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.

Thanksgiving 2009

Well it was our first Thanksgiving after returning back to the U.S. and our first Thanksgiving living in Cincinnati. My mom and dad came down for the 4 days to spend Thanksgiving with us. We also have been fortunate to have met a family here in Cincinnati that is on a 3 year assignment in the U.S. from the Netherlands. We invited them for their first "American" thanksgiving as well. So we definately had good company and good food.

While my parents were here the girls made christmas cookies with them, we took them to the tree lighting in downtown Cincinnati and of course we had to take them to Graeters ice cream- a Cincinnati original that has the BEST ice cream!! We had lots of fun, but of course the time went by too fast. Special times with so much to be thankful for!

Halloween 2009!

It was definately fun to be back in the U.S. for Halloween this year. We actually got the girls their Halloween costumes back in May when we went to Disneyland Paris. Our girls don't know how lucky they are!