Fall 2012

This August we left Texas and returned to Vilnius for our last year of living overseas! The flights back to Vilnius were fairly uneventful. There was one disgruntled lady in the Newark airport who was bothered by my 2 month old hungry baby and my 2 year old busy girl. After I told her to sit somewhere else, she was not very happy with me and of course, she ended up on our 8 hour flight to Frankfurt.
Vilnius in the fall is always welcomed after hot summers in Texas. We were also looking forward to being just the four of us for the first time in our apartment. Giuliana moved into her new room and Norman took over her old room and crib.
The end of August school started and Giuliana started the toddler program at AISV. This is Giuliana on her first day of school.

It did not stay warm long. It quickly cooled down and out came the winter clothes. Giuliana loves the winter weather but she loves her summer clothes. There is a daily battle between G and her nanny over what to wear in the house. Her nanny wants her in pants, socks, shirt and sweater and Giuliana wants to be in her spinning dress or a t-shirt and shorts.
Norman is such a good baby, but very different from Giuliana. I feel that we have been very blessed with two very well behaved children. Norman sleeps through the night, eats very well, and is happy all of the time. Giuliana is a funny, confident, and a spunky young lady:)

 Giuliana loves to get herself dressed in the morning. Her little pineapple vest was mine when I was younger:)

Planting Flowers.......that never bloomed by the way.

Norman eating for the first time

For Halloween, our school had a pumpkin carving contest. Instead of carving pumpkins  we decided to paint pumpkins.

 Giuliana decided she wanted to be a witch kitty for Halloween. There was also a contest at school for guessing the number of toys in a jar and Giuliana's class won! She was right up front during the assembly and got up all by herself to take the jar for the class. She is not a shy girl!

 We tried to get a picture of the two of them for Halloween, but as you can tell from the pictures below.... it didn't work that well.

A friend of ours tried to take some family pictures for us, however not too many of them turned out well. I don't know if it's trying to get 4 people to all have a good picture at the same time, or just us....but it just did not work out:) Here are a few of the two of them.

There are several things we will miss about Vilnius:
1. Working with Kelly every day
2. Walking to school every day with Kelly and Giuliana
3. Grazina; Norman and Giuliana's nanny (adopted grandmother:)
4. The friends we've made
5. Our apartment and the views!! Below are a few pictures of the views from our apartment from this fall.

This year, the city built a new park near our house which was very exciting. Most of the parks in Old Town are old, falling a part, and littered with mischievous unmentionables....