This Past Week...

 Well I am finally caught up!  Until tomorrow, that is ;).  This past week has been pretty normal.  We had Monday off, for President's Day.  Whenever we have 'American Holidays' that fall on a weekday, we like to try and go somewhere because Germans won't be off and places are less crowded, etc.  We had heard a lot about a store called, Cora, in France.  We like only about an hour from the French border, so we decided to check it out.  It was pretty much like a Walmart.  Honestly, we weren't super impressed with it.  They had a few fun things that we don't see in Germany.  When we got home, we laughed about our selections.  I bought a bunch of baguettes and this fancy lemonade (it's just like sprite, but i like the bottles!)...Nathan got about 10 bags of chips, all different flavors.  So funny.  After our trip to Cora, we went to Saarbrucken, a larger city in Germany, right on the border.  I had heard about a clothing store there that I wanted to check out.  It was one of those days with the kids, where you kinda just wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out.  By the time we got the kids in bed that night, we both felt like we had aged 10 years.  You win some, you lose some.  At least we didn't sit at home and watch TV or play Wii all day, right?!  (which is what we did today, because Nathan, Isla, and I are all sick) 

Of course Sawyer had to use his baguette as a weapon...always

 So we got the Wii U for Christmas.  It was a big debate, for Nathan & I.  We really didn't want to add one more thing to the vast array of 'screens' that we seem to get sucked into these days.  But we have been pretty good about limiting the time on Wii.  And honestly, it has been the best form of punishment/bribery for Sawyer that I've had yet!  It works SO well for that!  lol. But Nathan and Sawyer love to play Legos Avengers together.  And Violet always shows up at some point, begging to play along.  So Nathan gives her a wii-mote, and 'tells' her she's 'playing'.  Problem is, she's not that dumb...she eventually catches on. 

 This made me so happy!  Violet giving Isla some real attention (for about 15 seconds)!  So cute!

 We try to do some good activities every now and then as well.  On this day, we made homemade play doh.  The kids did so well with it...kept them entertained for quite a while.  They were doing so well, that I thought I would go outside and vacuum the car real quick before Isla woke up.  When I came back inside, I was in the middle of a full-on play doh massacre.  Play doh EVERYWHERE.  Not funny.  I guess that's the last time I leave them unsupervised with play doh again.  In the picture, Sawyer was very proud of his play doh airplane creation, as was I.

On Friday, Nathan took the boy scouts camping in the village right next to ours.  He is the scout master, so this is a common occurrence for Nathan these days.  But since he was so close to home, he decided to take Sawyer along for a few hours in the evening.  Sawyer had so much fun, he ended up asking if he could go to bed in the tent at 7:30.  He wanted to stay so that he could wake up with the boy scouts in the morning.  Nathan said that in his prayer, Sawyer asked Heavenly Father for the boy scouts to be quiet so that he could sleep.  Ha! 

Violet and I had a 'Girl's Night' while the boys were away.  We didn't want her to feel like she was missing out.  So I rented a Barbie Movie, and we had popcorn and did our nails.  And then she got to sleep in mommy's bed that night.  It was really fun, actually.  I enjoyed spending the one on one time with my little Viley.

 

The sun actually came out the other day!  So we grabbed our bikes and scooters, and went for a little walk.  I loved this picture of Violet, dirt on the face and all!