2010 Christmas Letter

2010 Ginger Bread House

Greethings Family and Friends,

We hope you all had a Merry Christmas and wish you a very Happy New Year in 2011! 

We know that 2010 has been great for some of you and sad for others, with the loss of family and friends - both to death and to divorce.  =(  We have had a mix.  Overall, I'd like to believe it was a good year even though not everything was good.  My motto is, we are not perfect but our Savior is.  Through Christ we can find the strength to get through difficult times.

We are on the road to ending our time in Germany and will be back in the States this coming year.  Our last full year in Germany has provided us some great opportunities to travel.  Last January we went to a marriage retreat in Heppenheim, Germany.  We took Caden on his first cruise with my parents in March and sailed the Eastern Mediterranean.  We visited Barcelona, and Malaga, Spain, Morocco (Casablanca and Agadir), Funchal, Portugal, and Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain.  We met up with our friends from the Ukraine in Prague for a short getaway.  We took a family vacation to Ireland.  We took Caden to Luxembourg.  Collin had some training and we took some leave to go to Texas for my sister's wedding.  For Thanksgiving we took a train to Paris.  A few weeks ago we went to a marriage retreat in Garmisch, Germany.  On the way we stopped in Reutte, Austria.  If you can't tell, we LOVE to travel.  We will certainly miss living in Germany and exploring Europe.  Thankfully we have been blessed with a lot of opportunities to travel.  I know our travel budget will decrease a lot once we return Stateside.

Some good news, we welcomed a new member to our family.  Kyle married my sister, Michelle, in October.  God answered my prayer and helped guide a family to choose our house to rent.  It's amazing how God answers prayers.  You know, I prayed that someone would sign a contract before January 1st and instead a family signed the papers and moved in before Christmas!  They literally looked at our house and wanted to move in less than a week.  (In case you didn't know, we had tenants who walked out on us).

Collin is still enjoying his job.  He also taught the youth group at church this past year and has preached, lead singing, helped serve communion, and has grown a lot spiritually.  Marisa's first and primary job is still taking care of Caden.  However, she has also started a part-time photography business, Heidelberg Photography, this past August and has had 11 photo shoots this year.  She has always wanted to do this and we are finally able to make it possible.  She is also still doing some freelance work.  Marisa has also grown spiritually and is a discussion group leader for her MOPS (Mother's of Preschoolers) group and is loving it. She is also active in her PWOC group (ladies' Bible study).  Caden is learning, growing, and is cute as ever. 

May the Lord bless each and everyone of you and yours!  We wish you and your family many blessings in 2011.  We hope and pray that your family is doing well.  Feel free to leave a comment, send us an email, message us on Facebook, or give us a call if we haven't heard from you in a while.  We love hearing from you.

Happy New Year!
Collin, Marisa, and Caden

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." -Jeremiah 29:11

Caden's 18 Months Update

Since Caden's 18-month well baby visit turned into a sick baby visit we are waiting until January for his actual well baby visit.  That being said we at least got his height and weight and I can look up his percentile online.  And I wanted to give an update from these past 18 months.

Weight: 25.46 lbs (42nd percentile)

Height: 32.5 in. (51st percentile)

These past 18 months have literally flown by.  I am constantly amazed how much Caden is learning and growing.  He is starting to look more like a little boy and less like a baby.  His communication skills have vastly grown during this past year.  He now knows all the letters in the English alphabet.  He gets them all right about 90% of the time.  He sometimes will get V mixed up with W, M with N, or Q mistaken for O.  However, overall he seems to really know his letters!  He also knows the numbers 0-9.  His vocabulary is exploding.  I lost track of all the words he knows.  He loves pointing to objects and naming them which is awesome.  He also points to pictures in books and tells me what they are and when he sees an animal or picture of an animal will say it or make the sound it makes. 

He is learning his colors.  For a while everything was blue.  Now he can distinguish between red, yellow, green, white, and blue.  He will repeat the names of the colors when you point them out but doesn't always say the correct color.  I know it is only a matter of time until he picks that up too. 

The newest thing he is doing is starting to sing.  He'll say something like, "row, row, row..." then we say, "your boat."  He'll repeat, "your boat."  Then he'll go back to "row, row, row."  It's so cute.  He also says, "patty cake, patty cake, row em..." and and will clap his hands or lay down and clap his feet together.

When it's bath time we tell him and he happily goes up the stairs, we undress him then he walks to the bathroom and gets in the tub himself and turns the water on.  This is both good and bad.  Good that he can do this, bad that we have to shut the bathroom door or he'll get in the tub during the day. 

We are also beginning to potty train.  Very gradually that is.  He is taking an interest in the toilet and is happy to sit on it.  He has also started telling us he went peepee or poopoo.  He doesn't always do this but sometimes and sometimes will also point to his diaper.  We are going to ease into the potty training but my goal is that by his 2nd birthday he is day trained.  We will see how things go over these next 6 months.  I also want him to get used to actually going on the toilet more before we potty train.  His newest thing is peeing in the bathtub before his bath.  Thankfully it's before and not during.  We were putting him on the potty before bath and will probably start doing that again.

Some of his favorite things are: playing with blocks, balls, driving his car, books, puzzles, eating, gymnastics, running, climbing, cutting up fruits and veggies (the plastic peel-apart kind), pretending to cook, and coloring.

He doesn't like having his diaper changed (thus the potty training) and would rather sit on the toilet than lay down for a new diaper.  He also doesn't like sitting still for very long.  So long car rides, sitting through church, and long dinners he sometimes struggles with.

Here are some pictures from the past 18 months.  My how he's grown!  We love you Caden!!

1 day old

6 months old

12 months old

18 months old

Merry Christmas from Germany!!

This Christmas has been really nice, even though Caden has been sick, poor little guy!  It may be our last Christmas in Germany so we are really trying to enjoy it.  We were blessed with a white Christmas.  It started snowing Christmas Eve and has not really stopped.  We have about a foot of snow piled on our back fence.  Yesterday we took Caden sledding and are planning to take him again once he wakes up from his nap.

I have to say, Christmas is 10 times more fun once you have a kid.  I have always liked this holiday, the reason behind the season is the main reason why.  But there's something extra special about it once you have a kid around.  We have been reading about the birth of Christ all December.  Caden says, "Mary, donkey, heehaw, road, star, angel, sheep" when we read one of our Christmas books.  It's so cute he now finishes the story on some books.  We bought him a nativity set that is child friendly from a mission group in Poland.  It is awesome!  It's not totally Cade proof but sturdy enough for us to play with him.

This year we made our traditional Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve - Beef Tenderloin with Blue Cheese Butter, Stuffed Mushrooms, Greek Salad, Steamed Sweet Potatoes, Creamy Corn, and Crème Brûlée.  We will eat leftovers tonight with a few new sides.  Caden is still sick so he only wanted some sweet potatoes, a little beef tenderloin (without the butter), bread, and Cheerios last night.  Later we gave him one of Santa's chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate and he threw up his dinner.  I don't know if it was the cookie or what.  I was so sad.  I'm starting to think he ate too much.  We were so close to being over this!

Christmas Eve Caden opened three gifts representing the three gifts the three wise men brought Jesus on the day he was born.  Christmas morning he opened the rest.  He loves all of his toys and it's hard to know which will be his favorite.  This year we decided to only buy him classic toys that require no batteries. He got a basketball hoop and ball, ABC blocks, wooden blocks, play dishes, peel and cut-apart fruit and veggies, a shopping cart, paint brushes, crayons, a coloring book, sit-n-spin, wooden racecar drop thing, a yellow car, some books, and a lot of love. 



Christmas Eve

He loves his car!

Christmas Morning

I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas.  During this time we really miss our family and friends back home and wish we could all be together.  We send our love from Germany.

Very Sick Kid!

Caden just turned 18 months old yesterday.  We had a well baby appointment scheduled which turned into a sick baby appointment.  He has been throwing up 4-5 times a week for the past month.  Usually just once a day but sometimes twice.  We had taken him to the doctor regarding this twice already as they were evaluating it saying at first nothing is wrong with him and if he threw up more than a few times a day then to give him a pill (which we never did since it was only once a day).  The short version, he's very sick, has lost some weight and only weighs one pound more since his 12 month appointment.  To know more about his condition keep reading.

Last week I went to another doctor and she gave me some reflux medicine for him to try for three weeks because she thought it was reflux related.  Well...the medicine has not helped and his throwing up has only worsen.  Friday we went to a friend's house and he had not thrown up all day.  He barely ate dinner and we got home late so I offered him a small snack.  About 15 minutes he threw it up.  Saturday he also threw up and Sunday he threw up several times and before bed had a fever of 102.4. 

Monday he wasn't able to keep anything down and his fever went up to 103.  The weather is really bad here.  I'm talking BAD ice, lots of snow, scary and dangerous roads.  Our area can handle snow and ice but not this much.  Most of Europe is experiencing extreme weather conditions right now.  Anyway, we called Monday morning to change his well baby appointment to a sick baby appointment.  However, when we got there they had sent all the nurses home (because of the ice) and the person whom Collin talked to did not relay the message to the doctor.  Therefore there were no nurses or staff to help us.  Since Caden was so sick the doctor had us take more extreme measures.  We had noticed that he was throwing up because of congestion.  Usually he's start coughing then gagging and then throw up everything he ate and drank.  The doctor noticed he also had a very bad ear infection which was most likely causing the high fever.  So the doctor went with us to the Acute Care Clinic (the Army's ER) because they had nurses there.  The nurse gave Caden a shot of rocephin which treats bacteria infections to help clear up the ear infection and would help clear his congestion by fighting the infection.  We also got some suppository acetaminophen to reduce his fever (that they showed us how to do at the ER) and some droplets to help with the congestion (which we are to use at home).

He seemed to be doing better and last night ate some chicken noodle soup at 6pm and went to sleep around 8pm.  At 10:45pm we heard him coughing and gagging.  Sure enough he had thrown up all over himself and his bed.  We changed his clothes, bedding, gave him another bath and checked his temperature.  He had a fever of 104.3.  Scary!!  We gave him the acetaminophen and the congestion droplets and started making phone calls and researching online trying to decide if we should take him to the Kinder Klinik (German Children's hospital).  An hour later Collin took his temperature again and it had gone down to 102.  We were about to get dressed and go to the hospital except our German neighbor called.  I went in with Caden and rocked him while Collin talked to our neighbor.  Meanwhile Caden fell asleep and I put him back in his bed.  Our neighbor's wife said since we had the fever reducing medicine and his fever had already went down two degrees then to wait until the morning to do anything else.  They said the ER doctors would take blood and give him fever reducing medicine so it was okay to wait since we already gave him the medicine. 

At 3:30am Caden woke up with a wet diaper.  I am now sick and took some medicine that knocked me out.  I was considering sleeping in Caden's room but we decided I needed to try and get rid of my illness to take care of Caden while Collin's at work.  So Collin got up, changed Caden's diaper and took his temperature again.  It had dropped to 98.8.  God answered our prayers, thanks for praying!!  After Collin got him back to sleep Caden slept until 9:45 this morning!  He never does that.  He's usually up by 7-7:30 at the latest.  I took his temperature and it was 97.8 and gave him some congestion medicine since he sounded congested.  He threw it up within 5 minutes.  I took him downstairs to eat breakfast and he had some bran muffin.  He held that in until lunch when he started throwing up after coughing.

We called the doctor's office, went in, the doctor suggested another shot to help kill the infection.  While we were there the fire alarm went off in the doctor's office so we had to take our sick baby out in the cold rain for 15 minutes for a practice drill.  It was dumb. Then he had to get another shot and they gave us medicine for nausea and vomiting (which online it says not to give kids until they are 2, so we're probably not going to give him that, plus the side effects are terrible), an antibiotic to start for 7 days once he stops throwing up, and a nasal decongestant (since he had thrown up the droplets).  Our doctor also wants us to come in tomorrow for another shot.  The shots are very painful.  They have to split the dose in two and stick both legs.  One of the needles broke while they were giving it to him today so he didn't get the full dose.  Honestly, if he's better tomorrow (i.e. not throwing up), I think I'm going to wait on a third shot.  I'm anti extreme medicine unless it's very serious which this is.  But since originally it was only going to be one shot and now it's three, I just don't know.



Tonight he started coughing when he laid down in bed and ended up throwing up the crackers he had for dinner.  We gave him some pedialite and crackers and he coughed and threw up some pedialite  We cleared his nose and gave him some decongestant medicine and I finally got him down around 9pm.

I know many of you who know about this are already praying.  I ask that you please continue.  God hears our prayers.  Also please pray for me.  I caught something and am now also sick - I am having chills, am weak, tired, and have a sore throat.  I'm struggling to have the energy to get the basics done around the house (which am not doing very well) while taking care of a sick kid.  I know I'll be fine, I'm just worried about Caden.  Thanks.

Marriage Retreat



View from our balcony of
the snowy night

This past weekend we were blessed with the opportunity to attend a marriage retreat sponsored by my Collin's job.  Just so my single friends know, his company also offers retreats for single people too.  I honestly think more companies would benefit from offering retreats to their employees.  Work relationships and people's personal relationships are so important in life.  If you live to be old, your boss most likely will not be the one sitting by your death bed, it will hopefully be your family.

Our retreat was in beautiful Garmisch, Germany, in the midst of the German Alps.  Our hotel, most food, and childcare were all provided for.  It was such a blessing to be able to go this year.  We were also excited to finally stay at the Edelweiss Resort. Last time we went to Garmisch it was booked.  Edelweiss is very American-style (which after staying in many European hotels with Caden we really appreciate American-style).  There were also three restaurants in it and every room had a private balcony.  The location was beautiful and the hotel kid-friendly.

 

Reutte, Austria

On the retreat we took a personality test and learned ways to better communicate with one another.  Collin and I are stronger in opposite personality traits but overall are not extreme in any of them.  He is a DC and I am an IS.  I love personality tests and learning about differences between people based on their personality and mine.  Of course my minor is in Communications so anything to do with communication I really enjoy.

On our way to Garmisch we stopped in Reutte, Austria and walked around the cute little town.  I bought a photo snow globe made of plastic that I will put a picture in just for Caden.  He loves the glass snow globes but I'm not about to give him one of those!

  

Besides the retreat we enjoyed taking Caden to play in the snow, letting him ride down a slope in a sled, and taking him swimming in the hotel's swimming pool.  He even had his first experience in a hot tub.  It was outside and it was snowing so the hot tub was more warm than hot.  He really enjoyed it as did we.  Collin and I also did some shopping one afternoon and bought some more essential cold weather gear.  I finally got some ski/snow pants and better gloves for example.  We had thought about going skiing but the mountain with the easy trail down was not opened yet.  We looked at the closest mountain to us and you would have to ski the blue down and it looked a little steeper than we remembered.  Plus it has been a number of years since either of us skied so we decided not to ski this time.

The childcare was actually very good.  Caden doesn't do very well away from us.  However, they tended to his needs and took great care of him.  They even complimented us on Caden's language skills.  They asked Collin if we read to Caden a lot because of all the words he knows and how big of interest he has in books and letters. 

Saturday morning Collin took Caden to the childcare and sadly Caden threw up in the car on the way there.  It was a mess.  Collin ended up not making it to the last session because he was busy cleaning up vomit in the rain and snow.  We are starting to think Caden was probably upset because I was gone and that's why he threw up.  It has been really frustrating trying to figure this out.  He has been on reflux medicine for not even a week and has already thrown up 3 times.  Needless to say, I don't think the medicine is helping.

Other updates: We hopefully have a renter for our house!  Our previous tenants moved out unannounced which made it a little tighter on us financially this Christmas season.  On the positive, I have had several photo shoots these past few weeks and LOVE it!  Meeting new families and kids is awesome.  Helping create precious memories is even better.  We also have a few more Christmas parties to go to and then it will be Christmas.  I hope everyone is staying warm and safe.  Here are a few more pictures from our time in Garmisch.  

Collin and Cade walking in the snow

At the play ground at our hotel

Cade sledding down the hill

Cade about to go down the hill



Beautiful view of the Alps



Scary Santa

This year Caden finally got to meet Santa Claus at a fundraiser event called Holiday Magic.  We waited around 30 minutes to see him.  It was a long line!  About 10 minutes before it was his turn to see him he threw up all over his clothes and the floor.  Thankfully my MOPS group was selling children's clothing so I was able to quickly find a new outfit for him and scored a cute jacket!  I just felt bad that he threw up, again.  I'll write more on that later.

At first Caden was pretty curious about Santa.  He kept wanting to cut in line to see him.  Once he got in his lap he wanted down.  So Santa handed him a few mini candy canes.  Caden thought those were neat.  But after a minute or two he was ready to go.  After getting a few pictures of just Caden and Santa, Caden's friend, Peyton, joined in.  She wasn't a big fan of Santa Claus either.  I guess they don't know yet that Santa is the one who leaves all the cool presents on Christmas morning.

Christmas Tree Time

Last Friday we went hunting for a Christmas tree.  We went to a tree farm about a 10 minute drive from our house.  It seems like since Thanksgiving, when we got our first snow, we have had snow and rain almost everyday.  So needless to say, it was COLD, wet, and there was a lot of snow on the ground.



There was so much snow Caden got stuck in it!

We picked a medium sized tree this year.  We were not sure how Caden would "act" around the tree.  He broke a ball ornament at one of the Eiffel Tower's gift shops, sneaky little guy - took it out of my hands and threw it - and loves to point and grab at the ball ornaments.  We should know that anything that looks like a ball is made for kicking and throwing!  So...we didn't want to get a huge tree in case he decided to try and knock it over while trying to get an ornament or decided to try and climb it!  Sheesh, let's hope not!

Which brings me to my next point.  We found a great tree and so far we have two ornaments on it and two strands of lights.  We are testing the waters slowly as we train him to just look at the tree.  Caden occasionally touches a light and says "hot."  Today he went to one of the wooden ornaments and grabbed it, I told him "no, no, don't touch" and he let go of it.  So...maybe we can put the rest of the ornaments on the tree soon.  He has really done a great job around the tree.  Except he loves pulling the Christmas tree skirt off and hiding under it or using it as a cape.  We haven't put any gifts under the tree yet because he likes playing with the Christmas tree skirt.  And I didn't want him opening any before Christmas Eve.

Here are a few pictures of our tree hunt and tree.


I'm ready!  This was taken outside our house.



It's cold out



There are so many trees!

Collin about to teach Caden how to chop down a tree



Collin getting ready to chop down our Christmas tree



Here is our 2010 Christmas tree!

When we arrived home we were greeted with the door-to-door Christmas tree salesman.  He had a truck load of Christmas trees outside our house.  We pointed to our tree and told him we just bought one.  Last year they came by our house too.  But it is more fun to go to a Christmas tree farm and find the perfect one.  Plus we got a better deal going to the farm than buying from the salesman. 

Collin looking at the truck load of Christmas trees

Collin talking to the salesman