Thanksgiving...

This was our fourth Thanksgiving away from "home".

...and this thanksgiving more than any other thanksgiving I am extremely thankful for my friends and family.

I'll leave it at that, but there is no way I could have survived the past month without my family and friends. It really does take a village ...and my village totally kicks butt. :)

...and if you don't have a village, and I mean like a loyal village, not a pretend group of "in-the-moment-followers"... but if you don't have that group of people to help you along and guard you like a German Shepard would, you are going to be eaten by some crazed rabid wolf somewhere through life...

...and rightfully so because IF you somehow manage to go through life and NOT have a loyal and trustworthy village to back you up, you probably SHOULD just be eaten because you are most likely too snakey and two-faced to have picked up a village along the way. Hmmm.... :)

Happy Thanksgiving. :)

HA! :)

How's that for English Homework? :)

Before Bug & Pooz....

ISH Wins!

Here is Sierra, #4, serving the final winning points of a volleyball game here in Hamburg. She served the last four points! First one to 25 wins! :)

She is much, much better than last year. Last year she had trouble getting it over the net very often, but she kept practicing and practicing and she is awesome this year! I love it!! I'm very proud of her... even if their tournament in Holland didn't go so well this weekend. :)

I can't wait for her to play High School Volleyball!

Halloween 2012!

Plants vs' Zombies. Papa knows exactly what Scotty is for Halloween. :)

Hippie Chick. Sehr cute.

Goth Chick. Sehr hasslich

Andrea chick. Andrea is just like Scotty was at the sweet age of three. She refused to put on a costume of any kind and when I forced the adorable pink puppy suit on her the screaming made my ears cry ...not worth it! She did wear a tutu for some of her party though and that made me happy enough.

At least she would wear her "bat hat" for the preschool play. :)

Spider cupcakes for Scotty's class. This is what they looked like before they all landed on the floor of my car. I carried a tray of spider parts up to Scotty's classroom and tried to rebuild the spiders. Whatever. The kids liked them anyways.

Here is our little pile of candy that our four children collected together. :) We got marzipan balls, lots of pennies, a wooden toy, a few chips, an orange and an apple... nothing we really cared to eat. :)

I can't wait for real trick-or-treating, but thankfully my kids don't know/remember the difference... at least the two little ones don't. As far as Scotty and Andrea were concerned this was a giant pile of candy and they were perfectly happy about it ...so I tried to be happy about it too. :)

We tried trick-or-treating this year again and it worked out fine. Last year we went to a row of apartments which is well known for housing all the International Families; this year we tried something new and went to a neigherboorhood that we heard also did trick-or-treating... :)

True. This other neighborhood did do trick-or-treating, but it was clearly a German neighborhood. There were other groups of kids running through the streets and it felt very "halloweeny" and that made me happy, but those little kids all had a cute German song to sing when the door opened. All we had was Scotty with a flower pot on his head yelling "trick-or-treat" at them as they opened the door. Sorry, no song.

Most of the time the Germans would just stand there and wait for our song. Nearly every opened door ended in a stare down... they'd stare at us waiting for a song, we'd stare at them waiting for candy. In the end we usually got candy, but even Scotty knew it was a bit awkward. :)

WWII Leftovers

I will try really hard to catch up with life...

Let's go all the way back to when an old WWII bomb was discovered 600M from Andrea's preschool... October 27th.

I was on my way to pick up Andrea and a friend's daughter from school. On the way I met Policeman #1 who told me the road was closed... I thought it was weird because it was a small back road, but I just figured I'd go around. I kept driving and, about the same time that I came across Policeman #2, who also told me to turn around, my phone rang. It was the Preschool Teacher saying not to worry and that they were in the basement.

Huh?

Seems that when Andrea's little preschool class was outside at the park a policeman came up to them and frantically yelled "something something something RUN AND HIDE in your basement"... Way to not invoke panic Mr. Police Officer.

Anyways, the preschool teacher, who is the person I'd most want Andrea to be with in a bomb situation, ran the kids back to the school and took them into the basement/toy room. :) I'm sure there are worse places to be stuck in during a bomb scare. :)

Neither the teacher, nor I, had any idea how serious it was, so I simply decided to go around and come in on the other side of the school. Then I met Policeman #3. I told #3 that I needed to get my kids who were hiding in the basement of their preschool. He said "No." He told me there was no way to get to my kids by using that road.

See, here's the deal. There was some digging/construction going on and they found a "not yet exploded" bomb from WWII. A British bomb, so thank you England... The immediate circle, ~500M, around the bomb was evacuated house by house and nobody was allowed to enter under any circumstances. However, around this immediate, inner circle, there was an "outer circle" that nobody was allowed to enter either, but the "outer circle" had not been evacuated as thoroughly as the "inner circle" and #3 said there was a chance I could talk my way in.

According to the policemen had been showing me, Andrea's school was in the "outer circle", just a few houses outside of the "inner circle". She could in theory be reached, but not on the road I was currently on because that particular road let straight into the inner circle. Policeman # 3 said I needed to go around the "inner circle" to the other side and come in from the back. Making sense so far??

Okay, so I start driving and it's pure chaos on the already ridiculous roads. This is when I began to get scared because other people were acting scared. I've learned that's how panic works... you see other people freak out and then you freak out and so on and so on... Strange, but it happened to me too... I didn't freak out, but I did become very, very focused on getting to my Poozie as quickly as possible.

The road turned into a video game. Do what you want and just don't hit anything or you lose your turn. Nobody was following rules, people were driving down sidewalks, honking from everywhere, bicyclists randomly riding places, the not-so-calming police plowing through traffic with their sirens and lights on... Eventually I got to the other side and met Policeman #4.

#4, who was a much older man, said, "No, you can't go this way." I explained that I had to pick up my two three year-olds who were were in the basement of their school." He told me to go back a road and try there. I stared at him and just said okay. As I was getting into my car I turned back and gave him my "mommy eyes" and said, "Please". He paused for a minute and said okay. I love you Policeman #4.

WHOO HOOO I was in. HA!

But not really, but at least it got easier because there was considerably less traffic inside the guarded "outer circle". :) But there were two more policemen I had to talk to and convince to let me through their individual barricade. Six policemen and one hour later, I made it to Andrea.

I had spent an hour trying so hard to get to little Poozie and her friend. I grabbed them both, gave them hugs, tossed them in the car, and then became rather focused on getting us all away from the dumb bomb.

We eventually made it home. My friend had picked up my other kids from school and we met at my house safe and sound, but a little traumatized from the entire event. :)

There you have it. Poozie's first WWII Bomb Experience ...mine too. :)

Michaela is 13!!!

Here she is in all her teenage glory. :)

I have a teenager, a real live teenager...

UGH. :) She does make me feel old, but on the other hand she makes me feel like I've accomplished something. I raised this kid for 13 years! Someone should throw ME a party. :)

Seriously.

Anyways, here they are... a group of teenagers. Not as scary as I once though, but that's just because my teenager picks nice teenagers to hang out with. I still believe that teenagers as a whole are pretty scary.

The girls hung out, watched movies, giggled, ate insane amounts of candy and chips, played all the games I used to play at sleep over parties, drank insane amounts of soda, bounced on the trampoline, giggled some more, and eventually went to sleep. Then they woke up and ate insane amounts of pancakes.

Teenagers are hungry, giggly people.

Here's the "cake". Michaela had a sushi party, so she got... sushi cupcakes ...which were handmade until 2am. :)

Stonehenge Adventure

Yes, we went to Stonehenge. :)

Once Paul flew in to meet us we decided that since we were only an hour away from Stonehenge that we should all go and see it.

Sounds simple enough, but the GPS was out to get us.

A certain person, who was not me but will rename nameless, used the GPS a week earlier and set it to "avoid major roads" ...and you can guess what happened.

We drove for two hours on the backroads of England, through the tiniest of towns/villages... some towns were even just one lane and to drive through the "town" we had to wait for a traffic signal so we could take turns with the traffic going the other way.

After two hours of driving through lovely little meandering roads we not seen a single sign for Stonehenge. We just kept following that dumb GPS ...until it's battery died and we realized the car chargers didn't work. Now we were two hours into the middle of nowhere England... and without a GPS. See the excitement of the situation?

Oh, but it gets better because it always does...

Andrea throws up.

All over. We had a change of clothes and we get her cleaned up.

Ten minutes later Scotty throws up. No change of clothes though...

...and we are still in the middle of nowhere England and still without a GPS.

So we stopped at a roadside pub to get out of the puke-mobile and take a break. We ate some British food. I had a jacket potato (baked potato filled with stuff), Happy and Sierra had fish and chips, and Michaela had this... it was called yorkshire pudding. The yorkshire pudding Happy's mom makes is WAY better. :)

At least we were in a country that spoke English, so as we were leaving I asked the bartender guy how to get to Stonehenge. He looked confused and said we were an hour away. HA! I explained to him that we were an hour out when we started nearly three hours earlier!

As he was trying to give me directions a guy drinking a beer at the end of the bar said he was headed that way and that we could follow him... So we followed a toothless drunk man to Stonehenge. ...but the toothless drunk man was very nice and was sure to drive slow for me so I could keep up... and he wasn't really drunk. :)

Please keep in mind I'm still on the wrong side of the road and the only one authorized to drive the rental car. WHEEEEE.......

We followed him most of the way and then we used Happy's cell phone's map to get us the rest of the way there. What a mess, but by then we were pretty determined to get there.

We finally saw a sign and had a small little celebration in the car. Turns out Stonehenge is right next to a "Major Road", that we could have followed straight from Ingrid's house... for an hour.

But we made it and got to see The England Countryside too.... :)

On the way home I got on the freeway towards London and refused to leave it. After disregarding a couple GPS directions to get off the freeway we finally figured out the dumb thing was set to avoid the only road we needed.

We were home at Ingrid's house just an hour later... (PS...For the ride home the GPS was only working because we found a charger in the trunk that worked... we had charged it while driving with Happy's phone.)

The End!