Finally!

I completely forgot, but we got our internet hooked up yesterday!!! YAY!
So, if you'd like to call us, now you can! We're using Skype, so we have an American phone # - a New York phone number, in fact - so there are no international or long distance charges, aside from whatever it normally costs you to call New York. If you'd like that number, just ask Mom or Memaw, as I'm not going to publish it here, for obvious reasons. I only ask that you please take into account the fact that we are 7-9 hours ahead of you, depending on where you live, and I'm not terribly talkative at 3a.m. If you've been the recipient of one of my previous calls and are concerned about call quality, let me assure you that things are MUCH better now. Really, you can't even tell we're halfway across the world!
I can also update my Flickr.com account, which you will see to the right hand side of this page, more often, so you can always look there to follow my camera. I'll try to post the gems here in the blog, but a mom of two toddler's time being what it is, it might be safe just to check there every now and again, in case I miss something :)

A Brief Visit

We had the awesome luck to see dad for a few minutes last night on his way home from Afghanistan. Well, technically from Turkey, but still. We met him at the airport not far from here, but what was originally a three hour layover became about thirty minutes, so we didn't have the chance to sneak him away for dinner and a visit to the new house, as we'd hoped.
We brought along a bag of treats - Kinder Eggs, some German tea called "Hot Loving" that is actually quite good, if unfortunately named and several tasty baked treats from the bakery in our village. Hopefully, dad is en route to Baltimore, enjoying fresh pretzels and pastries. At any rate, it will be better than what they usually serve on military flights :)
It took Ella a while to warm up to dad, but by the end of the visit, she was giving him plenty of kisses and hugs, and was quite sad to see him go. She wanted to show him her room at home, and Joe still didn't quite understand why Papa didn't have his motorcycle with him, but they were happy to be tickled and hugged, in the end.

New Photos

New photos uploading to flickr as we speak!
Supposedly, our internet will be hooked up in the next few days, so I promise they'll be updated more frequently after that.
Enjoy!

A Very Merry Christmas

Well, it's over. Months of planning, miles of paper, yards of tape and innumerable trips to the Mail Room : Christmas has come and gone again.

Joseph and Ella were thoroughly excited by the idea of Santa and his reindeer coming to

our house, and left out far too many treats for one jolly old elf to eat all by himself, and Rudolph would certainly have been too heavy in the tummy to do much flying after the giant carrot Ella found for him. But Santa never disappoints, so they woke to crumbs on the plate, and reindeer bite marks* on the nub of carrot.

Santa sure did leave plenty of presents requiring delicate and/or time consuming assembly this year, but everything was so well received that I could hardly say it wasn't worth the millions of steel cable twist ties and plastic restraints I struggled through. We had Spike the Ultra Dinosaur, a remote controlled beast who plays fetch and lumbers around the house, slipping a little on the tiles, a collection of toy power tools that would make Uncle Jack drool, and a great GeoTrax airport with a plane that flies on a loopy plastic track for Joe. Ella was happy to find a ride-on caterpillar, the same Little Tykes vanity that Samantha had when she was little (a surprise find at a base yardsale, and a steal for $15) and a Little People princess castle dollhouse, complete with dragon. Will got a french press for making German coffee, a European tea pot, a new leather wallet and the complete Chronicals of Narnia, as he's never read any of them but enjoys the movies. My gifts haven't arrived yet (military postal service being what it is) but I'll let you know as soon as I find out :)

One of Will's soldiers brought his wife over for Christmas dinner - and video games, which I suspect was really the plan all along. I made my first ham, which was a huge success (thank you, Alton Brown!) and we had greens, giant parker house rolls (I misjudged the size of the muffin tins), black eyed peas, glazed carrots, mashed potatoes and parsnips (it's a German thing), green bean casserole (which I did NOT make), arroz con pollo (which I did make) and fried okra. All in all, a very yummy southern dinner, with the obvious exception of the chicken and rice, a Puerto Rican dish Will insists we have for every holiday. Sweets were plentiful, and I'm afraid we'll be sending most of them to work for the soldiers to munch on there - I don't think I can handle that many here in the house.

Also, a few interesting notes on Christmas in Germany, as I haven't been able to write about them so far:

- Here, Santa does not come Christmas Eve. He visits good children on December 6th, and leaves small toys, snacks and apples in the boots they place outside their front door that evening. If the children have been naughty, they get switches in the boot for their parents to use. :S

- Christmas Eve is the night of the Christ Child, when an angel comes and brings gifts to children, representing the gifts of the wise men to the baby Jesus. Children yell up the chimney to give their Christmas lists to the angel, but telling Santa has become popular in the last decade. The Germans are starting to adopt a lot of American and English traditions, but they also hold on to their own, so for instance, when you see Santa walking around a market or store, he is accompanied by a woman dressed as an angel, usually with a long, blonde wig.

- German Christmas trees don't have the same lights as ours - theirs look like little candles, about two inches tall, and clip on to the ends of the branches. Germany is the home of the Tannenbaum, and the trees traditionally used real candles. Obviously this is dangerous, but older Germans still use real wax candles on their trees, and you can buy the special candles and holders at any grocery store.

- Recycling is mandatory in Germany. I'll write more about this later, but for now: As we opened and assembled toys and gifts this year, we had to sort the rubbish into piles: wrapping paper and cardboard boxes, plastic (which has to be removed from the cardboard boxes, in the case of those clear windows) and twist ties and restraints, metal bits and foil wrap, and even the tape from the paper had to be removed and tossed into the residual can, as it can't be recycled with the paper. It feels good to recycle, but man, it made cleaning up after gift-opening such a pain :)


*Does anyone know what reindeer's teeth look like? I just winged it, as she's two and has no frame of reference for these things.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Welcome!

This blog is for our family and friends, to follow us through our first tour in Germany. We'll update when we can, add pictures and just let you know about our day-to-day experiences. For security reasons, we won't write about future trips or excursions in detail, but we'll be sure to let you know all about them afterwards. Enjoy!