Well, there’s nothing like a little trip to Prague to interfere with good blogging intentions.  We visited the Czech Republic last week – it was a good trip full of beautiful sights:

This was real! The water was moving and everything.

 and good friends:

Kiddos on the Metro.

and a couple of smells, but we won’t focus on that…Anyway, it’s taken me most of this week to get back into the spirit of blogging and also I haven’t yet called Simone and she’s going to kill me. 

Simone, the German lady who lives next door has become such the part of our lives.  I call her my third mother (I already have a mother and a step-mother) because, well, she is.  She’s got the whole motherly thing going one even though she’s almost the same age as I am.  She’s excellent at it and meets all motherly criteria – she lives close – like mothers like to do if they can, she’s always baking things and bringing them over, and she has the grandmotherly superpower of not thinking my kids are ever being terrible, awful little urchins.  She also has those motherly mannerisms and passive agressive ways about her that, while endearing, tend to drive a ”kid” up a wall  - she expects to be called, she can hang around a little long and she’s all WAY up in my stuff with better suggestions on how I can do everything.  But have I mentioned she brings cookies over?

We play a game.  She loves to ask me about my things  - anything – and if it’s an American thing, she’ll get that look someone has when they eat something that’s a little “off” and helpfully suggest the German equivalent which, if you didn’t know this already, is ALWAYS better.  Her particular favorite thing to set me straight on is household cleaning supplies.  For example, she’ll say – Sally, what are you putting in your dishwasher when you run it?  And I’ll say…um…dishwashing detergent?   She’ll counter with -  American or the German kind?  And when I gulp and tell her American, she always winces as if she feels sorry for me that I don’t know any better.  Then, while shaking her head, she’ll launch into a 33 point diatribe on the benefits of German versus American dishwashing fluid.  Then to back up the point, I’ll find a box of it dropped secretly on my doorstep sometime in the week following.   She has done this with  my dish sponge (oh, Sally, you DON’T…),  my kitchen towels, my flour, my coffee creamer (“the GERMAN kind always lists the percentage of real cream in the cream half of the half-n-half – why is the American kind so vague?”), my appliances,  my laundry soap and oh so many more things that I can’t remember right now.

Paul says that the Germans like to think of us as the futuristic humans in Wall-E, the kids movie.  For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, in the movie Earth had been made uninhabitable long ago (except for robots) and the humans all went into space to live.  They had to float around in completely automated space cruiseships, and over thousands of years, since everything was automated, evolution turned us into gelatinous short-limbed blobs that would just propel ourselves around in reclining chairs and order the ship’s computer to wake us at noon and make us our double tall mochas with extra whip.  Unfortunately the humans were then relocated to Germany where they had to learn to actually DO things!  With our arms and stuff!  They didn’t know about such things as mixers, or yeast, or butchers or good laundry soap.  We just always did what the computers said, but now we have a Simone to set us straight.  Again, I go along with this part because she brings BAKERY!  To my house!

So I have to call her to check in. 

I have a lot to do in general.  I have to buy presents.  I have to clean the house.  And pressing on me is the feeling that I have to get to the gym this month.  It’s Christmas, yes, but still.  I’ve been fighting a losing battle with a flu for about a month now, and I’m not drinking water and I just feel…I don’t know…gelatinous I guess.  I need activity to loosen all this…me…up.   But I need help. I need motivation.   What do you do to get motivated to move, to sweat-to-the-oldies, power walk, lay on a giant ball, or whatever it is you do?  Someone – give me something to get me up and going.  

But for now…COMPUTER!  MOCHA!

I have longer hair though.

A Google search for “Radonich Ranch” produced these wonderful photos of another wedding at the ranch this past August. These photos really set the tone that Josh and I are trying to achieve, and I thought you’d enjoy seeing them. Look for the “lianne + jeong” wedding; it is about half way down on this page. Enjoy!

Photos taken by JL Photografia

Photo by the incredible Vasna Wilson

Our wedding planner Marky Carr sent me this incredible video of a wedding that was held at the ranch on August 8th, 2009. It makes me even more excited and pleased with our location selection! The ranch is just stunning. Enjoy!

That was phonetic. 

St. Martin’s Day was celebrated last week on Friday (in our village).  I had never heard of this holiday, but when I received the invitation from Griffin’s kindergarten with a date and time on it, I knew I’d have to study up.  They gave me the pamphlet with music all over it and said, “Maybe you come und sing vit us fur Sahnt Mahtin?” 

I bristle when I get pieces of paper from Kindergarten with dates and times on them because I know they are expecting me to go somewhere where there will be other parents.  When we are at these events, we get the “grandparent that needs a Miracle Ear” syndrome,  where Grandpa is there in the room and the family is socializing, all having a conversation, but he’s off in the corner and kind of zoned out, so he’s not really THERE, there.  That’s us – we’re there physically but that’s it.  We can’t understand anyone, and for a while, like Grandpa does, we strain and stretch our imagination and limits to try to pick out a familiar word here or there and maybe we’ll even try to say something once or twice.  It’s usually not relevant or even understood, so we end up off by ourselves in a corner getting the feeling that they’re all talking about putting us in a nursing home, but not really knowing for sure.  It makes for a tense and paranoid evening.  But then she added, “Zer will be a fire, und the gluhwein too, so we hopes to see you zeyre!”  Now wait a minute – she said gluhwein so that changed everything.  Like Grandpa, when you add a little alcohol to an awkward evening, it can only help.  And gluhwein is my current love – it’s a hot, spiced, usually red, wine that they simmer in kettles and ladle out in mugs at outdoor events here in the Germany.  Sweet, warm and Christmasy - like Santa pee!

St. Martin’s Day is celebrating…yes…that’s right…St. Martin!  It’s a kind of celebration/reenactment thing.  St. Martin (drop the St. at this point) was a Roman soldier and very kind.  The legend says that one day he was riding through a village and spotted a freezing beggar in the streets.  He ripped his cloak in half and gave half to the beggar.  What a guy. Later, The Church made him a Bishop and (also legend), he accepted this position rather reluctantly – The Church actually had to hunt him down by lantern light in the night because  St. Martin was all, “Noooo I don’t wanna be a Bishop!”  and The Church was all, “Oh THERE you are!  We can see you with our Lanterne – now go! Be a good Bishop and we’ll all re-enact this someday!”

The celebration, which mainly involves the children of the village,  goes like this:  You meet at the church and there’s a brief service (brief because every child in the village is there and you can’t hear anything), followed by a trek through the streets with music and lanterns (held by the kids) to a big bonfire party at the Kindergarten.   

So we met at our village’s church, which reminded me of somewhere they might hold a witch trial.  The church is in the middle of town, and rather run down looking, and inside it’s just plain white walls and honey colored oak pews and accents.  The bell tower functions just fine (it’s always sounding the time at 15 minute increments), and about 15 minutes before the celebration, we heard the bells summoning us to the church – kind of cool.  It’s never called US before! We walked down and soon saw everyone else coming from all over Mackenbach.  Please view the video to the right to hear the stern German church guy (Pastor?  Father?  I have no idea) giving his sermon – I just so loved his voice – he had that stereotypical Colonal Klink voice – the Angry German voice – we all know it.  Seemed out-of-place at this kid-oriented thing.  And since we couldn’t understand him, we could only imagine what he was saying to the kids…

NOW YOU CHILTREN LIZZEN TO ME!  IF YOU ARE NOT GOOD LITTLE KINDER VOR YOUR MUTTERS AND FATTERS, VEE VILL COME FOR YOU VIT DEESE LANTERNS AND BEAT YOU VIT DEM OVER YOUR NOGGENS UNTIL YOU COMPLY! *

It didn’t seem to be scary though because there was some laughing and funny stuff happening.  I think.

So here’s a picture of the boys with their lanterne (lantern-a) about to go down to the church…

We bought Cameron's Lanterne, but Griffin made his at Kindergarten.

Griffin had been studying the songs for awhile at school, and I punched them out at home on the piano a few times and sang along on the walk to the Kindergarten. 

The crowd with their lanterne and 4-piece brass band making our way across the village.

 And finally we made it to the bonfire party – there was Gluhwein, Kinder-Punch (gluhwein for kids), brats (of course), and two kinds of pretzels (bretzel).  And Lo!  There were many American families there who either lived in the village or had kids in other classes at the Kindergarten.  Who knew.  No matter – after a couple mugs of gluhwein I was brave enough to talk a little of the German to some tolerant elders at the fire.  I will elaborate more on how the language thing is going, but I’ll just sum this night up as a victory in that department.  The kids ran around with each other in the pitch blackness over rocks and near fire, the eltern drank and ate and socialized, there was a somewhat elaborate re-enactment in there somewhere (if the video loads, it will be down by the church one soon) and it made us feel at one with our village in a way we hadn’t experienced before.  A sense of camaraderie and kinship and a sense of Father Church being ever-present (there is no separation of church and state here – the Kindergartens are all run by the churches) was there in a way we don’t get in American towns.  Trick or treating is the closest thing we have to it, I suppose.  As you might know, we would definitely not describe ourselves as religious, but I appreciate how going to religious services can make “many feel like one”.  This event had that feeling to it.

Later, Paul was scolded by the attending fire dept for letting some German kids too close to the fire. As if he was with them.

Look Out St. Martin! Me and my ducky light are coming for YOU!

* I’m sure that by writing these things out like this, or saying Colonal Klink or whatever that it’s offensive to some, but I’m intending for it to be offensive to me and my kind and not to Germans.  I’m doing this for effect and from the standpoint of us – the stupid Americans that don’t know any better and are bewildered at everything – we hear it that way, it doesn’t really sound that way.  For the record, I think German is gorgeous, contrary to what I thought before I took the time to learn a little.  It’s musical, and intricate and exact and very beautiful.  I can’t wait to learn it well and have “an American accent”.

And oh, I’m totally not telling how he did this – don’t even ask me.  I especially like how he almost loses interest in the middle of the reappearance trick – he’s the magician for the love of pete! 

Nothing Up His Sleeves

The other day I saw a partridge.  And do you know where it was?  Well, DO YOU?  Yep - it was sitting in a mother-f**king pear tree.  I don’t make this stuff up.  This is where it all comes from, people.  This is all your storybooks, all your beloved songs.  Every day.  Here.

***

I always love when I find food items at their source.  My favorite thing to grow in my gardens every year is potatoes because it’s like unwrapping a present.  A really dirty one (and by dirty I mean dirt covered, and not this).   Uncovering the little brown globes in the earth gives me a rush every time.  Boring?  Not to me.  I have to embrace it because the glee generated by these things can’t be hidden and is already well documented.  I have previously dedicated a post to my neighbor’s cherry tree (how do I track back?  Someone?), and I have spent many hours online googling things like “where to find and dig wild ramps in Dayton, Ohio” or “Wild Ohio Mushrooms Non Hallucinagenic and Edible”.  If I owned a pig I’m sure I would have attempted truffle hunting at least once because that is right up my alley (yes – I know it’s a special pig and a specific geographical location, but you never know – has anyone truffle hunted in Ohio yet?  They COULD be there!).    So upon moving here, I was delighted to find a whole new batch of foodish items previously only found at my local Kroger

GROWING!    HERE!    IN THE WILD!   

And that, ladies and gents, makes my heart beat madly.  Ka-thump.

In mid summer shortly after we moved here to our house, we went walking and I collected the below all within 50 yards of this house:

!!!!!

If you shake it, they will fall.

Griffin is always riding shotgun on my foraging escapades.

The Starting Tents

If only all exercise was like this...

The previous week, my energies had been focused on finding figs at local markets.  Our German neighbor who I’ve become very fond of excitedly informed me that plums?  Plums were so last week and that now!  AT LAST! it was fig season!  Me (wide eyed):  <blink! blink!>  I had to find them, but I was distracted from beginning my quest by last Saturday morning’s soccer game.  We parked, and were hiking to the field when a chestnut tree (YES!) caught my eye, rather, the debris UNDER the tree caught my eye.  The spiney thorny coverings of chestnuts had DROPPED, earlier than I had expected, because you see I had been tracking these babies for months now and I thought I had at least another couple weeks.  Well, I picked up as many as I could find, and intended to go back the next day (with gloves and a pail) to the hidden grove of chestnut trees on the East end of the base that I had gotten wind of.  The next day was the wine walk so I didn’t go.

Toward the end of the walk, we happened upon a boy selling these chestnuts from a wagon.  500 Grams  - 2 Euro said the sign.  Me:  <blink! blink!>

I bought 500 grams.  Here they are along with the others I had picked up the previous day:

OK so I haven’t made them yet.  They’re sitting on the counter because every day I find a creepy crawly thing in the dish that wasn’t there the previous day so that means they’re comin out of…and the thought of eating these is a little, well…I’m not there yet. 

But the point is, I’m just so very smitten with it all, and I can’t wait to see what each new month, each new season brings because we haven’t even hit the charming ones yet!  I’ll bet Christmas just puts me over the edge.   I may end up buying a goat and making my own cheese or something.  I want to own this charm, to make it mine and soak it up.  Is anyone still reading? 

<sigh>…a partridge…in a pear tree…

So yes – saving the drafts -good plan from now on.  I’m still wiping the tears from my eyes.

Some of the Lately from Germany:

* Cameron the Third Grader!  He started school and is doing quite well – he catches his German Tour Bus in the center of Mackenbach each morning at 7:30 and comes home at 3:30 – it’s a long day, but he seems to be, well, not blossoming exactly, but rather something cooler sounding and less feminine.  You know what I mean.  He’s been invited to a couple b-day parties already and has some boys he calls friends and they all play soccer (foosball) at recess.  His teacher has informed us that he’s a little ahead, and he will most likely be reviewing until around Christmas time – thank you Beavercreek Schools  *smooch*.   He also plays soccer with the 9-10 league on base – he’s adopted a position, mainly because no one else is too hot on it – goalie.  It was all going swimmingly too (mainly because  the ball stayed away from his side)  until Saturday’s game (he was wearing his new goalie gloves and everything) when four got by him.  He was pulled.  They won – 5-4.  So now he’s bent on practicing whenever he can.  You can find him gloved-up and out back throwing a ball against the garage and stopping it on the rebound with hands, feet and head.  Good for him – he’s not giving up.

 * Griffin is starting kindergarten (German Kindergarten) on 1 October after a grueling process in which I went around to every village asking if I could enroll him in their kindergarten.  I had virtually no success and many outright failures along the way – it’s not easy to enroll an American in a German school.  They don’t really like us barging our way into their good thing and taking up spaces.  How do I know?  Well they pretty much told me “We don’t like Americans barging into our good thing and taking up our spaces”.  Or maybe it was more like, “NO AMERICANS!!” sometimes followed by the sound of a slamming door.  That’s right – it was more like that.  So (in the unlikely instances the door was still open) I’d politely nod my head in understanding after whatever version of  “Hell, no!” I got, and request I go on a “waiting list” (invisible) and if any spots opened up would they please contact me <backing away>, and thank you so very much <waving German flag>.  Then I would go out to my car and weep for about an hour, and YO! onto the next village!  It went like that for the last 60 days and well I guess one of the invisible waiting list was real and it’s right here in my own village.  They said they have a spot for him and though it’s part time (7:15 – 12 daily) it’s a spot!  I met with the administrators and his teachers and they’re delightful.  Tolerant and patient, they seem to be looking forward to him starting there – they even will speak a little English to him to help him out – at first.  I expect him to be well versed in German by this time next year.  German kindergarten is structured like a montessori school – each child learning at their own pace with minimal “teaching” – more like highly supervised play.  This month, for example,  they’re studying the apfel (apple).  They do cooking projects and art projects and studies involving apples.   Cute. 

* We’ve had multiple visitors!  My Dad came by on the tail-end of their European vacation cruising the Canal Du Midi  in Southern France.  With stops on both ends in Paris, they are all Frenched up now.  We had three crazy precious days with them and the kids were out of their head thrilled with Grammie and Grandpa being here.  We squeezed in lots somehow – a soccer game, two really nice German dinners in local villages – one with a schnapps tasting – and a full day in Heidelberg.  We pulled Cameron out of school for that one (educational field trips are EXCUSED absences here).  We shopped all morning, savored delicious seasonal pumpkin soup for lunch, and then boarded the funiular and toured the amazing castle that looms over Heidelberg.  I took Griffin to see them off on their train back to Paris (the super high speed ICE train) and he’s still talking about it.  They’ll be back in the winter of 2011 to stay longer this time. 

Our second visitors just left yesterday – my friend from Hawaii  ”C” and her friend “D” flew in from London where they’re stationed for the weekend – our big bazaar was going on at the base here, and C comes in every year to shop and this time we were Home Base.  I hadn’t seen her in about five years and I was giddy.  We met soon after we all moved to HI – the husbands worked together and got on well, and we had kids the same age so we all started doing touristy things together.  They’re relentless travelers and we tend to get stuck in the mud so they’re good for us, plus they’re crazy fun and for some reason they tolerated us so we were hooked.  C and I branched off from there and towards the end we were hanging out almost every day – we worked out, golfed and just watched television together on occasion.  For Paul and I, that time in Hawaii grew even more precious when we looked back on it – we haven’t had that nice of an arrangement before or since and we miss it.  It was not entirely incidental that we wanted to move to Germany NOW because they were out here in England.  It was a fun couple of days,  C’s friend D was a delight – funny and sarcastic – my favorite combination.  Lots of shopping, eating, and drinking later (holy crap – after a full day of walking and shopping, they stayed up ALL night to watch the Texas Tech game on Saturday finally going to sleep at 5:30 am! – I could not keep up with that and crashed at about 3:45 – I don’t know if I should feel young or old)  they were back on the plane to London yesterday morning.  Next time we see them will be in Prague for Thanksgiving.  

Other that that?  Same old, same old.

Grandpa and Cameron's Table Art Tree Masterpiece was created at our villages restaurant Saturday night. They meticulously worked on it the entire time.

Holy f’ing f.  I just spent 1.5 hours writing a massive post, and poof!  It disappeared.  I must go cry now.  More tomorrow.

Enjoy yourselves.

Windchimes on the back patio

I’ve been in a bit of a swoonie honeymooning period with this house and cleaning it.  In fact I haven’t cleaned it. What!  Cleaning involved anger and hate and I’m just not there with this place yet – why ruin a beautiful relationship? Seeing that we just moved in only three whole weeks ago now, and that cleaning tends to get in the way of my other ambitions such as yelling and having cocktails, and seeing that the previous tenants hired a team of cleaning folk that were nothing if not meticulous, spending at least 72 GMA’s (German Man Hours=103 American) scrubbing the ever-loving HELL out of this place, well frankly I just didn’t feel the need.  The other day an unfortunate incident with a spider turned my attention to a corner of a room where dust bunnies were not only beginning to accumulate but were swirling and leaping around amongst one another as if they were starring in a ballet entitled Sally – It’s Called a Vacuum, and as I watched their grotesque movements, open-jawed,  my wall of leisure came crashing down upon me bon-bon over bon-bon. 

We came from Tiny House (did you ever see that commercial depicting a new (fake) reality show where full grown people would have to live in a house seemingly designed by Little Tykes?) and this, while not  mansion-esque, is definitely an upgrade.  I barely managed to clean Tiny House, and when I took stock of my situation that other day, a bubbling panic rose within me.  How am I going to keep this place clean?  Where do I start?  I AM NOT BUILT FOR THIS!  The latter means not that I CAN’T clean a house, but for example,  my methods of cleaning Tiny House went something like:

Step One:  Notice something was dirty.

Step Two: Clean it.

Step Three:  Repeat until distracted.

And even if I WAS distracted, a few little cleaning tasks in Tiny House made every difference, and if I wasn’t distracted, I could pretty much do a bang-up company-worthy cleaning job “from filth to fit” in less than three hours.  Here?  Um…no.  So I did what every fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants (what does that even mean?) girl (that also hates to clean) does – I spend vast amounts of time avoiding ACTUALLY cleaning the house by inventing a scientific process that if followed, will keep this house in a constant state of order.

While Paul reminds me in his ever-so-special condescending way he reserves just for me that A System Is Only As Good As Its Implementor, I throw back my head and laugh at him – HA HA HA! – because I know for sure that my system is WAY better than the one who will implement it.   So THERE.

So first!

I made pages of lists of tasks by room and then sorted them into how often each task had to be done to fool people into thinking the house was clean, erring on the side of FOOLING PEOPLE.

Second! 

I grouped all Daily, 3x Weekly, Weekly, 2x Weekly and Monthly tasks…

Then Last!

I plugged it all into Outlook as appointments and changed their recurrance as I needed to SOOO every day, I can check that day’s task list and see what I need to do…

I kept some days lighter than others, and weekends very light.  That means some days are extremely daunting to look at, but I’m now in the middle of week 3 and I have to say that the house is generally looking good so I’m happy.

Wow.  Did I really just write a post about how I clean my house?  Yeah, guess so, but honestly it was a big deal for me.  Some people either are very naturally in tune with how to effectively clean a house, or like it or something (come here – let me slap you) and some people are organized enough to fake it.  I am neither, and plus I get paralyzed when I know I have a lot to do -  I can’t move when I see all that stuff out and so very messy.  So I do the fingers in the ear LA LA LA thing until the panic passes and I go back when I can cope.  I do catch myself avoiding, thankfully, and fix it before it gets really bad.  I think those people that are on Oprah who have all their newspapers and mail from the last decade sitting on their kitchen table have those same tendencies – they avoid because it’s all too much for them to just do something, to begin.  So they do nothing.  For a very long time or forever.   Or, until Oprah comes over.  But I don’t think she comes overseas to help people, so let’s hope The System continues to work for me.

Just a straight-up post here – Legoland – it was fun!

We took a trip last Sunday and Monday down to the Bavarian state and spent two partial days cowering from the blazing hot sun at Legoland.  Where were these lovely mid-seventies temps we are so accustomed to now?  It was 90 easy.  Awful.  Terrible. Evil hot.  Anyway, Legoland was for the most part, a blast for Cameron who is now tall enough to ride any rides they have there.  The rides at Legoland can’t really compare to a King’s Island type of amusement park though – for anyone over 12 or 13, they would be a snooze.  But this was Cameron we’re talking about who usually finds carousels a bit much – he was thinking himself quite the extreme ridesman by the time we were all done.

They also had something called Mini-Land at Legoland and they are specific to whatever region Legoland is in.  Ours, Germany, had 1/20 scale reproductions of entire cities in Germany and surrounding countries BUILT ENTIRELY OF LEGOS!  Paul found his car amidst one of the reproductions. 

There was Berlin, Frankfort, a Swiss village, Venice, etc., probably 10 or 12 cities in all and a soccer stadium too!  Each little lego seat is filled with an actual lego person.  The ends of the stadium are cross-sectioned and you can peer into the offices and press boxes. 

The kids are deliberately trying to avoid looking at us. Why do they do this?

I think Cameron’s career choice was made while we were looking at Mini-land.  Somewhere there are people designing these things and building Lego things full-time for CASH!  Pretty sweet.  Paul and I made a pact to at LEAST visit each real city depicted in Legoland.  That will give us much to do while we’re here in Europe if we just do that.

Griffin was too young or short for much there, but he enjoyed looking at every primary colored thing anyway with big excited Griffin expressions and much gasping. 

We stayed near the park in a hotel with a KID’S clubroom and everything.

Weird Moment at Legoland 1: This is NOT a girl

Weird Legoland moment 2: My son trying to see if this IS a girl.

  And an obligitory pictorial summary of the trip:

Legoland:  check.

Next is somewhere for Paul and I!

Took some photos the other evening when Griffin and I and the tricycle and the dog all went for a walk to the flower field behind the house.  The light was right and the sky was super blue and I liked these especially…

And of course I have to throw out a kid pic as well.  Sorry.  The sun behind him makes him glow and that part is excellent, but otherwise he looks like he’s about to attend a frat party.  That hair…sheesh.

Happy to be through with the fabric softener scented hell that was the base’s coin laundry facility (31 washers and 9 dryers = bring a book because YOU’RE GONNA BE THERE AWHILE) I gathered a small pile of clothes and threw them merrily into our own! American! Washing Machine!  upstairs.  It was a small pile of clothes because we also have a base issued German style dryer which, well, I guess it needs small loads because Germans are very clean people and seldom spill sauce on things SECONDS after donning them, as is my specialty.  They also apparently have no 3-year-olds, or just let them run around naked or something. 

DING!  30 mere minutes later I was back for the transfer to the dryer -  Open.  Stuff.  Close, aaaaannnd…..

And while even an idiot like me can deduce that Troken means dryer, what the hell is a TrokNEN?

I probably stood there for maybe a half hour stroking my beard and pondering each choice and wondering which one I should select.  Then I got out the German-English Dictionary and looked up things like Bugel, Shrank and Koch, not to mention Bunt (which sounds alarmingly like burnt).  They all seemed to mean the same thing – clothing.  I couldn’t tell by the definitions what distinguished one from the next.  Seriously, what would you do?  On which side would you even start to narrow your choices?  Are you more of a Pflegeleicht or a Koch/Bunt person? 

Like you, I tried Pflegeleicht, of course, and after the cycle ended I discovered that as far as I can tell, Pflegeleicht means: extremely wet forever.  So I switched sides and became a devoted Koch/Bunt gal – I never saw it coming, but I’ll never look back.

Our Next Episode:  The Dishwasher!

That’s right – at the hotel  – there was the bed…

Only bad dreams were had on the devil bed.

And me wanting the kill the children…

No Griffin...it's not a PINATA.

Be Careful What You Wish For.

Cozy Kitchen

Wohnzimmer (living room)

AAARRRGGGHH! Wait I didn't mean to show that one...

Looking out to the backyard.

Last night, we hung out on the patio while the kids played their hearts out with the neighborhood children and we met several new neighbors as everyone was out walking dogs and such.  We did some “nice to meet you” shots of German schnapps (which is not AT ALL like American Schnapps, but more like American moonshine).  Later, I walked down the street and chatted with Maike (Mike-ah) and watched her work her three horses.  We made arrangements for her and I to take a ride soon through the forest in back.  She’s looking  for a riding companion and, well, I had had the schnapps, so the fact that I’m completely brittle escaped me completely and I steppped up and volunteered my services.  Being a perpetual 8 year old girl, I’m always sucker for horses.  And tea parties.  Maike said she’d help me with my German and then laughed as she said something probably very easy assuming I’d understand and I laughed and nodded as if I did.  I walked back up and gave Griffin a bath, and after he went to bed I looked through the telescope at the moon off the second floor balcony.

They do just that at the Fleinsheim Wine Festival near Mannheim.  The city is surrounded by an ancient wall and various wineries and countless food vendors and bands and crafters set up in the town center. 

I particulary love the practice of using real things, even at festivals.  You can buy a glass of wine and wander the streets listening to music, shopping, and admiring the grapevines fruiting in the fields while drinking it.  In America you’d get some sort of plastic cup to carry around (and they’d put you in a caged in area as well but we already talked about that), but here you get a beautiful (and glass!) wineglass.  It somehow legitimizes things for me.  The food I bought yesterday at a vendor’s booth was presented to me on the same china I’m collecting! It came complete with silverware – like, the metal kind!  The catch?  You pay a small deposit which is included in the price of food/drink, and when you return your glass you get it back.  Or…if it’s a really cool glass imprinted with the town name and festival name and you’re a hillbilly from Ohio, you throw it in your bag and take it home.  And put it with the others.

We took our first train trip – coincidentally called by our USO guides:  How to ride the Train – on Thursday.  Our destination – Worms, about an hour away.  We all met at the station in Kaiserslautern and listened to an hour long tutorial on how to look for good fares (there are many ways to save on the train if you know what you’re doing), purchase tickets from the kiosks and find your track.  The highlight of the boys’ day was the first 20 seconds of movement on the train.  Other than that, I believe they almost died of boredom – at least that’s how they would tell it.    We kind of get it that this stuff is boring to 8 and 3 year olds, unless of course they come up with a tour called The USO Sponsored International Tour of Really Cool Playgrounds! With your guide – Spiderman!

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I was excited to see Worms because of its age.  It’s about 2000 years old, one of the oldest cities, even containing some Roman architecture such as The Imperial Cathedral of St. Peter.  There are remnants of a wall that surrounded the town that date back to the 4th century.

Before we visited the cathedral, however, we went into the oldest Jewish cemetary, Heiliger Sands, in Europe.  Even more amazing than how peaceful and beautiful it was, was the fact that it even existed anymore. 

More about Holy Sands here.

Overall, Worms was a collision of religions, each leaving its own mark on the town. 

We had a leisurely lunch at an outdoor cafe, Griffin took a dip in King Ludwig’s fountain, and we caught the train home.    Now that we know what we’re doing (sort of), we can venture out on our own. 

View the rest of the pictures here.

Right around the corner from our village is a field with a big sign out front that says Blumen.  I know from my weeks of German that means flowers, and being a flower myself, naturally I was attracted.  Turns out it’s a cut your own flower field <gasp!>.  The owners of the field set out a box and knives and it’s totally on the honor system.  This would never fly back home.   After passing it multiple times a day, finally today I stopped (after dumping off all my grumbling testosterone-filled passengers at the hotel).  Enjoy my flower cutting montage below. 

You might be able to see our future house in the middle pictures. It's right behind the field.

Paul took the kids to Landschtule Castle while C and I took to the streets of Homberg and flea marketed for half the day.  I’ve now started a collection of china which I will acquire, piece by piece at bargain hunter prices until we leave here or go broke, whichever comes first.  I chose this china collection for the simple fact that I can get family support behind it.  In other words, I’ve found a china pattern guys can dig – it’s got castles on it.   Yes, this china has most of Germany’s widely known castles painted on it.  Depending on the mark on the back, the pieces date back to the mid-1800’s.   I also found some vintage Playmobile for the kids and an old WW2 tin motorcycle toy for Paul’s desk at the flea market.   Never thought of myself as a flea market person.  What’s next for me?  Possibly bingo.  Who knows.

Later, we were feeling crazy and free-spirited and we, the four of us, decided to take an hour drive and visit one of the towns on the Rhine river in wine country.  We entered PRETTY TOWN WITH WINE, CASTLES, TRAINS AND HILLSIDES THAT WILL MAKE US SWOON into the Garmin and he promptly delivered us to a town called Bingen ithe heart of wine country.  It had sweeping views of the vineyard covered hillsides and several castles in sight from any vantage point.  There happened to be a festival going on called The Rhine Aflame or “come to our Rhine villages, Americans, and spend much Euro and we’ll throw you a bone and shoot some fireworks off”.  No, actually we only saw a handful of Americans there – mostly vacationing Germans.  Since we arrived late in the afternoon, we had time to kill before fireworks (it’s been getting dark here at about 10:30 – you?  Is this normal?) and we found a river walk with wine cafe stops along the way that served to kill a few hours with its charm and boozy but yet kid-friendly venue.  There was a giant playpark (I’ve long thought there should be wine cafes near playparks) and quaint cafe tables along the river for about a mile.  The path came to an end where the Rhine meandered around a bend – there were several villages visible from our walk, did I say that?  Each village had its castle…oh, the castles!  There were two of them suckers overlooking this bend point, another across the river and another watching over us from above Bingen.   It was possibly the most romantic place I’ve ever been and suddenly we recalled watching a travel video that featured this very same stretch as “One of the Most Romantic Places You’ll Ever Be”.  The kids frolicked and we drank and ate and walked and looked over the water and watched riverboats launch and motor down and around the bend. Slowly, as it does, the sun sank behind the hills and the castles lit themselves up in red lights and then (!) the boats that had disappeared were back!  They all came back around the bend together  in a procession, and they were all lit up, carnival style – a floating parade.  But wait – once they would pass a town, the town would launch all their fireworks, usually from a castle.  The boats would move on to the next village and the fireworks would go off.  While we were waiting, Cameron grew quiet for a little while remembering suddenly that all his cousins and Nana and Papa were together at our usual 4th hang-out – Port Clinton, Ohio.  But finally, at around 11 pm, the boats reached us in Bingen and the fireworks were launched from the hillside castle above us.  It seemed like we could reach out and touch them and the kids were thrilled.  I looked over and Cameron had found a friend and was sitting next to him on the grass, happily watching the show.   

I have to note that a unique part of all this was the wine culture.  This wasn’t a roped off festival, it was always there – the festival was in the river.  People came and brought picnic dinners, wine and champagne and beer and sat on the steps or the grass or the stone wall by the riverbank.  There weren’t any rules about where you could have alcohol and where you couldn’t.  Corks were popped and flew across the riverwalk freely.  Everyone had a bottle with them or glasses of wine bought at the cafes (when you visit a cafe or biergarden stop along your walk at a festival, flea market or whatever – you get a real glass or stein - no plastic here.  You pay a glass deposit as part of the price.  If you return the glass or beerstein, you get the deposit back, or if you’ve already moved past, you can add the glass to your collection as I’m doing!) and they roamed the street with them. 

Again, no fighting.  No blood and no mayhem caused by the evil alcohol.  It’s just how they spend an evening. 

Happy 4th!  View pictures of this romantic day here.

When we moved to Hawaii we had a dog, a giant grey baby who would have perished if faced with the 3 month mandatory quarrantine (now lessened) that was in place for all incoming pets.  So husband’s mother, who always loves a rescue project, very kindly offered to take him on for the 3 years we were away even going as far as having a 4-foot high chain link fence put in for the yard at great expense.  So…flash forward 3 years… she and Buckley somehow morphed into mother and hairy son, with him eating home-cooked dog dinner each night before they got comfy on the couch and watched all of his favorite shows.  She was in all her glory as well.  They thrived off one another.  We offered to take him back and were only met with a stern look of “don’t you even THINK about it”. She didn’t want him to leave either (Thanks! I’m here all week!).  We were dissapointed, but they’re happy and we get to see him on our visits North.  Here’s the latest, captioned, of him barely tolerating our current dog Baja:  

No (hahaha – I LOVE those ones),  but it’s really not too far off:

I have this thingy set up in the lower right that sucks my videos off YouTube and plops them into my sidebar, but in case you aren’t used to looking there, I thought I’d do the bloggish equivalent of stopping you on the street and forcing you to look at my photo album even though you didn’t ask and you don’t care.  No really, it’s ok.   But forgive me because, and the relatives can back me up here, it’s been about 2 years since I did that positively adorable one you see below and that’s way too long to go when you have a couple of the cutest children on the PLANET. Oh, and it took me like 17000 hours to make this because I’m technologically (and otherwise) challenged.

I really loved my digital camera, and knew it like the back of my hand (which I’m knowing less and less each year – what happens to the backs of our hands anyway - why so cruel?) and I was a master of its limited control panel.  Check it out – I did this with it. 

It was completely automatic but I knew (shhh!) how to override things and make things look better than they really did and adjust the flash and slow down the shutter and all that stuff.  Oh the fun we had, though it was an abusive relationship.  It had been dropped  several times from astounding heights, left out in the rain once and it was even handled occasionally by my children who can end the life of an electronic thing just by eating a popsicle in the same room as it. 

It was crippled toward the end – it would zoom out, but not in, it wouldn’t focus in b&w mode, etc. but it chugged and clanked onward determined to please until its ultimate death a couple months ago in Utah.  I was hearbroken and reluctant to move on without a proper mourning period (what would people think?) and the required scratch, but I still had a photo jones and darn if I wouldn’t find a way – ANY WAY – to meet that need.  So with my black armband on I’ve been using everything from disposables, to my phone (seriously.  at a wedding.), to my video camera’s photo function to my kid’s tiny “throw me off a cliff – no really! I’m totally fine!” digital camera to a cardboard box with a mirror and a pinhole.  I was just about to resort to sketches when I got the greenlight from the spouse (meaning the “no’s” weren’t being yelled anymore, only suggested) and got a new camera similar to what I had, but with a little more zoom and a little less clank. 

Oh the smell of new electronics…the book said to take the camera out and take a couple shots to see if it was functioning and to NOT try anything fancy, missy, because knowing YOU, you’ll break it.

Here’s what I got:

Bees are slamming into my computer screen right now.

Seriously, are those pollen granules? When did they do all this with cameras anyway?  I mean that in a good way.  To do the above with my old camera? I would have had to use a tripod, add a special macro function and turn off the flash and then I’d have to go in the garage and get my actual telescope and rig it up so I was taking the picture through the telescope’s viewfinder tube…while clicking my heels together and always thinking happy thoughts.  It would have turned out pretty, but…damn!   For the above?  I set it up the following way: 1) find a flower and 2) press the button with the really big PRESS HERE on it.

Someone’s been holding out on me, and now you’ll all pay in the form of a million trillion pictures – bwahahahah.

 One of the four cousins (or musketeers) from this last weekend.

He slew the dragon, got the girl, and saved the Kingdom

The Panasonic GH1 is a brand new 12 megapixel camera that can also shoot full HD video. We got hands-on with the Lumix GH1 at yesterday’s UK press launch, hitting the mean streets of, erm, Windsor, to bring you 31 JPEG and RAW images and a 1920×1280 video. The photos were taken using the new 14-140mm F4.0-5.8 and 7-14mm F4.0 lenses.

Website: www.panasonic.com