Caleb

Lately, Caleb has really grown up. He is so sweet and thoughtful and he is constantly thinking of how he can serve others. We had parent teacher conferences yesterday (yes, on Thanksgiving day) and his teacher said he was doing really well in school. He is really enjoying reading but he LOVES math! We went on a retreat last week and while Cotter was playing the Nintendo in the car, Caleb was doing math problems! We are so proud of him, so we decided that he deserved something special. We told him that he gets to go on a date with Mom or Dad. He chose Dad, and they went to this huge indoor playground. This place is full of cool things to do, and it is one of his favorite places in Vienna. He came back feeling so special that he got to do something fun without the other two. I think that we need to start having more "dates" with our kids.

Then, he decided that he wanted a little color added to his new haircut! (At least it washes out!)

a few favorites

Not much has been going on around here in the last few days, so I thought that I would start posting some of my favorite pictures from our summer. All of these were taken by Chiara.... so cute! I love them!

What exactly is Cotter doing in the picture below?!

Halloween

I have to be honest with you. I'm avoiding everyone's blogs this week. This was the first year since we have been here that we didn't have anything to do on Halloween. I really missed the Fall festivals, the cute costumes, and the Trick-or-Treating that makes up halloween in the States. But, I was still determined to make it a special day for my family, so here is what we did...

After eating pumpkin pancakes, we went for a walk to this cute pumpkin stand by our house and picked out a pumpkin to carve. We also got some cute ones just to decorate with.

I let the kids choose what they wanted to dress up as. Carli got a cat dress that she wanted to wear, so I added some ears and some whiskers. Cotter couldn't decide between Dash (from the Incredibles) and Thomas the train, so he went with both! And Caleb didn't want to be anything, (which made me kinda sad.)

We made some fun cupcakes with spiderwebs on top....
Then we did our own trick-or-treating in the house. Josh and I hid little boxes of candy throughout the house and turned off all the lights and they used flashlights to find the candy. They had a lot of fun. Even though this Halloween was very different, we still had a wonderful day together and made some of our own traditions.

Last week we went to the Volksoper. It is the "Opera for the people" which means that kids are welcome and it is not quite as formal. We saw "Max und Moritz" which is about a famous children's book. We all really enjoyed it.


I absolutely love fall in Vienna! There are so many beautiful colors of leaves! My good camera is not working right now, so I don't have that many good photos, but here are a few from a walk that we went on by our house.

I have some great memories of playing with cattails with my sister Kaci when we were young. The kids love them just as much as I do!

We are so blessed to live in such a beautiful place.