Monday, January 12

Hello All!!!

Hope all is well out there!!!! Things are kind of crazy after the first round of unpacking here - all the big items (clothes, shoes, and fabric) are put away. Now for all the small bags of stuff on the counter - I always feel bad when the German teacher comes and my house is a mess, but with my knee today, I just wasn't ambitious enough to do anything today (except play with Brenna - we did some cool stuff today, lol). (You may be asking what did I do to my knee - hmmm, well, after our flight yesterday, Dustin and Brenna took a nap and I cleaned the shower and tub while the house was quiet and empty (I needed to move or fall asleep sitting), then I did my first exercise video of the year, then when Dustin left to get the dog - I emptied all the suitcases - yes, all 4 of them out, and then (to many thens in my sentence I know, lol) I washed the dog in the bathtub). I think that was accomplishing a lot! I didn't get the sweeping done that needed to be accomplished (and I am always grouchy when I spend all of my time picking up clumps of fur in the apartment), but hopefully, my knee will feel better tomorrow and I will be able to start putting our life here back in order (hmm - one would think that maybe the cleaning fairies would come to my house while I was gone for 4 weeks and clean the place up, but the one here didn't even do the two tasks I asked him to do....o.k. - I will move on from that before I sound like a grouchy housewife!).

So, after sleeping way late today (we slept till noon German time - 6 am US time) - we woke up and had breakfast/lunch here. Then, we worked on not turning the TV on (we all have a TV addiction in our house - we are trying to really reduce Brenna's TV time now - should prove interesting!). So, Brenna and I painted with her glitter paint today and then did some glitter paper scrunches on the new paper dolls she got for Christmas. The painting went well and was not messy at all (Brenna didn't even have enough paint on her to warrent a major hand washing!), but the glitter from the dolls was all over the table and our hands (but it was a fun project - just don't put your hand on the sticky part of the princess - after that, non of the paper's stayed stuck on :-( I am going to have to come up with some idea to put them back on - I don't want to use glue as I think they really aren't supposed to stay on forever anyway...) (oh, and there is glitter in Dustin's baseball hat as Brenna decided that would be a great place to put the glitter paper that fell off the one Snow White doll, lol - can't wait to see his hair after he puts that hat on, lol!)

I think Brenna is ready to discover all of her Christmas gifts that are now all in one spot - we also got out her magnets and word game today :-) I think I need to reorganize things though - maybe see if we have anything that we can get rid of that Brenna doesn't play with and put her dress clothes somewhere that she can get to them on her own. Right now, things are just in various bins in the house, but I think I need to better categorize our stuff (before we all go nuts finding stuff - Brenna is getting more particular on what she wants and I don't want to be the only one who knows where stuff is hiding!).

Well, I need to get to bed - I can't sleep late tomorrow as Brenna and I have German class!

Take Care!