Nein to Meat

Sierra is a vegetarian now... just so you know.

I will not make any smart comments because she seems pretty serious about it, meanwhile I'm asking her to look for a happy medium... maybe decide some animals are okay to eat. We've agreed on fish so far. Chickens are definitely out though.

I blame this on the vegetarians that came over for dinner last Friday night... no more "unique eaters" allowed in our house ...seriously. :)

I have made sure Sierra is not doing this because it is "cool". Maybe being a vegetarian is just becoming more common, but I've never met so many vegetarians or lactose intolerant people in all my life. The last two international schools have been FULL of them.

I'd like to take a little poll of an American school and the school here. Number of: Vegans, Vegetarians, Lactose Intolerant, Peanut allergies in each... Perhaps the kids' old teachers will help me. :) Sounds like a good "dateline" topic. :)

Anyways, Sierra decided this on Saturday afternoon. Since then she has passed up McDonalds, bacon, salami sandwiches, pepperoni pizza, and sausages for lunch... and she didn't even whine at all, let alone give in. Of course, now I will feel bad feeding the family steaks this weekend... Wait! Oh good, Sierra is in Copenhagen this weekend with the Volleyball team! Bring on the MEAT! :)

However it's pretty impressive if you ask me. All of the before mentioned meat products are some of her favorites and there is no way I could have had the willpower to NOT eat them all weekend.

Being the supportive parent that I am now mixing egg salad sandwiches for her lunch and I'm going to try and have some meat-less meals just for her... but the rest of family isn't going to stop eating steak or meatloaf. Sorry Bear. She is actually being very mature about the entire thing... here they go becoming their own people. Guess that was my job huh?

We'll see how it all plays out. Go life go!

Two less teeth...

Michaela is getting braces. :)

...and as part of that she has to have four of her baby teeth removed. :(

Ouch.

3 down, 1 to go.

Michaela is seriously awesome though. If it was me I'd would have never survived. Really, I would have passed out. I couldn't even handle the dentist telling me what she had done... and she wasn't being graphic or gross. She just said the one tooth had strong roots and that a root broke off and was still in her mouth, but that it should just fall out later. She said the other tooth was easier and she could see the new tooth already. UGH! Even that was more than I could handle. I was lightheaded and suddenly very focused on leaving as quickly as possible... that and Michaela was looking less than happy so I wanted to get her home.

This also happened to me in California when a dentist was telling me about Michaela's mouth being too small and his idea of removing teeth so they could all fit. I had to leave and sit down outside.

I guess I'm just a giant sissy, but let's all remember who gave birth with ZERO drugs. ... that TOTALLY rules out being a sissy.

I'm just a sensitive mommy. :) ...I don't like teeth things.

SO. Michaela has two less teeth than she did last week. One more tooth to be removed and then when her mouth heals up a bit they will put braces on. Cute huh? :) She isn't distraught over it, it's the time of life kids have braces... no big deal.

Here is an interesting tid-bit about Michaela's mouth.
- She has one baby tooth that doesn't have an adult tooth coming in behind it. She will keep the baby tooth forever... or as long as it stays. :)

Nobody is sure what happened to the adult tooth... and I'm not quite sure why nobody has ever mentioned it before. I think I will now ask for her old dentist to send me some x-rays... ?

I never knew that my kids teeth would require so much effort, time, or money! :)

Two teeth. One normal baby tooth. One long root baby tooth.

When the dentist mentioned "roots" I was picturing long stringy things everywhere, like what a plant has (maybe that's why I was grossed out).

It wasn't until I had the courage to look in the cup to see her "souvenirs" that I realized what teeth roots were. Now I know why tooth cartoons in dentist books have those long things coming down from the typical baby tooth we see that falls out. I never thought about why that was because I never imagined this is what a tooth looked like inside your mouth. I guess the roots get smaller when the baby tooth grows up? Maybe the baby tooth "feeds" off the roots so they disappear when it's time to get wiggly and fall out.

If I didn't find this whole thing so icky I'd maybe google it, but just looking on line for how Michaela should keep her tooth holes clean made me light headed. All done talking/typing about it.

Gelbe Seiten!!!!

Look! It's the YELLOW PAGES!

Gelbe Seiten really translates to YELLOW PAGES!

:) Cute huh?

Cute, but not too helpful since I can't read it. :)

Driving Legally!!!

I HAVE A GERMAN DRIVERS LICENSE!!

:)

...and I didn't have to take the test.

In Germany certain States have different rules on what you have to do to "trade in" your American license. For example...

California and Oregon - written test only
South Carolina - no testing at all
Georgia - written AND the driving test AND a first aid class AND driving school

So it's really different depending on which State you are coming from. However, if you have a Canadian license you fall into the "no testing required" category.

My husband and I both had Oregon licenses and so we were going to have to take the written test which is infamously difficult. Not the worse scenario, but not the easiest.

We were sneaky though. AND We followed all the rules of every country to do it...

Here is how you get a German license without taking the test.
1. Go to Canada.
2. Trade American license for a Canadian license.
3. Go to Germany.
4. Trade Candian license for a German license.

TA DA! No testing required. :)

While in Canada this summer with my CANADIAN husband we got our Canadian licenses. It took about ten minutes and $75.00. That was it!! Once our Canadian licenses were mailed to us we took them into the German DMV and WHOOLAA!! - we were handed our German licenses.

Still is kind of funny to think about how easy it was with my Canadian one... but I'm thrilled to be done with the entire Drivers License Drama! It even turns out I did it within my allotted time!

Housewarming...

Last night we went to a "Housewarming" party next door. Hmm.

I don't even know where to begin. I'll describe a "Housewarming" party. ...and maybe they are the same in the states, but I was a little in awe as we left this German Housewarming Party.

So. Here is how it works... so I'm told:

When new people move into a house they spend a year or so fixing it up getting it organized. THEN they invite over everyone they know as well as all the neighbors for a housewarming party. During this party all the guests are supposed to go look at their entire house! Roam through the bedrooms, stroll through the yard, try out the bathrooms... just basically look at their house. Hmmm.

Maybe it was fine for the other rich Germans that were there, but after we walked the walk home to our house next door we felt a little discouraged with our slacker IKEA accessorized home. I found myself slightly jealous during that three minute walk home... Of course my jealousy didn't last long though; Michaela had been babysitting for us... and when the oldest kid can babysit the other kids life is way better than any designer couch and famous artwork can make it!

Anyways, this party was a catered party... with "helpers" serving and cleaning the whole time. I felt like I had more in common with the "helpers". With the exception of the lady who owns/lives in our house and this families Swedish daughter we weren't able to speak to anyone because aside from ordering a coffee or asking for a small plate I don't know much else to say in German. :)

Unreal house though. I would have taken pictures because I don't understand how her trinkets and FULL bookshelves and living space looked nice and not "cluttery" despite being FULL. NI decided taking pictures would be tacky so I only took a picture of a book I saw because it said "Burgi" which is my maiden name. :) ...As we were leaving I saw someone with a video camera. Really, the house was that nice...

I wonder if I will have a super fancy yuppie house when my kids are old, but I'd have to guess not because I'm just not that into that sort of thing. Good thing too because my daughter took a crayon to the side of the couch today. Good thing I just discovered my IKEA couch is super easy to uncover and wash! :)

...and I don't really think they were showing off their house only because they were really nice people and I didn't get that impression from them at all. :)

I almost laugh at the thought of having a "Housewarming Party" for our house. :) Think anyone would care to see my toys and fuzzy rugs?

Sad Hotdogs

HA! I'm hilarious. Sad hotdogs... get it? ...yah, anyways...

I have been wanting to rename my blog for a while now because we don't really have "adventures" anymore... it's just turned into regular ole' life... which is one big adventure.

So I stole Holly's reference to the "Happy Hamburgers" that she made on her blog here. :) I thought it was cute... She got a kick out of the fact that people here are Hamburgers. :)

Hey Holly, I wonder if people in Frankfurt are Frankfurters? :)

I'm the Boss's Wife!

Happy Anniversary to me!

Paul and I had our anniversary over the weekend and we celebrated by going to his big work party. :)

I must admit that at first I was a little irritated to be spending my anniversary with his company, but it turned out really well! I think if we didn't have this party to go to we would have sat at home like any other normal Saturday. This forced me to put on dress, get a babysitter, and actually LEAVE THE HOUSE!

...and leave the house we did... for many, many hours! NINE hours to be exact! WOW. Now that just I counted up the hours, that is probably a record! I think the previous record of "time kids were left with a babysitter" was for the six hours it took me to go the hospital and have Andrea. :)

So despite my stressing over what to wear and how on earth to buy shoes in my size here... which by the way you don't buy shoes in my size here... I had to borrow a friends and make a note to order size 6 online for next time. (No lie... adult shoe stores do not sell shoes smaller than size 36, size 6 is seriously not an abnormally small size!)

Anyways, I had never been to anything like this party before... so yes, I might have stressed for an entire week, but it was actually quite fun and next time I'll know what to expect.

The party was for the company's birthday and it was a HUGE event. They set up a big tent at an airport... ...but not just a tent though. It was like a house tent, a mansion tent... with a huge dining area and a separate dancing area...

Throughout the dinner there were saxophone players dangling from the ceiling, girls dangling from curtains, and guys dangling from bendy lightposts... Lots of dangling... :) Maybe they were going for a circus theme because the tent was circus like and we watched these dangley circus acts throughout the dinner. Very interesting... weird... amusing. :)

This was also a unique event because I've never been referred to as the boss's wife... It was a bit weird, but the people I was dancing with said it was a bit weird to be dancing with the boss's wife. :) Some people were so surprised to see that I was Paul Happy's wife.

I don't know if I was really "cool enough" to be hanging out at the special reserved table with all the other bosses and their wives... who were all probably much more prepared for this event than I was! It was like eating with a bunch of professional adults, who I would never really associated myself... or Paul, with. :)

I mean I spend most of my day changing poopy diapers and coaxing children to eat vegetables and brush their teeth. ...but I guess Paul is one of those "professional adults" which just seems hilarious to me for some reason. I'm glad he is though because it was fun to be important with him for a night. :)

Considering all the other company parties I have been to have been in bowling alleys or behind the building this was a big difference and I'm actually looking forward to the next one! ...not that those bowling alley parties were not some of the best times Trini!! :)

I just had a nice night out and I was able to do it because I'm the boss's wife. :)

I might be the Boss's wife, but around here the wife IS the boss...