random moments

On our way back from picking up our car Rosemary did some drive-by peekaboo'ing. She is too cute, and notice the background... you can see some of the countryside of Germany, yep it all looks the same. Pretty but the same.

Carmen after her latest doctor appt. She thinks she's so cute... too bad she is!

Its a alphabet train!

My mystery plant, turns out its a wild violet, who knew? Anyways its blooming and it looks like a herd of butterflies has landed on it!! how pretty. I also created my own vine grabber frame, I think it came out good.

face painting

Rosemary recently discovered how much fun a fork can be. She still stabs things with it and then flings them across the room. But the other night we had spagetti for dinner and we let her do her "thing". She seemed to enjoy dinner, as well as the process in which to eat it.

A few things... thats all

*sigh* Another big hurdle cleared... if not a tad slowly. We recieved our household goods today. The movers arrived at 7:30am, we literally rolled out of bed to answer the door. They were here till around 2pm. Remember, three flights of stairs carrying everything that we own. There were only two men doing this and they hand carried everything in! No snazy way of getting around carrying each box up. But its done, and now the large task of unpacking begins.

This is about 1/2 way into unloading.

This is the Girls hanging in our bedroom to stay out of the way of the movers. Note the bed that we borrowed, yeah they didnt come to pick that stuff up till the poor movers were bringing up the last three boxes. Talk about over loaded!

This is the second bedroom, most every box went in there, and this is only midway through. We ended up filling the room up and just shut the door and started loading things into the middle of the living room.

You might not be able to tell but at the base of my couch is a smattering of rice, yes I said rice. It would seem that the magical rice fairy visited our couch while on the boat on its way here. All my boxes were intact and the couch was completely surrounded by seran wrap. Plus, there was about the amount of two boxes of rice in it, I dont own that much rice. We still dont know how it got in there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acFyyUnU0j4

K, so I video taped the progress of the move, this would be the first installation, about an hour into the move. I was still perky, I just had a cup of coffee I am sure. :0)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYcBM6hjvA0

This is later in the day, I will explain in the video how things are going. I think this was around lunch time, which would mean my coffee buzz is worn off AND I am starving. Fun Times!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiX516n2aAo

Ok, this is later in the day... much later, around 5pm I believe. We shut the front door and I crashed on the couch, once I could find it. Jim was adorable and headed in to play trains with Carmen. Rosemary was, thankfully, taking a nap. She was super tired having missed both normal nap times.

Silly Hats, Sing Alongs, and EEG's

This isnt one of those funny, upbeat blogs. It's actually one of the harder ones to write. But I believe Carmens story in all its highs and lows needs to be told.

As you all know she has been diagnosed with Absent Seizures, it was actually a little more than a year ago this saga began. Well on Monday we had an appointment to meet with our German Neurologist. Unfortunately, the doctor was unavailable (something to do with his family, I didnt get it all because of the language barrier). We were "told" that we would have to come back next week to meet with him. The receptionist got into it with another woman... than another. It seemed they were arguing about when we had to make the appointment, or if we needed one. I wasnt sure. As it ended up, one of the ladies arguing was a tech and she wanted to give Carmen an EEG. Now, this wasnt part of the original plan, and Im not sure if its routine to go about doing this. Either way, we got dragged into a back room for just that purpose.

Now let me take you back about a year ago and you might remember Carmen getting her first EEG, it was terribly difficult on her, she had a seizure while in the EEG process. She screamed, cried and well.. it was tramatic. We were told first off that she was going to be sleep deprived, than no, we will just put her under, then no, lets just go for it. What a mess that was.

Now you can imagine what I was invisioning in this office after I figured out what they were wanting to do. I was unprepared (as you can imagine) for this kind of procedure. I didnt have time to prep Carmen as I usually do when we start one of these things. And well, honestly, I was in shock myself that they were going to do this in-house. With a child. I tried to explain that we had just one done last year. They asked where... OHSU, Dornbeckers... USA. When I said the states she rolled her eyes and said we had to do another one. Ok, I get that Germans think they can do things better than Americans, but isnt an EEG, and EEG no matter what language its translated into?

So we start this, Carmen screams her head off right off the bat. I convince her that the lady is going to make a silly hat for her and that mommy is gonna take pictures so we can show daddy how silly it really is going to be! Yeah that worked for about 3 minutes. Long enough for me to get these tragic pictures and then she started to cry again.

The EEG itself lasted about 15 minutes,. Applying the cap, then the electrodes lasted about 20 minutes. You can imagine why it took so long.

When they had her hooked up and where monitoring her, I showed her the computer and all of the wavy lines, and told her that her brain was doing that. That it was talking to the computer. I asked her what she thought it was saying, and she told me that it was saying that she wanted to get ouf of the chair and go home. Oh and that it wanted Gelato (at this point I had bribed her with anything I could think of, and we were downtown Ansbach so that would be easy enough to get for her). I truly thought she was a trooper at that statement, only a kid can give that kind of answer!

I was concerned that she would indeed have another seizure during this screaming event, as it was around the time for her normal dose of medication, and she was stressed. If she has a seizure the clock for her recovery sets itself back to zero. But she did great no seizures, and all in all she is getting better with dealing with these stressful situations. She still screamed her head off and could be heard blocks away, but she sat for the whole thing (last time we had to restrain her), and she was able to be distracted for moments in time by what I had to say (last time she was in her own little screaming, crying world and nothing I did or said helped).

The pictures are tragic, I know. And she does look a little funny with the cap pulling her skin back, there was a chin strap too, so that didnt help. But the single tear down her cheek just kills me, hopefully one day this will all be a blur and she will understand what she had to be put through.




she was placing electrodes in these pictures

Carmen was actually trying to smile in this one, how sad does she look?

Hopes for the future

Jim found me a large dog kennel the other day. It was super sweet of him.

Anyone who has been around me for the last few years knows that I want a dog. I think it would be the last piece of our family puzzle and would complete us. I dont want just any dog though I want a Labranard.. stupid name I know, but it is a mix of a labrador and a saint bernard. (and yes my brother stole my idea and got himself that exact breed! Here is a picture of his adorable dog Brutus)The perfect dog in my mind.

I have always wanted a big dog, little dogs are as useful as cats...

Anyways, I was crushed when we were forced into this apartment, on the third floor, and realised that I wouldnt be getting a dog till we leave. I just dont see potty training a puppy from the third floor as being a fun job, or even pheasable really. I know they make "potty pads" for apartment situations, but ick... and since any dog I get is going to be rather large, I dont see the point, their butt wouldnt fit on the pad anyways.

That all aside, it was touching the other day when Jim came home with my present. Its a big kennel too!! It wont fit a full grown dog, but for the first year it should work... now if only I had a dog to fill it...

~The Lawson Family Singers~

The early morning sing along...

Mystery Plant

Ok, so there is a long story behind this plant but I will save that for another day. My current problem is... what is it? It is miss marked as a Jasminum Polyanthum. The leaves are too broad for that plant along with the wrong shape of the petals. The overly long stamin makes it look almost orchid like. It seems like its a vine too. I am at a loss, anyone got any ideas?

Home Sweet Home

Ok, so we moved in, well in a sense we did. We signed for "the" apartment (that we have talked about so much). The place isnt too bad. Not that I enjoy walking up three flights of stairs mulitple times a day, the kids are already starting to complain about it. They do however, enjoy the view. Out our balcony is one of the airfields (which at this moment a chinook is doing hovering manuevers) and Carmen gets really excited everytime something flies in. I am sure with time that will dim some, but right now she is in seventh heaven!

We are borrowing beds and couches and a table from the Lending Closet. They are not the best out there, I would much rather have mine, but at least we have something to sit on and sleep on.

There isnt much else to say, we arent too happy with the situation, but have exhausted our last option and will just have to make the best of it.

I took a video tour of our apartment, its rather large but I am still going to try to load it on here. If not then maybe youtube and then attach a link to it... we shall see. (ok, so I had to put it on youtube, so you should be able to click on the link below and it should take you to the video.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWwVL2maEr8

Also I added my first touch to the place. Not many will care about it, but my girl Em will like it. :0) I miss you!!!

Where EXACTLY are you?

Good question, and one I have been getting from a few people so here goes. We are in Katterbach Germany. There... thats all you needed right? lol... Ok, here goes. I had Jim capture some images from google earth just for clarification purposes.

This one shows you where in Germany we are located at, its in Baveria (Bayern) which is the southern half of Germany. The lines in yellow are the borders of Germany and the yellow tack is where we are at.

Next is a closer picture, zoomed in as it were. You can see Nurnburg off to the right, its a big city out here and you should be able to find it on any map of Germany. We are between Ansbach and Nurnburg (which can also be spelled Nuremburg).

Again we zoom in to our relation to Ansbach, which is to the west and kind of south of us. There are a few labels on this one. Bismarck Kaserne and Katterbach kaserne (by the way kaserne just means barracks) are pretty much the same city cut into two by the major road out here, not impressive but it is what it is. The last label simply says "our place" which is actually where our future apartment is at. (we sign on it tomorrow, further updates to be posted soon).

Last but not least is a picture of our kaserne area. Ok, lets start at the top. Our hotel is located in Bismarck Kaserne north of the "highway" 14. Katterbach is south of the road, and below the air field if our apartment building. And dont even get me started about the apartment situation right now. I will fill you in more after we are in it and I have a proper rant ready. :0)

I hope this helps you with finding us on a map, or just getting an idea of where we are. We love and miss you all!!!

Morning Coffee

The hotel room seems to be losing square footage everyday. This morning, over coffee, this point was proven as Carmen AND Jim decided to take pictures of each other. And then proceeded to see how many silly faces they could make.

On another note, we received our unaccompanied baggage the other day. It has taken up all the corners in this shrinking room of ours. I took some pictures of it all before I started deligating it to the shadows.



And on an even further note, we have discovered the yummiest German food yet. I am sure there will be more, but for now we are loving the extra calories that come along with the "Doner Wrap" (now there are two dots over the o which makes you pronounce it Duner Wrap). Its a tortilla shell, shaven pork, feta cheese, cabbage, lettece, tomato, and a garlic sauce. Yeah I know, just reading that gave you 5 pounds. Its super scrumptous, and the other evening we went to pick up a couple. Since we arrived at 6:30pm she was about to close up and gave us the rest of the meat that was in her slow cooker. So she had created the "monster doner wrap". It was really funny, it was so full that she couldn't completely create a wrap with the tortilla!! but let me tell you, it didn't harm the taste at all. It took me two big meals to finish mine off. Now, just for your drooling enticement I have added pictures of our monster wrap. Enjoy, I certainly did!

Car tours part I

So with Jims new carkeys burning a hole in his pocket we headed out on the town for our first family outing on our own! It was exciting, till Jim started driving AWAY from town and into God's country. This area is beautiful, clean, small towns, well cared for homes. But after the 100'th wheat field and an hour past lunch time we made our way back to the hotel.

We managed to drive to three major cities and through countless towns. Streets names or numbers arent as important out here as knowing the name of the town you are heading to. Locals dont need to be distracted with remembering a highway name, they are just heading to Windenbach (which by the way is harder to pronounce than you would think).

The area is rather flat out here. There are rolling hills aplenty. Its interesting, it would seem that the fields out here arent in straight square shapes, they are more fluid than that. And there are small patched of forests in the middle of these fields (which most currently hold wheat) which makes them stand out considerably, much like the adorable homes that the farmers and locals live in. As you will see the homes all are in the same general shape, the roofs are all red bricked, and stucco-sided in a white-ish wash. We must have passed at least 20 cities today, and if you didnt know the name was different you wouldnt have known you were in a different town. It was amazing that so many people out here continue to follow the traditions and preferences that were created hundreds of years ago.

All in all it was a lovely day, a storm caught up to us towards the end of our drive and some killer thunderstorms announced our arrival home. It was fun to watch the lightning stretch across the sky against the backdrop of wheat fields, farm homes and black skies.

I am sure that we will be taking more trips in the near future and I will make Jim stop so I can actually get out and walk around to take even more pictures to show off.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jeniferlawson0117/Germany?feat=directlink

Our new addition

As I reported earlier Jim was in the last stages of purchasing a car. It's all final, he has to go back in after the holiday, and get the real plates, but other than that it all worked out. He got a BMW, is anyone surprised by this? I didn't think so, its an 318i from 1992, if anyone is interested. Its not bad, for a "hoop'd". It will get us around, hopefully with minimal costs, for the next three years.

Jim is really happy with his purchase and has spent every extra moment he can with it. Of course, whatever the car "needs" is manditory and how dare I suggest otherwise. Men and their cars.. really..

My car is still on the boat on its way here and wont reach us until mid to late July. I am going to try to take my international license here next week and have been studying for that most every night. Lets just pray that I score decently.