2015

Hi, long time no see,
eventhough i have not been active here, life has been extremly active to say the least!
2014 is done. It has been a good one but also one of the more challenging ones. I am sad that i did not make more time to really write down our every day happenings cause they come and go and before you know it is a new year and you only remember tiny snippets of it! not writing and feeling discontent in 2014 are definatley woven into eachother.
Instagram is a wonderful thing to catch some of those daily snippets but in the end I learned over the past year that I need a place to write again. So i decided to make 2015 count!
i have been thinking about my word for 2015 and i can't quite settle on one yet ! the general feeling of discontentment last year came from feelings like not spending enough quality time as a couple as a family and as an individual human being ,rushing through the day like a chased rabbit, too little down time and the general feeling of being exhausted! granted you cannot really avoid the last one once you have three littles but i want this feeling to change into a happy exhaustion instead of a grumpy one.also i think my feelings are triggered by the fact that i have not been home in so long( since before Fiona was born). I hope that 2015 is the year! I will try my hardest to make this happen, it will do me so good!
so my thoughts circle around: quality, joy, adventure!
make the things you do really count
happy 2015

A first in 2014 Virtual Coffee

a fresh start!!!

It's 2014 , a new year, clean slate, fresh start, ladeedadeeda! Truth is, 2013 went out with a big bang and since then I am still trying to count my blessings and find my mojo back! Trying is the word, cause the lack of sleep due to a teething lil lady and other things on my mind are not being very supportive!
Most of you guys know how excited I was to have my family here in the States for Christmas. A lot of hustle and bustle kept me busy the weeks before their arrival. I had not seen my peeps in exactly a year and it was the first time for Miss Fiona to meet her Omi and Opi. To say the least, I was bursting with excitement and just to say it straight forward, I am happy everybody is back were they belong!
All our plans for the holidays failed due to crazy sickness among the kids of the house( 4 out of 5 came down with RSV and much more) It was a visit between doctor visits , hospital stays, organizing care for the others while tending to the sick ones, loads of grocery trips, lots of worries, delayed flights home, nasty weather and so one.Granted we were together but I felt so bad for everybody making this very expensive trip to come and see us and then it was just a big mess. I really don't want to sound ungrateful, it was just the opposite spectrum of what I had hoped for and as of now, I can't shake this deflated, tired feeling.
But I am big on trying to get out of the funk. I have started ! My kids are back to school and we are getting back into the groove with that. And Everyone is healthy ( so thankful for that) !
Despite all the craziness, I think the kiddos still enjoyed Christmas. It was a looong Christmas season this year ( after a slumber party under the lights of the tree last weekend, we took down all decorations Sunday night)
Now the house is bare and in desperate need for a deep cleanse ( this is just how I feel too) . If we would really meet for coffee, I would fill you in on all the crazy details of our Christmas 2013, I would ask you to share your secret remedy to solve funky ,moody feelings, I would ask if you have made any special resolutions for 2014.
 I made a long list of things that I would like to accomplish 2014. Some house projects, some family trips, some personal goals and some to cave out more time to be with my man, oh and of course to be more patient, ha!stella picked her word for this year: Courage! I admire her so much for that! At her very young age she picked something that she knows will challenge her very much!

I wish I would be more like her sometimes.

I am still thinking about mine! There are just too many things buzzing in my head at the moment! I might come up with one or maybe not and i am totally ok either way! 

I did not take too many pics this past Christmas season but those very few need to be shared and remembered for the years to come: "hey, remember this crazy Christmas, when you came to visit us in the States!" "Oh how could we forget!!! It was freezing cold like Louisiana had not seen in the last 50 years...". And so on. 

So I guess it is safe to say we surely did make memories this Christmas of 2013:)
here we go:

Each year the excitement of eating those tiny, cheap chocolates is grand!!!

Nikolaus 2013

pros at eating chocolate at 6am

Fiona and her teeny tiny boot

Snippets of our Christmas season 

our card 2013

Decorating the tree ( Lu decorated a very special 'Lucien corner' on the back of the tree with all his special ornaments( that boy)), listening to Pandoras Christmas station, day in and day out, packaging sweet little presents, lots of crafting, Christmas parties and visiting Santa. All was peaceful. All was bright before this happened....

Poor little sickling

and a very tired mama

Fiona's first Christmas

Take a mental break for a bit cause a lot of not so fun things went on in between those pics (104 fever, breathing treatments, shots of antibiotics, a bottle of ibuprofen and an earinfection on top of the RSV, if you care for the details).
Feeling all better for Christmas morning and then everyone else got the bug, yuck!!!

my gang Christmas morning( feeling better)

plus the cousins

the cousins before sickness struck

Lu came down with it, just not as bad, due to the fact that he is older, but both twins got it, too. One of them really bad. Imagine being in a foreign country with one in the hospital and one sick at home! yeah, needless to say the stresslevel was high, really high for all of us. Not nearly the happy Christmas we had hoped for. But as usual,looking at the bright side. Those next two pics make me really happy and I will treasure them forever.

Christkind listened to all the begging and brought her Marie Grace!!!!

happiest moment this Christmas season, meeting her Opi for the first time

So there it is, all just spilled out. The good always outweighs the bad and this is why I needed all those little, mostly happy moments documented on here. I am so out of practice, when it comes to writing a post. This one took almost a week before I had all the words and pics lined up in a somewhat presentable way. Need to shape up my blogger skills soon or really hire someone to work on my layout. Anyone out there, that you can recommend????? Thanks for listening. I feel better. The end

One year later

I do

One year later ......
Oh where to start. Life has been a crazy whirlwind with lots of good and lots of unexpected happening to our little family.
Not quite sure why I had lost my mojo to write here for a while, cause I do need writing so desperately for my sanity! ( guess I lost that for a while, too ;))
First things first! we had a baby. Yes, and sometimes I am still in disbelief that this really happened. And I am so grateful for my sweet little surprise baby Fiona Mae, snoozing right beside me at this very moment.
 Remember my last real post about hurricane Isaac? Well, thankfully we weren't harmed in any way by it.Lots of rain of course, a couple extra days of no school, we never even lost power ( don't get me wrong, I am NOT complaining). Instead we enjoyed a little extra family time ;)
Before we knew it things were going normal pace again, kids back in school, normal business around here, me getting ready to hit the books hard to go back to work this summer. But something felt off. I did not feel right and seriously thought I might be sick, like real sick. Anyway, I was up for my check up anyway so I scheduled an appointment with my ob/gyn and I knew they would ask me about a prego test. So one fine late September Sunday morning ( I will never forget it was the weekend of the balloon festival around here) I took a test.Not thinking in a million years it would be positive, I left it on the bathroom counter not even looking at it and kinda forgetting about it. Fast forward an hour later or so: total disbelief ! My little world just got rocked to it's core. POSITIVE. It was still super early in the morning, Lu was up early as usual, so I took him outside to ride his bike, sort my thoughts and watch the sun rise ! While out there I saw two hot air balloons showing up on the horizon and then a little further away and a little lower another whee little one showing up! Always looking for a sign, I could not help myself but break down crying with the first rays of sunlight hitting my face.

this is the pic i posted on insta, the day i found out we were expecting. can you see the tiny balloons???

In retrospective, it was just a plain beautiful sight and the first sign showing me how much I needed this beautiful little baby, that I am rocking in my arms this minute.
As I broke the news to Ricky, he needed a moment, too. But the loving man and daddy he is, he caught his emotions quickly( after a little walk alone,( this hit him off guard, he did not even know I was taking a test) he wrapped his arms around me and reassured me that things would be alright). Maybe a bit different from our plans, but alright!

first doctors visit, feeling nervous

Well, to speed things up a bit, a doctors appointment  on Ricky's 38th birthday confirmed what we already knew. We were really and truly expecting another child.......to be continued!!!

yep there will be three