Happy Birthday 'Merica!!!

We got to spend our first holiday in Germany and it was Independence Day! It was a really great day!  I have a LOT of photos from this day, so this is pretty much going to be a photo-blog.

(I make the photos I love most extra-big.)

Jack wants to type something:

  der grandmama, you r prette cool. i mes you.

Yeah..he typed all of that himself. The only thing I told him is where the "Y" is and how to end a sentence with a period. My barely five year old can spell "grandmama".  O_o

Mugging in front of the ferris wheel.

On our walk to the carnival, he found some weird red berries.

Okay...I adore this. He "stuck a fevver in his cap and called it macaroni" all by himself.

Ooh he is handsome!

He had his hardcore face on....

...until he started bumping into people, haha!

Then he mugged for the camera some more.

Daddy won him a Spongebob

He hit 25 balloons in a row!

Behold, the fearsome Bald Eagle!

He loved his Spongebob

Some of our food

Sweet Tea!

The Ferris Wheel

Ferris Wheel Time!

 Going up on the Ferris Wheel with Mommy!

View from halfway up

View of the cars from inside our car

View of the American and German flags near the flightline

He rode the firetruck ride but he was apprehensive of the fake fire extinguisher

He looks skeptical.

My Captain America! SO handsome!

He liked his face painted

His one turn on the bounce house

Just before he got mad when I didn't let him crawl back up the slide and into the bounce house.

Meal #2, before fireworks

He almost lost it!

Some brilliant mama brought bubbles!

Mr Cross-Eyes

Oh my gosh, he is so filthy! D:

I kinda love this photo. He looks like a dirty little pagan wizard child with a crystal ball, lol.

FINALLY!!

Fireworks!

These were really pretty.

Illuminated by a red firework

Had to make this one big! It was so colorful!

Jack was pretty transfixed

So colorful and pretty!

EDIT// I had to edit this blog right quick to include something that just happened. It is like 2:00am here in Germany and Jack won't go to sleep and he got mad at me because I shut the computer and started to walk out of the room. I told him we were going to sleep and here is how it went:

Me: "Jack, we are going to turn off the lights" *walking toward the bathroom*
Jack: "You are mean and I don't even know you anymore. You are not my Mommy. I don't even know who you are. I don't know your name. I don't know your birthday. I don't know where you were born. You are like a stranger or something..."
Me: *sitting on the potty, laughing like crazy*
Jack "...and I guess you could be a bad guy cause you are a stranger now. And I don't know what your favorite color is and...  Mommy?  MOMMY WHERE ARE YOU?!!!"
Me: "I am in the bathroom."
Jack: *peeks in to make sure I am there* "Well, I am really a good kid but you are a stranger in there in the bathroom and I don't know you and I don't know where you came from and I don't know how old are you..."

Beauty Blog

Grumpy Pants

I really hate whining. I hated hearing Jack take a deep breath and whine out a fire-engine-sounding "MooooooOOOOOooooooOOOOooommmMMMMmmYYYYY". It is seriously cringe-inducing. Now, I hate to admit it but I have been guilty of being a bit whiny myself on Facebook lately. Living in this damn tiny room has been pretty frustrating and Jack has been going through some really bad behavior phases lately too but that is not really an excuse. I mean, I am in Europe! We actually found tenants for our house, sold my car, moved our stuff, got rid of the stuff we don't want, found homes for our pets and managed to bring Junebug and Critterbug with us despite all kinds of setbacks. We did all of this in about 45 days and we made it here. We found a great house and ordered me a brand new Mini from Austria and things are going to be pretty great. So, I just need to stop being a giant baby.

This is my new mascot. I call it Panic-Cow. I act like this way more than I should.

Anyway, I decided to stop being a giant baby. Yay me! I dragged Jack out of the dungeon...I mean "hotel room" and we went on a nature walk. I decided to focus on the beautiful things that we found just within a kilometer or so from our hotel room.

First of all, this little kiddo is the most beautiful thing I could ever imagine. Sometimes he makes me want to SCREAM and pull out all of my hair but I love every little piece of this boy no matter what. Walking around with him, looking at flowers and beetles and bugs and kissing booboos when he wipes out onto the cobblestones makes an ordinary walk extraordinary! (I haven't really played with my photography in a long time, so I had to make these photos special, lol.)

Flowers are EVERYWHERE here! I have never seen so many flowers in my whole life! And it is just incredibly beautiful. There are all of these lovely little things that people do to make their houses and yards so nice and unique. Everywhere you look, you see something interesting.

Like this photo below...how cute is that? It is just so colorful!

Here are a few other photos from our walk.

Making his "blowfish" face that he has made since he was 6 mos old.

Getting ready to blow his dandelion.

"Hurry up and take the picture!"

Giant dandelion seed thing looked like a spiderweb.

He thought that the giant dandelion was awesome!

He was tired and wanted to walk back, lol.

Laughing when I blew a dandelion all over his head, lol.

Standing by a random stone with something on it. These are everywhere.

Our House: Creeper-Style

We were complete creepers and drove past our new house so that I could take a few photos, lol. You walk in on the second level and there is a GIANT finished basement that is only partially underground and then there is a full top floor. I hope no one saw us and thinks we are weirdos or criminals, lol.

That first window is the kitchen the window after the two little windows is the office.

You can see the cute little mailbox with it's roof, lol.

The cute garage.

This is one side of the house where you can see the balcony. That will be my bedroom. :)

Stuff Jack Says

And now for another installment of "Stuff Jack Says". We were at Big EMMA's the other night having dinner and we walked through a group of Latina women. Jack stopped and stared at one lady who looked like she might be 50-ish and all of a sudden I heard him say "Hey! Your tooth is gone!". All of the women burst out laughing and I just did a facepalm and the embarrassed "sooooooorry" that moms have to do when their kids say such things to strangers. She laughed about it, so hopefully it was okay, lol. 

We finally took his iPad away from him for good because it turned him into a beastie for the day every time he got his hands on it. I think he just got frustrated with the internet here because it is so spotty but I got sick of hearing "I do not like my family!! I only love GRANDMAMA!", so the iPad is no more. It has done him a world of good too and he is back to his normal self again.

The cats are tired of being kept all pent up in the same space too. Critterbug is still such a baby and he wants to play but Miss Junebug kind of hates him. And she isn't afraid to show it.

And lastly, here are some photos of ice cream at our favorite ice cream place! It is AMAZING!!!!