Ich bin Frau Happy

Look. Parking spots for girls. Cool huh?

...and they are wider. :)

Flat foot?

Here is Bear. Her paw hurts.

After the summer Sierra's foot started hurting. It looked like her right foot had another ankle bone sticking out under the real ankle bone. She kept complaining so I finally decided she had a problem and I took her to the doctor a couple weeks ago.

The doctor immediately sent me to the surgeon ...and told me to hurry because they closed in an hour.

Scary huh?

Not really though ....although I spent the next hour thinking a surgeon was going to have to cut open Sierra's foot and remove whatever funky growth she had ... it turns out "surgeon" was a word that was "lost in translation". I think it the doctor was more a bone doctor of some sort.... but he was definitely not a surgeon. :)

After waiting for an hour in the waiting room filled with people with casts on it was finally our turn. The doctor looked at Sierra's foot for 18 seconds and said, "She has a flat foot." Well, he didn't really say that, it was more like a sad game of charades with a mix of my German and his English, and a lot of pointing ...and in the end I guessed that Sierra had a flat foot and that was making her leg bone rest differently on her one foot which caused the bone to poke out at a slight angle ....which was putting pressure on the inside of her foot. Oh.

Her foot looked fine to me. ??

Anyways, the not-surgeon-doctor gave me a prescription for a pair of custom fitted inserts for her shoe and the next day we went and had custom fitted inserts made for her shoes. Simple enough. We'll see how it works out, but it's not looking good. The inserts raise her out of her shoes all together so I think this will require some new shoes too. Too bad those aren't also free with the super cool medical insurance we have.

I also think that her foot was made angry by wearing flip flops all summer and that if she just started wearing normal shoes with good support then maybe it would solve the problem all together.

It's always something... I'm also in the process of removing a "wart" from the bottom of Poozie's big toe, but I'm pretty sure it's not a wart. I'll try, but if nothing happens it's a visit to the dermatologist.

Still makes me smile to get free everything and free medicine for kids under 12 ...made me smile until I realized Michaela turns 13 in a couple weeks. Hope KE doesn't get sick. :)

Volleyball Bear

Sierra is doing Volleyball again and she is really good!!

Turns out volleyball last year was more of a learning year for her ...because aside from the traumatic Danish Volleyball lesson in 2008, she had never really played before.

But this year is her second year on the ISH Volleyball team and I'm super proud of her. She is scoring points with her serves and returning the ball and calling "Mine" when it comes near... She's awesome.

She went to Dusseldorf a few weeks ago for a game and this past weekend we had two girls from Holland stay with us when they played here. In a few days she will go to Amsterdam to play and her last away trip will be back to The Hauge in Holland for the tournament and I think we will have to go along to watch now that she plays more of the games. :)

Good job Bear!

I hate this tree.

The BEECH TREE.

I hate this tree in the Spring when it's leaves turn a depressing brown ...a brown that some delusional people like to refer to as "purple" to make the tree seem a little more exotic.

I hate this tree in the Summer when it's brown leaves turn to a dark green similar to that of lake scum.

I hate this tree in the Fall when it creates these seed thingys: E V E R Y W H E R E

What a wonderful joy of nature this tree is.

Today I spent nearly three hours straight cleaning up after the two enormous, ugly trees in my front yard. I filled two garbage cans and ten big plastic bags full of these stupid seed thingys.

...and as I cleaned and raked and mowed and scooped; the stupid little seed thingys kept bouncing off my head.

I can't wait until all of its never-pretty leaves fall off. I'm done with the dumb tree.

The ironic part here is that we just bought real furniture ...a dining room set complete with a big table, side board, bookcase, and eight really cool looking chairs. All wood. :) hee hee

My new dining room furniture was made from the "core of German beech trees". HA! I will now love my new furniture even more because we have helped to kill off some of these frustrating trees. :)

I had no idea what kind of trees these were until this afternoon when I finally whined to a neighbor. She said it was a birch tree, but when I googled the picture to post here I realized she meant beech trees. Little translation problem, but I'm pretty impressed she came up with birch at all.

:) Maybe I should order some more beech tree furniture. :)

Ewwwww.....

I've recently wondered why there were so many pigeons hanging around our yard. I think it's because of these lovely little creatures.

Maybe little isn't the right word... I've never seen such big slugs before. Santa Cruz had the banana slugs, but these German slugs are gross! This one was was nearly as big as Scotty's foot.

Yucky huh? It gets better. Just imagine running one over with a lawnmower, or tagging the end of one with your car as you drive in the driveway, or better yet.... stepping on one as you take the garbage out. Disgusting enough yet?

Now I feel bad for saying how gross the slugs are. The slugs on their own are not gross. It's when they get squished and their sluggy guts go everywhere that things get a bit disgusting.

Thought I should share... :)

Birthday Season is over!

We are officially done with August birthdays! That was hard work. :)

Scotty had his birthday party today, Sierra's was last weekend. My birthday was somewhere in there...

This year I did kinda cheat though ...not with the cakes, because we have some strict standards around here concerning birthday cakes. I cheated on the parties. :)

Sierra wanted to have her party at an indoor swimming pool and Scotty wanted to go to an indoor play place. So we traded some money for our sanity and decided to let the kids run free somewhere other than our own home.

Scotty's Party: 23 kids, 4 hours.

I would have never survived without my husband and the nice parents who helped me. Go Team!

The highlight of the party was Daddy. Paul was flinging kids all over the place and they loved it. He was also throwing giant foam pieces at them so hard that they fell over ...those crazy kids couldn't get enough. Even the little girl who only spoke Russian kept tugging on Happy's arm for more. :) It was hilarious/scary.

The cake had some definite problems while being made, as they all do. It basically broke into crumbs and I had to search around the kitchen for other things to frost. It was a mess, but in the end it turned out okay. There were so many kids at the party I had to make a spaceship AND a Moon. :) This worked out okay because the Moon on it's own kinda looked like a hairball/turd.

Sierra's Party: 13 girls, 4 hours

Michaela was my helper during this party. She was a great big sister and I hope Sierra realized it. :) She helped with organizing people, clearing plates, handing out cake, and even skipping cake when there wasn't enough to go around. Thanks KE.

The only scary part about this party was that I was dealing with 11 year old girls who are scary enough on their own, but now I was dealing with a German speaking Pool. It took some time to figure it all out, but again, my mastery of the German language pulled through. :)

Here are the girls...

Here they are again...

...and not a lifeguard in sight so it was a free for all. Just little ole me down at the bottom of the slide pleading with them to be careful as they sprinted past me and back up the stairs for another ride.

These 13 girls kinda ran the pool while we were there. It was like a little mob of English speaking chaos running from area to area. They stopped at the deep diving pool for a while and took turns jumping off the 3 Meter platform and yelling things to Sierra like, "Sierra is awesome", "Happy Birthday Sierra", "We love you Sierra"

It was cute and when it was time to go the girls started singing Happy Birthday to her for the whole pool to hear. :) Very cute and it made me happy.

Since Sierra just made the Volleyball team I decided to make her a relatively easy Volleyball cake. :) (Not sure why, but the picture insists on being sideways so tilt your head and move on.) PS. It wasn't that easy... I dare you to draw a volleyball, it's harder than it looks! :)

So for a while my kids are now 12, 11, 6, and 3 ...and that makes me 34!

Das ist mein schultüte!

The first day of first grade is a huge deal to Germans. Parents take off work, get dressed up, and escort their kid to school ....AND the kid also gets a schultüte!

Thanks to my mastery of the German language I know that schultüte means school bag, although it looks more like a schule-waffle-cone.

The good parents, such as myself, buy a plain carboard cone and decorate it themselves. The slacker parents buy a pre-made cone that comes covered in sponge bob or pirates pictures, which seem to be the only two boy themes acknowledged in Germany. :) Of course, I think the best-est of parents probably form the cone themselves from a piece of poster board.

So being in the second-to-best parent category, I bought a plain yellow cone; and being in the busy-mom category, I made Happy decorate it with little dirt bike people going in circles. I guess this technically made Daddy the good parent here. :)

I saw other schultütes had felt on the top and bottom so trying to fit in, I put some felt on and stuffed it full of school supplies, a toy, and a piece of candy. :)

At first The Boy didn't want to bring it to school because it's a giant pain in the butt to carry and you can't set it down anywhere. German engineers did fine at making a BMW, but perhaps a Schule-box would have been a little more reasonable shape for a six year old to deal with. However, as soon as he got to school he saw that some other kids had cones and he was suddenly very proud of his.

This is my son, who within three minutes of being in his new classroom, was sitting at a table drawing a dirty bubble. Don't ask....