Recent happenings

I have officially decided that as much as I want to be a blogger, it just never quite makes it into my list of things that need to be accomplished each day! Here is a brief update of what we have been up to the last few months.

We had a team retreat in a part of Austria that we have never been to. It was a great time of rest, relaxation, and quality time spent with teammates. The kids had a blast!

Each year in Austria, the kids celebrate Fasching. They get to dress up in costumes and wear them to school and usually have a party or two to go with it. This year, they dressed up as...

a Pirate

an Indian

and Princess Leia.

They had a lot of fun and Carli got to fight against Darth Vader at school! She was excited.

In baby news... I have a funny story. Everything is going well. He is extremely active and we all can hardly wait to meet him! At one of my appointments a couple of weeks ago, they told me that he decided to do a flip and is now head up, instead of head down. The doctor said that since it is my 4th baby, he should have plenty of time and room to turn on his own, but wanted me to go talk to some nurses and they would give me some tricks to try at home. I went to the delivery part of the hospital and the nurse that I talked to was super friendly. She took me into a separate room and began describing what I needed to do at home to try to get the baby to turn. She handed me this envelope....

and began to explain to me (in German of course) what to do. She said to take 2 of these little thingys and place one on each of my pinky toes, like this...

Then she told me to light them! At this point I was really convinced that something was lost in translation! I kept asking questions to make sure I understood what she wanted me to do. I said... "like, with fire?!" She said yes, with fire! Then it will release a smell in the air and I am supposed to breathe in deep and hopefully after doing this for 3 days, the baby will turn! At the time, I was cracking up. It sounded like the craziest thing I have ever heard of! But since then, I have done some research and it is actually a quite common thing to try. It is some form of Chinese acupuncture (without needles) and it has something to do with the little toes that make the baby move. I tried it for 3 days and then went to the doctor last week hoping that he had flipped around, but he is still very much head up. She told me to try it again and come back in a week. So, we will see. I hope and pray that he will turn on his own. They will give him another couple of weeks before they will try to turn him and if that doesn't work, then I will have to have a C-section. Please pray that he will turn!