Ericka's first day of First Grade!

Ericka started first grade last week at Immaculate Heart of Mary catholic school. This is a new school for Ericka this fall, but we are hoping this is the last time she'll change schools for a couple years at least! She is very excited about being there, and she has a very nice teacher also. The best part are school uniforms now! No more disagreements about what to wear to school anymore!!! :)

Soccer Time!

Soccer is a very big sport here in Ohio! They have both a spring and fall season. So at the beginning of August both Ericka and Lauren started playing soccer. This is Lauren's first time playing, so she is still getting used to the idea. Their first game was actually today, and if the coaches got all the 3 and 4 year olds out on the field without crying- that was an accomplishment!! It's so much fun to watch them both play!

Back to MN!

After we returned from Hawaii, I was fortunate to take a 3 day trip back to MN by myself! Sheer joy to be free of mom duty for 3 days!! :) During my quick trip back to MN I was fortunate to meet my niece Mikayla, attend my cousin Linda's wedding and see a lot of family that I hadn't seen in years. It definitely makes me miss Minnesota!

Pearl Harbor

During our time in Hawaii we took some time to go to Pearl Harbor. During our time in Luxembourg we traveled to many of the World War II sites such as Normandy, and it seemed only fitting that we should visit the place that marked the entrance of the U.S. into World War II.

When you first enter the memorial you watch a video of how the events of December 7th, 1941 unfolded. We learned how complete battleships were destroyed in Pearl Harbor and sank killing thousands of men. We then took a boat out to the Arizona Memorial which sits over the sunken U.S. battleship Arizona that sank that day. It was amazing to see another very important place in American history.

Hawaii!

On July 30th we took a much needed family vacation to Hawaii! Oahu to be exact. We were there for eight days and it was absolutely perfect. We rented a beach house on Kailua beach (on the opposite side of the island of Honolulu and Waikiki beach). A friend of mine recommended we stay on this side of the island and we were so glad we did. There are no hotels right on the beach on this side of the island, so we rented a beach house 300ft of the beach. PERFECT! We played in the sand, swam in the ocean, went for walks on the beach ect... It was definately hard to come home from this vacation!

Gone for too long!

O.k.- I realize that I haven't posted anything since last spring. I've been feeling really guilty about all of that and then our dear friend Claude back in Luxembourg made me feel even worse when he recently sent me a message saying how much he missed pictures on our blog. I promised him I would get back to posting pictures. Thank you Claude for making me do this again and I hope you enjoy getting caught back up on our lives!

So what's happened since last spring. Ericka played soccer for the first time in the spring and loved it!! Ericka finished kindergarten here in the U.S. , and is now attending a new school this fall for first grade. More on all that later. Mark and Angela have been working WAY too much and the summer went by way too fast. We took a much needed trip to Hawaii, Angela went back to MN to meet her new niece Mikayla and for her cousin Linda's wedding. Now school and soccer have started again and we are trying to get back on a much more normal schedule. We'll see how this goes. So enjoy the next few posts of our summer recap. Claude- I promise you that I won't let so many months go by without posting new pictures!!

Happy 6th Birthday Ericka!

It's hard to believe, but Ericka turned 6 on Sunday! She's growing up so fast. We took 12 six year olds bowling for her birthday, and needless to say we were all exhausted afterwords. Oma (Angela's mom) came down for the weekend to help us celebrate. We were all glad that she could be in Cincinnati with us on Ericka's birthday. Happy Birthday Ericka!

Ericka looses her first tooth!

Ericka lost her first tooth last week and she was SOOOOOO excited! It's been loose since before Christmas, but she didn't want anyone to pull it out for her. But last week, she finally got the courage to pull it out herself. The best part of it all was when she said "mom- I think the tooth fairy is going to bring me 100 dollars!". Thank goodness she doesn't have any concept of money yet!

Not quite Oberweis- but close!!

Oh I was missing my birthday cake from Oberweis this year (our favorite bakery in Luxembourg), however we have found another bakery in Cincinnati that is pretty close!! It is called The Bonbonerie, and it has the reputation for being the best bakery in Cincinnati. It is this small, cute little bakery just outside the city. All of the cakes that we've had from there have been wonderful!! Yet- it's just not quite the same as all of our wonderful desserts from Oberweis! Oh how spoiled we were for 2 years in Lux with all of our pastries and desserts!

SNOW in Minnesota!

We were fortunate enough to make it back to Minnesota just before the BIG snowstorm! It was the snowiest Christmas for Minnesota in 30 years. It snowed 15 inches just over the Christmas holiday and the girls were so excited to see and play in all of the snow. Neither Cincinnati or Luxembourg gets snow like this!!!!

Christmas back in Minnesota!

After having not been home for Christmas for the past two years, it was very nice to be able to spend the holidays with our families back in Minnesota. We braved the weather and drove 11+ hours. Actual drive time is 11 hours, but with two little girls and 3-4 stops on the way it ended up taking us about 12.5 hours. However, we made it to Minnesota just in time before the BIG snowstorm- more on that in the next post! We hope all of you had a Merry Christmas as well. For those of you whom we did not get to see while we were home we apologize. With two families to celebrate Christmas with, the bad weather, and letting the girls enjoy time in the snow, the time just went by too quickly! We'll catch you all the next time we make it back!

A BIG Christmas tree once again!

One of the many things we always took for granted before moving to Luxembourg was a Christmas tree over 5 feet tall. With this being our first Christmas since moving back to the U.S., it was fun to actually go pick out a BIG Christmas tree once again. In addition to getting our tree, we were able to take out and put on the tree all of the Christmas ornaments that we collected during our time in Europe from all of the amazing places that we were fortunate to have visited. It was fun to remember all of the fun times and this will continue to be a fun tradition for us each year.