24 December

Merry Christmas!

23 December

Some last-minute Christmas Crafting, using discounted stuff I got the last time we were in the States for Christmas...

22 December

Bowling with Friends!

21 December

a fresh haircut followed by lunch with friends a (their) favorite restaurant!

19 December

Perhaps the only reason we continue to do piano lessons...meet Nero.

at lessons:

18 December

sweet baby girl. trying on some new clothes that arrived just before Christmas. you see, we noticed a week or so ago that she'd outgrown most of her stuff...

17 December

"Mommy! We are having a party tomorrow and we need to bring COOKIES!"

thanks for the notice!

16 December

Someone was a darling little Christmas Tree at the J+J Christmas Party.

well, okay, here were a lot of cute little Christmas Trees at the party.

15 December - MOVIE day!

Movie Day! Finally got out to see Frozen. We went all the way to Museum Lichtspiel just to see it in English. When it started, what to my dismay, Miss G says: "is it in English?!"

And after the movie was over, she asked: "WHY did we see it in English?" Break my heart, man.

14 December

Tee ball today. And grocery shopping. Kids LOVE grocery shopping...

The photo for today? The woman behind the lens. I can't even believe the camera focused so well. I literally stood in front of the mirror and pointed up kinda sorta and pushed the shutter release. didn't look at the exposure or anything...

back to tee ball for a sec, it's a total mix there, mutts of all sorts. One Mom is 1/4 American (or half?) and we got to chatting today. Turns out, she's a flight attendant! Awesome, she said: need anything? Let me know, I love to go shopping when I'm in the States...!

some photos (from last week) of the kids playing.

warming up before starting drill-practice. never knew how difficult arm-circles are, or touching toes for that matter!

This one is pretty damn amazing at catching ground balls. I always sucked at those!

Getting ready for the line-up. Miss G is chatting up the coach's son. She is quite taken with him, the little squirt, which is good, because he's probably the reason she decided to stick with tee ball!

They never get put on the same team. G is on 2nd for this inning, D is getting ready to run to 3rd.

And here, she was first base-man and he's OFF to 2nd!

SA-WING!

*    *    *

Merry Christmas to Me from Me! The ring? It didn't fit *sniff* and is being exchanged. The new one won't be here until the 23rd, if I'm lucky, otherwise it'll be after Christmas, which is okay...because it's also my birthday present.

And I have to share this, in case Miss K is ever reading the blog (I know, I neglected it for a year...) but this is something she gifted me like 12+ years ago. I was never able to hang it, because I couldn't get the plug for it and someone kept saying he'd wire one for me, but it never happened. So this year, we were at Ikea and I bought one of THEIR stars, just for the plug (my star is so much better!)

13 December

Vegan is cool. It's yummy. It's cheesy. It's totally not lacking in comfort foods...Who'da thunk it? Yummy, steaming, creamy, 'mac o geez' from 'let them eat vegan' for lunch today...

and due to the sicks, and a double header on stay-home-from-kindergarten...I pulled out a new 1000 piece Christmas puzzle. What to my wondering surprise...it was Mr. D who jumped at the opportunity to puzzle! And he did an amazing job before giving up for the evening!

12 December

Sick day for small ones, (big ones too, but she doesn't have as much leeway to miss school) led to boredom. So we played with gingerbread.

creating a gingerbread sleigh. (the box was packaged wrong, we had two santas, both facing the same direction, so we couldn't glue him together...)

chose the house, because of the Santa-problem with the sleigh, and because of one broken bit on the reindeer...

11 December

December 11th and bare feet? Not only that, you never would have caught anyone lying on the floor willingly in the old place! 

10 December

Learning notes...

and this one thought he wanted to learn the same notes...but NOT for homework, Mommy!

9. December

Learning to read with Sil & Ben  (Silben Methode). He's working on 'mu', 'mi', 'mo', 'ma' and 'me' and can read 'Oma', 'Omi' & 'Mama'...

8. December

decorating the tree (future baseball player?)

7. December

At Pflanzenkölle. It's tiring, NOT helping  choose the Christmas Tree...

6 December - Nikolaustag!

This was a crazy-busy day. It started with the discovery of the Nikolaus-stash in the morning and moved on to an 8:00am school assembly and then crafting until school was out, then piano lessons and I ended the day with a Christmas Party/Dinner for work (for me).

That doesn't matter though, Nikolaus DOES.  The stash:

5 December

First: Happy Birthday to Grandma! 
We made an insta-video for her this afternoon.

Then Oma and Opa came. And then we had a concert! Miss G was singing in a little choir, all thanks to this lovely lady:

who asked a few weeks ago whether G wouldn't like to come sing on Thursdays with Maria? And then she was singing in a concert for Nikolaus!

singing:

so serious...

4. December

Let her out of my sight for a few hours today and she came back like this:

good thing it was a bath night!