Howdy Y'all!

So far these Conley's are enjoying Texas!

We have only had a little time to explore so far, but we really love the Fort Worth Zoo! The animals are always out to look at and are more than happy to come right up to the glass!

Austin is away at school to learn about being a Recruiter, but when he gets back we plan on checking out the Fort Worth Stockyards and when my parents come in December we are taking Lyla on the Polar Express!

Lots of things to come in the future here. I am job hunting and everythng since we will be here for a while!

The Potty Game

Yes, I am going to write about my experience potty training. 

Once we got moved and semi-settled we deiced it was time to potty train. 

Lyla has probably been ready for a little while but because of the big move we had put it off. We started when we ran out of diapers once we got to TX, this happened to be on August 30th. 

We went a few days before and bought all the goodies, a potty seat for the big potty, a travel potty seat, a stool, big kid wipes, real panties, a "potty watch," and even pull ups for night time/leaving the house... the works. We have tried the little potty seats before just to get her used to the idea and they were looked at as toys, so we decided to go another way. 

The first few days were hectic and resulted in a lot of accidents because my parents came to visit that weekend and bring us some of our things from their house. The following week, there were still quite a few accidents and even some frustration and (yelling) from me, which I hate to even admit. ((I have to say that the yelling resulted from her getting in trouble and "having accidents" on the floor while she was in time out....))

It took about 1 week and Lyla has been telling us when she needs to go already! I was pleasantly surprised that only took this amount of time for her to do this, I thought that would take much longer and I would be reminding her for forever. 

I constantly reminded her for the first two weeks, non-stop. Now we are at the place where she will just tell us and even yesterday started telling us while we are out and about when she needs to go! We are so proud of our girl! :) 

She have vetoed all potty seats and just uses the toilet like the rest of us, which is fine by me... it makes taking her in public so much easier! 

It was quicker than I thought. Of course we are still working on it, but I am happy with the results and no buying diapers!!! 

Fairy Tale Castle Tour : June 2012

In June we went on a Fairy Tale castle tour and it was amazing! I love that there are so many cool things to do in Germany and I hope to find some adventure back stateside as well. 

We started our day super early at 2 AM to take our bus ride to the Castles:

Neuschwanstein:

This is the castle that Walt Disney fashioned his castle after.

This is a view from a bridge

Clearly Lyla was over the picture taking by the time someone offered to take ours. 

I forgot to rotate these, but this is the Castle main entrance. 

Another Castle door!

(we were not allowed to take inside photos unfortunately)

After this castle we headed to a famous church called Wieskirche. Here is a link to the history:

http://www.wieskirche.de/eframset.htm

Wieskirche and Lunch:

Beautiful church in a very small town

I could never remember the name, so I took a picture :) 

Beautiful art inside this church

There was a sign clearly stating not to go past a certain point unless you were in prayer. These guests didn't read English or German...lol 

This is the famous crying statue. 

We had a wonderful German lunch, I wish I had taken pictures of the food! 

This huge cross on a "mountain" near where our bus was parked.

And she fell asleep walking back to the bus from lunch. 

Linderhof:

Still napping

These castles are beautiful!

Amazing gardens

View of the castle from up top!

It was such an amazing trip, if you are ever in Germany, I highly suggest these places to go see! 

Let's catch up a little bit Part 2: July/August

Here is part 2! I didn't want to over whelm with too many photos. I also will have a special post about a fairy tale castle tour that we took in June for my birthday/Mother's Day!

July

July wasn't a particularly eventful month, but we had fun 4th celebration with friends (which I took no pictures of unfortunately), Austin got a promotion, and Lyla decided to "help" get the house ready for moving!

Painting herself with ice cream from our favorite ice cream man, Vito!

I guess she decided to help get the house ready for moving, she had been slowly taking pieces off for quite a while. 

The new "cheese" face!

One of the few pictures of the two of us that is decent.

Playing on her slide on our balcony in Germany. 

Austin got his E6 promotion ! 

August

August brought the most changes for our family. We had to say goodbye to friends and get ready to move on with this crazy Army life we live. Our friends, the Grissoms, very graciously let us stay with them for a night while we were "homeless" (had to be out of our apartment and the hotel had no openings). Lyla had to say good bye to her best friend, Lexi, and then we headed back to the US!

The guys fell asleep on the couches after a 24 hour shift and no sleep the next day either.

When we finally made it to the hotel, Lyla crashed after 2 days of no naps.

We took a walk to the park one day to say bye to Lexi. 

They love each other!

Lets catch up a little bit Part 1 : May/June

We have been back in the US for almost 3 weeks now! I have wanted to sit and update the blog for a long time now. Our flight back to the US was quite an adventure. After a quick calculation, we were up and traveling for just about 24 hours straight from the time we woke up to the time we landed. Neither Austin or I could sleep on the planes (yes, planeS). Lyla did remarkably well for so much traveling with only one or two small melt downs. 

After our 3 plane rides, we landed in Dallas, TX around 10:45 PM and got to the hotel and in bed by 11:30 pm (mind you this is after a 7 hr time change). We got up the next morning and headed to our new house! 

I am enjoying all of my creature comforts of the local shopping... Wal-Mart, Target, Kroger, Kohls, PetCo, etc...

Although we are missing most of our furniture still. My amazing parents brought our couches and washer and dryer, and doggies a couple of weekends ago! :)

Heres a quick Pic Catchup:

May

 Fell alseep sitting up

 Playing in the rain with daddy!

 Fell asleep eating

 Cheese!

 Dinosaur park in Kieserslautern Germany

 Fun at the Dino Park with Lexi

 A little intimidating

She was talking to the "baby Dinosaur"

June

Making Cupcakes for Mommy's 25th birthday! 

Love Them!

Playin Guitar with daddy! 

Thats right Folks.... duct tape diaper to keep them on! 

Our little Princess!

Germany - April Catch Up!

I am sad to say that our Germany adventure is soon coming to an end.

I ,as usual, am a terrible blog updater..... but I would love to share with you all some things we have enjoyed here in Germany.

Our time here has been so brief and there are a hundred more things we would have loved to do while here in Europe. We are so close to so many amazing things and I love this country. There is SO much history everywhere you go. Their buildings are hundreds and hundreds of years old and I absolutely love that they just re-use instead of knock down. I have not been to a town that isn't beautiful. The country side is amazing and I acredit that to the fact that all of the little towns along the way have just been built into the natural flow of the land instead of leveling out the land first. I wish we had much more time (and money) to experience more of what Europe has to offer.

Here are some photos from our German adventures in 

April:

Happy Easter!

 We had fun decorating some eggs.

 We went to Belgium and visited Bastogne!

 This was at the Bastogne memorial.

 A chapel under the memorial.

 This is the 101st memorial

 We also went to the Zoo in April in K-Town

 It was really cold that day!

 Japanese Gardens in K-Town

 We got to feed Koi!