New Years Eve in Atlanta, GA

Maine lobster from You DeKalb Farmer's Market

Fireworks from Target

Christmas Day in Atlanta, 2013

4 Advent, 2013

3 Advent - We got a tree!

Three candles - Christmas is almost here!

My boys got me a Christmas flower!

Our great Fraser fir!

The baby is developing in accordence with God's plan

Hey, what happened? Where did you go?! (This is the voice of you, dear reader.)

Max – our baby – went from being perfectly happy in my, or other family member’s, arms, just kind of tagging along, to wanting to grab everything we grab (typing with him became impossible), then quickly developed a desire to reach further, and move around by ways of commando crawl, exploring everything in his way. Very soon after that, within a couple of weeks, he moved on to a standard baby crawl (so much more effective!), which required the family to deep clean the house (he has a particular taste for eating lint) and baby proof every corner of every room (his first real crawl ever consisted of a very straight and determined trip to an electrical outlet, fingers ready). That took us a few days, at least, and involved, among other measures, a trip to IKEA.

Here we are, and I am trying to adjust to life with a crawling baby – for the fourth time. You’d think I’d have it down by now, wouldn’t you? However, this is our first house in the US, and every baby is slightly different. Max is a happier baby in general than most babies I’ve ever met, but he is definitely also just a normal baby at this stage: as they start being able to move around – remove themselves physically from the mother - at the same time they become more needy, physically displaying separation anxiety.

This is the stage when everything you ever needed to do or wanted to do on any given day have to be done during nap time. I call it the “Do-it-all-at-nap-time” stage. Of course it’s impossible. So some things are left neglected, for a while. I’ve learned that I have time for one – 1 – personal, not necessarily vital to my physical survival, activity, and I have chosen exercise over blogging. Sorry, folks. This doesn’t mean that I don’t want to write, or that I won’t. Just that I will exercise first and then blog. And whaddayaknow? Today I managed both.

*Disclaimer: At least one child, possibly a baby, and probably many household items were harmed during the recording of these accounts.

2 Advent, 2013

Visiting Helen, GA and hiking to Raven Cliff Falls

After our very yummy Thanksgiving dinner we drove up to Helen for a couple of days to visit this very peculiar town and go hiking.

On our way we passed the highway exit to the Mall of Georgia - oh the traffic! The exit was completely blocked and cars were lined up for miles. I can't even imagine what it was like inside the mall! Black Friday certainly earned its name there.

We had a cold but absolutely perfect weekend! Helen, which was changed to look like an Alpine village sometime in the 60's to boost tourism (it worked too - apparently around 1.2 million tourists visit each year), was hosting a Christmas market, and the boys got to wave to Santa Claus who paraded the street. We had a great German meal at the Bodensee restaurant, and then spent the night at Super 8 (I know, fancy us!).

The next day we drove up to the Raven Cliff Falls trail head and spent the day hiking one of the most beautiful hikes we have experienced here in Georgia - five miles of waterfalls, wood and nature's beauty all around.

1 Advent, 2013