It's hard to believe that November is here and gone so fast. I can't believe how busy our "sabbatical" has gotten!! Jay continues to plug away at two of his Projects. #1, learning German and # 2, his Greek Grammar textbook. I seem to have gotten caught up in the "dailies" as I call it. The shopping(we're NOT talking Mall here people), cooking, cleaning, retrieving kids, etc. To think I thought I was going to be catching up on all of my photo books, reading etc. Ha. Anyway, here's what we have been up to....
At the beginning of the month one of our highlights was the first potluck for our apartment complex. The girls helped decorate and we all had a great time. There is only one other American couple (but she is actually Venezuelan) and the rest are from everywhere - check out the picture(just click on it for a better look)! We enjoyed sampling various dishes from the countries and it was really fun. We'll have a Christmas dinner in December and everyone will bring a Christmas goodie from their country. We have posted a world map on the girls wall which shows the various flags in addition to the countries. As we meet people from different countries the girls are highlighting the respective flags. It has been fun and pretty amazing how many flags have been highlighted. I need to do a count but would guess it is around 25.
As the weather has dampened a bit (actually alot, but we do get beautiful rainbows) we have only gone on two outings this month. The first was to a town called Blaubauren which is about an hour away. There is a beautiful blue spring that feeds out of the mountain. Once again we joined our Icelandic friends who have been such a blessing to us. You can see a picture of the gang above in front of the "blue lagoon". There was also a pretty church there as well as you can see.
The other outing was to take our first official visitor somewhere fun! The Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. It just opened this year and we took Flat Stanley (our visitor from Grace Hartman Elementary in Rockwall courtesy Emily Henry) to check out the cars. It was a gorgeous museum and we all enjoyed looking at the history of the Porsche. The girls took about 500 pictures between them - ahhh the beauty of digital! Jay and I ordered his and hers - mine is blue, his is red. We'll have them shipped back to the U.S.
A few weeks ago I helped in Dayna's class as they made their annual plaster masks. They have a program where a 3rd grader is assigned to a 1st grader as their buddy for the year. It's really a great thing and the 3rd graders got to do the mask of their 1st grader. Fun to watch! Dayna's teacher allowed Karissa to make a mask since she hadn't had the opportunity as a first grader. Amazingly enough she allowed her pesty little sister to do it. They had a ball.
Thanksgiving was a bit odd. It is not a holiday here so the girls had school. We did have a little turkey that night but really had our feast on Friday night. We were hosted by a German American couple (she is German, he is of German descent but was born and raised in the U.S.) and had the traditional Thanksgiving meal with a German flair (can you say Knodel? A big doughy ball made from potatoes). I managed to cook, scrape and puree a real pumpkin for my pumpkin pie (actually pumpkin bars - pie pans do not exist here!). The only pumpkin you can find is in a jar and is pickled - not quite the flavor I'm looking for in a pie! Ah, the comforts and conveniences of home!
We are getting ready for the big Christmas Markets here in Germany. A VERY big deal. The market it a large outdoor "bazaar" for lack of a better word held in the old town square with all kinds of Christmas lights and food. Each town has one and they are supposed to be really pretty. I'll send some pictures of that soon. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving - we do have a lot to be thankful for!
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