Halloween and more fun....

I wanted to add a few Halloween pictures here :)  The kids were just WAY too cute!  Anna (Aurora) was wearing the tiara I wore at my wedding.  I was a little nervous about that, but I made sure to pin it in really well.  Daniel was a super cute Woody!  He wasn't too keen on keeping the hat on, but at two years old that's understandable.  He was very leery of all of the scary decorations and costumes and wound up crying to be held a few times while trick-or-treating.  The whole holiday seems to freak him out.  Every time we walked through the Halloween section at Target he would cry and hide his face.  He's so sensitive.

My passport came in the mail yesterday!  The picture cracks me up because I look so smug ;)  The guy was taking the pictures at a weird angle, so it looks like I'm half smiling while looking down on everyone.  Will said that my passport picture was the best out of all four of ours in spite of the smug look ;)  None of our passport pictures are good.  Even the kids, who never take a bad picture!  It's still bizarre to me that our kids have passports.  I didn't get my first passport until 15 or 16 when I went to China.  I love the fact that our children are going to be little world travelers.  I just hope they love traveling and Europe as much as Will and me.  To be honest, sometimes I worry that they'll grow to resent us because of all of the moving we'll probably do in their lifetime and having to be so far from extended family.  This is exactly the life that Will and I want, but would they choose it if they had the option?  I guess only time will tell.  

We'll be in Germany this time next month.  That's still pretty surreal.  Our lives have changed so much since we got married five and a half years ago.  I often feel overwhelmed to have been blessed so much.  God is SO good to us.  We're still working on all of the final details, but most things have been scheduled :)

Thoughts on loss and change...

It's hard to believe that it's November already!  Where has the time gone.  It feels like we're moving at a break-neck pace now and I'm trying to acclimate myself the best I can!

I suppose I should start with an apology for being MIA for such a long time.  I kind of gave myself this six months to try to take in life here in CA because I knew that everything would be changing so quickly.  I didn't take on any non-friend photography clients for quite some time here and tried to lay low.  I've made some of the best friendships I've had in my life in this short period of time.  I have friends who care deeply about me and never hesitate to offer a hand when they can tell that I need to take a breath.  What a blessing those friendships are.  There is nothing like a friendship where both parties are so actively pursuing each other.  I have been blessed like this by my best friend Jessica for years, but we never live near each other!  ;)  I love you SOOO much, Jessica!  Thank God for friends we can lean on when we feel like screaming or crying and need a sympathetic ear.  

Change...I don't even know where to start!  Like I said, I have been laying low here photographically speaking ;)  I've done a couple of newborn shoots and now I have a family shoot that was booked as a result of them seeing one of the newborn shoots!  This is such a lovely way to gain business!  I'm hopeful that things will really pick up once we get to Germany and I actually start advertising my photography business.  I'm looking forward to this move and all of the changes it will bring for my family.  Life is good and we are so blessed to be able to live where we've always wanted to live long term.  

Loss...There are some losses that you simply never get over.  My Grandma passed away about a year before Will and I got engaged.  She was and continues to be one of my favorite people who ever graced this planet.  I think of her daily, but sometimes the loss hits me like a ton of bricks and I find myself crying.  This happened the other day on my drive home from Walgreens.  I went to pick up medications for my stomach flu and found myself tearing up while driving home alone even though nothing in particular reminded me of her at that moment.  Today I was looking through a Pier 1 catalog and saw something that reminded me of her holiday decorations.  Autumn and the holiday season are the worst.  Will loves to listen to the Rat Pack and we often play Sinatra/Dean/Bing for the kids after dinner.  It always makes me think of how much my Grandma would love Will's affinity for old music and movies.  They would have gotten along so well!  Daniel's new favorite song to sing (sometimes yell ;)) is "Count Your Blessings" from White Christmas.  That would have made her day.  I think of her when I sing "Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra" to my children when they're in their beds and having a rough time sleeping because it's what she did for me every night I spent at her home.  My life is a million times richer for having spent time with her and it sometimes makes me cry that my children will never get to know how wonderful she was.  Anyway, I'm not sure why I felt the need to share this with whomever decides to read the blog, but I just know that I miss her dearly and wouldn't trade a second of the time I spent with her.  It's never easy to lose a loved one, but I have to trust that God has a plan and that ultimately my Grandma is now in Heaven and at peace.

Waiting to Exhale

For those of you who read my blog (hi family :)), I am SO sorry that it has been so long!  We are starting to get settled in to our new home in CA.  I seriously forgot how insanely gorgeous the whole state of California is.  Monterey, is especially beautiful.  I'm so blessed to be able to live in this city once again. 

 

I'm sure that you'll find a lot of pretty, ocean/Monterey pictures here in the next few months.  Followed by pictures of Germany (castles, silly signs, etc).  Our life feels so fluid.  It's constantly changing, and we are always planning the next big move.  I am not complaining.  I love it.  It definitely suits the nomad in me!  So, we're un-packing the boxes at our new house and enjoying CA while we can.   I'm taking care of laundry and dishes like my life depends on it!  By the way, someone forgot to remind me just how creepy the run-of-the-mill laundromat is now.  That was a very interesting trip ;)

I'll try to update here soon with some silly stories about my kids.  They are always funny :) 

"Let me tell you the words!"

So, Anna has this (self-proclaimed/invented) bedtime ritual where she insists on telling us "the words."  The words are really what she hopes for tomorrow.  Last night when she told her Daddy the words, they were to cuddle and watch movies with mommy (yes, that did melt my heart!) and go to play park.  I just put her down for her nap, and she insisted on sharing the words with me, even though it's not typically a nap time thing.  Today they were words about the specific play park she wanted to go to, so I heard "blue stairs, musical beeps (little buttons that you push that chime), teeter totters with red seats, and race cars.  She knows that if she doesn't take a nap, she doesn't get to go to play park, so let's all hope that she actually falls asleep for a bit so we can go to play park.

I figure that since this post was inspired by Anna, I'd share some more Annaisms.  Anna likes to invent words.  One of her favorites is "bigabit."  A bigabit is really just a bigger bit.  She likes to eat Froot ( I hate that they spell fruit that way!) Loops in the morning, and when I'm getting ready to give her the cereal she insists on a bigabit.  Daniel has picked up on this and regularly asks for a bigabit, also.

Anna has taken to saying owwie randomly and without any real need.  I mean, I understand saying it if something is actually bothering you or you're hurt, but she tells me that there's no good reason for her to say it, and I'm choosing to believe it ;)  The other day she kept saying it over and over again (it was like nails on a chalk board), so I told her that it was "slightly ridiculous to say owwie when there's nothing wrong with you."  Anna, being the super smart and silly girl that she is, decided that her plastic dog was ridiculous, "Bunito is SOO ridiculous!"  She then went through a few other items in the car and stated that they were also "slightly ridiculous."  I really do adore how goofy she is.  She loves to use big words and is interested in knowing what they all mean.  We really do talk to her like she's much older than she is, and I think it makes for some pretty fun conversations.

Daniel is pretty hilarious, too.  He's talking more now.  He typically uses normal words, but this morning he decided to revert to gibberish to tell me something very deep and meaningful.  He rattled off a good minute or so of nonsense and then said "Ummm" and took a nice, long pause for deep reflection.  After the cute pause (I'm telling you, it seriously looked like he was deep in thought, trying to figure out what he needed to say next) he continued to rattle on.  He says I love you too, but it sounds more like "Aiy you tiu!"  He says good morning in a way that would make anyone fond of southern accents swoon ;)  I'll have some more cute Daniel stories to share soon. 

Free At Last!

I am done with school until mid-July!  I don't know if you can tell, but I'm practically jumping up and down over here.  Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy my classes (especially the photography classes), but I am stressed to the max.  Between the move and everything else, the last thing I need is a ton of deadlines looming over my head.  I'll go back to class mid-July and take a couple new classes, then I'll take a break for our big move to Europe.  I'm also planning on taking a German class at the community college in CA.  I could certainly use a brush up on my German language skills before we head over there to live.  

I decided to get back to working-out.  I was going to Zumba super frequently for quite some time, but life got hectic and with Will's recurring ingrown toenail, he was unable to work-out for a while.  How did I jump back in to working-out?  Well, I thought that Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred dvd would be a great way to start.  That woman is a beast!  I wrote on facebook that I think she's an instrument of torture, and I have to say that I still believe it!  I don't remember the last time all of my muscles have hurt like this.  I'm just trusting that it will work and trying to smile through the ridiculous physical pain ;).

I had a chance to do a photo shoot with the Story family again.  I had such a blast.  If you want to check out the pictures, you can go here.  I have a new layout for my photography blog, and I'm loving it. 

Insanity

Today was interesting, to say the least!  We went out to lunch with some people who are going to be moving to CA and Germany at the same time as us.  I have to say, it is insanely nice to know people who will be with us the whole way through.  It is even better that they are really cool, nice people who I think we will have a great time with!

You're probably wondering why I titled this post "Insanity."  Well, while we were eating lunch at a lovely Indian buffet, we got to talking about Anna's little OCD-ish tendencies (she is definitely her mother's daughter!).  I mentioned that Anna freaks out to the point of almost crying if a door is left ajar and no one closes it the instant she notices.  It just so happens, that the couple sitting at a table across from us managed to hear that little tidbit.  Later, during lunch the woman comes over and informs us that she sees ghost/spirits (she used the word interchangeably), and has since she was five years old.  The first time she saw a spirit it was her recently departed grandmother, and she came out of her closet!  She then told her parents that her Grandma was not really dead just sleeping (anyone else ridiculously perplexed?!  I had to make a conscious effort to not make a lovely, "What the heck?!" face).  She shared this with us because she suspected that Anna shared her "gift."  I tried to explain that Anna is just extremely particular and I don't think she's seen any spirits yet.  In case you didn't know, I am a magnet for all weird/creepy people.  I was looking over my old blog from my internship in Germany, and man were there some funny stories about creepy people approaching me!  I'm sure this is simply the first of many creepy experiences to be shared on this blog ;). 

Fish out of water.

We took a trip up to Willard, OH to visit family.  I really can't explain just how wonderful the trip was.  We had a blast, and Anna can't stop talking about all of her newly discovered relatives (and their respective animal friends).  She was only a year old when we saw most of them last, so it was brand new to her.  She couldn't get enough of their animals (this is the point where you take pity on the poor defenseless animals ;)).  Daniel worked his charm on everyone.  He gave out BaoBaos (hugs) freely and open mouth kissed anyone who dared make the request.

Now for the fish out of water...yep, that's me!  This was my third trip to Willard.  The first couple of trips were even more whirlwind than this trip, so forgive my short memory.  Anyway, I hadn't been in nearly four years, so I forgot some of the aspects of small-town living.  As we were making the trip up to OH I started feeling a sinus infection coming on, so I suggested we stop in at Walmart when we got to Willard to pick up some Mucinex.  Will laughed hysterically and informed me that we wouldn't be able to make such a trip because Willard, OH has zero Walmarts.  I responded with "They don't have a Walmart?!  WHERE do they BUY things?!"  Looking back, it was a totally ridiculous thing to say, but at that moment, it was all I could think ;).  In my defense, I had never been to a small town before I started dating Will.  No one in my family lives in a town with fewer than a hundred thousand people.  I love Willard though.  Mostly because of all the people there, but it is a really nice place.  One thing I'm not so fond of...country roads.  I was on the verge of losing my lunch on a number of drives ;)