The Great Balancing Act

Legoland

Katja, Stefan, 3 other families from the neighborhood, the girls, and I went to Legoland on Memorial Day.  We had a great time!  As it was not a German holiday, the park was virtually empty – if you haven’t had the chance to partake in an empty amusement park, I’d highly recommend it.  It was the hottest day of the year so far, much warmer than typical for May so the girls really enjoyed getting a little wet in some of the water features, and we drank our weight in slurppies.   Katie and Stefan rode the infamous dragon roller coaster 8 times, and Holly went on one of the small coaster for her first coaster ride.    We love Legoland!

 

Though she looks horrified, Holly really wanted to go on this ride a second time, but we were out of time.  It’s top on her list for “next time”

 

And, submitted for your amusement, all of the neighbors that weren’t too sissy to go on the log ride.  (Notice that Katja and I are the only adults – the other two are strangers.)  Of course, when the kids went for a second go round, we stayed on the ground.

Happy Mother's Day

 We had a Mother’s Day miracle today – the girls slept until 9:00!  The miracle did not; however, extend to Holly holding still so that I could take her picture with her sister.

The girls we really sweet; they made cards and signs and such this week and decorated the house with them while I waited in bed this morning.  Katie picked the last of the fresh lilacs, made me a yogurt parfait for breakfast, and learned how challenging these types of tasks can be when a little someone is “helping” you.

Curtis took Katie shopping for a cards and a charm for my Pandora bracelet before he left.  She had them stashed in her room and pulled them out to give to me.  Hum . . . I think there is something hiding in their for my upcoming birthday.

 

There's nothing cuter than school art!

Happy Easter!

 

Katie, Holly, and The Great Hunt  (Notice Katie has a cast now.  They put in on on Friday after 10 days in the splint.  They plan to take it off May 4.)

 

Sabrina Wants to Hunt Too

Good-Bye Penguins, We're Sad You Could Not Stay

 

It has begun.  We have official paperwork that we are heading to Rhode Island this summer and we are getting into moving gear.  First up is extra careful packing of our Christmas decorations as we put them away, and setting aside those things that take 220v power that will be useless to us in the US.  Unfortunately, our beloved, straw penguins will also have to go.  We are banned by US agriculture laws from brings stuff like this back to the states with us.  We bought our penguins the first Christmas we were here and have enjoyed them in our yard décor each year.  To tell the truth, they are getting a little moldy from spending time out in the damp, but we are sad to see them go.  We have taken down all of the rest of our Christmas things, but the penguin family will stay in the yard until Three Kings Day (January 6).  Three Kings is the official end of the Christmas season in Germany.

Happy New Year

 

Germans really celebrate the New Year with a bang!  We are fortunate enough to be set back from the city by some fields so our skyline is filled with hard core fireworks for over an hour on New Years.  This is not a city display, but the celebrations of individual citizens.  Even more amazing, they all get up in the morning and sweep the streets clean like it never happened.

The girls had a blast.  Holly really enjoyed playing with fire.

 

And her special New Year’s drink.  Prost!

 

She also ran all over the party kissing one of the little boys for the express purpose of torturing him.  We are REALLY in trouble here.

Some of the neighbors brought out shop lights and lit up one of the playgrounds.  Katie and her friends had a great time running around and howling at the moon. (Well, it was far too cloudy to see either the moon or the Jupiter/Mercury/Venus display, but you get the point.)

 

Merry Christmas To All, and To All A Good Night

 

We had a pretty quiet Christmas at home this year.  We had your basic ham Christmas Dinner, and had one person over from Curtis’s office.  The girls opened and played with lots of presents.  Holly described her day to someone as, “I ripped the wrapping paper off a lot of presents, and then there was a really big mess in the family room.”  The new doll house got a lot of play time, and Katie went on a photo safari with her new camera looking for birds to photograph.

You can see a pile of pictures in our Christmas 2008 Photo Album.

Twas the Night Before Christmas

 

Reading The Night Before Christmas right before bed.

The girls and I did quite a bit of baking today.  They loved making and decorating cookies for Santa with their own hands.  Though, when the time came, Holly was a little hesitant to actually give one that she made away because “It’s cute.”  Curtis actually worked today, but will have the next 4 days off.  The girls opened a couple of presents this evening, but we left the bulk of them for Christmas morning.  The gaint pink cat was a gift to Holly from Katie.

Holly rolls the dough.

 

Katie Decorating

  

Holly really enjoyed painting the cookies with food coloring.

  

The End Results 

Santa

 

On Friday, we celebrated Madison’s birthday with cookies, milk, Christmas Carols, and Santa.  Her mom is a genius!  The USO was already decorated for Christmas -- complete with a tree and piano.  She supplied the coloring supplies, a couple of red table cloths, and the cookies and milk.  In one hour the kids were in, fed, entertained and out again.  I am so going to use this idea for Holly’s birthday one of these years.

Execute Order Merry Christmas

 

In keeping with the Star Wars theme, we went into Cutis’s office last Sunday and decorated his door for Christmas.  Our design revolves around Yoda using the powers of the force to turn Darth Vader into Santa, complete with storm trooper elves.  Of course, the design would not be complete without a Christmas candy dispensing Gonk Droid.   Is there perhaps a 12-step program that is available for us out there?

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Dave came from Belgium to visit us for Thanksgiving this year.  We once again had our turkey dinner at the Dining Facility.  Curtis made a pumpkin cheese cake this year and we enjoyed it in the afternoon with a side of coffee.  'Tis the season, he also started making the girls fancy hot chocolates with the espresso machine this week.  We did a little bit of final shopping this weekend, but as we need to mail everything to the states on Tuesday, we were pretty much done.  I wrote our Christmas Letter this weekend, and on Sunday we are going in as a family to decorate Curtis’s office door for the door decorating contest.  This coming week we need to get our exterior decorations up as next Saturday is the community luminary walk followed by the Gluhwein Social.