Minnesota is Heaven, But Virginia is Home

Of course, pictures are all messed around--Christmas Hanging out in Annika's new chair (thanks Chad & Heidi!) A little Grinch, decorating cookies (yes, I make them do it topless) Annika on Christmas morning New dishes! Now who could those be from? Two weeks ago, a statue on the Koenigstrasse, taken between bouts of screaming The Christmas pyramid, in our hotel room The Christmas tree, in our new apartment Donna, tell your boss that they can use this picture for advertisement! Eating messy cookies

It's been about a month since we've been without real, live, streaming internet at our residence. True, we had the internet cafe while we were in the hotel and I broke down a couple of times and paid the ridiculous 22 euro for 24 hours of connection in our room. Ah, those were good days. Then we moved onto the base and our only source of internet was at the library, where, apparently for security reasons, one is not allowed to view blogs. Don't ask what security is getting leaked from people looking at blogs...I haven't a clue. We were supposed to get this internet and phone thing done on Friday. I was counting down the days and planning on throwing a big party complete with shrimp and champagne to celebrate the return of the Internet. No dice. We waited all day long, paid two visits to the vendor in person and made several calls to their (not free) help line. Of course, we were told a different story every time we called. First, it was wait until 6:00 p.m., th...

I've shelled out another $25 to have the internet for a 24-hour period. It's totally worth it. I think I might pay $50 if they wanted it. However did we survive without the internet? It's such an addiction. My friends at J Crew, Gap and Gymboree were missing me...I don't want to think of all the great deals I missed out on while I wasn't connected. We had an OK weekend. Remember I said that we were going downtown to Stuttgart's shopping district, the Koenigstrasse? Oooooh, that was so not a good time. First of all, Hans and I were dumb enough to think that Josiah and Annika could do without a nap for one day. Silly, silly, silly us. We should have enough experience under our belts to know better than that. They were good on the train, but got crabbier and crabbier the longer we "shopped". They were probably feeling the stress of Mommy and Daddy, too, because duh--who goes shopping with a preschooler and a toddler two weeks before Christmas? Every stor...

I just finished reading Ian McEwan's Atonement and am on to a second book of his called A Child in Time . I'm sure many of you have heard of Atonement since it has been made into a recent film (one that is up for some Golden Globes, I see). I have to recommend it and very highly. Some of it is set in the British retreat from Dunkirk--the way that McEwan describes what the character is seeing and experiencing is absolutely riveting. I couldn't put it down. And there's a strange sort of twist at the end, something I've not encountered before that makes the reader really think and wonder what was real and what was fiction. Hopefully the movie will live up to the book. I am officially in love with all Haribo products. Haribo is a German company that makes gummi candy. It is soooooo good. And not overly sweet and hey--gummi candy doesn't have any fat! Whoo-hoo! I am currently washing a load of clothes in the very nice German washer. It takes about an hour to wash o...

The Rathaus in Tubingen Here are a couple of scenes from Tubingen. Not very good pictures, but you get the general idea. We definitely will need to invest in a better camera for this European adventure!

Josiah & Annika asleep at the hotel in Minneapolis "OK, I've put two pounds of sprinkles on this cookies, now how do I get it to my mouth ?" Josiah and his friend Logan at the Christmas beach party in Newport

Just one, because the computer in the room is ungodly slow and it will take about 22 minutes for one picture to upload. Here are Josiah and Annika in our suite, playing in a couple of the boxes that recently arrived from Newport. For some reason, Annika has a grouchy look on her face. Sometimes I think she doesn't like having her picture taken. Josiah, as usual, is working the camera like a chain-smoking, bulimic French model. Hope this sates the grandmothers...

See, the good part about the German keyboard is that I am not sitting here trying to figure out how to get an umlaut over letters. The u with umlaut is just part of the keyboard. I am having a hard time trying to figure out how to get an apotrophe, so bear with no contractions and a lot of I ams and do nots, OK? It is the best I can do right now... So, things are still going good. We have gotten cell phones...that was a big relief. I hate not feeling able to make phone calls or be connected to Hans when he's (oh, found the apostrophe) out and about, especially as we're trying to accomplish so much. The phones have already come in handy. Like when I was able to call Gen five or six times over the weekend. She never answered the phone. Not even, apparently, when I accidentally called her at 6 in the morning. Sorry about that, Badg. I think it was maybe a little closer to 7. I just wanted to hear her sweet little voice! Hmmm, what else? We passed a very pleasant weeke...

And please excuse any strange spelling mistakes as these German keyboards are different. Not overwhelmingly so, but the y and the z are in different places and that's enough to be very disconcerting...also, the apostrophe is in a strange place and there is only a shift key on one side. Well, I will make this short and sweet. I know that Hans e-mailed some of you. This is the first time I have been able to get down and use the computer. It is superexpensive to have internet in our room, so we come next door to this internet cafe. Travel went OK. Not great, but not horrible. The kids slept the majority of the flight from O'Hare to Heathrow. I think that the worst part was the wait at Heathrow with everyone feeling a bit punchy and just wanting to be done. It was a very quick flight from London to Stuttgart and our wonderful sponsor, Jen, was there waiting for us. She had rented us a car, a Mercedes station wagon, so we got everyone in and zoomed off to our hotel. Having...

I kind of love the word torpor. It's one of those whatchamacallit--words that sound like their meanings. Spellcheck is completely confused by my interpretation of that word, so if someone knows how to really spell "onamotapea", please let me know. I have to admit that that word kicks my butt. You all know I'm usually an excellent speller. Anyway, torpor. We spent the entire day today in our hotel room. Hans got out because the Vikings game wasn't being televised on any of the channels we get. Too bad, so sad. So he got to sit at the officer's club and drink beer and watch football. He's still watching football, seven hours later. I'm glad that the Vikings won, actually, that's good...keeps Hans in a decent mood. Ebullient, even. There, take that onamotapea!! Josiah, Annika and I had an excellent nap this afternoon. I know that I slept for at least an hour, the kids slept for closer to two. Tonight we'll try to get everyone to slee...

So I won't even try. I'm wondering if I have a whole host of new readers who "discovered" my blog while googling "huge sausages". Super. I have this fascinating way of putting my foot in my mouth, usually up past my knee. If I have a little, tiny, miniscule book listing the three times Hans has been wrong since I met him, Hans has a book the size of a thesaurus filled with all the awkward, bizarre and just plain stupid things I've said. I keep my pencil sharpened to write an entry in my book. He's on his third package of nicely sharpened #2s. Anyway. Our last Saturday in Newport. Annika is officially running a temperature today and threw up one more time this morning. The carseat has been painstakingly cleaned...seriously, it's a major undertaking to remove the cover from a carseat, untangle all the straps, wash it, clean all the gook and crud from the wells where stuff accumulates, then reassemble the whole thing, all the time praying t...

The title of this blog won't make sense to any of you and that's OK. We had supper tonight at 6:30 at a service plaza somewhere in the wastelands of Connecticut...we decided not to have McDonald's and instead braved the suspect Italian place. Hans got penne with sausage, I got ravioli with meatballs. I wasn't expecting much from a rest area Italian place, honestly, but at least we got a good laugh when Hans came over and revealed his penne with a huge, huge sausage on it. More like a bratwurst. He was expecting little bits of sausage in the sauce. I don't know why this was so damn funny, it just was... Maybe because we were exhausted from taking Frau Mathilde down to the port in New Jersey. The drive there was blessedly trauma-free. No terrifying tanker truck accients took place in front of us. We weren't stuck in horrific traffic on the George Washington Bridge in NYC, because we went a little further north and west to avoid it. We got to the vehicle processing...