Time for a Montage

Nothing says "hey I haven't been updating like I should" like having to resort to a slideshow without much explanation.  <sigh>  Well, too bad.  Check out over 200pics covering the time between the Third and Seventh Month  here.

Acquiring an Animal Companion

     So I know it's been forever since I last posted on here, although I have frequently thought about posting.  Alas, I am still not a very good 'blog' person.  However, we have recently picked up our adventuring again and also have news, one could say Epic news.  You see shortly after my last post we were crazy *as usual* and ran off to basically Poland and bought a dog.  That is right the Party now has an Animal Companion, we chose the 'dog' option as it was the most useful for our current campaign and situations.

Birthday pic, courtesy of Astrid, the breeder.

On our way home from the breeder's.

Sleeping in his travel kennel.

     Yes you read that right, we purchased a puppy.  A Cardigan Welsh Corgi with the 'Fluff' gene, a little boy to be exact.  His name is Epic as he will indeed be an Epic dog and he is roughly 7weeks older than Lumpy.  So this will be a very short post to say we shall now not only go on High Adventures, but you will also be privy to those times when we go on Epic High Adventures...the puns shall not cease and you my pretty much non-existent audience will just have to suffer though them.
He was already 16 weeks old, so past the prime 'socialization window' when we got him so he is a bit skittish and not real keen on meeting new dogs, animals, people, and initially didn't like any small children, but now he adores our kids and tolerates kids from the Kindergarten so long as they don't get too noisy or move too fast.  We're working on that, and he is improving considerably.

Snoozin'

Nothing like a good brushing.

The boys love him severely, and for the first time Hickory feels like "he" owns a dog.  I guess I was right in that him not being there to pick out the other two did affect him more than he wanted to let on.  Epic thinks he is the best thing since sliced bread, so it works out very well.  I think he and Hickory shall be attending obedience school together in the near future.  He is now a RED and white dog, not the peachy creamy color he started out.  So for comparison here is one photo of him now at approx. Okay now on to slowly updating the world on our continuing existence.

Family Portrait by Papa

Getting big, 6 months old now.

Updated Character Sheets

 

 Well as our High Adventure Campaign continues, we pause to bring you an update to everyone's character sheets, time to see who is leveling up, who is changing classes, or multi-classing, and where people are increasing their skills.  So here ya go!

Class Changes:

It's big news in the Adventuring Party, Chubbly has leveled up and changed classes, from "Baby" to his first "Toddler" level.  What momentous event has transpired you may ask to have us declare such a thing?  Well as you may have noticed before now, Chubbly has very much been a 'binky' or 'paci' child, to the extent he wasn't even talking very much due to having one his mouth all the time.  Hence the lovely collection we have acquired and stashed all around the house and car.  However, just as with Dash and his thumb sucking, there comes a time in every child's life that they must decide to leave such babyish thing behind and step forward into the wonderful world that is being a toddler.  

Chubbly has reached this point, and on his own began sleeping without a binky at night, which led Hickory and I to believe he no longer truly needed them.  So we just quit offering them and slowly made them 'disappear' while letting him have one if he seemed to really need it.  (Like after a particularly hard fall, or when he was sick.)  Pretty soon even when these things would happen, he would turn down the binky in favor of some other source of comfort.  After a few weeks of him never needing or requesting binkies and with Lumpy's arrival and him not showing interest in stealing her binkies at all, we thought it was time for the ultimate test.  Was he ready to throw them away?

YES!!! In fact he was excited to get rid of his binkies and be a "big boy".  He had a blast throwing each one into the GelbeSack to be recycled and has since been very helpful keeping track of Lumpys binky.  He gets very concerned for her if he finds one and her's is missing.  She rarely is willing to take it, but hey we're not going to crush his spirit with this.  It is the first of many steps toward being the 'big brother' that he has to take.  He is now talking much more and clearer, plus has begun potty training in earnest.  Pretty soon we'll be wondering where did our baby boy go, and who is this tiny toddler running around?  Ahhh, such is life in our household.







Dash has begun his levels in "Grade-schooler" a little earlier than most characters to.  He is now reading very well and easily at the 2nd grade level.  He is just beginning to understand his addition and subtraction table. (Well up to 10 that is.) We will begin formal homeschooling of Kindergarten curriculum in a few weeks.  So he can begin putting experience points there.  Luckily both he and Grins are attending the local  Kindergarten so are slowly increasing their "Knowledge Local" slots.  Which brings us to the next section.

Leveling Up

 Grins is working toward his next level in Toddler as he is gradually mastering his alphabet and is excited to start learning to read, just like Dash.  Both are doing very well at the  Kindergarten and have recently begun to show true interest in learning the language and making friends other than each other at school.  Lumpy has shown that she too will be a force to recon with, as her ability to roll 20's this early in life speaks volumes on her inherent prospects in the Game of life.  She has reached both the 1 month and 2 month experience point markers, and is working very well on the 3 month goals.  Skill points are being acquired in;  spot, search, listen, and speak language: Cooing.  Until the next update.

Spring Has Sprung

And Grass has ris', I wonder where all the flowers is?  Actually I just wanted to put up some pictures of spring arriving to our little village area.  Nothing big, just pictures for the family.  Sorry about the formatting, me and blogger are in disagreement right now.  Maybe I'll come back and fix it later, maybe not, we'll have to wait and see how things go.  For now though, enjoy.

Who is Who Twelfth Year

So I thought it might be fun to put up a short post about each of us at the beginning of each year and see how each kid changes as the years go by.  I had a post similar to this two years ago and it had the pictures on the right with it, now we have a newbie, so the pictures on the left are the new 'year' and the info to go with it.  I thought I'd include the old ones on the off chance somebody who had been following the blog prior to my rewrite wanted to see the difference.


 ~Hickory~
AKA Papa
Master of the house. Breadwinner, linguistic nerd, gamer, amazing dude who will probably never bother to read this so I can put just about whatever I want.  Loving father, awesome husband, compassionate man who loves the Lord our God...and is somewhat fond of me. :)






 ~Hummingbyrd~
AKA Mama
Lady of the house, linguistic nerd, all around geek, kid collector/supervisor, cleaning lady, baker, semi-crunchy mama and goofball...you know, Me. :D

~Dash~
AKA Bug/Buggie/Koboldartig
5yrs old: Avid game player, fairly competent reader of 1-3rd grade books, lover of anything played on a screen.  Likes dragons & knights.  Learning compound words & Germanic. Currently loves cooked carrots, cheesecake, and chicken nuggets.

 ~Grins~
AKA Pup/Spiderman
3yrs: old Loves to draw, make up stories, loves any super hero, but favorite is Spiderman.  Likes to cook, the outdoors, and anything with fur.   Current favorite foods are Raspberry-Mango pie, chicken nuggets, and berries. Learning his letters and numbers & Germanic.

 ~Chubbly~
AKA Chub/Chubbers
Learning to talk, Germanic, how to walk up & down stairs upright.  Likes snuggles, naps, M.L. (Emil) Monkey, his Papa.  Loves to draw, look at books, building blocks, following & mimicking his brothers.  Learning that not all four legged small creatures are 'kitty-cats'.  Currently loves food...in general, but favorites are bananas, chocolate, and chicken nuggets (noticing a theme in the favorite meat department.)



~Princess Lumpy~
AKA Chirp/Frito
Loves riding in the Cow Carrier, her Mama, sleeping, Noms, her brothers, her Papa.  Learning to smile, who her family is, to make noise, lift her head up, and reach for things.  Loves her stuffed fox "Foss".

I will come back to write more later, but for now need to go get boys from kindergarten, assemble the grill, and clean the family room.

Easter Weekend

Come on, let's see how many of us we can get looking in completely different directions...and GO!

   
     So the title says it all, this is mostly a post of pictures for family and friends to gawk and talk about.  Yeah you know the ones, the lovely family photos of things people do over their Easter weekends, you know, like trespassing with your Pastor into gated areas.  That kind of thing.  Wait.  What? You don't?  Well you're missing out then, let me tell you.  And no I'm not going to put up pictures from that, that's evidence.
 
     Anyway, our Easter started on Thursday, much to my surprise.  Apparently the Easter season here  begins on Green Thursday, (actually should be Thursday of Tears...but some misunderstandings and inaccurate assumptions over the years has turned it into 'Green'.  Very interesting linguistic change, but I digress.)  So the boys' last day of Kindergarten was Wednesday.  We took advantage of the nice weather to clean out the flower beds, plant seeds, and return to organizing the house.  In case you have never had to move, it takes months to years to get around to unpacking everything and put it away after one moves across country, or in our case intercontinental.

     On Good Friday we took Dash to get his eyes checked for the first time, we are happy to report that other than being slightly Far-sighted, his eyes are fine and he doesn't need glasses yet.  Yep, we are assuming he will need them eventually, he pretty much has no hereditary chance of not needing them at some point.  Grins will get his eyes checked later on this month, but for now it was fun to see him be such a big boy in the chair.    Funny he can see just fine, but can't seem to get them to look AT the camera...sheesh.  He was actually disappointed to learn he wasn't going to get glasses, but happy that he was a 'big boy' and surprised the Optometrist with his ability to recognize and name all the numbers and letters required for a normal adult eye exam.  Go Bug!  We also stopped at the Garden Center to pick ups some solar powered outdoor lighting and some potting soil.  Or at least that's what we were supposed to be picking up.  We ended up leaving with that AND three window boxes and flowers for said window boxes, plus a grill.  Yes we finally replaced the old rusted out charcoal grill.  It's a nice Char-broil propane grill, I know I know, propane just doesn't taste as good as charcoal, but we've decided that until the kiddos are old enough to make it practical to go out and prep the grill, we'll have to settle for quick, easy, and efficient over flavorful and more time consuming.  This way we can grill at all.

      Saturday was filled with more housework and filing of our taxes...yes I waited a long time to do so, but hey we had a baby, moved to another country, and started new jobs, so yeah I wasn't done by mid January, but hey I didn't have to file an extension.

Rare Blueberry Muffin Perch

      Easter Sunday was a wonderful day, it started with breakfast at church, we brought blueberry muffins.  I made them from scratch.  I would have made all of them fish...but that would have taken too long, and besides, it may have creeped out the other church members.  I mean really what would you think if you came up on a bowl filled with these things?  Note the blueberry conveniently located in the 'eye' socket as well as the blueberry 'lips'.





   
During breakfast we learned that dressing up children all fancy in suits and frilly dresses is a very non-European thing to do, they absolutely adore and loved seeing the boys in their suits and Princess Lumpy in her dress.  However, as one lady put it.  "This is an America and Canada thing to do, not very European.  It is so pretty, but you cannot get this stuff [these clothes] here."  It was apparently so endearing that many older women in the church kept coming up and taking Lumpy and taking pictures just holding her in her "little wedding dress" as one person put it.  We love it here. :D


  

After everyone ate breakfast, we cleaned up and had a wonderful Easter worship service and enjoyed sharing communion with our new church family.  When church was done I scooped up Lumpy and wrapped her up in her blanket and the towels leftover from the muffins and placed her in the serving bowl.  Placed said bowl on my head and headed out the door.  She was so comfy and tiny that from the ground you couldn't tell I had a baby on my head.

       While I was all ready to walk home now, we opted instead to stop and take Easter pictures in front of our friend's flowers instead.  Then went home, took a few more pictures outside in our backyard before it was naptime before we headed over to the home of our pastor for tea and cake.  We got to learn all about the church's plans to expand as we've outgrown our current location they are looking into buying an old building from the city and remodeling the interior.  Or if they should look elsewhere, so prayers for wisdom as they begin the search and decision making process for this are greatly appreciated.  After cake we went for a walk to check out the building site in question and the men 'snuck in' to inspect it and discuss their ideas while the women and children stayed outside admiring the scenery.   Oh and for those who don't know me, I'm being somewhat tongue and cheek, we weren't really in any danger of being arrested, and it was more a 'question of authority' as the Pastor put it, in regards to accessing the site over the weekend instead of during the week like would normally be done.  So while it's more fun to think of it as a sneaky adventure, it was more legitimate than that.  Although the boys "aka grown men" were having a blast being all sneaky like school children sneaking into the gym after hours.  The building in question is a historical building that was originally a textile mill in the 20's then the US Army took it over after WWII and it was a tank repair workshop.  It has been derelict since the 50's when the US withdrew from the area and gave the land back to the government.  So it is an interesting structure to say the least.

    Well here they also celebrate Easter Monday, so yesterday was filled with more working on the house and goofing off as a family.  Not much to write about, but hey I have tons of pictures of Easter to share.  So here ya go.  The final picture was the result of tons of coercion on our part and equal amounts of noncooperation on theirs.

 

Lumpy 1.5mo, Chubbly 1.5yr, Grins  3yrs, Dash 5yrs

 The boys singing before Church.