4 years old and already has a "Wedding Song" picked out...

Just had to share this with you. A few weeks ago Kalynn and I were talking about my wedding (my wedding march song came on the radio and I got all nostalgic and such so that led to a discussion about my wedding). Since then Kalynn frequently tells me that she wants to get "marrit". When I answer with "Oh you do?" she says "yes, but I don't see any boys". It is so cute. But the sweetest thing is that she has already picked out her wedding song. She chose "Gloria in excelsis Deo" because it is pretty. When we were in the car earlier this week she said "Mommy, play my wedding song for Daddy". Imagine the look on his face when his baby girl was sharing her wedding song with him... although it didn't rival the look he had when she told him she wanted a bra a couple of weeks before!

My baby's first Sunbeam Choir Perfomance

While we were still in Germany, Kalynn voiced a desire to join the choir "back home" at church. Well since we have been home (for exactly 4 weeks now, woohoo) she has since gotten her wish. She sang in the Sunbeam choir at Cornerstone Baptist Church at today's Christmas service. She was sooooo cute. She positioned herself up front and "sang" her song! Afterward she said she wanted to be on the youth choir (as opposed to the Sunbeam) and sit up on the choir stand by herself. She is growing up so fast!

Kalynn's last day at school

Today was Kalynn's last day at her German Kindergarten. The had a little party for her. It was cute. (I had one of her teachers use my camera to take to some pictures.) They had some American flag print napkins and arranged their tiny tables and chairs in a festive setting. It looked so cute. Tonight when I put her to bed she prayed for God to help her German friends not be sad when she left. (awwww) They made the cutest card for her with a thumbprint from each of her classmates on it. Each child drew a face/arms/legs/etc on his or her thumbprint to make it look like themselves. The director of the school gave her a pig (one of Kalynn's favorite characters right now is Waldemar the pig and she talks about him ALL of the time). The director told her that every time she plays with her pig she will thinks about them.

Tears...

My dear friend, Irena, just left our house and I am in tears because it was likely our last time seeing each other. (She had planned to have breakfast with us today or coffee later but her 3 year old is sick and her pre-teen son was at the hospital all evening long yesterday because a school-mate sprayed some type of cleaner in his eyes). Tonight is our last night in the house, which is just some 50 yards from Irena's apartment, and we will stay in company housing until we fly out Sunday morning. Irena took off a beautiful necklace from around her neck and handed it to me to remember her by. I was very moved by the gesture and even more so when she told me I was one of the best friends she has ever met. I'm really going to miss her.

Oh Dear... And the relocation begins...

This morning the guy from the relocation service came to pack up and take away the items we chose to put in air freight. These things are supposed to make it to the United States in about 2 weeks as opposed to the bulk of our things that will go on the sea container and take about a month and a half. We are very limited on the amount of stuff that goes by air so I had to choose wisely. Needless to say a bit of my craft things are going, lol. I miss my glue gun already and the guy just loaded it on the truck (yeah I'm writing this as he packs/loads). It is starting to feel real right now and I must say that I am a bit sad. I am going to miss Germany.

A Happy Halloween

Last night we had a small Halloween party for the kids (Kalynn and her buds Joshua and Jessica). This will be our last "major" holiday celebrated in Germany as we will be returning to the United States a few days before Thanksgiving. We had a great time and delicious treats. Melissa made some yummy Frankenstein cupcakes and Marco cut up some cute Monster Mouth apple bites. We played "pin the face on the pumpkin". Kalynn's came out pretty good, to be blindfolded! The kids decorated spooky sugar cookies and made haunted scenes from foam, stickers, glitter glue, and lots of giggles. Speaking of giggles, check out Joe wearing a pink cowboy hat and Marco wearing Kalynn's princess earring (with his Frankenstein head topper)! Now that was funny!!! Also funny was the fact that Kalynn had mini meltdown because she did not want to wear the skirt that came with her Princess Tiana costume but instead wanted to wear her old ratty pink skirt that besides being waaaaay too overused is getting waaaaay too short. After "arguing" with her that it did not match I finally relented after the crocodile tears came and she was a happy camper after that! Who knows, maybe she will grow up to be a huge fashion designer. Who am I to stunt her creativity!? LOL
We got quite a few more trick-or-treaters this year than last year. We even had some come to our door the day BEFORE Halloween! That was hilarious! They insisted that it was Halloween. Anyway, we *gasp* ran out of candy and had to shut her down around 8:00pm. Marco discovered that the T-o-Ters had taped a sign to our gate that they had handwritten on a sheet of paper that said "Süßes oder Saures", which is a German equivalent to Trick or Treat, to let others know that our house gave out candy. Since trick-or-treating has not really caught on big in Germany, it was nice to see the youth helping out the others by directing to the folks that are participating. However, we still had people buzzing our gate for about another hour after we removed the sign and turned off the Halloween lights! One set of revelers, after learning we had given out all of the candy earlier, told Marco "But we got dressed up. Give us anything... crackers, fruit, whatever." I had to laugh at that.

Back From a Wonderful Mediterranean Cruise!

We just returned yesterday evening from a wonderful 7 day long Eastern Mediterranean cruise through our favorite cruise line, Costa! We left early Saturday morning for a 5.5 -6 hour drive to Venice, Italy to board the Costa Victoria. (The drive alone is nice as we were treated to beautiful landscape after landscape as we drove through Germany, Austria, and Italy.) Our cruise included excursions in Italy (Venice and Ancona), several stops in Greece (Santorini, Athens, Mykonos, Corfu), and Dubrovnik in Croatia. We enjoyed them all but my personal favorite stop was the small town of Oia on the Santorini islands. The houses built into the cliffs, white washed with beautiful blue domes against an equally stunning sea were amazing. Marco enjoyed Athens the most. The Acropolis was well worth the hike we took to get there. There are no words for me to describe the feeling I had standing on the steps of the Parthenon while Kalynn played with rocks as we took it all in.
Kalynn loved the Squok Club the most it seems. This is the cruise ship's onboard kids' club (kinda like a cruise kindergarten) that offers various activities, crafts, and entertainment. Before we left for the cruise I told Marco that there was no way I was going to leave Kalynn at the club and I was sure she would not want to be left. Boy was I wrong. From the time we told her about the club, she begged to go by herself even before the club opened on the first day. Before we set sail, the first thing she wanted to do was go see the Squok Club room. I relented and we let her go for a couple of hours each day (though we took her with us every time we left the ship). She made quite a few friends on the ship, most were Italian and German. Luca and a girl who's name she could never remember (I think because it was so hard to say) were her favorites. On our excursion in Corfu, Kalynn held Luca's hand and wanted him to go with us. It was so cute. Everybody we met both on and off the ship fell in love with Kalynn. Everywhere you look people were snapping photos of her. One older gentleman in Dubrovnik (a store owner) came out of his store to see and talk to Kalynn. I was shopping in another store at the time and Marco and Kalynn were waiting outside. The store owner told me that he fell in love with her. He asked Marco if he could take a picture pinching her cheeks. He gave her a leather key chain with her initial on it for free!
There was a little bit of rain in Ancona, Italy that stopped almost as soon as it started but after that Kalynn enjoyed sunning it up on deck in the pool. This is in stark contrast to our drive home after our cruise was over... can you say SNOW in the Alps. We took photos of her playing in the snow and the snow capped mountains, lol.
We had a great time!
Sorry the pictures aren't labeled/categorized. You can visit my Facebook page where they are in albums for each placed visited.