The Devil's in the...Wait, what did you just say?

Sarah's folks were just here. They arrived on Thursday and left again on Monday. They will be back in about a week to visit with us some more. We didn't do too much while they were here. I had to work at first, and we stuck around Karlsruhe to see some of the local sites.



Popop immediately got on the zipline at the park down the road.



Momma even got in on the fun.



Here we are at the local tennis club's Italian restaurant. They have awesome pizza and calzones. And really good hefeweizen.



We finally went to the top of the Durlach Turmberg. It's an old watch tower up on a big hill. We've lived here almost two years in total, and this is the first time we managed to do this. It is a couple of stops past a restaurant we like. It only costs a few bucks to ride up. There are steps. You can even ride you bike up there, if you are a masochist. Yep, we suck.



Here we are in front of the "most unimpressive castle ever" as Sarah puts it. The children are in there usual poses. We call it grubbing around.

One last little cultural update. The Germans don't say that the Devil is in the details. They say that the Devil is in the squirrels. Now I know why squirrels freak me out.

A few quick notes

I don't have much time, but I want to post these little bits before I forget.

I got some new boxer shorts for my birthday. One pair has sock monkeys on it. They look like they are celebrating New Year's or something. One of them has a top hat and cane and is holding a glass of champagne. B pointed to him and asked me why he was a politician. OK, she said "ol-itician", but it was close.

A couple of days later, Sarah was holding her in the kitchen, and I was acting like I was going to scold Sarah for not giving the kids a treat. Briana holds out her hand to me and says, "Daddy, let me handle this." Then she proceeded to scold Sarah, and how.

Aiden went on his first big bike ride without his training wheels. We rode to this really cool park that is viking themed. It has a big, carved viking guarding the entrance and the main piece of playground equipment is a viking ship. He did pretty good. He is a little sketchy, and he believes that anything on the side of the walk (say a lamp post) is dangerous. This on German sidewalks that are 6 to 8 feet wide. But he made it. I had predicted some potential drama, so I brought along his tag along bar. I hooked him up to my bike for the ride home. He loved it. I will upload some pictures soon. Yeah, we forgot to take the camera with us. Which is too bad, because I saw an Audi R8 by the park. It's like a TT that is a little bit longer and meaner looking with a V8 jammed into the back. Sweet.

On a final note. I went on a ride this weekend. I did my first metric century (100 km). Which is a good start for getting me to a normal century (161 km). We did a hell of a lot of climbing, though. I am pretty sure that I could knock out a good 20 or 30 km more if it was flat. I have a picture of the altitude profile from the ride. I had to quit 14 km before the we got back home. My left knee couldn't take the abuse of constantly going uphill. I had to stop at a train station in Ettlingen to catch a tram back. We started out from Neureut and headed across Karlsruhe to Durlach. Then we headed up into Waldbronn. From there I think we went through Karlsbad to Spielberg. We picked up a friend there and headed up to Dobel. That was a massive climb. We dropped down a massive hill into Bad Herrenalb and then climbed up towards Loffenau. But before we got to Loffenau, we took a little left. And climbed straight up for 5 km. It was unreal. After an age of just staring at my front tire and trying to turn my cranks and walking a little bit and then riding some more, I reached Teufelsmühle. It was insane. Then we turned around and headed back to Bad Herrenalb and along the Alb through Ettlingen to Karlsruhe (or in my case to Ettlingen). It was pretty fun.

Holy crap it's been a long time.

For some reason, the Easter Bunny has the Claws of Death.


For both kids.



Here we are set up for coloring.



Okeedokee.

It's going to be a mad dash through the great things that have happened this week.

The kids and Sarah have been out of school this week. She and the kids came to the office to meet me for lunch at the cafeteria on Wednesday. While Sarah was trying to get the kids ready she told B she wanted a kiss. B told her no. The conversation went a lot like this:

Sarah: Give me a kiss.
B: No. I already gave you one today.
Sarah: Really. Give me a kiss.
B: No. I gave you one when you were in bed this morning.
Sarah: If you don't give me a kiss, I will leave you here when we go eat lunch with Daddy.
B: If you leave me here alone, I'll break all of your glasses.
Sarah: For that, I might just leave you here for real.
B: You can't. It's against the law.

That's my girl.

Then, they went to an English playgroup on Thursday. Briana played by herself the whole time. When they got home, I asked her if she had fun. It went like this:

Daddy: Did you have fun playing today?
B: No. Nobody played with me.
Daddy: Really? Why not?
B: They don't like me.
Daddy: Did mommy try to get you to play with the other kids?
B: Yes.
Daddy: Did you play with them?
B: Nope.
Daddy: Why not?
B: I wanted to play by myself.

Sometimes it really is painful.

Here's a shot of the kids playing after going to the park today.




But here's the big news this week:

AIDEN CAN RIDE A BIKE!

We have been having him ride on B's coaster bike lately. He has been pretty good with it. He can coast forever. So I explained to him that the plan was to get him to do the same thing on his bike without his training wheels. Then, once he was comfortable we would work on pedaling. So today, we went out for a big ride to a new park. Sarah and I rode, and I pulled the kids in the trailer. It was about half an hour to the park. The kids played for a couple of hours. Another family showed up. There was a boy that was 6 or 8 months older than Aiden, a girl that was about 4 months older than B, and a little 18 month old boy. The parents could speak English, so we chatted with them for a while. Once we were done, we headed back home on a new route. I had decided to try to make a loop. It didn't work. So we added about half an hour to the trip home. Into a headwind. It was quite a workout. Once we got home, I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and wash the winter crud off of our bikes while the kids rolled around in the driveway. As I was wrapping things up, Aiden comes up (after riding up and down the driveway on B's bike) and asks me to take the training wheels off of his bike. I told him it was late, that we'd have to do it later. He responds with, "Dad, I'm begging you." There's no way I could refuse that. I pulled the wheels off. He hopped on the bike, and I pushed him up the driveway. After about ten feet, he was pedaling along and seated squarely. I let go, and off he went. He turned around without stopping at the back of the drive, rode up to me, and then stopped without any issues. He then turned the bike around and started off by himself. I didn't have to interact again. I am so proud of him. He fought tooth and nail before this. It just took him setting his mind to it.



Okay. It is late, and I want to go to bed.

Oh, so that's panic...

Monday morning I learned what panic looks like. Aiden is always cold. Always. He wears flannel footy-pajamas as much as possible. I mean always. He's wearing them in the pictures from B's birthday party. So Monday morning he came into our room and crawled into bed with us around 6AM. He laid there for about 15 minutes dozing, and then he leaped out of bed loosing this creepy, low pitched keen and ran into the bathroom. Once in the bathroom, he began to turn in tight little circles, stamping his feet so fast you could barely see them, while frantically tugging at his zipper. Every revolution made his pitch step up a notch as he yanked at the zipper that ran from his neck to his right ankle. He managed to get out of his jammies mere seconds before he assploded. Poor little man. It was brutal. Almost ruined the toilet.



B got a package from Gramma Jeanne today. She got some long john jammies...



a cute little shirt and some pants. The shirt is a 6T. We have finally found something that is long enough to cover her little alien belly (as she has named it). The pants have little buttons to make them into capri's. With them up, they are short enough for her to wear as pants. She should grow enough by the time it is warm for them to be capri's.



Aiden was so worn out from a week and a half of coughing and being sick that he finally gave up the ghost and fell asleep on the sofa today. He looks pretty rough, eh?



Here's the poor guy getting a breathing treatment to open up his lungs and clean out the bronchitis. If you look closely, you will notice that his ear is all wadded up under the strap. Now, I'm not sure how uncomfortable the face mask is, but he refused to let us move it. Whatever we try, he gets all bowed up and moves it back so that it slides down and wads up his ear.

He is doing better, though. The kids will be going back to school tomorrow. That means that I have to work a full day for the first time in a week. Yeah, that sucks. I have been staying home until lunch while Sarah goes to German lessons while the kids have been sick. It is awesome.

Okeedokee. It is late. I am tired.

Auf Wiedersehen!

picture dump!

Ok, I can't write much tonight. It is late, and I need to mix up a sponge so I can make some sunflower seed rolls while I am watching the kids during Sarah's class in the morning.

First we have this picture from the Fasching parade we went to on February 5th.



Next we have B hard at work cleaning her toy horse at the little sink, a.k.a. the back washer.



Aiden was being a good helper while we were getting ready for B's birthday party on Monday.



Here is her little setup. We were instructed to make her leave the room and make up a surprise, then bring her back in and yell "Surprise!". So we did. She loved it.



Here is her cake. Sarah and I always eat pineapple upside down cake on our birthdays (cooked in the iron skillets we paid dearly to ship over). B aksed for a "plain ol' upside down cake" like we always eat. We made her a banana upside down cake. Like every other cake, she didn't touch it. Which is why we made something we thought we would like. Our kids always beg for cake. They hate cake. Teacher's used to worry that something was wrong with Aiden. The Smurfs are pretty much involved with everything Sarah arranges. It's a good thing they are so easy to get here.



That's it.

am i dead?

It has been a really long time. Three weeks, as a matter of fact. What can I say? I've been busy.

Last weekend, I went to my old boss's house (the guy who brought me to Germany) for a little BBQ. He just bought a Weber grill. Which cost about three times what it should have. It is a nice one, though. It cooked well. He and I have been discussing grilling for a few weeks, and I pointed out some pros and cons of the ones he was looking at. Once he got it, he decided he wanted to see how it was really done. So we went out and spent about a billion dollars on groceries on Friday night, and made arrangements for him to come get us Saturday morning.



Dieter has an old lab that wasn't sure what to think of us. He spent about the first five minutes we were there with B's house shoe in his mouth. He was pretty sure it was his, and he had no intention of giving it up. After Dieter made a brilliant recovery, the dog decided to go outside and relax where there weren't so many new people. Of course, right after that, we headed out ourselves, kids in tow.



With the kids distracted by the dog, Dieter and I got down to business. Dieter bought everything at the store the night before. We had chicken quarters, a whole chicken, a handful of what actually would pass as a pork steak (we thought it would be more bacony), some brats, some hotdogs, taters, some Roma tomatoes, onions, and GIGANTIC strip steaks. I found a site that translates cuts of meat into German. I click on a part of a cow, select the cut from the listed pictures, and it tells me what to order. It was awesome. I went back and forth with the lady cutting the meat. They had cleaned all of the fat off of the good end, so the edge wouldn't have the good old char I wanted. So we were debating the thickness of the cut. I asked for around 2 cm (yeah, I was having to do the conversions in my head, for some reason I hadn't thought about how thick I wanted them). 2 cm is about 3/4 inch. The lady realized that Dieter was going for an original American cut. She added about 1/2 an inch to them. They were monstrous. They grilled up great, though.



This was the view for the afternoon. We spent most of our time talking about grilling tips. I felt a lot like I was at home. It was healing. I have heard that there is actually a law in Germany that limits how many times a month one can grill. I think it is once a month. You can do it more if no one complains, but as soon as the neighbors complain, you don't have a leg to stand on.



Here we have some chicken quarters and potato packets. It was so yummy.

So, while we were there, Briana apparently kept everyone entertained. She kept talking about going upstairs to wash one of her toys upstairs in the bathroom. Finally, Sarah asked her why she had to go upstairs. She said she wanted to use the little sink. At this point, Dieter's family blew up. They all started hooting and hollering and laughing. Sarah went up with B, and found that she had the soap and a little workstation for cleaning all set up. On their bidet (or the back washer, as she calls it).



Today I went on a ride. It was sunny, there was no wind, and the temperature hit about 62°. We rode 50 hilly ass miles. The plot up there shows the profile of the ride, courtesy of my riding partners heart rate monitor with altimeter. It was pretty brutal. I felt like hell. The kids have been sick, and I haven't slept in about a week. I was dead about a quarter of the way in. I decided that I couldn't give up though, and I stuck it out. I know I held him back a bit, but my training partner is a good man, and didn't complain. It was pretty rewarding. Painful, but rewarding.

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.