Merry Christmas from the Azores!

I decided to start fresh. It's too overwhelming right now to try and play the catch up game with this blog so I'm starting from now. If I get more time to go back and do past posts than I will.

Merry Christmas

We've had some unseasonably warm days here. Usually we would have rainy, windy, chilly days and instead we get a chilly beach day.






This is the view of the Mary statue from the beach down below. If you can see those rock walls going up the side of the mountain, those are stairs that you can hike to get to the top. It's about a winding quarter mile of stairs. I have yet to walk them because of pregnancy but I hope do it soon.





They kids knew it was too cold to swim but they wanted to wear suits anyway. Savanna didn't want her suit. In this picture Sean is being Indiana Jones. He kept climbing the rock wall/hill and running down a sandy slide/hill and doing it all over.






Kaelin had fun letting her feet sink into the sand. She eventually fell in and got quite cold. Luckily it was time for us to go anyway.









We don't have any beach toys (lame, I know) so they dug with plastic spoons. This is actually the boat docking place. The real beach is on the other side.






this side has the boats <--- /This side has the real beach--->


Savanna fell in and was not happy. I told her we could leave or she could go play more. She decided to play more. She also never wanted to change, it's now almost bedtime and she is still in those clothes.






It was by no means warm, just warmer than usual. I had to try and keep a blanket wrapped on Zach. The street behind us has a hotel and restaurants. The white building by Zachary's ear is one of our favorite restaurants. He will be 5 months on the 22nd! Crazy!








This is the actual beach, but it's set up for the windy winters here. Those green fabric walls work and wind breakers to help keep the sand where it belongs.







I DID IT!

I have had a goal to get a picture of a cow close to the ocean. I see it all the time but I never have my camera. This time I did. Yeah! One more thing to cross off my Terceira list.

There's no cows in this one, don't worry, you're not blind. I just wanted to show the cliff, right at the edge of the cow field.

I'm back!

Alright everybody, if you're still out there? I am finally back to blogging. It has been a LONG time. The baby is good and the computer is functioning so, it is ON.


Now, we have to go way back to Germany. SO to refresh your memory we left off with an introduction to our hotel. To make it easy, for me, these blog posts will be short and I'm going to try to stick with one event at a time. So, one of the first places we went was the BX. It was huge! Think mall and you've got the Ramstein BX. Of course I had to stop somewhere near and dear to my heart.



TACO BELL




See the joy on my face? Crunch wrap supreme, MmMm!

No, they were not both mine. But, I did take some extra tacos back to the hotel with us.

Birth Story

I love reading the "birth story" so if you do too, here you go.

If you don't already know I was in England for the birth. Since we don't have an American hospital here on Terceira, we have the option to be sent to an Air Force base in England or Germany OR stay and give birth in a Portuguese hospital. For many reasons I chose England and then with the diagnosis of Gestational Diabetes, I was sent a little bit earlier. So from the middle of June until the baby was born I was in a hotel-type room. Alright here we go...

On July 22, I woke up at 3 am for my regular potty break and when I climbed back into bed I noticed I was having slight contractions. So out of curiosity I stayed awake to try and time them. They were really easy, and short contractions so I decided to go back to sleep. I couldn't fall back asleep, mostly because I was distracted by the contractions. So I took some Tylenol and read a book in a warm bath. The contractions didn't stop but neither did they increase in pain or length. After a LONG bath (it was a good book) I got out and toweled off. I notice a very light tinge of blood on the towel and figured that this was the real deal and should start getting ready for the hospital. This is after 4am, and I woke up my Mom and gathered the few last minute things for my bag. We called my "go to" person for our ride to the hospital. It is walking distance, maybe 5 min, but the contractions increased in pain and I didn't really want to walk. We wait outside to be picked up. When her van pulls up I have a big, bad contraction to the point where I couldn't move. So I'm standing in the middle of the road backing up the small amount of traffic there is at 4:30 in the morning on an AF base. I make it in the van, drive around the corner and into the Emergency Room parking lot. My driver (thank goodness) runs in and get the attendants to bring out a wheelchair. I get in pass along all pertinent information and head up the elevator. The labor nurse asks if I can get into the bed on my own, which I do. SIX MINUTES later Zachary Hayes Carlsen is laying at the bottom of the bed. 6lbs. 12oz. in weight 18 1/2 in in length born at 4:51 am. By the time the doctor got there I was just waiting around for a few stitches. I'm very thankful for my Mom being there with me, for Cindy for driving me to the hospital (and everywhere else), and the labor nurse who helped breath and focus because I don't think anyone was expecting it to happen that fast.

Now, he is 1 month old and doing fantastic. I figured I better get this story documented before he get too old.

Slacker

Yes, I know I am a major slacker about blogging these days. And I won't be getting around to it anytime soon either, because I am flying to England to have this baby of mine on Thursday. It would be a great time to blog seeing as I'll be sitting around with no kids, but I won't have any of my photos. So, the next time you'll hear anything from this blog won't be until August something or another unless Rob decides to blog in his "spare" time. Wish me good luck and send Rob luck and prayers.

Polly want a cracker

I have to put this video on. It has nothing to do with Germany and everything to do with how silly Savanna can be. Give it a watch and have a good laugh.

Germany-2

Sorry this one is a little lame because it's just about our hotel and a little of the surrounding area. Sorry, you have to wade through the less cool stuff before you can get to the castles and dinosaurs. I don't think there will much commentary.


The name of our hotel, obviously.



Here is the green lantern to go along with the name.




The view out our window, there is a castle up on the ridge.




Here is a zoom of the castle. We visited it twice but that is another post.






We decided to go walking around the neighborhood our first day there. One reason was to see what was close and two so that we could get to the rental car place. That church had such random bells. They were never the right number to be the time. Sunday had all sorts of bells I would assume they went along with their services.





Down the street in the other direction. This is a good picture because it reminds me that I need to get the pictures off of Kaelin's camera. I'm pretty sure this was the only day that she took her own pictures anyway.




A cute little side road on our walking trip. It sort of reminded me of where I grew up in NJ.


We passed a lot of shops but all seemed to be closed because it was Sunday. It was nice to see that the town/country had so many things closed on the Sabbath Day. We finally found the rental car place but that too was closed. We kind of expected it but thought we'd take a chance.
Instead of walking all the way back, we stopped in this gas station to call for a taxi. They were extremely nice and even gave the kids some crackers.




We hung out on the sidewalk for what ended up being a really long time. We have been so used to standing out in Portugal that it was weird to blend in so well and see such diversity. We did a lot of people watching sitting on this sidewalk.




Now you have to not look too closely to these pictures. I wanted to take some when we first got there but we weren't in our room for too long. We really only used our room to sleep. Rob took these pictures almost at the end of our trip so the room is pretty trashed, with dirty clothes, opened suitcases, unmade beds, food wrappers, and all the random stuff we collected over the week. So bare with me.




My legs and hips were having a tough time so I was taking some down time with my book. The pillows are huge squares, but they are soft enough that you can fold them in half. It's kind of smart because if you want a really soft pillow you just leave it and if you need more firmness, go ahead and fold it in half.




Savanna was in our room on a fold out bed, when it's folded it looks just like the chair that Kaelin is on. All the tv was in German so the kids are watching a movie on the IPAD until bedtime.




Sean was posing on the window sill. He also got a haircut at the BX while we were there. I couldn't get any picture of that because he fell asleep during and I was busy holding his head.



Our green and brown bathroom. Those little shelves got quite full because that was all the counter space. It also had a shower and a tub. The kids thought that was cool.




This was the kids room. Overall, we really enjoyed our hotel. We were glad that the tv was in German because then we didn't watch any. We were glad there weren't many sitting places because then we just stayed out until bedtime. I was glad there was really no where to eat because then I was able to get lots of fast food.

More on the fast food I ate in a later post, but I will tell you that I have gained 10lbs. in the past month and I don't think it's all baby and I don't doubt that I gained it all in our one week in Germany.

Germany-1

Alright, so we took a family trip to Germany and we took more than 400 pictures. Don't worry I won't post ALL of them but in an effort to actually get them posted I'm going do it in different posts. This post is the flight. It was not a normal flight. We were flying to Germany on a C-130 so we were in for a different experience.




From the airport terminal we had to hop on a bus that would take us to our plane. The kids were pretty excited about this.







When Sean saw the buses he said, "I think this is going to be fun!"






Then we got our first glimpse of our plane. It was quite huge! I mean look at it compared to that truck.









This was an inside shot out the back of the plane. The back is open because they were loading our luggage. That is that plastic wrapped bundle. At least we knew our luggage wouldn't get lost.





This was before the engines were started up, I know this because they don't have in their ear plugs. It was quite loud.




We all sat on jump seats that were sideways. In some ways I liked this much better. It gave the illusion of more room even though their was much, much less. The bathroom was down at one end so whenever anyone had to use the facilities they had to squeeze between everyone, all they way down the line. That definitely got annoying. I actually don't think I got a picture of the bathroom. It was just a toilet that they were kind enough to hang up a tarp for us to use as a privacy curtain. When I did need to use the bathroom I was very thankful for the loud noise, or else everyone would hear the gentle tinkle of every patron.




Sean and Vanna did surprisingly well with the noise and with the earplugs. They fell out a few times but it was loud enough that they didn't argue about putting them back in.






We all slept at some time or another. The kids were entertained with the IPAD's and DS's. I was surprised that you could still hear them, but I guess when the sound is piped right into your ear than it works just fine.





We were told that flying on a C-130 would get cold. It was not cold. We had close to 80 people and they had the heater running. Instead of putting on hats, coats and gloves we were taking off as many layers as we could. My long sleeved shirt did not last long.





In this one you can see how little leg room we had between us and the people across the room. Luckily the people directly across from me, Vanna and Sean were Rob and Kaelin, so we could put our legs up next to them if we needed a stretch.



This is my genius. Savanna's head phones kept falling off. It was an inconvenience because 1. she couldn't hear her movie any more and 2. her sound barrier disappeared and it got real loud. So I did some bending and made her headphones work. I was pretty excited that it worked so well. Yeah, me!




At one point I got up to walk around and asked one of the men if they knew where we were. They called through their headsets and found out we were coming up on Paris. I yelled/signed/mouthed over to Rob and he finally understood and came to take a look. With perfect timing he was able to get a picture of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. Looks like we don't have to make a trip to Paris now. lol, j/k





Well, I hope to get another post done tomorrow and continue one a day until I get them all done. Sean and I are going on a medical trip to Baltimore (ENT dr. appt.) that leaves Sunday, so maybe I'll get all of the Germany trip finished before I leave. Here's hoping.

Chocolate?

So after Valentine's Day I bought a few packages of clearance priced Valentine cookies. I pulled one out to bake and had a second thought about purchasing these again.


The Phillsbury Doughboy looks so cute and all but something about "Chocolate flavored Chip" cookies doesn't sound so good. How can you fudge on chocolate chips. Now I need to go look at my bag of chocolate chips and see if they too are chocolate flavored. Maybe it has something to do with preservation or keeping the chip shape,or maybe that soft, squishy boy is really cheap and allergic to real chocolate?

Kaelin updated her blog

Kaelin's blog got an update. If you don't know how to get there, she is listed in the column to the right or if you click on her picture. Please leave a comment, she would love it! I don't care if everyone else says the same thing you wanted to say, say it anyway. Go on, just do it.

Hail?

Yup, we got some hail. I was cooking in the kitchen and couldn't understand why the rain was so loud. So I investigated and this is what was all over.







It didn't last very long but it did hail. Everyone was pretty surprised by it. Sean came running down to eat some followed closely behind by a (Yes, you're seeing it correctly) naked Savanna. I don't know why she was currently in the buff but it was quickly remedied and we all got a surprised giggle.





I've been trying to figure out why I don't have any new blog posts. So I grabbed my camera, which I couldn't find even though it was in front of my face for quite a while. I was just never looking in the right place when I was actually looking. Anyway, I looked through and saw a few posts that hopefully should be coming soon.

BX trip

So this evening I went to the BX to buy some shoes and I was sidetracked by some tasty snacks.









Finally I made it over to the clothing (I'd say area but it's really too small to be categorized as that) And look at the awesome outfit that I found!








That's right we're having a BOY!!!