An Eventful December

As you know, Amanda was in a car accident on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8th). She was in the hospital for four days with a fractured nose, fractured orbital (the bottom of the eye socket), and a torn eye lid that needed stitches.  Thankfully nothing is permanent and her recovery is going well.  The kids were perfectly fine, but stayed in the hospital for observation for 3 days.  The car was totaled, but we are in the process of buying a new car now (a Subaru!!).

Then on December 13th  Amanda's mom, dad, 2 sisters and brother in law flew in to spend two weeks with us in Germany.  We did a lot of fun local stuff, including cross country skiing, ice skating and thrift store shopping.  Then we went down to the Alps and stayed in and Army Resort. 

Here are some pictures from our interesting and eventful December:

Pictures of the Trailblazer after it got to the wrecker's

A few hours after the accident.  The hospital insisted on the neck brace just as a precaution =)

Two days later: Eye still swollen shut, but bleeding has stopped

The kids enjoyed playing in the children's wing

Stella wanted to try a little apple wine on her first birthday

Andrew, Stuart and Aaron hiking in the Alps.  They were working hard and getting hot, even at below freezing temperatures

Amanda on a more mild hike with Philip

Family Photos

Andrew, Stuart, and Aaron, doing the music for Christmas morning Mass

Christmas

A Long Awaited Update...

Hello Family,

I find myself feeling unstressed for perhaps the first time since last December, and realized that I have not written anything for the blog lately. There is much I have wanted to post, so I won't share it all now, but I will give the more interesting updates.

First, here are some photos of mine and Andrew's (does anyone know the correct order for that chain of possessives? Is it Andrew and mine; Andrew's and my; Andrew's and mine?) adventure up Pike's Peak, in Colorado. This was in early August, right after Grandma Lila's Celebration of Life.

I could give captions for all of the photos, but there is really not much more to say than, "This is a picture of part of the mountain."

You may notice that there are trees in most of the photos, which means that most of my photos were taken below the tree line. I didn't do this consciously, but as we got higher and the air got thinner, I think we were just too exhausted to care about pictures any more.

The last three pictures were taken in the cog train on the way back down. The tour guide said that many people believe the second to last picture looks like a seal, though I can't see it, and the last picture looks like a turkey. I agree with the turkey description, but I think "Peep," as in Dad's favorite candy, is much better.

In case you are interested, here is a chart showing the details of our trip. It took us almost 6.5 hours to go 11.66 miles, a time which we were both fairly pleased with. Another interesting thing to note is that the time of our last .66 miles was almost double that of the first mile. This was due to the high altitude, and our need to stop every 100-200 yards to breathe. Perhaps Andrew can comment about his own experience, but I was shocked at the way my body reacted to the thinner air. I wasn't heaving and out of breath like I imagined I would be. Rather, my body just did not work right. I have thought about it several times, and there is really no other way to describe it than that. I did not feel out of breath, I just did not seem to be able to go on at all.

Moving on, I have been busy writing applications for PhD programs. I won't hear back about them until mid March, so until then, please pray that I grow in holiness and love for God and ya'll. I am not too worried about where I get in, or if I get in (yet). For my writing sample, which the applications require, I recently wrote an paper on a theme from Wisdom of Solomon, and some of you may be interested in reading it. It is 17 pages long and has lots of footnotes though, so if you think it would be boring, you don't have to read it.

Regina recently moved to a different office within the same company, and the move seems to be suiting her well. The biggest improvement is that she works much closer to home, so we get much more time together, and she gets less worn out from driving around all over the place. The downside is that she has more city driving to do, which is stressful in itself, but she still logs fewer driving hours per week, and it is never fun to drive up here anyway, regardless of whether you are in the city or the country.

I will attach some more photos below, but they are just of nice fall leaves. I will leave the other personal updates until later.

Love,
Dan and Regina

I have been Collecting pictures of Dorothy to post on here for a while. I finally got some cute ones of her playing. Since she is one now, she is babbling and running around being crazy. The loves to be chased and tickled.  The other day she came over to me with a a hairbrush, hairband, and a hair bow and threw them on my lap. She also likes the pick her shoes to wear to church or outside. The Pink nail polish is a favorite of hers.

Another thing she does is hide in the mountains of leaves at the road.  She will literally let the boys bury he in the leaves until you can no longer see her. Then she pops up smiling and giggling. She says Mommy, Daddy, Me, Dog(bahg) and Up. Up was he first word. When she was six months old, She was climbing up the stairs. "Wheres Dorothy?" Mommy asked.  "Up!"  What we heard from the Steps. She completely gave herself away.

Love,
Ellie

Hello Family,

We wanted to share some picture of the past couple of months.  We haven't been doing too much traveling, but we have just been having fun exploring our part of Germany and really getting to know our community.  We have gotten pretty involved with our church and have made some great friends--some very devout couples--which has surprised us since this is such a small military community compared with the other bases in Germany.  

We've started a little bit of homeschooling with Philip, although he does go to a preschool two mornings a week.  Not enough to actually learn and retain.  But he loves to be around the other kids.  

Surprisingly we haven't had any lasting snow.  It snowed once a few weeks ago, but was melted within a day and it has been cold, but dry ever since.

Amanda has been discovering some wonderful thrift stores and Andrew has been playing lots of music on the guitar lately.  He is in charge of the Christmas morning Mass!  Stella likes to giggle and crawl away quickly if she thinks she found something naughty to play with, and Philip likes to watch youtube videos of sea lions barking.  We are also going to host a big fondue party at our house close to Christmas, for which Amanda has been collecting fondue pots from said thrift stores.