Cologne

Ann and Brian at the Shokolade Museum

In front of the Koln Dom

On the Shoko-Express

The high point of Ann's day was in front of the Dom (Cathedral) in Cologne when she was trying to figure out if a statue in the square was a statue or a person pretending to be statue when the "statue" growled at her. She screamed so loud, everyone in the square turned to look.

We toured the cathedral where the bones of the Wise Men are laid to rest and then headed off to the Chocolate Museum. We learned little known facts about chocolate and even got to experience the rainforest atmosphere where cacao grows. Then of course, there was the tasting. We had hot chocolate, chocolate cake, chocolate bars (only mini ones!) and then purchased more chocolate to bring home. Check out our complexions tomorrow.

Off to our favorite Italian restaurant tonight. I warned Ann and Brian that Germany for me is all about the food.

Best news of the day--after a whole year of waiting, Maddie will be the Superstar of her class next week. It's all done by random drawing and she is the next to the last girl (it alternates boy/girl/boy/girl) to get to do it. Thank goodness we didn't have to wait until after spring break!

Ann and Brian on the Rhine

In front of the Rhine in Kaiserswerth with Meerbusch in the background

On the Rhine in Duesseldorf
We had good weather in which to tour Duesseldorf yesterday. Ann and Brian got to see the Rhine at several places and today we're off to Cologne.

International Sewing Circle

Spent the day yesterday at friend Sheree's house learning how to make a reversible tote bag. She's a professional seamstress (and oddly enough, a chemist), and she's started having a group of us over to help us learn to sew. The group's common denominator is that we all have first graders. We represented the US, Belgium, Japan, Korea and England. We had a really great time and I made a fabulous bag. You can learn more about it at Sheree's Blog.

On another International Note, you can, apparently, get too much of a good thing. Some American women I know went for a girl's weekend to Heidleberg. Beautiful, quintessentially German town. All of the women have been in this country for at least three years (one of them has been here for five). All of them experienced a "been-there-done-that" feeling. Another cute town, another church, another castle. Must be time to move on to another continent!

Picked up Uncle Brian and his new wife, Ann, at the airport today. Had a bad moment at the parking garage where I got stuck temporarily and couldn't communicated well to the guy over the little loudspeaker box. Called Skip in London and yelled at him for awhile to ease my frustrations, but I was able to park and get to the arrival gate on time. I've got just under four months of situations like these to get through, then I can be competent and self-sufficient once again. And Skip can stop having to field my hysterical phone calls.

When in Rome

I just spent half-an-hour hooked up to an IV at my doctor's office. What was in the IV? Not sure. Some kind of immuno-boosting vitamins. I have this chronic sore throat and that's how it's being treated. With vitamins pumped into me through a tube in my arm. Will let you know how that turns out.

The ISD Disease Factory

We had a really good time with my mom here last week. She and Maddie made it through an entire Miss Piggle Wiggle Book. The weather was yucky, but we mainly just stayed in a visited anyway. I just hope she didn't leave here with a dread disease.

I think they may have to close down Maddie's school and have it disinfected. I've never experienced anything like this. The range of viruses and diseases that are spreading through the school and the families whose kids attend is staggering. There's a stomach virus, a fever virus, strep throat, chicken pox and now we've introduced scarlet fever. One mom who has three kids hasn't been out in two weeks because at least one kid has been home sick. Now she's sick, too.

Maddie seems to be fine since getting over the chicken pox, although she's had some sort of other rash that seems to be unrelated that we've just gotten rid of. I have another sore throat, but we're hoping it stays at just that. Skip was actually home all last week and I'm amazed he didn't pick anything up. The viruses apparently target only children and women because I've only heard about kids and moms getting sick. The dads seem to have escaped.

Am really ready for some wellness and sunny weather!

On the bunny front, I worry that Skip is partial to the new bunny, Riddles, and that Rosie may be feeling left out. So now, I try to make up for that by showing more attention to Rosie. And then I remember--THESE ARE BUNNIES! Thank goodness we only had one kid!

Why Maddie is Voting for Obama

Click here to see

100 Days

Last week was the 100th day of school at ISD and this week, the First Graders got to do the presentation in the weekly assembly. The school let the parents come in to see the program after the other kids went back to class. Maddie was chosen to be the person from her class who did the introduction. Skip and Mom and I were impressed that she was the one who was asked, but Maddie didn't seem to get it. She said her teacher asked her if she thought she could do it and she said, "Sure."






After watching the assembly, Mom and I headed to Roermond in the Netherlands. It's a really charming little town with a canal and an historic old town area with a walking district. It was nice enough in Duesseldorf, but boy what a difference 40 minutes makes when you head west into the flatlands. It was bitterly cold. Not a good walking around day at all! February really is a lovely time to visit Northern Europe. We're hoping for warmer weather by the time Skip's brother Brian and his new wife come for their visit!

A Good time to Go Veggie

So, I woke up this morning--two weeks into my Lenten veggie pledge--with a little bit of a meat craving. I've kind of unwillingly cheated on my meat fast as I spent about 4 days with strep throat in which I didn't really eat anything, so giving up meat wasn't a stretch. And it hasn't been a problem at all, except for today when I woke up wanting something more protein packed than an egg, a handful of almonds or some tofu.

My craving was quickly cured as soon as I logged in to abcnews.com to see the massive beef recall that is going on in the states. Garbanzo beans are looking better and better!

Am enjoying hanging out with my mom who is here until Friday morning. We're going to head to Holland tomorrow after seeing Maddie take center stage at the school assembly. She gets to introduce the First Graders 100 days projects to the whole elementary school. We were all so excited that she'd been chosen to be the one from her class who gets to speak, and she didn't see the big deal.

A Star Is Born

Maddie made her theater debut as a mermaid in Peter Pan today. Nothing like a play put on by elementary students in which all the characters (even those who are supposed to be in the same family) all have different accents! The kids did a really great job. It was very cute. It was staged twice so that there could be enough parts to go around, and some parts like Peter and Wendy switched actors in the middle of the play. We had three American and one Chinese Wendies; two American, one American of Indian descent and one German Peter Pans. Many of the Indians were Korean. The Pirates were Indian, Korean, Dutch, British and American. The best part was that Maddie's Nana got to be here to see it.

I'll never make it as a stage mom. I was pretty much the biggest slacker of all the moms. I just did the pirate makeup on play day and provided snacks for the kids who were in both the three and five o'clock productions. The super moms were helping direct at every practice, building, designing and painting sets, coordinating props, creating costumes, choreagraphing, etc. There was only one dad who helped with any of it. It's a mom's world. I just swept in at the last minute to get my volunteer time in.

Don't know what will happen to Drama Club next year. The woman who started it all and directs the plays is moving to China. The set designer is moving back to New Zealand and the costume coordinator is headed back to the States.

Good Grief

My mom is here visiting and I expected more from her.

She went with Skip and Maddie to take Rosie to the pet shop to make sure she is actually a girl. We were thinking about getting another bunny and needed to know for sure. They came home with another bunny! And I couldn't be mad about it, because it's the cutest bunny (next to Rosie) that you ever saw. Maddie has named the new bunny Riddles and Skip has to take Riddles to the vet next week to be fixed or else we'll be asking which of you would like a new bunny.




Tonight we went to Tanzania night at ISD. Every International School has a "sister" school in an underdeveloped part of the world that they helped support. So tonight was a fun fundraiser.


Maddie's debut as a Mermaid in the Peter Pan play tomorrow.

Party

Maddie has been sick for Karneval activities in Duesseldorf both years we've lived here. So I told her this year, we'd have some of her friends over and everyone could dress up and we'd have our own little Karneval Party.

Of course, it ended up happening when Skip was out of town skiing. Luckily, friend Joy is also out of town, so her husband Ron came with their kids and the neighbors kids and stayed to help. I had nine kids under the age of 8 in my house. For some people, that's par for the course, for me, it's a major endeavor. We had our own little parade around the neighborhood, played some games, made some bunnies from a kit Maddie ordered from Oriental Trading and then had lunch followed by cake that Maddie helped make. When it was all over, Maddie declared it the best party ever. I've now strategically placed her in front of the television and I'm about to nap. It's okay--it's German television, so she's learning something.

Skip in Garmisch

You can read all about the event Skip and his cousin Ollie are at in Garmisch.



Skip's been sending back photos via his cell phone. Takes a pretty good picture.

Look for Skip on TV

Skip headed off today for Garmish for the World Downhill Ski Championships. He's meeting his cousin Ollie there. Here's what he looked like headed out to catch the train with his snowboard, helmet and boots in tow. (okay, maybe later, I can't get pictures to load) So if you watch the contest on tv, look for them in the crowd. I've charged him with getting Bode Miller's autograph.

Maddie is finally going back to school tomorrow. Phewf! She's been a real trouper about this whole mitigated chicken pox thing. Her first dress rehearsal for Peter Pan is tomorrow, so she really needed to be well enough to go to school.

I've made it through my second day as a vegetarian--having given up meat for Lent. Trying to be healthier and leave a smaller footprint on the earth and all. Kind of a stupid thing to do when you're living in Germany, but the bread is good.

Oh, and for those of you who don't know, it's official. We're moving to London at the end of the school year (Maddie and I will be in the US for a chunk of the summer). It wasn't formally announced in the company until yesterday, so I was not allowed to blog about it until now. I hear they speak English there, so I'm looking forward to that.

We've found Maddie another International School to go to and we'll be looking for a house or a flat to rent in Chiswick. So make your travel plans now. London is way cool.

And since this move means I have no idea when I will get behind a pulpit again, I'm trying to re-ignite my freelance writing career that I ditched about 9 years ago. I've already gotten one query accepted and sent an article in that I'm waiting to hear back on and am working on some more. We'll see what happens.

So, yeah. Not much going on here.

Missing the excitement

Wow! What an election season is going on back home. What's going to happen with the Democrats? I did see where gossip blogger Perez Hilton has endorsed Hillary. That may put her over the top!

The Daily Show and Colbert Report from yesterday are not yet loaded on the Comedy Central Web site, but I can't wait to see them. Colbert and Conan O'Brien are already in a mock war over who "made" Huckabee. Loving the clever "Hucka-a-back" headlines. He must be in hog heaven.

Skip and I both enjoyed the seeing a clip on abcnews.com about Elizabeth Hasselback's voting experience. The lone and very outspoken Republican on The View lives on the Upper West side of Manhatten in an apparently largely Democratic voting district. She said she got up to go running and ran in the polling place to go vote. Her name wasn't in the voter registration book, so she had to fill out some forms and fill out a paper ballot. When she sat down with her ballot, she saw names like Clinton and Obama. She went back to the registrar to let them know that she is a registered Republican and she said the whole room stopped and looked at her. She claims the woman had to rifle around a little bit to find a Republican ballot, but that she was able to cast her ballot in the end. Whoopie Goldberg, who sits at the other end of the table, was about to fall off her chair she was laughing so hard.

Gonna get pretty interesting.

Super Tuesday

Skip and I are up late tonight, waiting to get some word about Super Tuesday. All we know right now is that Obama carried the ex-pat vote in Jakarta and Huckabee has taken West Virginia.

We're getting a lot of coverage on CNN Europe about the ex-pat population. Apparently, there are 6 million Americans living overseas who are eligible to vote. Skip and I could have voted in the Democratic primary here, but Skip is not registered with any party and I still don't know who I would vote for.

Maddie has "mitigated" chicken pox. Which means that she had the vaccine so the virus is not quite so bad. She's only broken out on her face. She ran a fever all weekend and didn't start to break out until yesterday. Fortunately, Skip and I both had the chicken pox (I had them when I was the same age Maddie is now). We're hoping to have her back in school by Friday when she has the first big dress rehearsal for her Peter Pan play.

Everyone here is sick. I start back with my Wednesday Worships tomorrow, but most of the people who usually come have a kid at home this week. Tis the season.

Super Bowl Sunday

I always really miss being in the US on Super Bowl Sunday. You just can't duplicate the experience here. The game won't start until midnight, they cut out the commercials AND you can't get Velveeta and Rotel anyway, so what is the point?

We've managed to, once again, miss out on the Karneval Activities here this year. We may try to catch one of the village parades tomorrow if Maddie feels up to it, but we're a bit afraid of heading into the fray of downtown Duesseldorf.

In late breaking news, my mom is going to make an unscheduled visit this month. She turns 70 and what better way to celebrate entering a new decade than to fly to Germany to see your only grand daughter make her theater debut as a mermaid.

I really will start taking pictures again to post on this here blog.

Time to Leave

Okay, I have officially been in Germany too long. Today I burned my arm ironing sheets. I realize that, for some people, ironing bedding is a regular occurrence. I, however, don't believe I have ever ironed bedding in my life. I mean, you're going to sleep on it. It's going to get wrinkled anyway. But cousin Ollie was going to be in town and spend the night with us tonight. After I pulled the sheets and the duvet cover out of the dryer, I felt they were far to wrinkled to go on the bed. What has happened to me? Hopefully we'll be out of here before I start sweeping the garage.

It's Karneval Time here in Duesseldorf, and while I haven't made it to any festivities yet (Maddie is running the same 102 degree fever she had last year at Karneval time), here's a pic of some of my friends.