girls' bed together in their room(we have to paint them though). The guest room is the last room we haven't touched yet which has all of Leevi's clothes. We had a ton of storage space in the basement for all of our extras and rubbermaid tubs that we were able to turn the 2nd storage room into a weight room. Leevi found a total body system on yardsales.com (like craigslist) and it looks great...now if only we can find the time to workout! :) We also put a deep freezer down there and I'm excited about the prospect of doing large commissary shops and stocking up on things!

It was like Christmas again when we started unpacking the toys that we hadn't seen since April!!! A drumstick was sticking out of the bottom of this box...so exciting! :) Hailey was too funny when she realized she had grown taller than the yardstick!We had lots and lots of box forts out back for a few days

Watermelon break

Leila is lovin having a yard to sun herself in again!

They worked until the wee hours of the morning and never made it upstairs...this was how I found them one morning!

Towards the end of the week that Leevi and Hailey were gone, Kailee stopped her interest in the potty. She wouldn't even sit on it. She found this Elmo potty when we unpacked and opened it up and plopped down on it. I'm not sure how she even knew it was a potty because back in Hawaii we had only used it as a stepstool.

Nora Kent and Hailey on the tire swing out back. The Kents have been over a lot helping unpack and keep an eye on the girls.

Leevi brought home flowers last night to put in planters for our window sills.

So strong!

Oh that hair!! :) Her hair was done at one point in the day but between getting hot and sweaty and then the weather cooling for a storm that was approaching this was how her day ended! :)

I'll eventually get around to taking pictures of the house as we finish. I miss being able to run down to Target or Walmart to find something we need. All of the windows need curtains and rods but we are having trouble drilling into the wall (it crumbles away) and we need to buy a new T.V. because the hertz level is wrong and it distorts the color and will eventually burn it out. Eventually everything will get done...........

I've got a few old things to post about that happened while we didn't have an internet connection that I'll try to get on here over the next few days so check back!

Grant Circle

We have a home! We were finally approved for the Mannheim 4 bedroom duplex housing in Grant Circle. Its probably not as large as something we could have found off post, but it definitely has a lot of pros...4 bedrooms, large kitchen, decent size backyard, basement, carport, no neighbors immediately behind us, gated community, free utilities, walking distance to commissary, dr appts, dentist, post office, etc. It's larger than our Hawaii home by probably 400 sq ft, so we will have more than enough room for our things. We got our keys on Thursday and have been cleaning and unpacking the things we brought with us. Both of our household good shipments are here!!!!!!! And the movers come tomorrow!!!! Hailey is excited to have her bike back (and we are excited to take family bike ride around the neighborhood!) and I'm excited to finally be able to cook in a kitchen again!!!!! Leevi is excited to have a lawn to take care of and he and Hailey will go at some point this week to the "Self Help" store and get flowers to plant out front (the store offers home move-in supplies all for free!!!)

I thought it was funny that this paper arrived at our new house the day we got our keys. This was the main dilemma on why it took so long to get approved to live in the on-post housing on a post where Leevi won't be working. The article says that the Grant Circle housing will close in 2014...we may or may not still be in Germany at that point! When we were told they are closing we assumed it'd be within a year or two. I guess it was be Home Sweet Home for longer than we expected.
The girls are getting a normal experience with wildlife now that we aren't on an island! This little hedgehog decided to take a nap in our carport one day.

And the video of the house...sorry it ended up so long. And then I'll take pictures once we make it a home! :)