Our Laughing Baby!

This is just a short post to update you on Keegan!!



He is just now learning how to laugh and Jonas and I are
enjoying every minute of it. He also rolled over for the
first time two weekends ago (December 19th) and that
was also very exciting for us! He's a really healthy baby,
and we couldn't ask for anything else. Thanks for reading!

Vixey - Our Newest Addition!!

That's right! Jonas loves me so much that he got me an early Christmas present, and that's our new dog Vixey!

She's so sweet! We got her from a rescue shelter in Arkansas. She's about a year old, although they're not positive on her age or her breed! The way I like to think about it is her one year birthday is the day we got her and she's a collie, chow and FOX mix! (definitely a fox..has to be a fox)She's really good with the cats, Jonas likes her, and best of all: she's great with Keegan!! Now I can actually go outside instead of being cooped up inside all day long. I've got a dog to walk. :)

Bienvenue en Louisiane!

I heard from an old friend today who told me that he was following the blog. He actually reminded me that I had a blog to keep up with! Sorry ya'll, we've been quite busy these past couple of months.

So, on November 10th, Jonas and I moved out on our own and into our first apartment together! (Living in my mom's basement doesn't count as our own apartment, haha) It was very exciting for me as it was the first time I'm really out on my own.

This is our couch set and coffee table (thanks Mom!!) in our family room.
light on the left is coming from the door to our balcony!

A different angle of the family room, looking at the tv and into Keegan's room.



This is Keegan's room! Lucky dog..I didn't have my own room until high school!


This is our dining room, on the other side of our family room from the balcony.
It looks into our kitchen.


And there's my wonderful Dragonfly wind chime. :)

Last but not least, this is mine and Jonas's bedroom.

Welcome to our humble abode! We're still working on the finishing touches, but it's our first "home" and I love it!

The Keegan Show - In color!

Grandpa came all the way from Germany to hang out with me!

4 Generations - 1 Picture!

Grandpa and Great-grandparents

"just" the parents

3 Generations and a freezing Keegan

The Keegan Show

Dear Everybody,
long time no see for me on the internet, but I made it back - safely! So don't worry y'all, I will still provide you with interesting information and stories about and around my life.

The last weeks have been pretty busy for us. Birth, surgery, recovery, parents, grandparents, parents-in-law, grandparents-in-law, family dinners, work authorization, social security application, travel documents, apartment application, moving truck booking and so on.

But let's start out in the beginning - NOT. Ha, I am still the old, funny guy from overseas, just living over-overseas, which means right here, right!?

About 4 weeks ago, my mom, Keegan's grandma and Sam's mother-in-law, arrived in Atlanta. She was really excited about meeting her first grandchild and there he was, an American!
She should not be the only visit from Germany. Almost my whole family came over to see my son, their grandchild or even great-grandchild. Like I said, it has been a busy time.
However, thanks to the visit from Germany I got around more and more to sightseeing places such as Kennesaw Mountain, the Aquarium, the Mall(s) and of course Stone Mountain.

This week was and is the week of the goodbyes, at least for now. My cousin left on Sunday, my grandparents on Monday, my Dad will leave tomorrow, my Mom next week on Tuesday and my family including me is moving to Shreveport next week on Wednesday!

So fyi, if you decide to start a family overseas, you'd better prepare for a hard, well, fun time.
It was really fun though, spending that much time with my family that I won't see until January and hadn't seen in 5 months. Anyway, I am glad to start out the new life with my family in Shreveport in about a week and be able to life more independantly.

Enough writing and reading for you - enjoy the pictures of our little Mr Sunshine!

Due to technical difficulties you will have to wait for the pictures, hopefully just until tomorrow! ;-)

Take care!

The Big Arrival!

So, we have a good excuse for not writing in our blog recently, I promise.  :)  Our little boy, the most beautiful baby in the world (not even kidding), has finally come.  He was born on September 15, 2008, at Northside Hospital in Atlanta.  He was 7 pounds and 5.5 ounces. According to the hospital's measurements, he was 21 inches long.  So, we've had him with us for two weeks now, and what a big adjustment it has been.

I started having more frequent contractions on Friday night (September 12th).  Finally, on Sunday night, I decided that it was time to go to the hospital.  I started labor at 5:00 PM on Sunday afternoon/evening.  We arrived at the hospital around 10:00 PM.  Keegan was born the following morning at 11:19 AM.  It was quite a long labor.  Due to some minor complications, Keegan was born via cesarean section (which is now causing me some problems as it has begun to open up); however, he IS here and he is healthy and has all his fingers and toes and whatnot. 

He's perfect.  :)   

   

Mommy and Daddy with baby Keegan.

Keegan's umbilical cord fell off when he was 10 days old.  I thought that was a bit early, but it's healed completely now so today we were able to give him a bath for the first time!

As you can probably tell, he didn't like it too much.

  

It was still nice to finally have a clean baby though!

  After his bath, we tried to capture some nice shots of his curls.  

They didn't turn out too well, but maybe you can still see it a bit.

Thanks for reading!!

Our interest: Stormchasing

Dear fellows,

Our newest hobby is chasing storms. We thought it's way better to chase them, than have them chase us. Due to our new love, we had to drive all the way to Louisiana last week in order to see our latest storm - Gustav, a category 5 hurricane (when we "saw" it, it was not even a hurricane any more, but anyway!!) hitting the US gulf coast.

Not a lot of you knew about our secret love, so we thought we should show you guys some pictures of our trips. Please don't be irritated by the National Geographic logo, our photos have already been published!

Hurricane Erica in the wasteland of Alabama's south.

A tornado we saw on our road trip between the Grand Canyon and Prescott.

The tornado that built up next to our house in may.

The only picture not taken by us, but such a good one!

Now that you guys know about it, please don't blame us for our dangerous love of chasing storms!

"It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck."

- National Geographic talking about stormchasers

Take care!

Back to school - NOT

There we go again! Back to school - woohoo!


Actually not really back to school, at least back to our beginning: Milledgeville!

Atkinson Hall - GCSU

We stayed at Magnolia park, an apartment complex near my old home (the village) from Friday to Sunday last week. Due to the hurricane Florida sent us, soccer was more like scuba diving in very rough sea. Fortunately, I got to play in the shirtless team, so that I could really enjoy the wind and rain - awesome experience! After two hours of soccer and rain I didn't feel better than before, however, I got to know some more internationals! A guy from Finland, one from Spain, some from Asia and a German guy - Uwe, from Magdeburg, our proud Eastern Metropolitan dream area! Of course, he knows Bernd/Stromberg/Volkmer or just Philipp. It was weird seeing the new internationals standing all shy next to each other pretending to do small talk. Just like me about a year and 2 weeks ago.

If I think about it now, it wasn't toooooo great to meet them. Asian people don't talk that much, the Spanish guy is from Spain (for non-soccer fans: they beat us (us=Germany)) and when you are abroad as a German you don't want to meet other Germans. Why? Just take a look at the picture below!

HOWEVER, not all the Germans are like that - just take me as a very good example for German honesty and hard work...

Anyway, after soccer, a burrito and some movies, we actually didn't do a whole lot on Saturday. But we were pretty active on Sunday. First, we went to lunch with our friend Jeramy, who is going to Spain to be with his girlfriend Diana, and to work, but we are guessing the first point is more important for him. After that we visited with Sam's athletic teacher from GCSU who just had her little baby boy - 4 week old Ethan! It was great to hold him and we can't wait to have our own little boy to hold!

Unfortunately, we had to go back home and here we are: new carpet, still fleas, no sleep, feeling sick, bad weather...but the athmosphere is great! :)

Stay tuned

Bye Bye Bootsy

Yup, so it's finally been done. I finally gave in to Jonas's wishes (and my mom's) and I got rid of my kitty.


I've had her for almost a year which, in my short life, is a long time. I was her only known mama - I had her since she was about three months old. She was just a little baby. Her birthday is June 29, 2007. She was such a sweet cat (although all of my siblings will try to tell you otherwise). And just look at her - isn't she just the cutest thing??



She was always the sweet nurturer who cared more about her kittens (and me, of course) more than anything.




I didn't think I could ever get rid of her. I've been thinking about it for quite some time now, just because I know that two cats is easier and more pleasurable than three, especially for a limited living space, such as ours. I found an animal shelter online that wouldn't kill animals. We had to come up with some sort of story for them to ensure that we could leave her there. So, Jonas walks in and leaves Boots with her papers and they said they'd take care of it. They have a website - http://www.southernhope.org/ - and I've been checking everyday to see if her picture is there (if you go there, you'll see they have a bio and picture for each adoptable animal). I'm really hoping that they actually do/did take care of her. I just know I'll be very upset if I don't see her picture up there soon, because I'll only think the worst.





There was another cat in the house, Milly. She was my roommate's cat from college. Amanda (my old roommate) has Milly now and is trying to figure out what to do with her because she can't keep her.






The other two cats are the kittens from Boots's first litter. On March 16th, 2008, Boots gave birth to four kittens. I was in Germany, unfortunately, so I wasn't there to see the birth or to take care of them. Two of the kittens died, and the other two, Bo and Sophie, are the cats that we still have today. On July 2nd, 2008, Boots gave birth to another litter, this one with five babies. Unfortunately, none of the kittens made it. Maybe it's a sign that no cat under one year old should attempt to give birth to two litters.


This is Bo. He is our sweet boy. He craves attention all of the time, which is nice because often times we go throughout the whole day without leaving the house.








This is Sophie, our baby girl. Ever since her mama left, she has been a lot sweeter to me and Jonas (Jonas really really didn't like her before, but I think things are a lot different now).

It's a boy!!

HA, and you guys already know that part. Funny - I know...

Oh well, while fighting the fleas and trying to live the life as Nomads throughout the house, because we can't stay in our area, we were thinking about a name for our soon to be born son.

It's really not easy to agree on one name combination if your origin is in different cultures.

But we agreed soon on the part that traditional German names such as Manfred, Heribert or Heinz are not applicable for him to be named.

Soooo we came up with a pretty cool name, or like Chase titled it: A bad ass name!

By this time you are probably all just waiting for me to be done talking about stuff nobody is interested in, so here it comes:

Keegan Pierce Schuster

will be born in the end of September or as Sam would hope in the middle of September.

Talk to you guys (say it in the south: y'all) later.

Welcome Back to Georgia!

Okay, so don't make fun of me - I don't really know what this blogging thing is all about so I'm just going to kind of go with it. Jonas and I just returned back home from our adventures on the West Coast. Whatnot a better place to come home to than a flea infested house with a broken washer. Lovely, huh? We've spent nearly all of our time since we've been home (over a week now) vacuuming, mopping, bombing, bathing, etc. etc. etc. It seems that no matter what we do, we just can't get rid of the darn fleas! We've tried homemade flea traps; while they kill a lot of fleas, it doesn't even make a dent in our problem. We've tried bombing the place - we thought it worked, but the very next day there seemed to be just as many fleas as before. It's driving us crazy, we haven't been able to sleep in our own bed since we've got back because it's so bad. :(

In other news, I will be 32 weeks pregnant on Sunday. Yikes! It's getting so close! With the flea problem going on, I haven't had much time to prepare for the baby. All of my mom's children were born one to two and a half weeks early, so she's convinced I'll have the baby in about 6 weeks. I can't believe how fast it's gone by.

I'll leave you with my registry number :) Haha, just in case you're interested. We're registered at Babies 'R Us and the number is 82298681.

Bye!