Wednesday, June 30

some pics from the weekend - Brenna was enjoying her bubble maker (sorry, no bubbles in the pictures, lol!)

Hello All!!!

Hope all is well out there! Things are hot here - the apartment has been getting to 85 - 87 degrees in the afternoon - so we have been spending our afternoons at the swimming pool. (Poor Justice, he gets left behind in the hot apartment - although I am trying to make sure that he has plenty of water available). With our swimming days, Brenna took a nap on Monday and Tuesday afternoon (on the couch) - I wasn't really prepared for the nap either day - poor Justice had to wait until after 6 to go out yesterday afternoon...

We are also seeing many of Brenna's classmates (and one of her teachers) at the pool - so nice to be in a small community for Brenna!

I am hoping to get Brenna's birthday invitations out soon, but save the date of August 14 sometime around lunch for her party (at our house in the US).

So, we are just trying to stay cool here - we painted toe nails yesterday and did some craft paper cutting today too, but mostly we are hanging out at the pool here in town :-) (it is very nice that it is only a short walk away - but my feet are still tired today!)

Take Care!

Sunday, June 27

I couldn't resist this little good luck soccer pig yesterday - isn't he cute??? (We will be cheering for Germany now in the World Cup (esp. since the US is out)). We went to Heidelberg yesterday - Brenna continued her love affair with statutes - that is all she wanted pictures with, lol.

We've been having beautiful blue skies here lately :-) Our upcoming forecast for the week even has sun every day (bet we will spend some time at the pool this week!). Below, some of our bubble fun. (Can you tell that Brenna wasn't so interested in pictures to start with, lol - I really only intended to take some pictures of the scenery, but she is too cute not to photograph!).

bubble machine and bubbles to blow - what could be better???

I love her grin in this one!

Just in case you wondered where Justice has been lately...

Hello All!!!

Hope all is well out there! Things are good here - just trying to stay cool in our warm apartment (at least the weather is cooling off nicely in the evening for sleep).

Friday morning, I finished my 3 new summer skirts (can you imagine that I have no shorts here???). Maybe I can actually get some sun on my pale, pale legs this year.... Brenna had a school outing in the morning - they went out walking and then to a playground in the area. Not much else happened in the afternoon on Friday - Brenna was a little tired after the morning walk (I did give her a little break and only made her walk home from school on Friday - she has been walking both to and from school most of the time now). We did play bubbles on Friday evening while waiting for Dustin to get home from work - doesn't it look like fun???

Yesterday, we went to Heidelberg in the morning to walk around. Hard to believe we only have 40 more days until we fly back to the US - how our time has flown over here! We also had our normal errands later in the day, but other than that, it was pretty quiet here. The weather is warm - mid 80s now, so it feels more like summer now...

Cherry season has also started over here, wish Dustin and Brenna would eat them (as the landlord likes to share his yummy cherries). This morning, I made homemade cherry pie filling - yum!!! (I should have taken a picture of the beautiful bowl of cherries - they looked so pretty!).

I've been keeping busy doing Brenna's Disney scrapbook here lately - hoping to get that one printed over here before heading back - at least it only takes about a week to get printed, but I still want to have it sent by the end of the week...

Take Care!

Wednesday, June 23

So, what does a banana split look like in Germany??? I ordered one at the ice cream shop today (and Brenna ordered a Pinocchio) - is it just me, or is this a work of art??? (if it looks like enough for two, it really is - we both left ice cream in our bowls :-)

Isn't Brenna's cute???

Brenna digging in - I think she ate less of her ice cream at the store than what she normally eats when we just have a cone that she walks home with! (she just wanted to eat the decoration, lol).

Brenna and I made pizza dough on Monday - Brenna wanted to have her picture taken - guess I should have known that silliness would follow :-)

I made a new apron on Monday morning - this was a gift for the daughter of my German teacher - I think it turned out really cute (Brenna and I both wanted to keep it - guess we will just need to add it to the project list for when we are back in the US - I am really trying to get my gifts for friends done here first, then finish my unfinished projects that were started here....) (then again, this apron was started before Brenna was born - I did motify the top design - in fact, I redesigned the apron myself :-)

Yesterday afternoon we decided to go to the zoo. I didn't really think it would take a hour and a half to walk to the train station from our house (but it does)....Brenna and I enjoyed a relaxing afternoon there (it was a wonderful 70 degree day for the zoo) and then Dustin picked us up at the train station :-) (the elephant viewed from the boat at the zoo)

The sea lion at feeding time....

Brenna's new window shade - her three "pet" snails from last summer...

one of my favorite flowers here in Germany - foxglove :-)

Hello All!!!!

Hope all is well out there! Things are good here.

Brenna and I have been keeping busy with our afternoons this week (hmm, the sun is finally shining again - so we have went out every afternoon :-) On Monday afternoon, we played at the park. Brenna even shared her ball with one of the boys at the park (although, I think she was also happy when they left and she had the whole park to herself for 30 minutes before we came back home...). Yesterday, we decided it was a great day for the zoo in the afternoon. I had hoped that it would be a hour walk to the train station from our house, but turns out that it is close to a hour and a half... (lucky for us, the train runs every half hour from the bigger town and we got on one of the regional express trains instead of a local train :-) The only down side of the train was that we accidentally sat in 1st class with our 2nd class ticket, so we got kicked out of 1st class and had to make our way to 2nd class (I think the guy just didn't want to sit in the same car as a child - the guy was the only person in 1st class and didn't check tickets in 2nd class once we moved...). (In my defense, my actual ticket didn't say 1st or 2nd class - and with only riding the trains a couple times, how was I to know if I bought a 1st or 2nd class ticket???). Brenna was really happy with our afternoon at the zoo (although we were both disappointed that we couldn't find the popcorn stand - what happened to it???). So, after our relaxing boat ride at the zoo - she had to settle for ice cream. Then we watched the sea lions have supper and made our return trip (we did kind of catch "rush hour" at 5 - the train was full - but again, not alot of people want to sit with you when you have a kid - even one as well behaved as Brenna normally is (and she was pretty good yesterday)). Brenna was very excited that Dustin picked us up at the train station - she wanted all of his attention - she kept complaining that I was interupting her! (although she did allow us to take turns talking to him, lol).

Today, we stayed in town and just went to the park for a short 30 minutes. I took Justice with me on some morning errands today - I had to leave him outside at one of the stores, but he seemed to do o.k. (lucky for me, they had a dog hook up that was by far more secure than any I have seen elsewhere - it actually latched him in with his leash :-) Brenna and I also had our ice cream snack inside the ice cream shop today - hope you enjoy the ice cream "art" today :-) (and yes, the ice cream is as good as it looks!)

Take Care!

Monday, June 21

So, this weekend, with the cool weather here in Germany (only a high in the low 60s!), we decided it was a good time to make our planned day trip to Frankfurt (we didn't want to leave Germany having only seen the airport in Frankfurt, lol!). Sorry, to get some of the landmark pictures in Frankfurt the people are pretty tiny! (I was really surprised that in order to find out what to see in Frankfurt I had to research it on the internet - none of our travel books say much about it!). So, to start our day, we parked in the Old Town area (always a favorite with our travels). We also grabbed lunch in the area - but no one had a frankfurter (I was sure Brenna would want that, but she choose to have Schnitzel instead).

Brenna spotted the playgrounds before we even parked the car! So, after lunch we headed to one of the playgrounds along the river. (I thought the path along the river was really nice - the city was pretty empty which also made it very nice to stroll everywhere in the city).

Brenna enjoyed being a pirate the most - can you hear her say "Argg"??

My favorite picture from the park below - don't you wonder what she was looking for??

Brenna was directing Daddy in the next few...

We had to get our shot by the Euro - I didn't think how tiny this would make us look though! Frankfurt is called the New York of Germany with all the high rise glass buildings - but don't expect the crowds of New York. As I said earlier, it was great how uncrowded the city was to stroll around in!

We went up to the top of the Main Tower - you are 200 meters above the city - worth the wait if you ever go to Frankfurt! I was a little worried about how open it was up at the top, but Dustin really kept Brenna under control and entertained at the top (she loved the binoculars that are up there - too bad we didn't have any 1 Euro coins for her!)

The World Cup is big news here - I loved the picture of the Fan Plunder....

Below - once Brenna wasn't walking around anymore (or running around), she thought the air was pretty chilly - can you hear her below "brrr, I'm cold"

The person below was a street performer with a fire trick. Brenna thinks all performers are great and gave him some money - if you click on the picture, you might be able to see his smile with Brenna giving him a donation... (I also love that she now has a German flag - maybe she will return to the US a soccer fan and Germany will be who she cheers for??)

Hello All!!

Hope all is well out there! Things are good here.

As promised yesterday, here are our pictures from our travels on Saturday to Frankfurt. We all enjoyed a relaxing day of traveling (we had talked the night before about waiting until Sunday, but as we all were up before 7 on Saturday and it was raining in our town - we decided to head north and had a very pleasant day...). We also lucked out in Frankfurt that the main construction was in the parking garage (we really think that all the cities have construction just because we plan to travel there, lol!). Anyway, Frankfurt was pretty easy to get into and very easy to stroll around in. We enjoyed a ice cream treat at the end of our day there and then made it home in time for supper in our town. Brenna fell asleep on our drive home (and pretty much slept the whole way home).

Brenna had a fitful night of sleep last night, so we are both hoping for a better night tonight. I hope to have some craft pictures to share soon (I made an apron gift today - I think it turned out really cute!)... I also got some great pictures of Brenna helping me with the pizza dough today (she actually asked me to take some pictures - so of course I got some great smiles today!).

Well, that is it for today. Just in case anyone is curious - the digital scrapbooking pages came from http://www.jessicasprague.com/ Just be warned it is very addictive! (I have started some pages from our disney trip - I am having way too much fun!).

Take Care!