What we've been up to over the past week...

Random happenings this week seen through pictures:

I tried another new soup recipe last week, Southwestern Chicken Soup, that turned out really well. I added zucchini to the recipe, as I think that BK and I need to eat more veggies. Cheese toast, not so healthy, but good for dipping.

I had my biggest day ever on Fitbit, with 27,530 steps last Tuesday. If I recall correctly, I was pretty tired at the end of the day. Funny thing is, I can't remember doing anything out of the ordinary to reach this. I obviously just walked more than normal.

For some reason the urge to make scones hit me on Wednesday, so I made these Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Scones. I took half of them to BK's team on my way to visit one of Baby K's potential schools and have eaten the other half for breakfast and snacks throughout the week. They were not BK's favorite, but I liked them.

I mentioned in a previous post that I have started practicing walking the dogs with the stroller. One of our neighbors saw me outside and assumed that we had already had Baby K. BK and I came home one night to flowers and a card at our door. I texted the neighbors to tell them thank you for thinking of us, only to find out they thought Baby K had already made her arrival. I assured them we would let them know when it happened, and that I was just practicing for when she did get here.

The weather has been really nice, and surprisingly mild for February here. I've tried to be outside when I can and have the doors and windows open in our apartment as much as possible. Last Friday it rained a little bit, but then this rainbow appeared afterward on my walk to the grocery store. Something you don't see all the time.

Saturday morning BK and I got up at a decent time and took the boys for a walk that was nearly an hour and a half. We covered lots of ground in Klein Basel (our side of the river), including this market in a church square and some people watching along the river. When the sun comes out the Swiss come out, so there were lots of people out and about with us.

Sunday brought us to our last day of Planning for Parenthood class (more on that later). Sunday night I suggested we get away from the typical food here and look for a new Mexican restaurant. Now, don't get me wrong, it will never be Tex-Mex but we did find a pretty good place that we liked better than any other we've tried here. BK even said their margaritas were good!

Monday we had great weather, sunny and around 60 degrees! I jumped on the opportunity and took the boys to Lange Erlan, a park where they can be off the leash and run around a bit.

The boys did great off the leash and enjoyed an hour of fetching a squeaky ball up and down the river. Tobs even took the chance to get in and out of the river a number of times. It's the simple things, right?

Baby K goes to school!

Obviously it's not quite time yet, but I spent part of last week touring nursery schools around Basel. BK and I have talked quite a bit about the fact that we want her to go to some sort of nursery school pretty early on. We're big believers in the benefits of socialization for her, but outside of that, BK mentioned early on that he assumed I would want some adult time during the week as well. I'm glad we were on the same page on that one! She'll only go two days a week, but I still think it will be really good for her (and me).

Last week I visited four different nursery schools. They are all relatively close to our apartment, with the furthest one away being about a 12-minute bus ride to the main train station- not too bad. The most convenient one is just outside of BK's work campus, pretty much right behind his building. I thought this one would be good so that dad and Baby K could have some time together in the mornings for drop off…unfortunately I wasn't a big fan of the place. My favorite one is right down the street from BK's campus though, so that will still work well for us.

Overall I was very impressed with most of the schools. Day cares/nursery schools in Switzerland all seem to be highly regulated and are overseen by the Department of Education, regardless of what, if any, subsidies they receive. BK's company does run five different day cares for their employees, but both parents have to be working to qualify to use those, so it's not an option for us.

Here are some of the things I learned and observed while visiting:

• The monthly cost is about double what it costs in the US;
• Most are open from 7:30am to 6:30pm;
• All of the nurseries I looked at were German/English bilingual;
• Staff to child ratio is about one to four;
• Typically there is a two week acclimation period for Baby K to get used to the place, meaning that myself or BK would go with her for increasing periods of time, then start to leave her for longer periods of time so that the transition into school is easier on everyone;
• All of the schools provide all diapers, wipes, toiletries, and any food outside of formula and/or breast milk;
• Most have a cook on site to prepare all of the meals with fresh food;
• All schools follow the baby's schedule, so you can dictate how you want their day to go;
• All schools take the children (even babies) outside every day, regardless of weather- all of them said that they believe it helps the children sleep better, play better, pretty much function better if they can spend some unstructured time outside each day.

It was all pretty interesting, and I would be happy with almost any of them. I may look more this week to see if there are any others I should look at. For example, there's one that's just at the end of our block, but I'm not sure if they speak English or not, so I don't know if it's an option. She won't go to school until September or the beginning of October, when she'll be nearly six months old, but we need to apply and let schools know that we want a place relatively soon.

As a side note, I know I've been posting a lot about Baby K, but we're quickly approaching her arrival date and finishing up some of the things that need to be done before she gets here. We're contemplating one last weekend away before she gets here, but we'll have to ask the doctor when we go on Wednesday to see what she thinks.

Happy Monday to all!

Our child is stealing my brain power

It's official. I'm having an "off day" today. It started early this morning (or late last night) when I couldn't sleep because of unbearable indigestion. Ick…and sorry if that's too much information for you. I don't even think I had heartburn that bad in the first trimester when it was a fairly common occurrence for me.

So as BK slept like a rock in our room, I moved to the couch and tried to get comfortable, dozing off and on until it was time to get up. Both Tanner and Toby came in and joined me at some point; they needed to check things out since something different was happening. Tanner nearly fell off the couch a couple of times, as he doesn't seem to realize that there's not quite as much room for him to snuggle up these days.

I'm sure I had a few more mishaps while getting ready and leaving the apartment to walk BK to work. We made it out the door, dropped him off at work, then continued on our walk. This all works up to the point where I cannot find my phone anywhere, as in, I have no clue where I could have possibly put it.

I realized I didn't have it on our walk when I wanted to text my sisters something. Oops…this is not the first time I've forgotten my phone on one of our walks recently. When I realize that I don't have it, my first thought is that BK is going to worry if I'm out somewhere and he can't get a hold of me, wondering if something has happened. In case something did happen, I typically go into how I would borrow someone else's phone and tell them what was happening- all in German. Awesome.

When I get home, I email BK to see if he has accidentally picked it up. He hasn't. He then proceeds to call it numerous times, at which time I realize the ringer is on silent. Great. People in the US tend to continue to text throughout the night, and so that I don't wake up every time a text comes in, it's on vibrate. I typically forget to turn it back on until I realize that I haven't really communicated with anyone yet today, and oops, it's on silent, which may explain that.

I then proceed to attempt to FaceTime myself numerous times, walking around the apartment straining to hear the vibrating phone…which I can't. I look through the kitchen, unmake the bed, look under the bed, check in the laundry (I just feel like you never know at this point), go through various coat pockets, look under blankets and in between couch cushions, all with no luck.

It finally dawns on me to use the Find my iPhone feature. If you ever find yourself in this situation, don't bother searching high and low, just use this feature on your phone. We have about seven apple devices, all of which were immediately located in our apartment. Luckily the app has a feature where it will make your phone make a sound even if it's on silent. Soon after, I was wandering around the apartment, following the sound to find my phone.

Ultimately, I found the phone in my robe pocket…the obvious place for it. Hopefully my day starts to look up from here. I definitely see a nap in my future.

Two dogs, a pregnant person and a stroller

Wow! You may be thinking to yourself, "Sounds like a complete train wreck". Well, this will be my life after Baby K makes her debut and all the parents go home and aren't here to help with stuff around the house, so we kind of need to figure it out sooner than later.

I was a little worried about how it was going to go, considering that I had to download the users manual for our stroller before I could even get out the door. The dogs and I had been practicing in the apartment with the stroller for the past couple of weeks, but had not ventured out yet. Here's the stroller we're working with that will shortly play a big part in our daily activity.

It is a serious stroller, but as it is our primary mode of transportation, we need something like this. After I figured out how to get the bassinet off the base of the stroller and how to collapse the base so that I could carry it downstairs, we were sort of on our way out the door. It was a multiple step process:

1. Fold base and take downstairs, go back upstairs;
2. Carry bassinet into hallway, lead dogs out of apartment, lock door behind us;
3. Get on elevator with bassinet and dogs and go down;
4. Unload off elevator, prop front door open, hook dogs to hand rail;
5. Take base outside to driveway, unfold;
6. Carry bassinet out of apartment entry, load onto base;
7. Unhook dogs, release stroller break, GO!

Here we are in the elevator on the way down. Me, the bassinet and two dogs is pretty much all that will fit in the elevator at one time. Obviously Tanner can't be on top of the bassinet like that, but I think he was partially on there because of what was wrapped up in Baby K's blanket…

One other amusing tidbit that the trainer said to do was to put something in the stroller to add some weight…you know, like there's a kid in there. So I put the small bag of dog food I had in there to add a few kilos of weight. I did wrap it in a blanket as well, so I didn't look any crazier than we already would. Today I replaced the dog food with an eight pound weight instead.

Overall, the walk went really well. Luckily my friend AH was up for the adventure and joined us on the walk. The dogs are not afraid of the stroller and aren't constantly in front of it or getting their leashes tied up in the wheels or anything.

As far as the dogs are concerned, the one thing we need to work on is that the stroller blocks their view of what's on the other side of the sidewalk, so if there's a dog passing, often they get surprised, which leads to barking…exactly what we don't want. We worked on that more with the trainer today and will continue to practice strategies until Baby K arrives.

The other thing I quickly figured out is that I need to learn how to drive the thing too! I'm used to going off curbs, around corners quickly and down lots of steps. Not so much anymore- I can't take this thing down the stairs without jolting Baby K around a lot…oops. The other thing I realized was  need to learn to load the bassinet without slamming it in there- another thing that would wake her up. It's not that the stroller can't handle those things, but I don't need to jolt Baby K awake at every chance I get. I'll keep you updated on our progress.

On a somewhat related note, as of today we're 35 days out from Baby K's due date!

A sunny day in the mountains

Saturday in Zermatt finally brought us some sun and clear skies. We woke up relatively early, only to realize we had a great view of the Matterhorn right out of our hotel room window. The picture below was taken from the terrace outside of our room. Pretty awesome, right? I think it looks a little fake, but that's the real deal!

Matterhorn over Zermatt

We had planned to go up the Matterhorn Express to experience those views, but because of strong winds it was closed. Instead, we went up to Sunnegga, then to Blauherd, then on up to Rothorn. We changed cable cars at each of the stations, and actually went up to Rothorn first, so that we could then work our way back down.

The Swiss and Kanton flags at Rothorn

It was really cold at Rothorn, and we finally felt some of the wind that closed the other lift. I think I was feeling the altitude a little bit more than the previous day, so we headed inside and had some coffee and hot chocolate to warm up a little and pass some time before heading down the mountain for a lunch reservation.

34 weeks at the Matterhorn

When we ventured back outside, BK had me pose for the above picture, then we ran into Lucky the dog and his person. Lucky is a Swiss mountain dog, who has the job of posing for pictures with skiers and visitors all day. We had to take part and have a couple of pictures made. The only bad thing about it was that we about froze to death waiting behind a huge group of teenage girls who all had to have five different poses with the dog. It was a bit painful, especially when the wind picked up even more!

 

After we finished with our picture taking, we headed down to Blauherd, where we found a great bar called Blu Lounge. Since it was sunny and we had come down out of the wind, the patio at this place was a great place to hang out. When we got there there was one lone guy playing guitar and singing, then we he took a break, a larger group played. The larger group was a little different- they were part of Carnival happening in Zermatt, and were dressed in pretty funny costumes. They weren't quite as together as the other guy, but it was amusing none the less. We also had lunch at this place- if you're in Zermatt, make the trip up here.

Band playing at Blu Lounge

After we finished lunch, we headed all the way back down the mountain, into Zermatt for some walking around and a little shopping before catching the train back to Basel. While walking around we ran into some real, live curling happening in the center of Zermatt. As it seems like curling is all BBC shows from the Olympics, I had to get a pic of the real deal.

Curling matches

We headed home that evening so that BK and I could go to our Planning for Parenthood class on Sunday. Zermatt is a great Swiss destination that I would highly recommend visiting if you're over here and have a couple of days to spend exploring. I'm really interested in going back during the summer to see what it's like and experience a different side of the village.

Like I said, BK and I had class on Sunday. I'll fill you in on all the new things we learned about parenthood soon, along with the adventures of this week…be back soon!

Hitting the slopes in Switzerland

Friday in Zermatt meant that it was time to ski! Luckily for us, we had three really different days of weather. Thursday when we arrived it was snowing really hard; Friday it was still snowing a little bit, but made for nice powdery slopes to ski on; and Saturday it stopped snowing and the sun came out. Crazy!

Headed to the ski lift

Like I mentioned before, I didn't ski, but I did get suited up and go up to the top of the mountain with everyone to take pics, explore around a little bit, and be there for when everyone was ready to break for lunch or a snack. I did get quite a few looks of concern as we were headed up, and as I asked for a lift ticket (so that I could go up and down the mountain). Rightly so…no one wants to see me on skis.

How happy does he look to be on the slopes?!?!

Zermatt seems to have a large number of ski runs to choose from, with various lifts to take you up. We took the Gornergrat train up to Gornergrat (there are other stops along the way) for everyone to start skiing. During the winter the train is full of skiers, but I hear it is just as packed in the summer when people are going up for views of the Matterhorn. In theory we should have had nice view, but it was way too cloudy and snowy to see anything.

Skiers off the train and ready to go

AH and CH hired a guide/instructor to help them with skiing, as it is a little different from US skiing. If you don't really know what you're looking for, you're likely to ski right off the run you're on, and possibly right off the side of the mountain. They also don't do a lot of easy slopes in Switzerland. In fact, they don't use the color green as an identifier; it starts with blue, then red, then black, then yellow. Yellow is essentially a double black diamond, and you're on your own...not for me! My understanding is that BK stayed with the group for a few runs, then headed off on his own.

While they were all out enjoying skiing, I went up to the Gornergrat Observatory to see if there were any views from the very top (there weren't), have a snack and finish a blog post. Of course, the winter Olympics were on as well, which are kind of fun to watch at the top of a snowy mountain.

Gornergrat Observatory

A little while later I met everyone at the Riffelburg train stop to have lunch and relax. If you're up on the slopes, the Riffelburg Buffet and Bar is pretty much your only choice for refreshments- it was a good, easy meeting spot.

Riffelburg Buffet and Bar

After lunch, AH and I stayed in put while CH and BK went out for a few more runs. CH came back after a couple, and the three of us headed back down via train. BK really outdid himself and skied for quite a while longer. He ended up skiing all the way down the mountain into Zermatt on various runs. The part that really killed him though was the walk back to our hotel in his ski boots. Age is just a number, right?

Before heading down the mountain

When we got back down, we enjoyed some desserts and drinks by the fireplace in the hotel lobby, then the guys went to rest a bit. I didn't feel like I had gotten very much exercise during the day, so AH and I headed out for a walk around Zermatt. It had cleared up some and wasn't snowing, so we stopped and checked out the Mountaineers' Cemetery, which is where people who have lost their lives to the Matterhorn are buried.

Markers in the cemetery

And what day was last Friday? Valentine's Day, of course, but they don't really celebrate it here in Switzerland. The four of us went out for a nice dinner at Restaurant Julen, a somewhat traditional Swiss restaurant located in the middle of Zermatt. Everyone really enjoyed their meal; I would definitely suggest you go if you get a chance. They are known for their lamb; I had lamb ravioli and really liked it!

Dinner at Restaurant Julen

After a day full of activity and a dinner of heavy Swiss food, we were all pooped and ready to head back to the hotel after dinner. Saturday our trip came to an end, but brought beautiful weather and lots of great views. More to come on that!

A winter wonderland in Zermatt

Sometimes I can't believe that BK and I have lived in Switzerland for nearly a year and have yet to go skiing. We made sure to bring all of our ski gear when we moved at the end of March last year, only to realize that ski season was pretty much over when we got here.

Hotel transportation from train station

This was our first ski weekend in Switzerland, and we definitely picked the top of the line place to come: Zermatt. If I'm completely honest, this is probably our last ski weekend of the year too, though. Zermatt is quite the luxury ski resort town. I'm sure it helps that we stayed in a really nice hotel, Grand Hotel Zermatterhof, but we figured as this is our last pre-baby getaway and we haven't done any European travel since November, why not splurge? The hotel was really nice, is centrally located and is around 10 minutes from the train station.

Hotel Zermatterhof

Thursday afternoon when we arrived it was snowing really hard, so we met our friends, bundled up (BK and I needed to add more layers) and went to explore the town. Everything was covered in fresh snow, which was beautiful. It makes it really seem like a winter wonderland and something you see in a book…it's probably what you picture when you think of Switzerland.

Streets of Zermatt

As we were walking along, we stumbled upon a cozy little bar/restaurant that BK found online, The SnowBoat, and took a break from the winter weather to enjoy some cocktails and hot chocolate. The staff was really friendly and we enjoyed watching the Olympics with other visitors there. We didn't have a meal there, but the menu looks really good and offers some unique dishes. Based on our experience, I would think it's at least worth a try for dinner.

BK and CH warming up in the Yacht Club

After we had warmed up some, we ventured back out to explore a little bit more. One thing that we found a little annoying about the streets of Zermatt were the electric car taxis. Zermatt claims to be "car free," but in reality they are not. They are really just gas engine vehicle free. It's nice, as you never have any exhaust smell, but the taxis come very close to running any pedestrian who is in their way right over. It's irritating when you're working to stay upright on slippery streets and you have to quickly get out of the way for these little golf cart cars.

We wanted something easy for dinner, so earlier in the day AH and I looked around for somewhere while BK was renting skis for the next day. We found Pizza and Spaghetti Factory, which was close to our hotel and had a good variety of Italian food. We booked there, and after more walking around town, headed in for a nice dinner.

Lots of snow on Thursday night!

That brought our snowy night to a relatively early end, as we all knew we wanted to get up at a decent time and head up to the ski slopes. Don't panic…I didn't ski. More to come on skiing and our days in the mountains above Zermatt!

How it feels to learn German

BK and I are headed to Zermatt today with some friends, but first I went to German class this morning. I figured since I only have it two times a week, we could wait and take the noon train so that I wouldn't miss part of the class this week.

In class today we all had a good laugh about what it's like to speak German, as compared to other languages. One of my fellow students shared the video below with us, which we of course, thought was hilarious. We have one person who does not speak any English, but she does speak French, so she got the gist.

You probably won't find this nearly as funny if you're not learning German or around German that much. Here's the link in case the video doesn't show up for some reason (it shows up in my draft, but not in my preview).

The guy in the video is totally over exaggerating, but you get the point.

We're on the train to Zermatt for our last pre-baby getaway! We'll head back Saturday night so that we can make our Planning for Parenthood classes. I'll make sure to fill you in on all happenings from our full weekend!

*Note: I actually finished and posted this blog at the top of one of the mountains in Zermatt. BK and our friends are skiing; I went ahead and rode up with them so that I could take pictures and explore around some up here. I'll head down to meet them for lunch in just a bit. More to come later!

How do I use this phone?

As I mentioned in a recent post, I'm working on planning travel for us for this year. At times this requires me to actually call to a different country to make a reservation for various activities. Somehow every time I have to call I am stumped on how the hell to make a phone call to another country from Switzerland. Really?

I call my parents and sisters on a regular basis, so why is it that I can call the US and not anywhere else in the world? I partially blame it on the fact that they are programmed into my cell phone, so outside of clicking on their name, I don't have to do much to call.

Also, for those of you who don't know, the US country code is +1. So you dial 001 then continue on with the number. European countries on the other hand have a two digit country code (for example, France is +33). So when you call you're supposed to dial 00, then the country code, then continue on with the number. Every time I try to make a phone call I'm convinced I need to drop one of the zeros or something; it's like the two digit country code trips me up every time.

Long story short, pretty much every time I have to make a phone call to somewhere other than the US or Switzerland I end up Googling how to call [insert country here] from Switzerland, and then am provided with directions.

Nothing like a simple task to put you right back in check about how smart you think you are. Maybe now that I've written about it I'll remember.

Trying not to have SO much to say...

As I mentioned the other day, I've been looking at other expat blogs lately and noticed that I have a tendency to have A LOT to say anytime I post. I'm trying to get better about not making my posts SO longwinded. In an effort to actually make some progress on this, I thought I would just post some pics from the last week or so. 

Basel sunset from our balcony

BK's handiwork in Baby K's room

Baking adventures: Red Velvet Cupcakes

33 weeks last Thursday

A look down the river, walking BK to work

Good morning from Abbs

I'm no expert photographer, but you get the idea. I may need to take more random pics during the week...

Let the travel planning begin!

Have baby will travel?

A throwback to traveling with friends (and baby) in Europe in 2010

When you read our blog, specifically about all the places we've travelled to, you may think to yourself, "How fun is that? LK and BK just jet around Europe on a whim, as they please." I hate to disappoint, but as fun as that sounds, it's not exactly how it works with BK and me. Spontaneity is not really our strong point. For those of you who know me well, I like a plan; I want to know what's going to happen, when it's going to happen and how it's going to happen.

All that said, we've started planning travel for this year. We do this so that BK can go ahead and take time off of work, we can look at where else we want to go during the year and make sure that happens, and so that we don't get locked out of hotels/flights/activities we want to do while traveling. 

So…we've started planning for 2014! The one huge difference this year? We'll be traveling as a party of three for the first time. My dad recently told me that my organized world was about to be in for a big change. I know this is true, but hopefully we'll figure out how to manage. I refuse to miss out on travel while living in Europe just because we've had Baby K.

Here's what we have planned so far:

• Day trips to other regions of Switzerland
• Lake Como/Lugano (Italian part of Switzerland)
• Prague, Czech Republic
• British Open (UK) and Ireland
• Two trips back to the US

And here's the other stuff we want to do:

• Istanbul, Turkey
• French wine country
• Exploring more of Germany
• See some World War II landmarks
• Budapest, Hungary 
• Morocco
• Spain (not sure which part)
• Lisbon and other parts of Portugal

Our first day trip is planned for when Baby K will be around six weeks old. I figured we would start with a day trip by train, then a long weekend by train, then try a long weekend via a short flight; hopefully we'll be good at this by the time we hit that long-haul flight back to the US.

I'll admit, I've started reading and researching blogs that talk about traveling abroad with a baby, although I've been told they are easiest to travel with when they are really young and not yet mobile. I quickly found that I was annoyed by the ones written by your typical American sources, as all they talk about is how hard it is going to be and that you have to take everything you own with you to be successful. 

I've found I really enjoy the ones written by other expats or Europeans who act like it's not that big of a deal, and no, they are not going to give up travel either. I'm hoping because so much of our day here will be spent being transported around to various places, similar to how we'll move around on vacation, that it won't be that big of a shock to her system. I honestly think going to the US will be the biggest change and challenge because it's will be such a change from our usual routine.

BK and I are headed to Zermatt, Switzerland this weekend with some friends for our last trip as a party of two. We'll live it up…as much as you can at 7.5 months pregnant!

Workday five sweet treats: "Red" Velvet Cupcakes

As you all know by now, I typically embark on some sort of baking adventure for BK's team during the first of the month. Workday four is their busiest day of the month- it lasted until 4am for BK this month, which was at least better than January when he didn't get come home between the two work days.

So for February I decided to make Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing in honor of Valentine's Day. Even though Valentine's Day is not until next week, I thought I would recognize the holiday through baking this month. BK and I will be traveling next week, so I figured, why not?

The only problem I ran into? Apparently the red food coloring we have here is not quite a potent as the stuff in the US. BK phrased it well, noting that instead of red velvet, we had brown velvet cupcakes. Didn't exactly work out the way I thought. Here's how it went...

Mix the wet ingredients together and the dry ingredients together

I couldn't really tell what color the cupcakes were going to turn out. The batter did seem a little bit reddish, but I couldn't be sure about how red it would be. Maybe the cocoa powder is darker here too?

Everything mixed together

Cupcakes ready to be put into the oven

Cooling cupcakes

The cupcake taste and texture were great! Really tasty and the cupcakes were springy and crumbly on the inside- I was really happy with how they turned out…outside of the color and all.

Brown velvet cupcakes

The best part (of course) was the cream cheese icing! The recipe calls for a ton of powdered sugar. I didn't use quite as much as it called for and just judged the icing based on taste and texture. The icing also worked better after I chilled it in the fridge- I did it overnight, but I'm sure a couple of hours would work as well. They tasted as good as they look!

The finished product

The cupcakes turned out fairly large as well, which is a little different from what I normally take to BK's team. They went over really well with everyone and were all gone shortly into the afternoon.

BK's team was pretty funny when I delivered the cupcakes that afternoon. I always get lots of questions about how I'm feeling and comments about how much I've grown over the past month. The other thing I found quite amusing (and flattering) was that they told me I could have one month off when Baby K comes- April- then they wanted me back in May.

Just briefly, the other baking I did this week was a loaf of Sweet Cinnamon Bread. I have been on a kick of making cinnamon toast for breakfast lately and thought I might make it a little easier on myself in the morning and just make a loaf of cinnamon bread.

Sweet Cinnamon Bread

It turned out well, but was a little more done on the sides and bottom of the loaf than I would have preferred. I did have one small success though- for the first time ever my bread didn't fall in the middle. Typically when I bake something like this, for some reason the middle of the loaf falls and the bread ends up in the shape of a brick. It's always tasted good, just hasn't been the perfect shape. I have no clue what I did differently, but it's been a nice addition to breakfast this week.

Yum!

Happy Birthday to Tobs!

Yes, today I'm going to be that person who blogs about the fact that it's her dog's birthday. From what I hear this type of thing will come to an end after Baby K arrives, so I figured, why not?

Today Toby turns six years old. He is the calm one of the two, with the exception of when he thinks another person or dog is out to get his people or Tanner. He is not a fan of children right now, but he is extremely loyal, so I have no doubt that he will warm up to Baby K and watch out for her with the utmost diligence.

To celebrate his birthday, here are a few pics that I thought showed his personality.

Right after he arrived

Enjoying some snow in Texas

Loves the water

Snuggle buddies

Waiting to pick BK up from work

All Toby wants in life is to be with his people. He doesn't care where we're going or what we're doing, as long as he gets to come with BK and I, he's good. Here's to many more years with our fluffy dog :)