Won't you be my.... Mayor.

My German teacher showed this to me. It's from a popular German magazine, "Der Spiegel".

This house is three houses away from us. It's being remodeled and has been ever since we moved in... EXACTLY ONE YEAR AGO TODAY. (Yep, we moved in on Valentine's Day!)

It is the MAYOR OF HAMBURG'S HOUSE!!

The mayor of Hamburg lives on my street!

The mayor is my neighbor!

I'm going trick or treating there next year. :) (If I can get past his 1,000,000 Euro security system.)

Free Drugs

Guess what? Michaela and Scotty have strep throat ...along with half of the silly international school.

I hated the Danish health care everything. I would wait until the doctors office closed so I could go to the hospital for a competent doctor to see me, but here, the German healtcare system has been pretty nice to me so far. :) (Of course I haven't given birth here so it might be unfair to compare...) :)

True, I haven't seen a doctor bill since we've been here! Same as DK though...

However...

I just got all my kids' antibiotics for free!! I walked into the pharmacy and they just gave me the antibiotics! No form to fill out, nothing to even sign... They just asked if it was for my children and I said yes... and they just gave it to me!

I did have to pay five cents for the bag though. :)

I went home.... but not really.

We had a Girls Weekend in Denmark! It was almost like going home for me ...but not so much. :)

(As in my friends and me, not my girls and me... but yes, my girls are my friends too... I meant my MOM friends and me...)

It was really fun to go back to a place I totally knew all about. It was so easy. I LOVE DENMARK! :) Hee Hee...

I guided us through downtown, I could find street addresses and stores off memory, I could even hop on a random bus to take a short cut! I knew just what to do and it was fun. We even had good luck and ran into nice people everywhere we went!

Aarhus seems so easy now that I'm here in a giant city like Hamburg. I now appreciate Aarhus and it's smallness. I miss it. HA! I never thought I'd say that! :) ...But I'd still pick Hamburg, only because of the school...

Michaela was actually supposed to come with me and stay with her friend for the weekend, but her friend called a half hour before we were supposed to leave, she was sick and couldn't have Michaela over. It was at this point that I realized I will be the worst person on earth to tell Michaela really bad news... I had a hard time telling her she couldn't go. I didn't know what to say. I felt absolutely terrible. It ruined the whole morning for me too. I had to go of course, but I had to leave Michaela behind and I felt really, really, really bad. Sorry Michaela. We will try again... At least I bought you Skittles and Root Beer!

While in Aarhus my friends and I went shopping at all my favorite cheap stores and also to all my favorite expensive kitchen stores. They all learned that Denmark has a million cute things, but they are all so ridiculously expensive that you could never in a million years justify buying it. :)

We went to a restaurant and out for some dancing at a night club where we were too old for the teeny-boppers in things they believed qualified as clothes... and we were too young for the sad music in the other section. We did our best and had fun and made our way back to the hotel by 3:00am. :) No problem though, because we all drifted off to sleep without the fear of any children waking us up.

We woke up, ate breakfast, did some more shopping, and headed home to Hamburg.

It was great. I knew my kids were fine so I didn't stress out about them. It was good to have a break, and it wasn't too long...

Little did I know how critical this weekend break was to my upcoming week... this week has been ICK! Scotty has strep throat and I have to take the others to the doctor tomorrow before school to test them too. If they pass they can go to school, if they don't pass, it's off to the apotek for more antibiotics and then back home.

So I've had Scotty home all week with a fever and being generally unhappy... and he's such a sad little sick boy. I apologize in advance to his future wife.

Noodle Straw

Paul thought these pasta's would be fun. They are like spaghetti, but are hollow like a bird's bones. :)

In the end, these noodles were fun, but only when DADDY discovered they could be used as straws. So we all sucked up our milk with our noodles.

The Musical Fruit

I've always heard this was a good idea for keep kids entertained, but it wasn't until my friend tried it that I decided I'd try too. All you need is a bowl, some spoons, lots of dried beans, and a high tolerance for chaos.

These beans worked wonders and it was pretty tame ...until Sierra got involved that is. Sierra started to play and I came back to a kitchen COVERED in beans. I couldn't believe it! You couldn't even tiptoe across the floor without stepping on a bean. I wasn't too happy about it and made her sweep it up, but Andrea had a great time!

The beans are still in a bowl in the kitchen and I bring them out when I'm trying to make dinner. They are losing their novelty though so they might go away and come back another day.

Poozie's Hair Stylist

Sierra is in charge of brushing Andrea's hair after bathtime. Sierra loves to do it and Andrea sits there pretty long and lets Bear do whatever she wants.

Here is our new attempt at taming Andrea's flyaway hair. A pony tail! :) They never stay in for more than ten minutes, but it's super cute. :)

The Yearly Bill

We get a heating bill once a year. Today a man came and read all of our meters in our house. The meters are on our radiator things and they count how much "warm" we take... or something like that.

But the "heater reader" guy only comes once a year. Hey I just realized that we "took" this house on February 1st. :) So he came a year to the date! Wow.

Happy estimates our heating will cost 6000 euros for the year. If it is more than that we will have to move. :)

The thought of moving makes me cringe, but the thought of paying more than 6000 euros... to still be cold makes me want to poke myself in the eye.

...that was gross.