Favorite Pics

Ellie is so much fun. She can say baby, she holds her nose and says stinky when she has a dirty diaper, and she says doggy about 50 times a day. She is so busy hording all of the craziest things into her favorite hiding spots in the house and into containers. She puts her crayons in moms kitchen cupboards and her books in the closets. At the end of the day I always find a little bucket with all her treasures from the house: ear plugs, pens, hair things, candles, paper flowers, and plastic lids from the kitchen. How does she snag all these things with out me seeing??
Doing Ojitos for mommy. It means "Little eyes" in Spanish- she learned it from Grammy Liz.
We had the missionaries over last last night. Ellie welcomed them by handing over all her toys and books.
These two are best buds, I love this pic.

Nutella For Breakfast

She learned this face from a friend:) It's also the, "I know you have more" face.

mmmmmmmmmm. We love Nutella.

Broken Promise

So, I promised myself I would try really hard not to say anything negative about the German people as a whole. Stereotyping in general bothers me and I know that there are things that I do as an American that most likely bothers others. But for some reason I need to get this off my chest, so here it goes (and this does not apply to all, just most in my 3 months here:) Germans are brutally honest, emphasis on the brutally! If something is wrong you are notified directly no matter where or who you are with and forget about points for effort. 

Most Germans are meticulous, deliberate and expect the same of everyone else. Everything is where it should be and everything has a place. Once again, if something isn't as it should be you are notified instantly.  The dishwasher repair man came over a few days ago to fix a leak. When the leak was fixed he told me that I needed to use salt in the dishwasher because the water is hard. Totally important tip, that I was doing, but at the time it needed more so we put more in. Then he said that I needed to use rinse aid, also something I was doing, thank you. And then he said I was putting my knives in wrong- the blade is supposed to be up. Ok. 10 min later. Are you done?? Thanks. Other offenses that you might get yelled at about:  putting the wrong trash in the wrong container, using too much electricity (we pay for it), running your child into the apartment quick without a hat or gloves,  translating something for church on the German translator on your computer (it doesn't translate right) and drinking something that is too cold. I guess my lazy attitude doesn't cut it over here.

New Years, Heidelberg and Shopping With Ellie

New Years was a battle zone, but it was awesome! Imagine everyone in the city having illegal (not illegal here) fireworks and blasting them off at any time come 12pm and on. When New Years was finally here the city was ablaze, all you could see were fireworks and smoke. I thought I was going to get hit multiple times. This picture does it no justice, but everywhere you see light its a firework. It was insane!


Madonna statue with castle Heidelberg in the background.

The walks to castles are always straight up. I wonder how hard it was to get there back in the day?

On the Castle tower overlooking the city

In side the castle walls
In the Castle gardens. It was so cold!! Ellie wasn't liken' it!

Heidelberg. The bridge takes you on the old philosophers walk.

More of the Castle Garden.

This is Knight Ritter's home that they have converted into a hotel.

Inside the church.

Ellie finally started really walking yesterday!! Yea! She is still pretty scared of walking without support, but yesterday she really started to get brave. We walked out to the car and just as I was about the pick her up and put her in her seat she decided she wanted to climb in the car by herself and ended up falling into the snow. She let out the biggest scream I've heard, not because she was hurt, but because she didn't know why she was so cold. As sad as it was she totally made me laugh. One of her favorite things is to play with her shopping cart. She puts all of her babies and bears in it and walks all over the house collecting all of mommies decorations on the way. It cracks me up so here's a pic.

Getting the pics up is half the battle. The internet is getting fixed today so with all luck, more commentary to come:)