This is it!!!!

So that´s it. I´m sitting here in the middle of packing the rest of our things.Waiting for the New year to start with a major new chapter in my life. It is the sadest and hardest thing I have ever done in my life to say goodbye to all my loved ones over here in Germany. I know Louisiana and the people there, are going to be great and I´m excited to be with them. And this is what keeps me from going nuts here ,at the moment. But all the tears I´ve cried already could possibly fill my dads swimming pool. We are blessed with such a great bunch of people, loving and caring for us.
Now it´s time to say: Goodbye Deutschland
Hello USA

Happy New Year to everyone!!!!

The Move

As I said already, my blog is a little behind with everything that happened within the last 2 months. I will try and catch up with it as soon as possible. December 15th the move started to get serious and for the first time real to us!!!!!
After preparing the best we could, in the middle of another sick- family-episode, 5 movers came to pack our house. Man, they were fast. We tried to keep up with what is packed and what still needed to go but they were just too fast. They packed the first day from 3 pm to 6pm and the next day from 7 til 6pm and they were done. The 3rd day was basically just waiting for the oversea container to arrive and load. Those people did a great job, I was very pleased with their work.

Let the move begin!!!

Lulu having fun inbetween all those boxes

Stellas and Luciens rooms getting packed

My last coffee out of a babyfood jar
all the cups were packed!!!!!!!!!!!

Loading the truck

Loading in front of the house

Loading the container
It was freezing cold

I just heard that our container will arrive in New Orleans on the 22nd of January. We are hoping customs will take a bit, which means we would be able to bring our stuff straight to the new house instead of bringing it in a storage. We´ll see

Merry Christmas

We wish all our friends and families all across the world a Merry Christmas. Enjoy this special time of the year to the fullest. We are spending a wonderful time at my parents house and Stella is so excited about opening her presents in a few minutes. Pics will follow
All our love
Rick, Verena, Stella and Lucien

Being Responsible

Our kids are very independent as you can see ;) Once the craziness is over, we´ll take advantage of our cute little babysitter( maybe with some assistance by Granny....)

Art Work

Before

This is Stellas canvas. She works on it at random times, whenever she feels like it. It´s fun to just follow the progress. It´s our modern piece of art in our dinning room and we love to look at it. This time it happened to be that her kindergarten friend Fabienne came by for a playdate and since the weather was calling for some inside fun, they decided on painting. It was the first time somebody else was "allowed " to work on Stellas canvas. They had so much fun and spent quite some time working on it, which gave the mamas some time for a coffee and a nice conversation.




Busy girls!!!

I have pictures of the first progress steps of the canvas ,somewhere. I will add them to this post as soon as I find them

Polish Pottery Trip

Friday,the 20th of November, me and a bunch of girls ( 10 to be exact) set off to go to Boleslawiec, Poland. This polish city is worldfamous for georgious handmade pottery. I wanted to go there so bad for the last 2 years, basically since I first got introduced to the beauty of polish pottery by a friend of mine. Finally, 3 weeks before the movers come to pack our stuff, I got to go.
It took us about 6,5 hours driving to get there.It was so nice just to have girlie conversations, giggles and laughs,which made the drive go by quick and set just the right mood for the weekend.When we arrived in Boleslawiec( it was still shopping time), we headed straight to the first pottery store and boy , we were overwhelmed by the variety, colours and patters of the pottery. It was perfect to get an idea what is out there. Unfortunately it made us sleepless that night aswell, just to try and figure out what to get. Cer Far closed and off we went to find our hotel The Blue Beetroot. It was such a nice and cozy place to stay. The rooms were great, the food delicious and the price was not to be beaten.( which made the trip even better)

We were such a fun group of girls. I have not met any of them( exept my friend Kimber)before, but it was so nice and easy to get to know eachother a little besides the main goal of pottery shopping.I had agreat time with them. Unfortunately we are leaving Germany in a little while, which will make it difficult to get together with them again :(
This was the crew

Nicole, Kathy, Kara, Lexi, Teina, Noelle, Heather
Vicky, Verena and Kimber
Saturday morning the serious shopping started. Some of those girls were definately pro´s in polish pottery.The pattern that I had seen online beforehand that I really liked didn´t come in dinner plates, which made me decide to go with random pieces in different patterns. It was so much fun to just mix and match everything. And everything looks so good together.
Here are just some pictures of different shops.There was sooo much to see( and buy ;) )

We all got some good shopping done and it was so interessting what everybody else bought and how different everyones taste is.

We were basically done shopping at 4 pm,went back to the hotel where we all had appointments for massages, pedicures, footmassages.....

I can´t say all of us made it back in time. One car decided to get a deeper impression of Poland by getting introduced to the polish police ;)
Lexi got back to the hotel, carrying a speeding ticket in her pocket, and was called "the polish road pirate "for the rest of the trip, which we all got a good laugh out of, thanks to Lexi!!!!

Road Pirate Lexi

We all enjoyed the massages, some wine and unwrapping the pottery. Felt a little like christmas.

We all went from room to oom to inspect what everyone else had gotten. There was some serious pottery talking going on til late that night.
It felt so good to have this girl trip. I got to meet new people, spend a bunch of time with my friend Kimber and bought beautiful pieces of pottery.

( They will always remind me of a great weekend) Eventhough we didn´t sleep a lot, we returned home Sunday refreshed, pampered and ready to take over the mommy job again.
Thanks to you Ricky, for letting me enjoy these 3 days and for doing a great job with the little ones. i missed you all but this was much needed to recharge my batteries. I´m going to be more relaxed, the house will be cleaner, the meals better..... for at least the next week or so ;)......

I love my pottery !!!!

Germs ;)

Ok, today is a very special day. Not only, cause I get to blog 2 nights in a row, no, finally, we are all feeling much better after a very long exhausting month of health problems in our family. As you all know, Stella ran 105 fever for a long time, up to the point where we had to take her to the hospital to get treated. It was one of those experiences that you don´t need more than once ( I´m sure stuff like this will happen again). Worrying about my little girl, finding babysitters for Lucien( feeling bad for leaving him the main part of the day), taking turns with Ricky at the hospital, the lack of sleep and a pile of other things waiting in line to do, made this actually one of our biggest challenges as a family so far.
I´m still amazed about what you are able to handle if you really need to.
On top of Stellas 1st infection, she caught 2 more while staying at the hospital. One was the famous Noro virus, which unfortunately got passed on to Ricky and then to me. Words can not describe how much we worried about Lucien getting it,knowing how rough it was on us. We were almost excited once we figured out that he had only come down with `just`a pretty bad cold and major teething problems.
This little man is 9 months old, today and still, there is no single tooth cut. Nevertheless he is chewing down whatever I feed him: Bread( the german kind), noodles, rice, bananas....and he loves it.While still at the hospital with Stella , we decided on Ricky taking the nightshifts there cause Lucien was still nursing at night and early mornings. Well, this is history aswell. Once I came down with the virus, we had to go cold turkey from nursing and had to whean him within 24 hours( Poor baby). I felt so bad about it, but there was no other way we could have done it.Thank god, I had given him his first bottle ever a couple days before, just to try it for an emergency at the hospital. Who would have known.....
We are still recovering from a crazy last month but we are felling better each day. We simply have to be better now, otherwise there is no way we can keep up with our tight schedule until the move( the movers are loading our stuff in only 30 days, AHHHHHHHH!!!!!)
That was definately enough sickness to talk about. Stay tuned for stories about the craziness of an international move, they will be on their way shortly.