The Great Balancing Act

Jabba The Frog is sick of the snow.

 

Poor Jabba, it’s a cold, cruel world out there.  It snowed again yesterday afternoon.  I couldn’t believe it!  We all thought it was over.  Oh, well, I’m taking Katie for ski lessons on Monday, and I guess there will be lots of snow in the mountains.  The good news is that even with the snow it’s not as cold as it’s been for the last week.

Holly had her dreaded four-year well-child appointment yesterday afternnon.  (Requiring us to go out in the peak of the snow, of course,)  They gave her vaccinations for 8 illnesses with a total of 4 shots – she is not pleased.  They also gave me a new tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough.  I’m not enjoying it so much myself.  She weighs 35.6 pounds (50^th percentile) and is 40.2 inches tall (75^th percentile). They tell me that her night terrors (screaming in her sleep without waking up) are not completely unusual, and are likely directly genetically linked to my tendency to talk in my sleep as a child.  So, while we can rest assured that she’s not possessed, we shouldn’t imagine that the screaming every night will stop anytime soon.

It seems we might not have to hibernate after all.

 

I saw something yesterday morning that I have never have before.  The 5 gallon water bottles for our water cooler froze on the delivery truck.  Brrrr!

We are having a bit of a warming trend.  Yesterday morning it was 20 degrees (as opposed to 9) and it got up to 37 degrees yesterday afternoon -- I actually heard the birds chirping again.  This morning it was 22 degrees when I took Holly to school.  Holly was happy to be outside this morning when we walked Katie to school, as opposed to screaming in protest.  (Well, she screamed in protest because she wanted to stay outside, but that's a different story.)  So, while it’s still cold, we no longer feel like we are going to die if we set foot out the door – I might even go crazy and head out to the commissary today!  It is getting warmer in the house as well since all of our drafty drafts from our poorly sealed windows are in the 20’s rather than single digits.

In other weather related news . . . Our CDC (Child Development Center where community kids under the age of 5 receive child care.)  shut off their heat over the weekend.  Their steam lines froze and burst.  They have been closed down since Monday, and might not even re-open this week.  As you can imagine, this is where the majority of our work force takes their children under 5 for child care.  Things are a bit of a mess around here.

***Update … I ventured out to the commissary today just as it began raining/icing/sleeting (it’s 30 degrees)  so much for coming out of our cave. ***

 

It’s Cold Outside, There’s Hardly Any Atmosphere …

 

Ugg!  I had to break my vow to never set foot outside already.  It was all of 6 degrees when I took Holly to school this morning.  Our high yesterday when I went to gas up – 19.  On the good side, the sky this morning was beautiful.  I admired the large, lingering peachish orange luminescent moon in the dawning pink and purple sky on my way home from taking Holly to school this morning.  Then I realized that the “moon” was the sun!  We are rather far north here, and in the winter the sun doesn’t get fully up in the sky before it starts going down again.  I have; however, already started noticing the lengthening of days since the winter solstice.  This can’t last forever.  Right?

I'm Thinking Warm Thoughts

 

Brrrrrrrrr!  It’s 13 degrees today.  I’m beginning to think I will never be warm again.  Even the girls are sick of it.  Holly had a major tantrum yesterday, as apposed to the minor tantrums she has every 25 minutes – “I don’t want to put on my gear!”  (That would be snow gear so we didn’t freeze in place walking to get Katie from school.)  Wrestling a 4 year-old into a snow suit is not so much fun. Then of course we fought all the way to and back home from school about whether or not she was going to leave her hat and mittens on.  Neither of the girls even had the slightest desire to go out and frolic in the snow today, and Katie put very little effort into her frolicking after school yesterday.  (Suzie tantrum pants stayed in the house with me.)  Personally, I think perhaps I won’t walk out the front door again until spring.

On the bright side, it has been very sunny and clear, so we got to see the biggest brightest moon of the year this evening.  (Out the window of course – I believe I mentioned that I’m never going outside again.)  This lack of clouds to provide us with insulation is part of what’s driving the cold snap.  According to Yahoo weather we might get a bit above freezing tomorrow – they did say we’d get to 32 today and we didn’t make it past 25 so I’m not holding my breath.  The extended forecast does show a bit of a warming trend though.

Oh, and just so you all know I am currently not speaking to my husband.  You see, he left on a work related trip yesterday for a week and e-mailed me that he had arrived and it’s 63 degrees where he is.  With the lack of consistency of heat out of the radiators here I’m having trouble achieving 63 degrees in some rooms of the house!

9 Degrees is REALLY Cold!

 

We live in a region of Germany that has relatively mild, though dark and gray winters.  As I have whined about mentioned, it’s been colder than usual this year – we’ve had a lot of days in the upper 30’s.  It turns out that I didn’t really know what cold is.  It was a balmy 9 degrees at 10 o’clock this morning as the inside of my nose froze in the parking lot walking in to pick-up some keys.  It was 7 degrees when I walked Katie to school this morning (but I was wearing two coats then so 9 degrees a couple of hours later with only one coat was way colder). It was a whopping 4 degrees when Curtis went to PT this morning.

Our super duper cooling trend started on Monday with temperatures in the upper 20’s and a couple of inches of snow.  (Another rarity for this area.)  Unlike previous little spurts of snow we’ve had that usually melt off by noon, this one has hung around for a couple of days.  At first, we were happy about that as it gave the poor kids who finally got snow on their first day back at school from winter break a chance to play in it.   We’ve also been pleased that our poor, sweet penguins got some snow to frolic in.  But as Holly headed back from her break today, and I was faced with having to drive on the still snowy streets and sliding van doors that were frozen shut, I was less enchanted.

I have to say though, Germans are way more hard core than Americans.  Katie’s school had indoor recess today due to the cold, but at Holly’s school 40 3-5 year olds went sledding.  Fortunately, I sent Holly’s ski pants, boots, and heavy duty mittens to school with her.  So the 8 year-old worked on her poetry during recess today, and the 4 year-old took a teacher tossed snowball to the face and liked it.

Jabba The Snowman

 

Built on Tuesday, the snowman project became a snow pile because this snow does not compact well.  Unless of course it's on the streets.

 

Look mom, I'm making foot prints!

 

And in the midst of a record setting cold snap and zoo monkeys being feed cookies to keep their calories up, Russia has gone from slowing down the flow of natural gas to Europe to completely shutting it off. Thus far, this has no specific impact on us, but in general, it can't be good.

The Great Flood of 2008

We have had some interesting weather this summer.  It’s been in the upper sixties and rainy for a couple of weeks now, and then a couple of days ago it started to heat up.  Well, if you go from 68 degrees to 86 degrees and all the rain evaporates into the air, you get one heck of a thunder storm.  Enough rain and our old storm systems are overwhelmed.  Since the storm pipes are narrow and at a higher elevation than the basement drains, storm overflow does not go into the street, it comes in our houses.  That’s right; once again 20 some homes in the neighborhood got instant indoor swimming pools! 

(Click here to read all about our August 2006 flood, and yes I had the drain in the off position this time, but the water pressure overloaded the seal. Appearenlty it is designed to fail or the water will just come out of your sinks and such.  I was standing in the basement yelling, "The valve is closed!  The valve is closed!  Why is there water coming out?"  Neither the drain nor my children had an answer for me.)

Our house was not as hard hit as many (some people were actually bailing  their basements to keep from getting several feet of water), and the only thing permanently damaged was the cheep rug in the playroom, but these houses we live in are ticking time bombs for water issues!  Ugg!  I had about 7 hours of clean-up after the great flood.  (Curtis is currently visiting family in Florida after attending an Army mandated meeting in Georgia, so he missed out on his chance to swim.)  Though our basement floors are painted cement, things are still pretty muggy down there.  We have these plastic pallets bolted to the floor in the larger room down there, it keeps your stuff out of the water, but water gets trapped underneath and they said the only thing to do was to wait for it to dry out.  Is it bad when the air in your basement is so humid it could form its own weather pattern?

 

 

Spring?

I was a lovely day today.  The temperature hit 59 degrees, the birds were singing, my crocuses opened up, my mini-irises are thinking about it, Katie played outside all day, Curtis grilled, and Holly and I made a carrot cake.  Now, I keep telling myself it's January, and the great grey will be back, but we're feeling the itch to plant grass seed and flowers.

For months now, they have been giving the parks in the neighborhood some much needed face lifts.  Gone are the ringworm filled sand pits and rotting in place play structures.  Everything is fresh, new, and rubberized.  They finished another park last week, and opened it for play.  (There is one more waiting to be re-opened in our area.)  Curtis and I took the girls down to play at it this afternoon.  Holly was very excited that the new slide "had a roof" (tunnel slide).  She "could go inside and no one could see her".  The new tunnel slide is very fast and her first time down she shot out onto her bottom on the clean, cushy new rubberized surface.  She shied away from it for a little bit, but Holly's not one to be deterred by a fast slide (particularly when the rough landing doesn't hurt at all).  The second time around she was ready for it and very excited to announce, " I stayed on my feet!  Look daddy! I stayed on my feet." (Feats of daring skill are all about "Look daddy!".  "Look Momma!" is reserved for things that need to be cleaned up.)

Let it Snow!

Since a few days before Christmas, it has been cold, cold, cold -- we've had temperatures below freezing all day long and huge build ups of frost.  It was quite pretty and the birds have been out in full force eating the seed, but as ever here, it seemed that the precipitation and the cold were not going to align and give us some snow.  Well . . . we finally got a dusting.  I know the photos of snow below will not seem that exciting to some of you, but we live in a pretty temperate region of Germany, and snow is just not the norm here.  Grey skies and rain, rain, rain, but snow is rare.  (You can click on the photo to see a larger version.)

Fall Treasures

We have a lot of trees and squirrels and birds and . . . in our neighborhood.  It's really very nice.  We don't have much of a private yard, but it's also a lot like living in a park.  The leaves have been falling from the trees and the girls have been enjoying them.  Everyday as we walk to and from school with Katie, Holly collects leaves and pine cones and sticks and "helicopters" and rocks and . . .  She has an empty flower pot by the front door to store her things in.  (Well, it used to be empty -- now it's overflowing.) The above image is a scan of some of this morning's treasures.

In The "Back-a-lard"

We've been enjoying some mild summer weather.  Things are still a bit funky, but we've had a few decent, if not super warm days.  It's apparently supposed to start raining again next week.  I took a few pictures of the kids in the back yard, and they turned out pretty well. So . . here they are.

Oh . . . and no we haven't gone crazy and bought every molded plastic toy on the market -- we have inherited them from people who were moving and didn't want to clean them well enough to pass customs returning to the US.  (Read free of a single speck of dirt -- cleaner than fresh out of the box really.)  They are perfect for Holly, and we'll be ready to pass them on when we go.