Birthday Girl!

Our sweet Carly turned 2 last week! 

Here are a few pictures of fun times celebrating the birthday girl!!

She was quite focused when we sang Happy Birthday.  She had a very serious look on her face!

Big sister didn't mind helping her blow the candles out!

She was only interested in the frosting!  It was good, if I do say so myself!  She handed me the cake part of her cupcake and said, "here you go" once she cleaned the frosting off.

 Say cheese!

Carly is a sweet little girl and we're so thankful to have her in our family!  She is full of spunk and energy and she never seems to stop moving.  She's definitley learning how to make her opinions known and try to get what she wants!  She's a ton of fun and makes us laugh every day and keeps us on our toes!  We love you, Carly!!!

Tummy Shot!

Oh this poor neglected 3rd child!  I'm 27 weeks pregnant and last week I took the first tummy shot of this whole pregnancy!  I think I took one every month with Katie!  But I figure, I'm a 3rd born and I turned out alright so this little man will do fine. 

With the big sisters!

My pergnancy is going well so far.  My doctor is great.  She's the same one who deliviered both of the girls so I am very comfortable with her.  When I had an appointment in September I asked her when I should come see her again and she said, "Oh, I think you could call me when you start having contractions and we'd be ok."  Nice!  Don't worry, I've seen her once since then and I'll see her again in December so we're keeping things regular.  It's just nice that she is not a stressful person to deal with (as a lot of medical professionals here have been - in my experience!). 

One thing that has been interesting now that I'm very obviously showing is the reaction from people here that we're having our 3rd child.  Most families here have one maybe two children.  And they're often spread out with a big gap in their ages.  Partly it's financial and partly it seems like it has become cultural to have small families.  This seems to be a trend all across Western Europe. 

So now people see me walking around with my two cute girls and I often see them glance back and stare at my belly.  It's pretty common for people to make comments too, not just stare.  "Wow!  3 children!  That's a lot of work!"  I even had an elderly woman at church pull me aside and tell me very seriously that we really needed to stop after this one.  She said that it's just too much work.  3 is enough.  And she encouraged me to go home and seriously think about what she said.  Wow!  That's pretty bold!

I've mentioned before that poeple here are just more blunt than us Americans (at least Southern Californians) tend to be.  It's not unusal to have people comment on your weight or how you look.  I had a friend ask me what happened to my hair when I got it cut too short a few months ago.  I just don't think we'd say those kinds of things to each other in So Cal.  We're too worried about being polite and not stepping on toes.  I have to say, I wouldn't mind if people worried about stepping on my toes a little more over here!  I'm getting a little tired of the looks and comments and the baby isn't even here yet!  But I guess that I'd better get used to it because it's not going to change! 

We're very excited for you to come join our family, little man!  Even if you'll make us stand out even more! 

A Cute Picture and a Sweet Idea!

Here's Katie at the park on Monday.  She got up there all by herself!  I turned around and - whoa- there she was!  Getting quite brave...

So there's a missionary mom blog that I read - it's really encouraging to see what other moms like me all over the world have to say.  Struggles, encouragements, ideas...  Today they posted about a giveaway that another missionary mom who is currently in the US is doing.  What an amazingly sweet idea!!!  If you're another missionary mom on the field, check it out here!  It's true, a little care package goes a long way in the encouragement department. 

Thankfulness Tree

Thanksgiving is coming! Well, not for most people over here (did you know that the Pilgrims didn’t land in Portugal???) but it is for us!

I got this idea from someone from last year but not until the end of the month so it was too late to give it a try. I’m so glad that I remembered it before the month of November started so that the girls and I could work on it all month. It’s been a lot of fun!

Every morning we’re writing down things that we’re thankful for on leaves and adding them to the tree. I just saw another friend on FB doing this with her kids’ hands for the leaves– so cute! The idea was one per kid per day but we’ve ended up doing several a day. I think the tree looks better with more leaves so hey, let’s go for it!

It’s interesting what an almost 4 year old thinks of when asked what she’s thankful for. She has said her blanket on her bed, her piggy bank toy that was given to us at the conference this summer, and her bed. No, “Mommy” did not come up without some prompting. :-) We’re working on being thankful for people, not just things!

Today we were thankful for cousins! My girls have 4 cousins, 2 on each side. One they haven’t gotten to meet yet but hopefully will sometime soon! That doesn’t matter, though! We’re thankful for them all and their names are now up on our tree!

Hope you’re having a good day and that you have many things to be thankful for too!

By the way, oh my, it's hard to take a good picture of these two at the same time these days!!!  One won't sit still and the other holds everything up RIGHT in front of her face! Also, she'll smile but then look away from the camera RIGHT as I take the picture.  Oh well, you get the idea! 

Pumpkin Carving Time!

Even though it was pretty hard to find good pumpkins for carving we found some small ones and the girls got to carve a pumpkin for the first time!  Don't worry, they're pumpkin carving knives - quite safe!  :-)

Getting ready!



What is he doing???

 Getting ready to light it up!



 All done!



So cute!

Up in the Sky!

Katie filled up her marble jar and got to pick a prize out of the treasure box! This time she chose to go for a ride on the sky buckets nearby! It was a fun family Saturday afternoon celebrating Katie and enjoying a great view.

You can see the sky buckets in the background here.  They run along the river.

Yeah Katie! 

This little one didn't enjoy the day as much as the rest of us.  She had a pretty bad cold complete with a fever.  No fun!  Now all four of us have or had the same lovely cold.  Oh the family togetherness!

One Month and One Day

Today Carly is one day and one month away from 2 years old.  When Katie was one month and one day away from 2 years old Carly was born!  Katie seemed older than Caly does right now... maybe because she had a lot more hair than Carly does! 

Sweet Carly girl has about 4 more months before she becomes a big sister.  It'll be a big change but she'll be a great big sister, I'm sure!