Good-Bye

Our adventures in Kimberly are at an end and a big new adventure in Germany is about to begin. We really enjoyed our time in Wisconsin spending lots of time with grandparents and other family as well as making new friends and enjoying our first school experiences. As with any move we make, good-byes are always very hard. Tears will be shed as we fly away in the airplane, but a brand-new experience awaits us in Germany and we know that love has no distance and is always found in our hearts no matter how far away we are. And so we say good-bye....until we meet again.

We packed up our belongings and said good-bye to our nice duplex in Kimberly.

Our neighbors, Father Bob and Mary, had a wonderful little going away pizza party for us. Father Bob sang a love song to Katriana and did a little show with his tap-dancing puppet while Katriana sang songs. It will be a great memory for us all and we are honored to have had the chance to know them. Good-bye Father Bob and Mary!

And the kids had to say good-bye to their teachers and friends at school. These teachers gave Katriana and Josef great starts to their education and were a joy for them to be around. I hope that this time in pre-school and pre-kindergarten will be the cornerstone for more wonderful school experiences. I can't thank Mrs. Geiser/Mrs. Diedrich and Mrs. Ortner/Mrs. W enough for their positive role model and for making school so much fun!! We will really miss being in their classrooms.

Good-bye Mrs. Geiser...

Good-bye Mrs. Diedrich.

Good-bye Mrs. Ortner and Mrs. W.....

Good-bye friends!

We love and will miss you all! We are so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends in our lives. We will meet again soon. Auf Weidersehen!

Easter Best

We had a beautiful Easter day full of sunshine and smiles. It is a sure sign that spring is here when you see all of the kids outside in their fancy clothes running around enjoying the day.

Gretchen looks so cute in front of the flowers.

Gretchen and Elias make quite the handsome pair, don't you think?

All of the cousins in their finery.

And of course the day wouldn't be complete without a family picture.

Eggs

Eggs, eggs and more eggs!! The kids had great fun coloring Easter eggs this year. We started out decorating eggs with Auntie Kelli over at my parents house. Glad the mess was over there :-) Kelli always gets neat looking coloring kits and likes to color eggs with her neices and nephews. This was Gretchen's very first time with egg decorating. She put on an old shirt and had a glorious time dropping the eggs into the cup and then pulling them out! We only cracked a few.

Which had more color - Gretchen or the egg?

What happy little egg artists!

The next day we headed down to Grandma and Grandpa Wolf's house to have an Easter celebration. Guess what we did!! Why, colored more eggs of course!

Grandma Wolf had fun little stickers and things to put on the colored eggs. Can you guess who decorated this egg?

There is a chick popping out of this one!

Oh, it was such an eggciting time decorating Easter eggs! If only we enjoyed eating them.....

Stay tuned for more of our Easter adventure!

Unaccompanied Baggage

Today was unaccompanied baggage pick-up day. It is the first of three stages of our moving process. We are allowed up to 1000 pounds in this shipment and we were told it will go by boat and arrive in about three weeks. We got together some items that will keep us happy until our household goods arrive (that will get packed up in two weeks). Seeing the guys here packing up some of our stuff has made this move to Germany very real to me. I think I am still a little in denial about the whole thing. It has been so nice living here and it will be a sad day when we board the plane to fly to another country. But, the Army says we need to go to Germany so to Germany we will go. I just need to look at the bright side and enjoy the adventures that await us.

Family Fun

The time is getting very close for us to fly off to Germany for a couple of years. It will be difficult to be away from our extended family for that long of a time and I know the kids will miss their grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. This past weekend all of Aaron's sisters and their families and his parents drove over for a family fun day before we have to leave. We wish Aaron's brother, Ben, and his family could have joined us but it was a difficult weekend for them to drive up from Ohio. We missed you!

We all had a good time visiting with each other at our house. The cousins all had a great time playing together and played very nicely with each other. Katriana and Elizabeth had fun putting on dress-up clothes and doing a fashion show for us. They twirled and danced so quickly that I didn't catch a picture of them, but I did get a photo of this little fashion diva.

Dominic found some tasty beads to chew on while watching the fashion show.

Poor Symphony just wasn't feeling well with her double ear infection, but we are so glad we got to see her and give her some hugs.

While the kids were playing, the grown-ups were trying out our Wii. Unfortunately I did not get any photos of the action. I think they all rather enjoyed it and the men were not too bad at bowling and golf. In fact, it went over so well that Chris and Joey are now the proud owners of a Wii themselves! Have fun playing!

It was such a beautiful day outside that the Easter Bunny decided to make an early stop at our house for all of the cousins. He hid loads of Easter eggs filled with goodies in the backyard and the kids all had a fun time hunting for them. I tried to get photos of all of the kids hunting, but they were just too quick for me!

Dominic was just so cute sitting in the grass with his little tongue sticking out. I have learned that he inherited this from his great-grandfather Roshardt.

After the big hunt was over the kids played a few running games to get some energy out! Auntie Nicki is so good at thinking up fun games to play.

There were also a couple of birthdays that needed to be celebrated! Chris' birthday was this past Saturday and Nicki's birthday is coming this next Saturday. Joey did a fantastic job and making birthday cupcakes to mark the occasions. She made really cool tie-dye cupcakes for Nicki who was born in the 60's and some basketball cupcakes for her husband Chris. They were very cute and oh so yummy! Thanks Joey!!

If all of that was not fun enough, we headed out to Chuck E Cheese for a dinner treat. Some of the cousins have never been there so we had to let them experience it. The games were lots of fun to play and the kids won some little prizes. I think maybe the adults even had fun playing a game or two....

We had a wonderful family fun day and are so thankful to have all of these special people in our lives. We appreciate the long drive you all had to make to be here. We will miss you!!