Getting around

Joshua will be eight weeks old on Friday. He is growing and changing so much! We are all enjoying the times that he is awake and alert but he still sleeps alot during the day time. When he is awake, I have had to find some creative ways to keep him happy and play with Sarah. I think I have hit on something but I don't know how much longer I can get away with it. Sarah has started getting an imagination and she loves to imitate me. So she will get her baby doll and do what I do with her dolly. We have a large toy baby buggy that right now is too big and heavy for Sarah to push but perfect for everyone else. When things get to hectic, I simply put Joshua in it and push him around while Sarah follows behind me with her baby stroller and imitates me. Today, we went for a walk and feed the "ducks" in the hallway.

Sarah isn't always willing to wait for her food when I am busy giving Joshua his. So today, she took matters into her own hands and helped herself to some cereal.

Here she is trying to act all cool and pretend that she hadn't gotten into the cereal at all.

Another week

Wow another week has gone by since I last posted. Believe it or not, we still are dealing with sickness around our home. The good news is that Sarah and Joshua seem to be getting better with their colds. The bad news is that I seem now to be the one down and out with a bad head cold. So the adults that are healthy enough seem to be handling childcare during the day and we somehow are getting through this.
Yesterday, Jeff and I drove down to Bern Switzerland to register Joshua as a U.S. citizen. It is weird to think that at almost two months old he has no country to call his own. We decided to head down to Bern because Frankfurt is such a long drive for us and the process we were told was quicker in Bern. I had called the embassy in Bern and was sent all of the paper work so I had everything filled out. Once we arrived, we were aloud to register him even though he wasn't born in Switzerland. Since we were alrady there, they couldn't turn us away. We were also told that we could wait longer for his passport to arrive, maybe up to two months because they had to send all the information on up to Frankfurt to be processed. So goes life living internationally and dealing with all the wonderful international laws. We are praying that his passport will come sooner than they made it out to be.

The Sickies

We have all been sick around our house. Some more than others. In fact, about 20% of our school community has been hit by the flu/cold bug. That is the worst we have seen since moving here eight years ago! When you think about all of the exotic places our students travel to over Christmas break and what kind of germs they bring back with them it is a wonder something like this hasn't happend before. Hopefully things will get better next week. Pray for the health of our students and Staff in the next week.

Birthday Girl

Sarah turned two today. She was just starting to figure out how it works, but she doesn't have the patience to wait for everything. She has hit her terrible two's alright. She was very excited about two things to happen today, eat at McDonalds for dinner and eat birthday cake. However, the build up was too much for her and she had a melt down during present time. Oh well, there is always next year.

Joshua even enjoyed some food.

Play dishes from Grandma and Grandpa Benjamin! The perfect item to go along with her...

Toy kitchen!

Lets eat cake!!

Play time

Earlier this week I was asked by the Independent living class to bring Sarah and Joshua into class as they study child development. There were other mom's there with their children and the students were able to ask us questions and observe the kids play. Here are a few pictures of our time there.

Here is Joshua and his buddy Jonathan just five days apart. Jonathan's mom and I had the same due date. So far, this is about the extent of their interaction with eachother.

Sarah demostrating her two year old abilities infront of the students.

Sarah checking on baby Joshua to see that everything is okay. She has become very protective of him. At one month old, he tips the scale at 12 pounds!

Future parents learning hands on childcare while the curent parents head out for a much needed cup of coffee.

Listen and Learn

If any of you are interested in learning more about our school, Black Forest Academy, follow the link to listen to a recent spot that was played on MBN Prime Time American. It is about 10 minutes into the program and gives some good information about our school.

This 8 minute spot was recorded near the end of the 06/07 school year and was aired across the USA on January 4, 2008.
1) Go to www.mbn.org <http://www.mbn.org>
2) Click on MBN Audio Archives
3) Click on Prime Time America
4) Scroll down and click on "01/04/2008"
5) Click on the link to hear Prime Time America. The BFA story starts about 10 minutes into the program.

Speaking of our school, Jeff co lead the staff breakfast this morning and did a great job. Everyone even clapped for him when he was introduced as the new Principal he felt really honored by the support given to him. Now bring on the students and stress!

Family Fun

Our Christmas break is almost over. It has been very relaxing- well as relaxing as it can be with a newborn in the house and sleepless nights. We were able to get out once during the break for some family fun. Normally, we like to take advantage of our break and do some travelling but of course that was out of the question this time around. So we decided to check out a kid friendly play place called Kinder Galaxie. It was only about 25 minutes from our home. It seemed to be a hit with the kids so we may go back there again.