Christmas

Wow!  I can't believe Christmas 2012 has come and gone.  It was a fabulous Christmas spent with lots of family. 

I won't go into the horrible deatails of all the things that went wrong on our way home and 48 hours of traveling and lost luggage, etc.  But we finally got home on Christmas Eve.

I was anxious for Grey to open one of his "Christmas presents" early.  I got him a shirt to wear when Baby Ozier #2 is born.  He opened in front of all our family.  It says "I Love my Little Brother".  We are sooooo excited to have another boy! 

Our family's are excited too, except for the 2 nieces who really wanted another girl because they are already outnumbered.  2 boys and now 5 boys on the Blythe side!

 The first couple days home were all a blur with jet lag and busy schedules, but we had a great time seeing everyone and Grey had a wonderful time with his cousins and grandparents!  He was spoiled rotten for a week and loved every minute of it!

Christmas morning with all the cousins!

Grey loved his car track from Santa...somehow boys just know what to do with cars even if you don't teach them.

Grey also got a swing, his own rocking chair, a puzzle, and some Veggie Tales DVDs from Santa.

He liked playing with Kate's American Girl RV.  He wanted to get in it :)  It was a little small for him.

A little break from presents to chase the cat.  He was all about all the animals in the house.

He had to get down on the cat level to see his face :)

Sometimes I think the cousins had more fun helping Grey open and play with his gifts than they had playing and opening their own.

This was a common site of Kate with Grey on her hip taking him wherever he pointed.....spoiled!

The car play mat Grey got from the cousin gift swap.  Big hit with all the cousins!

I don't think we could have fit any more presents in this room!

Grey got a tricycle from Nana and Pop.  Not really ready to ride it yet, but he sure thought he could.

Train set from Nana and Pop.

Big blocks form Uncle Allen.  He also got a table from my parents that goes with these blocks.  He loves them!
 

 We had a big Christmas with more gifts that we could imagine.  Davis and I were blessed with lots of presents too..I just didn't take pictures. 
This Christmas was so nice to have Davis home and many times I caught myself tearing up thinking of how blessed we are that he made it home safely from Afghanistan and we were able to spend our first "real" Christmas as a family with so many people we love! 

Christmas in Germany

This was our 5th Christmas to be married and we FINALLY had our first Christmas tree.  We have always gone home like a week before Christmas and just procrastinated and not gotten one.  This year I was determined to have one and it did not disappoint.  We went to cut our own tree, but it was so snowy and wet we settled for a tree they had already cut. 

We didn't have many ornaments since we had never had a tree, but we started adding to our collection this year as we visited a couple German Christmas markets.

Grey loved helping decorate the tree and surprisingly he left it alone for the most part.  We did have a couple of ornaments go flying across the room when they were mistaken for balls, but luckily they were unbreakable :)

 Okay, I know that is a lot of pictures of Grey decorating the tree, but it was just so precious how into it he was.

This is the finished product.  Not the biggest or brightest tree, but I wasn't about to buy more than 1 strand of Christmas lights that won't work in our American outlets next year.  (Many of you know how cheap I am:)

I loved being able to turn off the lights though and have the Christmas tree on at night. 

As I said, we went to some great Christmas markets here in Germany.  They are a really big deal here.  The first one we went to was in Nuremburg and it was soooo crowded and cold and not very stroller friendly with the crowd so we didn't enjoy it as much as the next one we went to.  I didn't get any pics except this one of how bundled up we had Grey.  It was COLD!!!

 

We went a couple weeks later to a smaller Christmas market and even though it was still REALLY

cold we enjoyed this market a lot more and got some great goodies for our tree and some gifts.

This is the only picture I got at a Christmas market.  It was just too cold to take the time to stop and get my camera out :)

 

We really enjoyed spending some time in Germany during the Christmas season before heading home to the states for Christmas with family.

 

Rome for Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving Davis and I decided to plan a trip to Rome since it was high on our list of places to see before leaving Germany.  If you can't spend Thanksgiving eating turkey and dressing with family why not spend it in a gorgeous old city eating pizza and pasta.....right? 
Rome did not disappoint and I really enjoyed the history of the city (which is not usually my thing). 

This is how we spent a lot of the time since everywhere wasn't stroller friendly.  Grey doesn't mind it too much, but he sure gets antsy after a little bit.

Grey was a good boy and slept in the stroller for us the last night so Davis and I could have a nice dinner together without him interupting.

Grey loved out earphones from the tour of the Vatican. 

One night we took the iPad down to the hotel lounge and Davis and I enjoyed some adult time and Bambi "babysat" Grey :)  Gotta do what you gotta do....

Spanish Steps

Fount di Trevi

Grey had fun crawling and climbing on the oldest street in Rome.  I think it was from around 400 B.C.  He had no clue what cool stuff was surrounding him.

The Coliseum was amazing and so cool to see in person.

St. Peter's Basilica

We had a great time and really enjoyed Rome.  It was one of of my favorite places we have traveled.  Just one maybe 2 more big trips before we move back in March!  I can't believe all the things we have been so blessed to experience over here and would not trade it for the world, but I cannot wait to be home either!

Playmobil

In October while Davis was gone training Grey and I went to Playmobil Land with a group of friends and their kids.  We had a great time and Grey was in heaven!  He loved all the figures and playing with all the other kids.  I can't wait to take him back.

Grey had fun playing with his German friends in the play center.

He took all the toys out of the toybox and climbed in :)

Jumping on the trampoline/