Groceries, Kids, and Ice Cream...

I've started an activity with the girls that they are thoroughly enjoying because it involves them getting to pick something out at the store.  They are each allowed to pick out one food item to try, but it must be something they have never tried before.  They each started with a sort of "chocolate egg" because it had a cartoon drawn on it, and of course, it was exactly what they expected because it was a "chocolate egg."  Tay commented that it tasted "exactly like normal chocolate," but she was very excited that it had a little prize inside.  She got a miniature My Little Pony figurine and Ri got Star Wars stickers.  I got myself a hazelnut chocolate bar with whole hazelnuts embedded in it...delicious.

Here was our snag from the first and second trip to the closest grocery store to our house:

I haven't tried the tortellini yet, but it looks delicious.  We may have that tomorrow.  The little yogurt-looking cups are actually rice pudding...Milch Reis (milk rice).  They have such a variety of rice puddings here...the first two I picked up to try were cinnamon sugar and chocolate, the next two I chose were mixed berry...thus far, the best has been the chocolate, the berry and cinnamon were a little strange.  They are made like little "fruit on the bottom" yogurts, so you can avoid the added flavor altogether if you want.  I'm going to look for a plain one next time because I really do like the taste of the regular Milch Reis without the additional flavor.  (Still doesn't beat the Kozy Shack brand rice pudding, though...)  

Another neat find was the little basket of garlic cloves I bought, which I bought because I thought they were miniature onions, but when I cut into them to cook with them, they turned out to be little bitty individual garlic cloves!  Not much bigger than the diameter of a quarter!  And beautifully shaped...

Enough about groceries and on to the kids...

The kids are growing up and enjoying having a house to live in and fresh air to breathe here in Germany (minus the smokers...man, there are so many smokers!).  They are very cuddly with each other, most of the time, and love morning cuddles with their littlest sister:

The older two are especially loving the time they can spend outdoors in our backyard.  The trampoline gets quite a bit of use these days, and the weather has really been beautiful and cool these past few days, so perfect for them to get silly outside:

As for the littlest one, she is really getting big and learning new things every day.  She still isn't sitting up so well by herself yet, and doesn't care to sit in the tripod position for too long, although she is quite capable of sitting there.  She has most recently learned that she can grab her toes and bring them to her mouth, so she frequently lifts both her legs up and brings them down to make a "thud" on the bed...it is part of her "settling" routine, so she'll do that for a bit and suddenly she'll be asleep.  Strange, but cute.  We did have a well-baby visit last week, and she goes back for another immunization shot tomorrow, but I don't know what her height and weight are right now...so I will post that at another time.  In the meantime, here are some photos of the wee one...I've been playing a little dress up, too.  ;)

And last, but not least, we have been going to this little ice cream shop since we moved here and I kept meaning to take a photo of the shop, but kept forgetting...so here it is.  The chocolate ice cream there is absolutely the best (I do believe it's actually gelato).  It seems the popular ice cream choice is a "spaghetti" ice cream, where the ice cream is made to look like spaghetti?  I'm not sure, and I haven't worked up the courage to order it yet, but one day...one day.  It really is the best ice cream shop in town, although I can't really be a true judge because I haven't tried the other places, but hey, it came highly recommended and it has been fantastic, so I can't complain.

Well, that's about it for me for tonight.  Hope everyone is well and planning to visit us... ;)

On a final note, as we were leaving the restaurant tonight, the lady who waited on us said, "Tschuss" which is "bye" in German and Shinah turned around and said, "CHEESE!"  hehehe...I guess that's what it sounded like to her.

Gute nacht!  (Good night!)

Hot day, cool lake - Waldbad Lake

Today was a full day for us.  We worked on the house a bit in the morning, and then we went to visit "the big PX" in Grafenwohr and Vilseck. Had to go pick up a few things like shelving and gardening tools...and just wanted to have a look around.  Checked on the status of our furniture order, too...such a long wait.

On the drive, we saw a cool castle on top of a hill:

  

After that long drive, the girls got a nap in the car and the temperature outside got super hot...so we decided to hit the lake by our town: Waldbad lake.

The water here is surprisingly clean and the girls love playing there.  It has a very shallow kids play area complete with slide and climbing structure, and it has a larger area with slide, diving board and floating dock.  It also has a decent snack shack and showers and covered areas for shade.  Most folks around here seem to bring their own little half tents and set them up long the banks.  We picked up an umbrella tent at the PX today!

Only thing we noticed that kinda creeped me out was that there were some leeches in the water...ugh.  Not many, but enough to make me check the kids thoroughly after they got out to make sure there was nothing "leeched" on...blech!

All in all, the girls loved the lake, and had a great time:

A great place to cool off on a hot summer day!

Tschüss!  (Bye!)

Photos from Rothenburg

Rothenburg.  We are almost there!

Here we are!

The sun and shadows make it hard to see faces!

The streets are beautiful...even along the palace wall.

Baby woke up to enjoy the sights.

Look at this lovely house!

Lovely church...can you find Jeff? 

Many of the buildings have pretty flowers and statues.  (Pardon my photobombing face, but I know this photo is much more interesting with my face in it than not...admit it).

Of course we visited the HUGE Christmas shop...beautiful inside...made me want to buy everything there!

So much to look at in there...just the ornaments alone would have taken me hours to browse if I had the time.

Then, Baby got hungry so I fed her whilst walking the beautiful streets.  I love this carrier (Ergo) for that reason.

A quick look inside a Franciscan church. 

The palace gardens were very lovely to stroll through...lots of shade and photo opportunities...

Beautiful views...

After a quick birthday lunch, we headed home.  

Happy Birthday, Jeff!

Rothenburg

Today is Jeff's birthday, so we are off on an adventure to Rothenburg here in Bavaria.  It is considered the best preserved 13th century medieval town with a castle, which will hopefully excite the girls.

I'm loving the beautiful scenery on our drive...

The weather is also just perfect.  Perfect.

Happy birthday, Jeff!

A return to blogging...

Goodness, it has been a very long time since I have blogged...

So much has happened since. 

Let's do a quick catch-up post and see if I can get back into the swing of writing...I can't really catch up on everything, so I'll just hit the major highlights:

Shinhae Reagan Ryals was born in March 2013...our third beautiful baby girl!  :)  She weighed in at 7 lbs 13 oz.  We are thrilled that she joined our family!

Here she is at 13 days old, and photos were taken by the lovely +Victoria Burgamy.

Another major life change for me was that I left my job.  It was causing me quite a bit of stress right at the end before I had Shinhae, but I did love the job...I was sad to leave.  Although frustrating, it gave me quite a bit of job satisfaction...the little successes and the folks I worked closely with made it worthwhile. 

The third major life change was our move from Korea to Germany!  Who knew we would pick up our whole family and move to another foreign country after nine long years of being in Korea?  We had known it was always a possibility, but didn't know we would actually get the chance to go so suddenly.  Very exciting...and intimidating...

Not knowing the language or the culture, moving from a huge city to a tiny ~8,000 population town, working mom to stay-at-home mom, two kids to three kids...YIKES.  It was all overwhelming...exciting and highly anxiety-inducing.  I am losing my hair in clumps.  Could I do this without having a breakdown? 

Well, we have now been in Germany for two weeks.  I think I'm going to make it.  Our house is still not quite unpacked yet...but we are slowly getting there.  We are still waiting for some furniture to arrive and I am still getting accustomed to living in a HOUSE instead of an apartment...cleaning is a little intimidating.  BUT...it is SO incredibly wonderful to have a back yard and a garage and a quiet neighborhood where I can take the girls walking at any time of day...oh, and the refreshingly clean air...and the sparkling moon and stars...

It's not all fun and games (YET), but I think with a little help and some time, we will get this house to where I want it and I will be the happiest woman alive living in a beautifully rural German town. 

Both girls start school (German Kindergarten) in September, so I will get some time alone with the baby (hooray!) and will get to settle into some sort of routine.  The hours are strange, but I think I will like it...12:30 to 5:30 Monday through Friday.  Strange, but I'll take it!  No rushing out the door in the morning...only a snack to pack for them for mid-afternoon.  They get home in time for dinner, a little play, bath and bedtime!  And I get to keep them during the morning, which is when they are the sweetest and happiest anyway...hopefully it works out that way.  Another bonus is that it is less than a mile from our house, so we can walk to school and back.  Looking forward to getting started.

Pretty much everything in town is walking distance...but driving around is really easy, too.  Plenty of parking, not too hard to get around.  The town is small, but has pretty much everything one could need.  We've selected the pediatrician/family doctor and she has (thus far) been great.  The language barrier will make it a little tricky, but it seems manageable.  She speaks some English as does a couple of the nurses there.  One oddity of living in a small town is that for immunization shots, you have to get a prescription from the doc, take it to the pharmacy, then pick it up and keep it in your fridge until it's your kid's appointment day and take it with you for them to administer the shot.  They have an excellent ice cream shop (of course, this was an important excursion) and German restaurant.  They even have a Chinese restaurant (which I haven't tried yet, but am planning on checking it out soon).  Much more exploring needs to be done, but all in all, I'm getting comfortable with the town.  Forgot to mention that I also enjoy the weekly farmer's market (yes, there is only one farmer).  That is our every Wednesday excursion with the girls.

Ack, one of the girls are up and need me to come lie with them.  I guess photos will have to follow later...

To a new beginning!

Half way there...update.

And I thought I'd be better this time around keeping up with the blog, but I guess it's true what they say about pregnancies and keeping track as you have more.  I just haven't kept up, although I am enjoying this pregnancy better now that I am over the nausea and have begun an exercise program.

So, let's look back at the first half of this pregnancy...

The first trimester was probably by far my worst out of the three in terms of nausea and exhaustion.  I think I was probably much more grumpy this time around, too...mainly because of the nausea and exhaustion.  Work was also much more stressful than my first two pregnancies, I think, and the hours were longer, although during my first trimester while I was active duty, I worked much longer days...

Anyhow, the first trimester passed without incident, thankfully, and although I spent more time in the bathroom than I would have liked, I am just thankful it passed.  Things of note, however, is that during the first couple weeks after discovering I was pregnant, all I wanted to eat was steak.  Not just red meat, but straight steak with steak sauce.  Marinated meat made me more nauseous, so I ate lots of just regular beef seared during the first week or two after discovering I was pregnant. Perhaps I was a little iron deficient.  Much like the two previous pregnancies, however, I never really had any cravings other than the red meat, and I was more ambivalent about what I wanted to eat than ever before.  I did eat constantly, though, whether or not I could keep eating whatever I chose was another story, but I had to keep munching on something.  I pretty much stayed out of the kitchen the first trimester due to the nausea, and only cooked when I had to for the kids. 

Jeff has been so much help with the girls this whole time.  Letting me nap for hours on the weekend, putting the girls down when I pass out after getting home from work, cooking, doing laundry, dealing with my hormonal outbursts and insecurities...

Speaking of hormonal outbursts...this job I have now requires a lot of patience and friendliness on my part because of the international relationships that I need to maintain and the senior leaders I come in contact with regularly at meetings.  Well, with the surging of hormones and my constant discomfort with the nausea in my first trimester, I noticed that I get very irritated and frustrated during my meetings...and apparently in my writing as well.  As I draft up letters to be sent from one office to another, occasionally I get a little more emotionally invested in the work and tidbits of "rosa rage" kicks in and my boss comes chuckling holding the letter and asks if I'm doing okay.  I seem to have become much more aggressive and directive at the office, which actually has made for much more efficient meetings, although I'm not sure everyone leaves as "happy" or as "appeased" as most of my meetings used to go...at least it cuts out a lot of the political back-rubbing and explaining and re-explaining (and re-explaining and re-explaining) why things have to be done a certain way or why the answer is "still" no.  I am enjoying the efficiency, personally...now that my hormones have settled down a bit and I am a bit more stable (at least at work), I am trying to maintain my "more aggressive persona" and it seems to be working, for the most part.  I am keeping the "rosa rage" out of the papers, though...

Another first trimester symptom (that contributed to the excessive nausea this time around, I'm certain) was my bloodhound nose.  I smelled anything and everything, and boy, was it not a pleasant experience when working in an office full of men (sorry, men).  I had to go to one meeting with the big boss and it was hot in the room already and the entire room smelled like old corn chips...Fritos...I lasted about the first 10 minutes before I had to excuse myself and step out for fresh air before coming back in so I wouldn't hurl on the table.  After that meeting, I started carrying around a plastic bag...just in case. Luckily, I never had to use the bags.  I did huff a lot of Altoid mints, though...the strong peppermint smell actually helped quell the nausea much better than actually sucking on them.  (They actually tasted awful to me...like sucking on gasoline drops or something...bizarre).

Although the nausea lingered this pregnancy longer than I wanted it to (around 16 weeks), now that it has passed, my energy has picked up and as I mentioned, my moods seem to have evened out for the most part.  I actually don't pass out right when I get home from work and I have made dinner a few nights. 

As I transitioned into the second trimester, I started having a lot of insecurities about my ballooning body, breakouts on my face, general personality...etc...so after much discussion with Jeff, I decided to do the on-ramp for Crossfit at our local gym by our house and do it throughout this pregnancy.  I had been running about six miles a week through the first trimester (about 3 miles twice a week), but it just wasn't helping me in my moods as much as working out with others could...and as good as swimming felt once I was in the pool, getting myself in the pool took so much motivation, I'd frequently just skip it, even if I had all the stuff with me to swim at lunch!  So, I on-ramped and finally got certified on 31 October!  I am reading up on the safety of Crossfit-ing as a pregnant woman through the crossfitmom website (http://crossfitmom.com) and am scaling and focusing on technique as much as possible now.  It's giving me tons of energy that I didn't have before (although I'm sure it also has to do with the fact that I'm well into my second trimester now), and my mood is so much better every day.  My body and belly continues to balloon, as I expect, but I feel fitter and healthier for this pregnancy than my two previous ones, so the outlook is good that I won't make my doc fall out of her chair from my weight gain...I hope. ;)

OK, so I think I've covered most everything that has been happening to ME this pregnancy, but let me close with a note about my little one growing within...

As of our 17-week ultrasound check-up, the baby is going to be our princess number 3!  I got to feel her fluttering inside for the first time in mid-October while I was in a meeting, although I failed to write down the date.  And, this morning, I felt her hiccuping in my belly for the first time! :)  I'm not sure why hiccups seem to be such a significant milestone in my pregnancies, but I seem to take note of it because it's such a funny sensation for me...it makes me smile. :)

In more medical aspects, all the tests have come back clean and she's growing on par with her estimated due date of 16 March, so I'm hoping I have a late late February or early March baby.  Here's to hoping! 

Next doc appointment is on 12 November, and that one is the full ultrasound with all measurements and such, so I'll see you then, Little One.  In the meantime, keep kicking and fluttering in there!

And we begin the journey again...:)

So...

Here I am again at the beginning of a familiar road that leads me for nine months.

Destination: Baby #3.

I honestly couldn't be more joyful! (Well, maybe if I allowed myself to tell people about it and didn't keep it a secret!)

Here's how the discovery went...the long version:

On the drive home from the airport after a grueling flight back from the US, I was feeling quite nauseous and I let Jeff know. His initial response was: "You'd better not be pregnant!" The thought hadn't even crossed my mind...I just assumed it was the long plane ride, lack of sleep, and just the muggy air...but we both laughed it off and didn't think of it again. This was Sunday, 8 July 2012.

The ever-so-slightly nauseous feeling still lingered through Monday, but I assumed it was due to lack of sleep. I did think it was a bit unusual that I still hadn't started my cycle even after I had stopped nursing for about three months already. I scheduled an appointment with Dr. Sung on Tuesday just to get checked out down there to make sure all was well. I figured I could also ask for about six months of birth control to ensure we were fully moved into Germany before having a baby. We had decided we definitely want another child in our life...we just wasn't sure when yet. We figured since we are definitely moving to Germany next summer, it would probably be a good idea to delay getting pregnant until after we were settled there.

God clearly had other plans for us. :)

Tuesday rolled around and at lunch time, I went in for my appointment. The nurse called my name for the initial assessment and she asked me what I was here for. I explained that we were leaving Korea in the next 10 months and wanted to discuss some birth control options to reduce the risk of disrupting the move timeline. She asked if there was any possibility that I was currently pregnant since I still haven't had a period since I stopped nursing. I told her, not likely. She recommended we do a pregnancy test just to rule it out before talking about the next step. I went and peed in a cup, she took it and went back into their lab. I waited in the waiting area not thinking anything of it. She called me up and casually showed me the pregnancy test result and at first, I just glanced with the assumption that it came back negative because she didn't say anything particular; she just said, "here's the result" with no surprise or excitement (considering our conversation before the pee-test, you'd think she would have given some indication...maybe she was afraid of my possible reaction?). I looked again and there was the faint pink line. As I stood there staring at the test trying to decide whether or not it meant positive or negative, the nurse finally spoke up and said, "Looks like you're pregnant!" The biggest grin spread across my face unwittingly and I couldn't stop smiling as I stood there speechless.

The nurse told me they would confirm the pregnancy with a sonogram shortly, so I waited a bit longer and debated internally how I should let Jeff know the news. The tech called me in and lo and behold, there was the little speck, confirming the just barely 4-week mark of my pregnancy! Who knew?

At this point, I was led back into the waiting area to wait for the actual Doctor consult. That's when I just sent a text to Jeff with this: "Um...prepare to move to Germany earlier than planned if you really want a German-born baby..." His response, "What? You suck!"  haha...

Well, long story short, the doc said, "Here we go again!" and told me I needed to start taking prenatal vitamins. I'm surprised she didn't mention I needed to exercise considering her opinion of my pregnancy last time...

Jeff and I had a fairly lengthy discussion about the timeline, but ultimately decided it probably doesn't need to be affected since the expected due date is 16 March 2013 and we can plan on leaving country at the end of April or beginning of May. The date seems SO SOON. I can't believe how quickly things are happening now...

Now the question is, how to break the news to the rest of the world. :)

Looking forward to seeing you again, Little Speck. See you on the July 24th. :) I love you already!