Just for fun

My little Lady.....

Crazy yet calculated, Daring yet cautious.....she's a girl with an amazing imagination, great ideas and a spunky attitude.

Here she is using her stuffed dog's leash as a swing from our stair well. She loves to prove she can do anything and I believe she can and will.

Her hands are tiny yet so strong, she wants to be grown up like her Daddy yet still is such a baby, she eats all the time yet stays hungry......& SKINNY!

Each day that she gets closer to turning 5 I can't help but hang on to each memory leading to that day, knowing that each year that passes she will become more of a women yet still my little lady.

Getting things in order.......

Charles will be home from Africa tomorrow morning. The Church Saints, our girls and I are looking forward to his return. We adjust while he's gone but when he is back home, everything seems to feel more safe, and secure.

Yes he adds a sense of intensity when he comes home, because he is over flowing with dreams, ideas, goals, passion, meetings, phone calls, and has a bad cause of what I have diagnosed as overly organized disorder...OOD better known to most as OCD. He loves things in order, he loves to eat in silence and as many of you know with a almost 5 year old and almost 2 year old that doesn't happen often around here.....order or silence:-)

But as it comes closer to him arriving, we always feel a wind change. The girls and I pull ourselves together, get things in the order how Daddy likes them, and prepare ourselves for the one thing the 3 of us have in common..... and that is Loving the most precious, sweetest and greatest man we know.

Can't wait for him to finally get home, and although he's only home for a short while we will enjoy each moment we have as a family together.

Hope to have pictures and a detail description of Charles mission trip to Africa....(coming soon!)

Like Memaw

I found this picture of Aleia while we were in Michigan last year and it reminded me of my Mom....Aleia's Memaw! If any of you know my Mom she can make some serious moody faces and here's one of them:-)

The older I get the more I miss my Mom, wishing sometimes she were here with us to see our girls growing and learning how to be little ladies.

So often, I'm amazed that even though Aleia hasn't seen Memaw or spent a lot of time with her, how much she is so much like her.

As much as I hated it when my Mom would refer me to someone if I said something or did something that reminded her of someone, I find myself weekly saying to Aleia 'Ok little Robin"...you're just like your Memaw and in many ways I love it, cause I feel like through Aleia I still have a little part of my Mom....Memaw with me all the time.

On a side note....have you every made an egg and it still smelt wild......if not maybe it's just the eggs here, I guess thats what hot sauce is for.

Monday Madness

Mondays are to be set aside as a day off, a family day but it just so happens to be the busiest day of my week. It's a day I get organized, re-set my weekly goals and my annual resolutions, making sure that I'm staying on track with what is truly important.

-God
-Family
-Church

Today we're crossing our fingers that the planes will be going out of Vienna so that Charles can catch his next flight from Amsterdam to Kenya then onward to Malawi.

He is looking forward to being with the wonderful team and seeing great things done in Africa. I'll post more on his trip while he is there at another time.

Until then, I'm packing his clothes, putting dishes away, doing laundry, blogging, cooking, organizing and looking forward to going to bed tonight EARLY!


Charles getting all his papers together for his trip

......another year older

As many Mothers do....... I find the closer my girls get to being another year older I start reminiscing of stages that have come and gone.

With both of their Birthdays just one month away, one daughter just about the height of my rib cage and the other one just about ready to be out of diapers...I find that I'll miss when my first born couldn't tie her shoes, even though her putting them on herself makes things easier, or when she had to ask me for a word she was thinking of, or maybe even the most simple things as straping her seat belt around her little chest to be sure she was safe for the journey.

In the time I've been a Mama I've changed approximately 4,341 diapers and yet the closer our second born gets to being potty trained I find that changing one more diaper is not so bad, it means she's still that much farther away from being a big girl and not needing us as much as she does now.

I can say even though some stages have been challenging and have caused restless nights, and yes I do know there are yet some stages that we must go through that won't be so easy I'm sad that some have gone and I look forward to many more wonderful and challenging stages with my beautiful angels.

Being a Mother has brought the greatest joys, worries, challenges and victories to my life and I'm so thankful I was chosen to be the Mama for the job.

Can't wait to celebrate another year with the two most amazing little people in my life..................forever my baby girls!

Wordless Wednesday

S.L.S.S

Silly little Sally Sue sits as she slurps her special kind of cereal with her big girl spoon.

Her smile is simply spectacular especially with her sweet dimple on the sides of her silly smile.

She is sweet, stubborn and super smart.

Our Silly little Sally Sue!

Diaper rates

Ok so the day we land back in Austria from America I seem to think I have enough diapers to last Brienna till I can get to the grocery store to buy some more. Yeah 10 diapers should last me for 3 days but what I didn't factor in was that the day after Easter would be a Holiday and all the stores would be closed.

So on Saturday night I realize that we have only 3 diapers left for Brienna and that will not last her until Tuesday, so I call Charles on his way back from AMTC Bible school in Germany to tell him before he gets home to stop at the OMV gas station to get me a small package of Pampers for Brie to last her through Tuesday when the stores will re-open.

He complies and when he gets home he hands me the package of pampers and the receipt to file in our April envelope of expenses. I glance at the receipt and it says 33.48 Euro......What? I say to him the diapers cost 33 Euro he says "no I bought 2 rolls of toilet paper to" hahahaha......no way that is high way robbery, 29.99 euro for a package of diapers.

Well I guess that is the diaper rate at the gas station, I will remember this when I'm almost out and either use cloth diapers or better yet not wait till I only have 3 pampers left before I head to the grocery store.

By the way the Diapers rates at the local grocery store are half the cost of the ones at the gas station.

For all of you who need to know the exchange rate on 29.99 for a package of diapers in the dollar is 41 American dollars.....yeah we could have eaten at red lobster for the cost of those butty covers for that little white rear end:-) oh well, it was a good lesson learned......never run out of diapers over the weekend or before a Holiday.