our growing babe

lela had her 4 month visit a little early since we're taking off for the states. she's healthy!

4 month check-up:

weight: 14.8 lbs. (86th percentile)
length: 25.4 in. (95th percentile)
head circumference: 16.3 in. (77th percentile)

merry christmas

lela got rollerskates for christmas :)


...and today started melodically gurgling. this continues all day - oh what music to our ears! :)

first family photos

we had a family photo shoot done in mid-november since we have close to zero pics of the three of us. we hired the photographer that taught the class that i took in july and as we already knew, he was awesome. princess peach didn't quite cooperate (she was nine weeks at the time what can we expect, right?), but we still got some sweet shots. please forgive the cheesy ones and lela's look of distress in the ones of the three of us (not quite sure if the beret was too tight or if she was going for some euro-chic look that i didn't know about). they are posted here. this is one of our faves:



these days lela enjoys listening to books, laying on her changing table and cooing at her pictures, reverse crunches (these are her fave, she's really working on toning up), shadow boxing, bicycling her legs as fast as she can, and doing thumb wars against herself. she has an early 4 month appt. this week where we'll find out her new measurements.

did i mention it is STILL snowing here... ! we got 4 inches, then 6, now 2-4 again, and snow is forecasted all week. i love it! on saturday night we went to a christmas party in bernkastel and then to an ugly sweater party after that. we ended up leaving early because the snow was coming down so hard and we were afraid for the drive home. we took the long way home on the autobahn (to avoid curvy country mountain roads) and it was horrible. no one was out, but the roads hadn't been touched yet. it took us forever to get home, but we made it safely. the base rates the drivability of the roads as either green, amber, red, or black. yesterday (sunday) they were black. they NEVER go to black. this means that you can only drive on them if it is a life-threatening emergency. the germans are saying this is looking to be the worst winter in 100 years... german gossip. good thing we'll be in vegas in less than a month, for a month. :)

zermatt and christmas markets everywhere

over the thanksgiving weekend we headed to zermatt, switzerland, home of the matterhorn. :) we rented a chalet with a bunch of friends and skied as much as we could handle....it was blistering cold. brant went out the first day, i skied the second day, and we were very fortunate to be able to ski together the third day as our friend lauren tended to our kin. :)


black friday shopping at its finest...

lela hanging with the boys...








we've also been hitting up all the christmas markets we can. they are so authentically german. we love the gluhwein (hot spiced wine) in town specific mugs (our collection of these is getting a little out of hand) and brats.

koblenz christmas market



trier christmas market



lela is a little chubette... loves to eat, smile, half roll over, and laugh hysterically. we are trying to catch the laughing part on video, but she gets camera shy. as soon as we do, it will be on our mobileme site. she also showed us that she can sleep through the night! she started in early november and has been fairly consistent. we get her off schedule a lot with all our traveling, but when she's been home for a few days she sleeps from about 10pm to 6am. good enough for us!




class is over for me as of last week... i will be taking two classes starting in mid-january, but until then i'm going to read something insignificant and trashy.

brant is taking a grad school break. he will be heading to the desert in april for 6 months and will finish up grad school there.

we did an overnight trip to the rothenburg ob der tauber christmas market. it is a walled medieval city - we went there with my parents in september and knew we had to go back for their christmas market. we arrived late at night and when we went to check into our place, no one answered. we called, rang the doorbell, and rang the bell (yes, they had a real old-fashioned bell). it was icy cold and the streets were snow-covered and there wasn't a soul in sight. we walked with our friends lauren and tommy to help them check into their place....and asked if they had any more rooms. she said that they were waiting up for us and there was one room left. can you believe it? literally, one room left at the inn. a christmas miracle. ;)

rothenburg christmas market



lastly, we have a LOT of snow. it's gorgeous and it just keeps on snowing...