She did it!

Sophia has slept the last two nights in her big girl bed. Wahoo!! I was seriously dreading this. The first night she only got out once and the second night she fell right asleep.

She's so proud of herself. Notice her bedding has bears and wolves on it. I haven't got her pretty girl bedding yet. This was Josiah's before he moved to a bigger bed.

Next battle is potty training. Not until we get back from Romania! Just hoping she's done before we head to the states this summer. Yes, we get to go back and spend time with our families. We can't wait!

NordPark

This is one huge fountain in the Spring

The parks in Dusseldorf are wonderful and HUGE! Nordpark which is close to us has three playgrounds inside. We hit two of the three the other day.

I can't wait for the Spring. The park grounds will be gorgeous. Flowers everywhere. I will definitely post pictures when they bloom.

Hattingen, Germany

We have been wanting to explore Germany, but we don't have a lot of extra time. The international school was on Ski Week and so we had no club this week. We got Josiah from kindergarten at three and decided we should go somewhere. I packed us up in 15 minutes and Nick got a room for the night and we were off to the train station. The kids loved the train rides and the apartment we had for the night was perfect and cheap.

Hattingen is only about 30 minutes away (by car) from Dusseldorf. The altstadt (old town) is full of half timbered houses tucked in very close to each other. It was small, cute and just what we needed. Time away is always good, even if it's only 24 hours.

Nick in Switzerland

Nick went on a mens retreat to Switzerland last month. He enjoyed the skiing and said it was super cold. One of the pictures shows -16 celcius and that was in the middle of the day.

Do you recognize the first picture?? In the ski lodge in the Alps had a picture of Mt. Bachelor. Kinda funny.

Karneval 2012

Nick and Josiah went downtown to see the big parade for Karneval. I guess the parade is hours long and the different floats throw out candy to the kids. They even had segway floats. Josiah made friends with a little girl dressed up as Snow White and he came away with loads of candy!

Kids

Here are some of the most recent pictures I have of the kids. They loved having their Papa, Grandma and Aunt Ninny here.

Josiah's 5th birthday

Josiah's birthday was extra special because he had Papa, Grandma, and Aunt Ninny here to help celebrate! He chose a knight birthday and had lots of being the center of attention.

The crown he is wearing in the first picture was made by his kindergarten teacher. When he walked in the door to the kindergarten the whole class started singing. They sang in German and English and he got to wear the crown for the whole day.