BYE HOLLY

Holly is gone, but I've been so behind I didn't even mention she was here! :(

Holly's husband had to work in Denmark so she got to hang out with me for the week while he "slaved away at the office". :) We had a great time with Holly, she even babysat for two nights so I could go the back to school nights at school. :) Nice of her to fly in from Illinois to babysit!

She didn't come just to babysit of course, she really came to make cookies! She has the best recipe on earth for peanut butter cookies... and now I do! HOWEVER, I have been sworn to secrecy and as I'm typing this I hope I can remember where I "hid" the recipe. Now as I am typing this I am coming up with the plan to get some of the frozen cookies out of the freezer and cook some for Andrea and me. :) So yummy...

Our week:
Holly and her husband, Chuck, got to see the city on Monday... and Monday was cookie baking night while I went to the school. Sierra really enjoyed this and Sierra has been taught proper "rolling" and "squishing" and "timing" techniques.

On Tuesday Holly and I went on an adventure to Stade, which came highly suggested to us. So Tuesday morning, we dropped the kids off at school, entered Stade into the GPS, and off we went, with instructions to "park under the crane"! I was a little nervous because Holly is a world class traveler, but Stade was a huge success. We followed city center signs and found the crane and parked without any drama. It was the cutest town ever!! Andrea was an angel child that day too... walking everywhere and even sitting in the stroller for a bit. Oh, except for the nice German couple she scowled at when they mentioned she might be cold.

We even had time to get lunch, during which Andrea was an angel child again! THEN a super-cool friend collected my boy from school so we could go to the grocery store... Holly wanted to bring some things back to the states. HA! Who exports here?? She wanted chicken stock powder, tomato paste in a toothpaste container, and kinder eggs... and some other candy.

Guess which one is illegal in America?

Kinder Eggs. I wonder if she got them across the border okay? :)

Kinder Eggs involve an inedible CHOKING HAZARD inside the middle of an edible CHOCOLATE EGG. That's insanely dangerous. :) With this thinking they should quickly outlaw grapes and hotdogs because I think more kids choke on those.

SO.

Wednesday and Thursday Holly took off to Berlin. Friday we did some shopping and Andrea was a angel child again as we ate lunch at a Bagel place. I won't make any comments about Holly's husband showing up nearly four hours late to pick her up so they could drive to Copenhagen in time for an early morning Saturday flight to Norway! I was happy to spend some more time with her. I don't think she was excited about it since it meant a midnight arrival to DK.

Great week with a friend. Holly, you're welcome back anytime!!! We miss you!

Bye Bear...

Sierra left yesterday for the entire week. She went to Borgwedel, which is Northern Germany... duh. :)

Their class is going to learn about Vikings. I told her that her mom is an Honorary Viking because she gave birth in the viking country of Denmark. She just rolled her eyes at me because that's what ten years olds do when their moms try to be funny.

Anyways, it's always weird to be without a kid. Things do seem easier, but it's just strange and it always feels like something is missing, like I haven't done everything I need to do at the end of the day. It's like everytime I go somewhere I've forgotten something.

This trip Sierra wasn't allowed to bring a cell phone with her so I won't be able to talk to her for the week... which I think is a bit extreme, but I will send her secret messages through a mom I know that will be going so she knows I miss her and love her... :) I know she'll be fine. She's cool like that! :)

See you Friday BEAR!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME... and my MOM

My birthday was August 27th... My mom's was on the 30th... so Happy Birthday to us.

For my birthday I woke up, made the kids lunches, and got them all to school...

Then Andrea and I met a friend at the grocery store for coffee. :) I did all the shopping for Sierra's party.

I found a light bulb at the "home depot" for the broken night light that I had been trying to fix for four months.

I went home and Andrea took a nap. I almost took a nap with her, but decided to clean the house instead because I knew a cleaner house would make me happy.

I started making cakes for Sierra's birthday cake and realized I would be late picking the kids up. I called a friend who, in addition to her three kids, rounded up my three kids and brought them to the drive through pick up so I didn't have to get out my car. PS. It was pouring rain. PSS. It poured rain all day long.

Later that night my friend came to our house and watched the kids so Paul and I could go out to dinner. :) I ate my dinner while it was warm, I ate all of it myself, I even got dessert. :) When I got home the house was clean and decorated for Sierra's party the next morning.

I stayed up WAY too late making a cake for Sierra.

SO Happy Birthday to me and thanks to Shelly, the above mentioned friend. :)

OH, and my husband got me a gift certificate to a local spa ...and that makes me happy.

I called my mom for her birthday but I was really too tired to have a conversation. I think this next week will be easier...

Happy Birthday Sierra!

My BIG Bear! :)

She is TEN!

Her party was last weekend and it involved nine of her friends from school. They watched a movie, ate popcorn, and then we had some lunch. I took the easy way out and just had pizza delivered; however that required a German phone call so it wasn't exactly that easy. Of course before I made the phone call I asked the girls who spoke German and had one of them standing by in case I needed them to translate my order. :)

After lunch we dipped things in chocolate and covered them with sprinkles. Pretzels, Marshmallows, Gummy Bears, Cookies... those eventually gave way to filling spoons with chocolate and making "chocolate suckers"... and ended with just eating the chocolate right out of the pot. It was a giant mess, but was accompanied by lots of giggling so I think it was fun. I sent everyone home with a box (or two) of "things covered in chocolate".

I was a little scared of this party because I didn't know any of the friends and didn't know any of the parents... Plus older kids are kinda scary. :) It was good to get to meet her friends and get to hang out with them a little bit more.

I was surprised to see that some of her friends arrived in "party dresses". I guess it's fun to have somewhere to wear all these "fancy" dresses the girls like to wear... it was just surprising, that's all. :)

Making her cake was a mini-fiasco... I had envisioned something completely different, but the cakes never turn out how I imagine them. Yes, I did plan to lopsided tiers. :) My problem was that I tried to look into the correct way to do it instead of just making it up myself. I tried to cut it "correctly" and it ended up being a pile of crumbs, with cookies and wafers shoved in it to keep it's shape.

Then I tried to hide all the fiasco-y mess with frosting ...in the end I made three batches of frosting so that means three pounds of powdered sugar was involved in making this cake. :)

Dumb Weather

Here are my thoughts on the weather here in magical Germany.

My feet are cold. I have on jeans and a sweatshirt. It's pouring rain outside. It's August. So dumb. I'm freezing. August and I'm cold.

So very, very dumb.

The weather here is absolutely terrible. Why on earth do people choose to live in such a gray and cold place? Well I guess that's a stupid question because I happen to live here, but sometimes I think I'm a little stupid to agreeing to it. Why aren't there good jobs in warm places?

Yes, I realize this a pointless thing to complain about, but the laptop is warm on my lap.

I don't know if I'll make it this winter. It's August and I'm already tired of being cold. Time to start my insulation plan I guess, and we'll see if it helps, but I'm not too hopeful. This is so dumb to be so cold already. It's been raining for a week straight and that is getting a little old too.

I've tried to be welcoming of the cold weather and have the "oh-we-can-snuggle-under-blankets-and-sip-on-comfy-warm-soup" attitude, but let's be honest that there is no bright side of cold toes.

Watching TV and seeing people warm is depressing. Looking at pictures I've taken over the summer and seeing the sun and seeing us warm is depressing. Andrea even sees pictures of us in Canada at the cottage and asks for her life jacket... that's sad. I wonder if she will find her snow suit as enjoyable...

My insulation plan will start in Andrea's room. I will cover her windows with plastic and add another thick curtain to the window. I've also been saving egg cartons all year and I'm not opposed to stapling them onto the wall if necessary. Today while putting Andrea down for a nap I decided I'd just make every room a foot smaller on every wall and insulate it myself.

OK. I'm done. I won't complain anymore. I'll get off the couch and go something to take my mind off the miserable weather. Sitting here watching Happy's motocross races of people riding their bikes in the hot, bright sun sure isn't helping either. It actually makes me angry and resentful, that they are warm and I am not. That's probably not healthy. :)

If people say they like this weather they are lying. They are lying to make themselves feel better. I'll try lying to myself for a while though... but first I'm going to make some artichokes. That will require the stove to be on for an hour and that will make the kitchen warm... then I'll sit in there.

Well, I've amused myself for eight minutes here and I'm feeling a little better. Not warmer, just better...

:)

Happy Birthday Scotty!

My little boy is FIVE! :) Five seems so old. :( I miss my four year old Scotty, but I think the five year old one should be fun.

His party was fun. We invited his best friends from school over. Clay and Franklin and his brother Oliver are American, and Koh is from Japan. They were an active group of little people. :)

For lunch we had corn dogs. WAY BETTER than my last attempt because I had bought the super-mega-deep-frier the day before. After discussing corn dogs in great deal with another poor American mom we decided that oil temperature was crucial for a good corn dog, and fixing this problem required a HUGE $150 kitchen appliance. Great. At least they tasted good. :)

Then we threw water balloons off the balcony. :) I thought the boys would like to throw balloons at Michaela and Sierra, but in the end they wanted us to throw them at them. Andrea had a great time tossing them off the balcony one after the other too. Oh, and we lost the big red bowl over the balcony too. That was sad.

We played on the trampoline. Holding bubbles. Holding bubbles was a trick so they would stop the unreal screeching that made me ears cry.

We hunted for hidden lego toys. Then we built them. That was a nice quiet moment.

We opened presents and ate cake. Scotty liked his cake. Making his cake was stressful and required a cute engineer to step in and help. It also required a paper towel roll... and some masking tape. It also required me staying up until midnight. It was worth it though, Scotty loved it.

Their families came over and we ate spaghetti. Then everyone left. :)

Squish it in the Suitcase

Few people have seen the packing fiascoes I create for myself. This is one of them. It could be an app for the iPhone. ...Fit all this stuff into the last allowed suitcase. Oh, and stay within the 50 pound weight limit. :)

I tried.

I did pay ($50) for an extra checked bag because we brought home my guitar for Michaela who wants to take lessons. Better than 50 euros a month to rent one...

Anyways, I packed all the suitcases myself. Better this way I learned because of the fact that I also UNpack them, my dear husband doesn't know what exactly I've bought because he may not understand WHY I've bought what I have. It's better he's not involved. :) hee hee...

I weighed each one using a stand on scale which when we got to the airport I realized was off by five pounds. So every bag was overweight by five pounds. Super. AH HA! I had thought ahead. Because I'm super packer.... I had put at least two cake mixes or frostings in each suitcase knowing that if I was overweight I would just have to pull out a cake mix or two since they are heavier than one thinks. I figured that worst case I would leave behind a $2.00 cake mix. After adjusting the weight of all my luggage though I now had a pile of cake mix I had to... leave behind?? No way, I couldn't do it. I opened two boxes and shoved them into the guitar case, but I still have 5 boxes and some frosting I couldn't bear to part with.

But. In Canada, they check your luggage in and tag it, but YOU carry it through customs and put it on the conveyor belt yourself. So now I'm in a customs line with all my suitcases... Soooooooooo..... I opened up my bags and put my cake mix back in. My new super trick for flying out of Toronto. :)

Here is how I justified it:

I emotionally couldn't leave the cake mix. They were too important. I was going to end up carrying them on somehow. Bottom Line - The Cake Mix Was Coming. AND if it was coming then it would be on the plane -SO- Either way the plane was going to carry my cake mixes. Who cares if it's in the stowed luggage section or in the overhead compartment? It's the same weight, just in a different spot and I don't suffer as much. With my new way of thinking I also took some heavy books from my bag and tossed them into a checked suitcase too.

Now that I had this new logic going in my head, I also decided that people should get a weight allowance per ticket. Each ticket is allowed 250 pounds. You and your carry ons can weigh 200 pounds, and your checked bag can weigh 50 pounds = 250 pounds per person. Well, I only weigh 105 pounds so that means my bags can all weigh 145 pounds. Andrea only weighs 20 pounds so she gets a bag that weighs 230 pounds. I believe this is a perfectly reasonable argument. I wonder who I should talk to about it.