My Bed is my Castle

It has been a busy weekend. We bought a bed for the kids last week. I went out with my neighbor yesterday to pick it up. We put it together today. It is pretty cool. It is a half-height loft with a slide.





Aiden gets to sleep up top, and Briana's bed fits underneath on the floor. Getting Aiden's mattress up off of the cold floor ought to help him sleep better.



We aren't so worried about B since she is always hot, and the curtains ought to hold a little heat as well.



I managed to get the bed picked up yesterday right before some friends came over. I invited a colleague and his family and another friend over to celebrate my birthday last night. My colleague has an 8 year old boy. He and Aiden are starting to do well together because Aiden can finally handle at least rudimentary communication in German.

They came over around dinner time. Our other friend that came over brought some potato soup. It was tasty. I cooked up a few dozen frozen "hot" wings. The Germans don't really appreciate spicy food, and these wings are definitely not hot. They are tasty, though, and they are easy to prepare. So we had that and some nice red and white wine. Then things got ugly. I hung a beer opener with a catch pan under it yesterday morning. Now the kids constantly beg to open bottles. So they began plying us with drinks. I was in a rough way when it was bed time. So I drank about a half gallon of water (seriously), ate 2 tablespoons full of honey, took two Advil and called it a morning. The kids woke me up about 6 hours later, and I felt pretty good. A little groggy and rough around the edges, but not too bad. I was pretty lucky. So I came stumbling downstairs to fix the kids breakfast and let Sarah sleep in. That's right, I am such an awesome husband that I will get up early with a hangover just so my lovely wife can sleep in.

As I was fixing breakfast under Aiden's supervision, he looked up at me and asked, "Hey, Dad, can I get you a beer?" Man, it doesn't matter how lucky you get, getting offered a beer at 7:45 while you are still trying to determine if the day is actually going to be functional is just about enough to stop it all. So to punish myself good and solid, I made a plate of German breakfast/leftovers:



That would be a sunflower seed roll with butter (that got Butterkäse and Schinkenwurst), a pumpkin seed roll with butter (that got salami and Butterkäse), some "bread and butter" pickles, half a dozen wings, and a chunk of Weichkäse (like a very mild Camembert) that had been in the fridge long enough to go from weich (mild) to foot (yes, foot). It was still pretty good, but it was far from mild. It had aged something fierce.

After eating breakfast, I went upstairs and helped Sarah with the bed. We got it pretty much knocked out (to the point in the first picture) and then took the kids into town to watch a movie. Aiden has been begging for months. I don't really think it is to see the movie so much as it is to get popcorn in a bag with a drink. There is a theater at one of the tram stops we use, and he is always begging to go when we are heading home. Sometimes they have English movies, and I was holding out for a kid's movie, but it wasn't happening. Aiden said he'd be cool with a German one if it was a cartoon. So we went to see Bee Movie. I really enjoyed it. My German is now good enough that I can go to the movies. I was pretty surprised. Of course, it isn't much of an intellectual film, but I am OK with that. And since I hadn't already seen it in English, it wasn't completely ruined for me. I think that might be the big thing. At least for animations. It still pains me to watch actors I know speaking a foreign language with the wrong voice.

The kids really seemed to have a good time. Aiden claims that he didn't understand a thing. We have no idea if that is true. He was sure doing a bang up job of scolding me in German on our way to the movie, so I think he might have gotten some of it. Briana sat through most of the movie without incident. She got up to sit in Sarah's lap for a while towards the end and then moved over to my lap for the last 20 minutes or so.

All in all, it was a pretty nice Sunday. I am taking tomorrow off (for my birthday) and then I am taking Tuesday off to take the kids to a Fasching (Mardi Gras) parade in the next town up the tram line. I carried 3 days over from last year that I have to use before the end of March. That puts me at 33 vacation days this year. Tomorrow I am going to go buy myself some Starbucks coffee (I am craving some really strong American style coffee) and have some Sushi with Sarah for lunch. I am really looking forward to it.