November

Most of my time seems to be consumed with preparing food, feeding the boys, and cleaning it up. "Didn't I just feed you?" is the most common thought of the day. Timmy likes to look at the cereal boxes and milk cartons as he's eating.

It rained several times in the past few weeks. After a hard rain one morning, there were lots of puddles left over outside. On our way back from preschool, I instructed the boys to watch out for puddles. We carefully maneuvered around all the puddles, all the way home. Just as we came up to the door, I turned around to find that my little ducks had veered course and were laughing with great delight at running up and down the grass line through a huge puddle.
At that point, we decided that we might as well play outside for an hour and get our wiggles out.

Poor Lamby needed a double washing afterwards, along with all the other muddy clothes and shoes!
"We made a fort" says Timmy. This morning Scott and the boys used every chair and blanket they could find to make this little fort in the living room.

Yesterday for my birthday, we ate at our favorite German restaurant, Metzger's. They give 50% off your bill + a free dessert on your birthday! We had rouladen, kaese-spaetzle, potato pancakes, rye bread, rotkohl and bread pudding. Mmmmm!

Timmy and I made necklaces from the "Fun Stix" they gave us to play with.

We hope that when the forest is full of snow soon that we will still bundle up and visit our little Eeyore House.

Timmy and I just watched this powerful song with video.  Great message!

Birthday Discounts

A favorite birthday pastime here in student housing is to run around town on the special day and collect on all of the free Birthday swag available from the local commerce. We certainly don't get as into it as some, but we had this 50% off meal at a local german resteraunt (+ free dessert), free ice cream cone, cup cake, and half-dozen bagels. That's about as much "shopping" as I can handle. If you haven't yet, you should definitely go online and see what kind of deals you can swing for your birthday: the possibilities would probably surprise you!

Here we are at the german resteraunt Metzgers, eating our fat Wurst Sampler! We had a great time, but it inevitably turned into a wrestling match on the bench!

Saturday we got out our camping stove and made pancakes for dinner in the forest. It was fun, but it inevitably turned into a wrestling match in the dirt.

The sport of Curling

Last Saturday we went curling.  When we got invited, I just had to try it.  I'm always up for trying something new.  For those of you who are like me and have no experience curling, it is a Canadian game.  Some play also in Scotland.  You sort of scoot off a rubber footstopper and skid on your right knee with your left foot on the ice while aiming a stone at a bullseye up the ice.  You are supposed to gently "curl" the stone to help place it.  Our skills did not reach such technical levels, but we tried. :)
Here's me after practicing skidding out.



Here's a photo of the other members of our team, Lisa, Bill, and Scott.  Lisa was a very patient instructor!

Curling was sort of like a combination of bowling and bocce ball on ice.

Then, the BEST part is that if the stone is curling too much, or needs to go faster, you SWEEP quickly in front of it to smooth the ice, which actually speeds the stone slightly and stops the curling, which can sometimes help it over the line, or into the bullseye.  That is fun to try, and especially to watch!

So, now I understand the whole sweeping part of the sport.
Very fun night!

In the Spirit of Thanksgiving

In the Spirit of Thanksgiving

Halloween

Showing off the costumes

Timmy was Pooh Bear and Aaron was Elmo.  We enjoyed having a little red monster running around the house the last few weeks.  Aaron really enjoyed dressing up this year, and would beg to have his costume put on every time he saw it hanging up.

Timmy playing at Maiko's house.  Thanks Maiko!