I miss baking cookies with my mom! Last yr my mom was with us while we waited for Owen to make his debut. We made cookies with Jackson together. It was so much fun. Almost daily I tell her I wish she could hop a plane and come on over!

I miss Chickfila. I would love to pack my kids up and head over to Chickfila for a good old lunch with a clean play area! Sounds silly, but I miss it!

I miss being able to go to the store and buy some jeans…or things in general    . Everything is Switzerland is ridiculously marked up!!! I mean ridiculously! For example, a starbucks tall hot chocolate is $7.80.

I miss being able to Christmas shop in person. I know we are spoiled, we have a mail system and lots of online shopping but I love getting to pick out gifts in ways other than sitting at a computer.

I miss people speaking my language. I had a really annoying morning and mostly because I don’t speak German! I am spoiled in that most people in Bern speak English, but it’s just not the same.

I miss Tex- Mex food. I wish I could hop over to Lupe Tortilla!

Enough of the things I miss. I am thankful for where we are! Just a little homesick!

In one week our baby will be ONE!!!! No way. This year has flown. I vow to never again move during the first yr of a child’s life. It makes time go even faster.

Owen has blessed our family far more than I could have anticipated. I knew having another child would be wonderful but I really can’t imagine our little family without him.  I have to think hard to remember times before him.  He is a sweet-tempered little guy but has enough fiesty-ness (wonder where he gets that) to stand up to his brother and let his opinions be heard.

Owen is a great little sleeper and loves cuddling. He often dives towards his bed when he is tired. When he wakes up and gets rescued from his bed we tell him to get rid of his pacifier. He energetically yanks his pacifier out and tosses it into his crib with a laugh.

I think I expected Owen to hold out on talking a little longer just because he’s the second child and well, even if he wasn’t, it’s hard to get a word in edge wise. But Owen makes every attempt to outshout Jackson and has a great little repertoire of words these days! So far he says, “Dada, “mama-sometimes mommy”, “JackJack”, “cracu” for cracker, “nana” for all fruits, “milk”,  “bye bye”, “more”, “all done”, and his latest word is “touch” which he learned from Seth when I was out of town and Seth had to keep saying “no touch” with the Christmas tree.

Owen appears to have a very particular palate. He is a good eater but is particular about textures and tastes. He wants to be independent so often resists being spoon fed. Resistance from Owen is often a tight-lipped grin! No amount of coaxing opens those jaws so we move on. When he is done eating he cheerfully tosses piece by piece onto the kitchen floor.

For those of you that worry whether or not we have photographed Owen or taken any videos of him, rest assured we have captured this first yr! Although we have worse than slacked on the blog the documentation continues!  We are hoping to get up a video before his birthday!

Owen is quite the comic. There are some in our family that are banned from telling jokes in any language they may speak (we won’t name any names but he is the only one in the family to speak German, Spanish and English and gets paid for it) but Owen is going to be our naturally funny guy. He has a hysterical laugh and when he and Jackson get going he just can’t stop himself.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from his first yr!

We love you little guy and we can’t wait to celebrate your 1st birthday!

Well, despite the fact that the tree has already started to turn brown and die, the cheer continues. I thought I would put up a couple more pictures of decorations!

We don’t have a mantel in this house so we are trying to warm up the stairway and have a place for the stockings to hang!

this was hard to photograph but these are small wooden snowflakes that my sweet friend Annie O’Leary sent me for Christmas last yr and said they were for our windows in Switzerland. Little did she know we would have walls of windows and they would fit in perfectly!

This is a happy pot of paperwhites that is now residing on my kitchen ledge! My mom surprised us and sent them as an early Christmas gift. For those of you that don’t know, we gave out paperwhite bulbs as our wedding favor when we got married almost 5 yrs ago! We are watching them grow daily!

Seth’s co-workers now hate him because he has been getting the most packages! Gotta love family and Amazon.  We are so spoiled!

This isn’t a great picture but you can get the idea. I used this thrifted old mesh door to display our Christmas cards from the yrs past. We are waiting to add this yrs when it arrives!

sorry, random pictures of the top of our armoire…again trying to find “mantel” spaces . I put the second picture in so you can see the carved “Joy to the World” from my dad. He carved it a few yrs back for us and it has made our home feel like home during the holidays since! We had one in our house from his parents when I was growing up!

And oh yes, the snow! and snow babies. They love it!

enjoying the tree

I used one of our clear glass vases and filled it with old-fashioned hard candies and candy canes..then put some fresh branches in. I used my cake stand and cover and filled it with extra ornaments and ribbons

thrifted ornaments hanging on the chandelier

this yr the new addition to our decorations on the tree are these gingerbread cookies I found. The house is smelling yummy!

Jackson had his friends Amelia and Amanda over to make a gingerbread house

more Christmas decor pictures to come! That was just to get my mom hooked so she will read again soon!