Vienna part 2

Our last day in Vienna was on and off rain which meant a lot of sight seeing was out of the question. E and I did some exploring in the area around our hotel before meeting up with everyone else for lunch. After hanging out at their apartment we all went out for a late dinner with some of Noelle and Brady's other friends.

Elliot and Max earning their keep cleaning the apartment :) 

Elliot and I explored the vineyards near our hotel

Overlooking Vienna

Cheers to Milk and Beer at lunch

E was loving the music at dinner

All the kiddos dancing at dinner

Good bye until next time!

We had such a nice trip and Elliot was a great little travel buddy. I think I see some future mama and Elliot trips!

Vienna

The morning after I ran my half marathon Elliot and I had an early morning flight to Vienna. My good friend Noelle was visiting her parents and so we decided on a short trip to see them all. Noelle and her husband have an almost 2 year who Elliot loved running around with. It was such a nice change for our travels to have a little buddy for E. We got settled into our hotel and quickly got public transport figured out and headed into the city center. We had some lunch, walked around, E took a nap and headed back to our hotel around dinner time. There were quite a few traditional Austrian restaurants right near our hotel which was great.

Playground right outside of our hotel room

Outside the Stephansdom

E loved his worst and fries

On Tuesday we met up with Noelle and her family right away in the morning and let the boys play at her parents house. We headed into the city for lunch and then made our way over to the Vienna zoo. It is the oldest zoo in the world and was a great time. Lots of animals and a great environment. It was pretty cool to see Pandas and a few Giraffe up close. The zoo in located on the Schonbrunn Palace. We only got to see the outside of the palace and it was unreal. What's crazier is that the palace was only used as a summer residence.

My cute travel buddy

Elliot in front of the Schonbrunn Palace

On a train ride in the zoo

Zoo selfie

Running around the palace grounds

My little explorer

I'll have another post coming with the rest of our trip soon!

Surprise!!

Last night I had plans to have dinner with my friend Melissa. I got to the restaurant a little bit before here and got a table when I see her walk saying surprise along with 4 of my other friends! I was so caught of guard and couldn't believe I had no idea! Brent helped coordinate with the ladies as well and he never let on to anything. It meant so much to me that they all took time out of there schedules to celebrate with me. We had a great time and they spoiled me with flowers, chocolates, a personalized coffee mug and a cookie jar!(i have been wanting a cute cookie jar for awhile). I feel so blessed to have met such a great group of ladies over here and know that they will be life long friends!

Amy, Lindsey, Sam, Melissa, Daina and myself. I am blaming how pale I look on the flash from the camera :) 

Such a sweet card

The girl on the coffee mug is meant to look like me

My new Dutch cookie jar(it already has cookies in it!) 

Great way to end a wonderful dinner

Favorties 2-28, just a bit late

I meant to post this last Friday but never get around to it! So here are some favorites from last week!

1. One of my favorites is a dinner I made on Monday night. The homemade mac and cheese was amazing! I have been trying for awhile to get the sauce just right and i think I finally made a perfect one. I had to round it out with a salad so I didn't feel so bad about the quantity of butter it took to make the sauce :)

2. The weather is another favorite(seriously!!) This week everyday(except yesterday) has been sunny and 55. Elliot and I have been going on lots of walks and with it being light out later it means I am getting to run when Brent gets home from work. All these sunny days means Elliot gets to wear his sunglasses again :) 

Loves his shades!

Beautiful park day with a side of cute baby 

3. Yesterday I watched my friend Daina's little girl while she had some dental work done. Thankfully, she and Elliot were both awesome and made watching a 3 month old and an almost 8 month old a breeze. 

Bente napping in the crib, Elliot napping on Mama

They were so great with each other! 

Favorites from the week

Happy Friday! I'm going to try checking in on Fridays with some of my favorite things from the week. Hopefully I can stick to it!

1. Elliot has been saying "mum" all week. I keep telling Brent he is trying to say mom, but he thinks that he was born in Great Britain and not the Netherlands :) Either way it is super cute and every time he does it I smile.

2. Last night I got to have a night out with my friend Melissa.  We went to the same place we went to my first night leaving Elliot after he was born, which meant I got to have some of their awesome sangria again! It was so nice having a couple hours to myself.  Elliot did great for Brent and stayed asleep most of the time I was gone. 

Old picture but same delicious sangria!(this was before I cut my hair! I forgot how long it was!)

3. In Wednesday Elliot and I had a coffee date with my friend Daina and her daughter Bente. 

So much fun having another friend here with a little one! We have plans to have weekly meet ups until she goes back to work!

4. Last Saturday(i know technically not this week) I went to a hot yoga class with one of my friends. I haven't been to a yoga class since I was 7 months pregnant and it felt so awesome to do a class again. They have a class during one of Elliot's naps so it is perfect since one of us would have to be home anyways! I'm hoping to make it a regular thing so stay tuned! (no pictures of this because I promise nobody wants to see how sweaty hot yoga makes me :))

5. On Monday, Elliot and I went for a nice walk with my friend Lindsey and her 2 daughters. Her youngest daughter is 5 months older than Elliot and her oldest will be 3 in a couple weeks. The 3 year old LOVES Elliot and loves "watching" him for me :) 

6. Elliot finally getting over his jet lag. Let me tell you it was a rough few days when we got back from Minnesota. Thankfully we turned a corner this week and little man is back to sleeping all night again! 

Playtime when he was jet lagged ended like this many days

As you can see we had a pretty busy week with lots of get togethers, which has been great! It's nice to have some things to get us out of the house during the chilly months.

And just because this post needed another picture of Elliot! Seriously he looks like such a big boy!

Have a good weekend!

Mindy

Happy New Year!

Happy 2013 everyone!! Brent and I had a great 2012 and are looking forward to an amazing 2013!! 13 has always been my lucky number :) 

We celebrated with friends at our house

Then we headed over to their place to watch some fireworks.  The fireworks were insane! The were everywhere and went on for over 45 minutes

The windmill made a great backdrop for the fireworks- doesn't get any more Dutch than that :)

Not a great fireworks shot but a good one of the windmill

Sparklers after the fireworks- I love how excited Brent was about this!!

Wishing everyone a healthy and happy 2013!!

Catch Up!

Wow it has been awhile!  I have good reason though :)

Brent and I left for Minnesota the day before Thanksgiving.  Brent spent just under 2 weeks in MN and I spent 3 weeks.  We had a great time and spent a lot of time with our two families. 

One of the days I picked my sisters kids of from daycare early and spent the afternoon baking cookies and just having fun.

Love that smile 

So much fun with these two cuties

Peanut butter cookies covered in sprinkles 

A different afternoon I got to hang out with my brother's 3 kids and after spending some time together we HAD to get frozen yogurt :) I think I had just as many toppings as the kids!

Coco and Sammy took full advantage of Brent leaving early and snuggled in bed with me at night

She loves me, even when I put clips in her hair

We had a great trip and loved seeing our family and friends! We look forward to the next time we can see everyone

Sinterklaas is Coming to Town

On Saturday Sinterklaas,(the Dutch version of St. Nick) came to Utrecht.  The story goes he comes up on the canal from Spain accompanied by his "friends" Zwarte Piete(exact translation is Black Pete, yep real politically correct here :)).  He then docks in town and rides through the city on a white horse.

We had to do as the locals do and get pictures with Zwarte Piete, side note all of these were women with the paint on.  The bags that they are carrying are filled with Poepenoten(translation: pepper nuts), which are little biscuit like ginger cookies.  When Zwarte Piete sees children he will through the mix for the children

We had great spots along the canal for the journey up the canal

Sinterklaas is on that boat, he was on the other side of the canal and this is the best we could get

Boat full of Zwarte Piete

One of the carriages in the parade

Riding his white horse to the Dom Tower

It was definitely an experience!  It was fun to see all of the kids so excited and really got me into the Holiday spirit!!

Mindy

While Brent's Away

Brent is gone this whole week traveling for work(Germany and Italy) and I have gotten asked by quite a few people what I am going to do with him gone. So here are my plans/goals for this week

- Get long runs in. My goal is to run 40 miles this week.  Typical weeks I do around 35 so hopefully the extra 5 miles will be easy :)

- Eat a TON of leftover Mexican food- Brent and I hosted a dinner last night and instead of cooking for 5 people who would be there, I cooked enough for probably 10 :)  Thankfully Mexican is my favorite and I can mix the ingredients up a little bit.

- Finish my Christmas shopping- I need to get a move on this since we will be in Minnesota in 9 days!!!

- Continue my search for a new apartment for us and a job for me- Neither of these are going very well

- Dinners with friends- I have some lunches and dinners planned with some friends here so I will enjoy the girl time!

Needless to say I am going to keep myself busy!

This past weekend Brent and I went to the St. Maarten Festival of Lights parade with friends of ours.

Anyone who had a lantern could walk in the parade and it was really cute to see some of the lanterns that the little kids had

The Parade started with a St. Maarten(he is the patron Saint of Utrecht) lantern.

Saxophone leading the band through the parade 

The parade ended in the Dom Square and they had the children's band from St. Maarten's school playing.  

It was a cute parade and most of all a fun night out with friends!