Babies

"When God wants a great work done in the world or a wrong righted, he goes about it in a very unusual way. He doesn't stir up his earthquakes or send forth his thunderbolts. Instead, he has a helpless baby born, perhaps in a simple home of some obscure mother. And then God puts the idea into the mother's heart, and she puts the idea into the baby's mind. And then God waits. The greatest forces in the world are not the earthquakes and the thunderbolts. The greatest forces in the world are babies."
My sister had her 2nd baby a few weeks ago. I know he'll be a doll if he's half as cute as his older brother. Congrats Sissy!

Sick Days

For the past 2 weeks Caden has been out of school for Spring Break. We had some good quality fun with family and friends. We went on vacation and did some things around town. You can read about our trip to the Frankfurt Zoo here. http://dzmurafamily.blogspot.com

However, I was anxiously awaiting today. Today was the day Caden went back to school. No more complaints that he was bored. No more teasing of his sister...a little quite time for me. Wouldn't you know that he got sick yesterday with a virus and had to stay home. UGH! He is feeling better and WILL be back at school tomorrow but for today he is home.

The exact thing happened after his Christmas Break too. He must need just a few extra days to be ready for school again. Those are some expensive sick days to have. With a school year costing nearly 25k for kindergarten (yes, you read that right 25k for one school year) each day he misses cost more than my weekly trip to the commissary. Good thing he has a generous uncle to pay for it. Thanks Uncle Sam.

Superstar

Kayla loves to sing and dance. She could make us alot of money if she could actually carry a tune. She really loves to sing love ballads. There is just something about love, breaking up and moving on that she can really relate to as a 4 year old. She has such emotion that you can hardly tell what she's singing. This is Kayla singing a song from High School Musical. She's got to move on and be who she is.

The Outfit

This is Kayla's favorite outfit. Interesting to say the least. Every article of clothing she has on were bought as separates not intended to be worn with each other. Somehow she managed to find all of them in her closet and assemble this very pink, very patterned outfit. She would wear it everyday if it were clean. If it comes through the wash then she will change into it. she always wears her pink sparkle shoes (purchased for dress up but have somehow become everyday shoes.) Sometimes it has a silver sparkly belt too.
Now I am not the kind of mom that needs to pick out her kid's clothes. I let them do that. Hey, it's one less thing I have to worry about. I will of course "make" them wear certain things for pictures and what not but I really have few rules when it comes to their clothes. No jammies to church and no swimsuits to daddy's work. That's about it. So of course I let Kayla wear this whenever it's clean. Oh how I wish it would warm up and she would at least take off the Dr. Seuss tights.

On Holiday

As the Europeans would say, we were "on holiday" this past week. We went to Garmisch, Germany and stayed at the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort.

http://www.edelweisslodgeandresort.com/

We have been there before, but this time we went just to relax. No tours or sightseeing. Just plain ole relaxing and doing nothing. It was great. Of course the only thing the kids wanted to do was swim so we could have stayed next door at a Best Western and it would have been just as great for them. Well, almost. Edelweiss really is a nice place to stay. We had a beautiful view of the Alps from our porch.

There was a big grassy area for the kids to run around in while they were taking a quick break from swimming.
The next few pictures are from our last trip to Garmisch. We took a train ride up the mountain to the Zugspitze. At nearly 10 thousand feet this is Germany's highest peak. It was an amazing view. The sun reflecting off of the snow was so bright that we had to buy some sunglasses for Avery. We took the cable car down the mountain which turned out to be a very memorable experience. The views were breathtaking. The weather was also much warmer this time. We had a few days in the 70's where we just sat in the sun and remembered what heat felt like.
View from the Zugspitze.
Also on our last trip down we toured the royal Castle of Neuschwanstein. I won't go into all of the history of the castle, but I'll say that it was by far my favorite thing thus far in Germany. The castle itself was unbelievable beautiful inside and out. The story behind the castle is just as amazing. If you are ever in Germany, this is a must see.
But alas we are back in overcast Frankfurt. Back to work and schedules and cleaning and cooking. We had a wonderful family vacation. We just wish it could have been longer.

April Fool's

We aren't big pranksters in our house. The kids kinda got into April Fool's Day by saying silly things like "there's a rocket ship", or "there's a butterfly" and point into the empty air. But this year I pulled a little prank on Caden. I sent him to school with an empty lunch box with nothing but a note saying "April Fool's...look around". I was waiting in the doorway with Subway and Taco Bell. I twas fun and luckily he saw me before he started crying because he had no lunch.