my belly hurts

we had thanksgiving dinner today. sarah's sister aileen flew in yesterday. i took the kids up to frankfurt on the train. they like doing that. we had to make the 5 block walk to the tram stop in the rain. that wasn't too bad. we all have raincoats, and the kids had umbrellas. of course, it is a 25 minute tram ride to the hauptbahnhof, so aiden was pretty much done with train rides by the time we got to the train station. i bought a cup of coffee at the train station, and we sequestered ourselves into a little heated cabin to wait for the train (it was only 15 minutes).

we were able to get into a six seater cabin that only had one old man in it. he was pretty friendly. it had a little table in it. i gave them a couple of pretzels, and we settled down to read. i downloaded some books from the gutenberg collection last week and put them on my handheld. the kids thought that was pretty cool. i read them the tale of peter rabbit. it isn't a new one, but we have to start somewhere. we made a transfer in mannheim and got some more seats in the driver's cabin end of an i.c.e. train. the kids spent the most of that 30 minutes or so looking out the window.

so we got to the airport in good time and headed for concourse c. turns out that aileen's flight went from denver to chicago. i didn't know that, so i couldn't find her flight. after a quick call to sarah, i got the 411. her flight had come in 45 minutes early in another concourse. we had to get to b concourse international arrivals stat. fortunately passport control and customs delayed her enough to get us stationed. of course, that arrival door was only about 60 yards from the c door. the kids acted appropriately as soon as aunt aileen came through the door.

we made it back to the long distance train station at the airport about 6 minutes after the train to karlsruhe left. so we had to wait an hour. it wasn't too bad. i bought some more pretzels and a cup of coffee and watched the kids play. we got on the train without any issues. we had to switch over again in mannheim. aiden managed to find a little girl his age that had been on the train with us that spoke english. they played around until the train got there, and then we sat with her and her dad in the same cabin. that made it pretty easy, with the kids playing with each other and all. the little girl has been alternating one month in KC and two months in germany since february. she speaks amazing english. it gives me hope. we got to karlsruhe and got ourselves right on the tram. with the same little girl and her mom. so the kids and aileen sat with them, and i sat behind them. we got to our tram stop and met sarah. we all wandered home in a pretty steady rain.

we got everyone settled, and then i had to go into the office (on my first ever, german vacation day) to drop some receipts off and turn on my out of office notification. yep, i'm an american through and through. i also made the mistake of stopping to say hi to my boss. that took me about 20 minutes to fix. granted, he did warn me as i came up that he had news i didn't necessarily want to hear, so i should turn around and leave. i didn't. he did. it wasn't horrible. mainly because i have two weeks off, and he has to fix it. yep, i'm becoming more german by the second. after the little trip to the office i rode over to a colleague's house to pick up a printer and some other knick knacks. he is moving, so he is trying to lighten his load. i talked to him for 30 or 45 minutes and then loaded up the bike trailer and headed home. this whole sessions was performed in a steady rain. thanks to my gore-tex coat and pants, i managed to stay completely dry. i love high tech clothing.

today we got up early (like, 6:30) and started getting thanksgiving dinner ready. the kids let aunt aileen sleep until about 7:xx (where xx.gt.00 and xx.lt.59, sorry for the fortran. blogspot won't handle angle brackets that aren't html.). so she got up and moved her sleeping down to the sofa. and, oddly enough, that actually subdued the children for a while. she said she had to read them one book before they would leave her alone. then they sat on her and watched a movie while sarah and i kept up the cooking. we were somehow able to pull off cooking a turkey, a pumpkin pie, some home made rolls, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, and glazed carrots by 2:30. christian and julie came over at 2:15 with some green beans and red cabbage. with cloves in it. yes. i said cloves. in red cabbage. it was good. weird, but good. we then proceeded to eat the hell out of it. i was stuffed. then i ate a piece of pumpkin pie. after that, i had a piece of apple pie (that sarah cooked while we were eating). that did it. i actually couldn't eat the last two bites. it was shameful. of course, it was better than throwing up on the table.

and one last piece of family news. aileen was talking to aiden after he went poop this morning. she was helping him get everything taken care of and all. our toilets are not real aggressive when it comes to flushing, so it doesn't always work as planned. assuming you aren't planning on turds and paper being there after it is all said and done. so aileen was fretting about it. aiden reassured her with, 'don't worry, aunt aileen. sometimes you have to let the poop sit in there a little while. when it gets waterlogged, it will sink to the bottom. then you can flush it.' yes. he not only used the word waterlogged, but he managed to use it while talking about poop. that's my boy.