Arnold's official now!

Ok, so I know it's been a while since it actually happened but it's still exciting! Our friends Sam and Erin came up to see us and we got to hang out the night before for a bit. It was so good to see them and chat.
Above is Erin holding Marie and below is Sam.
This is our little family just after the swearing in...YAY for Arnold!!!!
And since our Sam was asleep the night before we got some pictures of the two Sams together. This is just one.

And finally the most important part of the day. This is the actual swearing in if you feel like you want to watch. The rest of the hour was taken up by speeches and the reading off of 700 and something names but I didn't get all of that. It's crazy to think how many attorneys were set loose on the unknowing public that day.

Oh, and Arnold can be seen just above the sign in the middle leftish. Sorry it's so wiggly. I guess that's what happens when you are holding a baby and trying to keep it happy while filming.

Hugs and kisses for Marie

Sam loves and adores his little sister! It's so much fun until he tries to do something with her when I'm across the room. When there is someone there to help it's really cute. :) Here are some pictures of him in action with a little help from Daddy. What else are you suppose to do when you are in a hotel room and it's below freezing outside. Brrrr....
Marie has gotten lots and lots of kisses from the boys in her life. I love her face in these pictures! :) Sam is great too. It's almost as if he's saying, "Are you watching me?"
Just more cuteness. :)

Walking around Albany

Albany was really cool! Well, more like freezing, but we had a lot of fun on our brief walk to see the capitol of NY. As you can see Sam wore his little snow suit to keep him warm and it's probably a good thing he had it on since it was rather cold.
This is the actual state capitol building. Yup...that's about as much of it as we saw but it was fun! :)
Marie is in this picture but a little hard to see ;)
This is kinda funny. Its some kind of administration building for a university. It was HUGE but looks cool. (This is only a picture of part if it. It's atleast 2 if not 3 times as big as what you see here)

Airport

So we spent a bit of time in the airport on our trip to the US so I thought it would be good to share some of the pictures from it.
I know it looks sunny outside so you might be wondering why Sam is in his pajamas but since it was the middle of the night for him and we were hoping he'd go to sleep we decided to put them on him. He also had a lot of fun carrying around his teddy and the monkey leash. He wouldn't put them down for quite a while and it was really cute.

So this is what happened when he did fall asleep finally on the airplane. We got off and put him in the stroller and he actually slept for a bit longer! Yea!

It's a good thing we got our stuff at the gate. It would have been sad to leave this behind...

One more randomeness...

Ok, so I almost forgot this one...He won't eat mushrooms but he loves mustard???

Drool and other randomness

Ok so there is a lot of randomness in this post but there is a lot of it at our house so here we go... hope you enjoy! :)
Starting with drool...WHAT??? The last time I saw a 2 month old drool (Sam) the baby had 2 teeth before 4 months and at 4 months 4 teeth... I'm not sure I'm ready for this. Too bad I didn't get a picture of the initial HUGE drool that came first.
I love this! I have a son who LOVES trains and a husband who is quite the artist. So we get this on a regular basis whether on paper or the front porch.
Happy Valentines Day? Maybe it's too late for that but it's a cute picture anyway! :)

You'd think this kid loved chocolate and nutella...What do you think?

Sam has found a love for hats recently. He found the cut off end of some jeans I had made shorter and this is what he decided it was... and of course Teddy needs one too :)

Ok, so now for a funny story...

The other night I had just put Sam to bed and was trying to get Marie there also. However they had a different plan apparently. Marie screamed, probably due to a burp, and woke up Sam. She then calmed down. After about an hour I finally got Sam back to sleep. Yea! And Marie started screaming again. So Sam woke up again. She calmed down and went to sleep so we put her down in hopes of getting Sam back to sleep again. Sam started making a huge fuss over everything and being quite noisy about it. I was getting really frustrated at this point and was not ready to have this going on all night so I very sharply told him to be quiet. He then looked at me as if to say "huh?" and this conversation followed...(or something very close to it)

To fully appreciate this you have to know that he regularly answers yes, no and silence (when he doesn't know) to things correctly. He really does.

Me: "Sam, Are you doing this to drive me crazy?"
Sam: "Yea"(very innocently)
Me: "So you and Marie are doing this whole tag team screaming on purpose?"
Sam: "Yea"
Me: "Is someone paying you for this?"
Sam: "Yea"
Me: "They must be paying you a lot..."
Sam: "Yea"
Me: "I know, you and Marie are paying each other?"
Sam: "Yea"
Me: "Great, so are you trying to save for retirement or something?"
Sam: "Yea"

So at this point you can guess that the frustration had left and I was pretty much laughing...How do they do it???

And finally, One thing I never thought I'd miss but really do now that I'm here in Germany is Cambell's soup...I don't even remember how to spell it. I especially miss the cream soups, mainly mushroom. Now I don't like mushrooms but this soup is handy in making a lot of things. When you don't have it and want to make something you improvise...I tried replacing it with a german version unsuccessfully. I guess my little boy who eats everything, including blue cheese, doesn't like mushrooms...

Life happens...

So my sister reminded me that I haven't posted in a long time...oops! I did (2 posts back) commit to doing a post every day to get all caught up on the whole holiday to current that hadn't been posted yet. However I think I'm a little behind and I might have to do a few days of brief catch up at some point but what can I say...Life happens... today I'm just going to do some pictures of one of the most amazing people I know! (and my cute kids :)

So here she is... For those of you who don't know her, this is my Grandma Bastian.Ok, so maybe I'm biased but I think she's the greatest Grandma in the whole world. She's the most kind, loving, spiritual, faithful, amazing, patient, wonderful, hardworker, stubborn(...I should probably stop now) person I've ever known. The list could really go on forever.
If these two pictures don't show you how loving she is then you'll never see it. She raised 9 of the most wonderful people I know and if that doesn't say some thing then nothing does. I've never met kinder or happier people than my Aunts and Uncles. They are all as amazing as she is and I'm sure they would be happy to say that they learned it from their parents.
And here is another one just because it's fun. We had so much fun spending time with her and I just wish we could do it more often.

And here is a picture of a picture of her other half. I admire her so much since she's been without him for 13 years now. That's where the stubborn is admirable because she's still going strong for someone in their mid 80's!

And I'm not sure why she has this because I don't think her house is ever a mess but I definitely feel like I need one here for my little tornadoes...

I know this doesn't do her justice, or my Grandpa for that matter, because they make the best couple in the world. I hope to someday be even a fraction as wonderful as they are. If I can get there I'll be a very happy person indeed! :) Love you Grandma!