My girly girl

Sydney is definetly a girly girl. She loves the mirror - when she was little and would cry, if she could see herself in the mirror, the crying would stop. She loves shoes like every other girl, but at 21 months old she dreams about shoes, she said shoes the other night in her sleep. Everyday when she gets dressed, she has to go and check out her outfit in the mirror to approve. She love to shower, but her favorite part is putting lotion on after a shower. Lipgloss is also a new found favorite. She has a purse that she carries around with her toy key, wallet, and cell phone. She is also loving hats. Everytime we go outside - she always reminds us that she needs her hat.

T-shirt dress

Here is Syd's newest dress. I was bored one day and went through my box of material and found an old t-shirt and loved the stripes. My old t-shirt looks a thousand times better on Syd - the dress was really easy to sew and with a bit of ribbon it looks really cute.

Wall Tattoos

I love wall tattoos. I have loved these since I first saw them - my problem is that we have a small apartment and I've had problems finding the perfect one. While at the inlaws last week I finally found one that works for us. It was a task and a half putting it up with all the small pieces. But I'm happy with how it turned out.

Sydney's Summer Adventures

The last weekend in August we had a Women's Weekend with 20 women from David's family. We spent the weekend in the Harz region of Germany. We rented what once was a farm house - so there was plenty of room and a nice fenced in area for the kids to play in.


The week following the Womens weekend Syd and I spent it at David's parents. We had a couple days of super summer weather - so Syd lived in her little pool in Oma and Opa's garden.


Sydney loves to go to car rides - one of her favourite things to say is 'auto fahren', which means drive car in English. She would always run to the driver's seat and try to get in before anzone else. So on our way back to Stuttgart we took a couple pictures of Syd driving.

David's job

David finally has a full time job. As of the 17th of this month he's a Research Assisstant at the University of Stuttgart. He's working the department of Hydraulic Engineering.
Here's the link to his profile in the University.

Medicine Soothers

Sydney recently had tonisillitis which meant medicine. We tried everything possible to get her to take her medicine and swallow more then she spit out. What ended up working best was a medicine soother we bought when she was a couple months old to give her colic medicine. This made the 5 days of medicine somewhat managable. Sorry that the picture is fuzzy - but you get the idea of what it looks like.

Sydney & Destiny

Sydney's little friend Destiny - often called "Desty" is going back to America. Sydney is not happy over this news. Sydney and Destiny have been getting together to play since January of this year. So before Destiny and her mom headed we spent a day at the zoo with the girls. They loved it, they had tons of fun chasing each other and running ahead of everyone else. It was a very sad good-bye when the day was over. Hopefully we can keep in contact over skype. Here are some pictures from their many adventures together.

Syd's Shoes

So Syd needed some new slippers and we were having a hard time getting some in her size, so I decided I would try to make her a pair. They turned out to be pretty easy and they don't look too bad. Plus the best thing is Syd loves them, she wasn't happy when I took them off to take the picture.

The word of the week

Syd's newest word is Shower, she gets really excited
when we say the word, just take a look. So needless
to say she showers almost daily here.

Syd's Dress

Here is our attempt at a picture of Syd in her dress that I made, she wasn't very cooperative when it came to having a picture taken. But you get the idea of what the dress looks like.

Weekend Sewing

Here is a picture of my finished weekend project. I went through some of the matieral that was bought and never started. So I decided to make a skirt for myself friday when Syd took a nap. Then Saturday I decided to make Syd a matching dress and the bottoms to go with it. I am quite impressed with myself seeing as everything was made without patterns.

Sydeny's 18 months old!

Here she is a couple days old, my sleeping angel.


6 months old and drooling like crazy, love those big beautiful eyes.


At 1 everything was an adventure to climb upon or to pull down or to take apart.


18 months old today, my camera loving, litle girl, whose not so little anymore.

I Want Attention

I love this shirt - it's describes Syd's attitude perfectly.


She loves the camera can you tell?


Here's Sydeny's cousin Audrey - she had to have the shirt as well.

Sydney's Tricycle a.k.a. Auto

Sydney was so excited when the trike came yesterday that she couldn't even wait for it to be opened. She calls it "auto", this morning she even woke up saying "Papa auto, papa auto"


Here she is helping sort the pieces, very concentrated, it's hard work.


What is this, can I ride it yet?


Had to test it out as soon as it was together. I acutally had been trying to keep her off it for the last 10 minutes of putting it together.


Here she it outside - she loves it. Her legs are too short to peddle the right way, but it doesn't stop her from screaming out with glee the whole way down the sidewalk.
I love where her feet are in the last picture.

My Lounger

Sydney is a girl who has a hard time to sit still, she actually doesn't sit so much as she lounges. These pictures are from her morning snack yesterday, not really sitting, lounging with the feet up.

Passed right out

This was too cute to not take a picture of. She was so tired yesterday - can't imagine that this is comfrotable.

Sydney and her Toothbrush

Here is Syd at 6 months with her toohbrush. She was getting her first tooth and wanted to rub her gums constantly.


Syd is now 16 months old and getting teeth number 13 and 14 - and they hurt.


She doesn't like when we brush her teeth - she has to do it herself becuase she thinks she's a big girl.


Syd wanted to show her Uncle, who's a dentist how good she can brush her teeth. But when you brush your teeth you need to look in the mirror to see what your doing. Not even the camera could distract her from brushing her teeth.

My new bag

I have been trying to find the perfect bag to put both my usual purse stuff plus Sydney's diaperbag necesscities in. The problem is they are either all way too big or simply I didn't like the material. So being the overly ambitious person I tend to be - I thought I'll just make one myself. First problem - what should it look like - I quickly found the wonderful world of Amy Butler Patterns. Second Problem - Material - that was also quickly solved by a trip the Netherlands Fabric Market. I got great deals on the material - 5€/m for the print and 2€/m for the solid. There were several other problems that came up - seeing as I decided to make the pattern myself, and then installing a magnetic snap. But I am thrilled with the end result.

Leftover Material

So - I have been keeping old pairs of jeans thinking I could make something with the denim. Sydney now has a jean skirt and teddybear. The bear is a favorite - I had to take it from her bed to get a picture of it.

Too Funny

So today we got a package - and Sydney couldn't wait to see what was inside of the cardboard box. She helped to open the box and was so excited to see a toy inside that as soon as she saw it she said "Lecker!" For all of those people out there who don't understand German - lecker is the equivilant of Yummy. I thought it hilarious that the toy was yummy.

Head and Shoulders . . .

Sydney loves Baby Einstein - her favorite one at the moment is Baby DaVinci. She gets super excited everytime the music starts. The video has the song Head and Shoulders Knees and Toes - she tries so hard to copy the actions. It's so cute - see for yourself.


Sorry, we tried to rotate the video but it didn't work. So just tilt your head or the screen.

Diplom Thesis

Today I finally handed in my thesis. So if nothing goes wrong I will be a real engineer soon. The topic of my thesis is "Hydrologic Precipitation Runoff Simulation in Arid Regions using Remote Sensing Data on the Example of a Catchment in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia".

Reliving my childhood

Sharon, Lois & Bram. If these names don't mean anything to you - it's probably because you didn't grow up in Canada watching the Elephant Show. It was one of my favorite shows as a little girl. The songs I remember still to this day. I loved them so much - that I had to order Sydney her own CD of Sharon, Lois and Bram.

Newsletter 2008

Our newsletter for 2008 is finally done. Also all the other past editions are here for your reading pleasure. Enjoy.

English Newsletters:
2008
2007
2006
2005

Deutsche Newsletter:
2008
2007
2006
2005