The Happiest Child Alive

I’m the happiest child alive,

I had a birthday and now I’m five,

So to the big school I can go,

to learn all the things I want to know.

It’s hard for me to believe that Naomi is already 5 years old.  I’m in denial.  I still want her to be my baby!  She is growing so quickly, though, and is turning into such a beautiful, grown-up girl.   Here are some things that Naomi told be about herself:

My name is Naomi.

I am 5.

I like to play games.

My favorite book is Curious George and the Puppies.

My favorite color is red.  Pink is my second best color.  Red is my really favorite color.

My favorite food is soup and grilled cheese. (This is what she requested for her birthday dinner, which surprised me because we usually have to force feed her soup.  She’s really not much of a soup eater.)

My favorite movie is Mary Poppins. (Side note – I think her favorite movie is whichever one she happens to be watching.)

My favorite animal is my horse Spot (the one that I’m holding.)

I live in Germany.

My favorite place is London.

Someday I want to go to London again.  It’s fun going to London.

I am good at practicing.  (So completely true!)

I love my pipe cleaners.

Naomi isn’t writing a lot yet, so she dictated the answers to me.  

We celebrated Naomi’s birthday with another super fabulous princess party.  Something that I love about 5 year olds is that they’re happy with repetition.  We recycled princess/birthday bingo, pin the horn on the unicorn and I even (and this is big) made another castle cake.

                                 

I think it turned out much better this year.  For one thing, it was structurally sound.  No tilting towers.  For another thing, the finish is much more smooth.  I used fondant instead of frosting, and although it didn’t taste as good, it was so, so, so much easier to make even.   Next year my goal is to start the piping (vines, dots etc.) more than an hour before the party starts.  I really, really, rushed it this year (like I did last year) and it is really sloppy.  I’d love to get the details right sometime.  I need to work on those advance planning skills.

This year the party was about double the size.  We had 11 kids…

8 princesses and 3 princes.  (Note that one prince was a girl.  She wanted to come as a horse (she was the donkey in our Nativity play) but her mom talked her into being a knight instead.  So fantastic!)

Naomi had a wonderful time.  Birthday parties are a lot of work and a lot of stress, but in the end, I think they are worth it.  I want to enjoy this age and time.  Because Naomi will eventually stop wanting to dress up as a princess and having a castle cake at her parties (most likely preferring a movie and pizza with friends) I’m happy to create a princess birthday party with a castle cake.  Besides, what is cuter than a bunch of 5 year olds in princess dresses?  Not much.

A few more pictures from the party…

                     

           

***Note – this party was held in our stairwell community room.  My apartment is not nearly large enough to host a birthday party.  I do NOT have raw cement floors and parrot decor in my living room.  Just so we’re clear.***

                                        

Happy Birthday Naomi!   You are a sweet, smart, precocious, creative, wonderful girl.  We are so grateful you are part of our family and we love you!

A Weekend Off

We have some great friends here with whom we have worked out a child swap.  They have two, we have two…it just works out well.  It also doesn’t hurt that Naomi and their daughter Claire seem to be princess twins separated at birth.  We have each taken a weekend with all four now, and it has been a dream come true.  Let’s face it – some things (many things, in fact) in Europe are just NO FUN to do with kids.   I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have enjoyed being dragged through art museums when I was 5.  

Anyway, thanks to Brandon’s crummy work schedule (so glad Ben chose dentistry!) we got to celebrate New Year’s Eve on our own this year.  CHILD FREE!  Emily picked the kids up that morning (Thursday) and we reclaimed them Saturday afternoon.  Emily, Brandon – we love you.  A weekend long date – what better way to start out the new year?!

We started out by watching Avatar in 3D at a German theater in Mannheim.  (The movie was in English.)  Hooray for a stadium style theater with reserved seating!  BOO on $21 tickets.  Really.  Have you ever paid that much for a movie ticket? 

I didn’t think so.

I suppose it was worth it.  We have been seeing movies at the theater here on post for the last year and a half.  Tickets here are only $4.50, which is fine if you like movies that are out of focus and that stop periodically.

When we were at the Mannheim theater, I was thrilled to notice that they show the “Live From the Met” opera broadcasts.  How fun!!!  Then I looked at the ticket prices.  28 Euro per ticket.  That’s $42!!!  We only paid $35 to see Carmen live at the Met in New York!  Crazy!  Maybe the glass of wine that is included in the ticket price is very high end.  I think that I’ll keep my money and go see a live performance in Heidelberg…

After the movie we went to a party at our friends’ house.  They live in a small German town about 15 minutes from post.  (Lucky dogs.)  Can you say fireworks?!  Last year Naomi was sick so we spent New Year’s Eve in our apartment and went to bed early.  Around midnight we heard what sounded like the beginning of Armageddon.   Because fireworks are not allowed on post, we couldn’t see anything – we could just hear it.  This year we saw it.  Some of the fireworks people were doing were on par with the kind of thing you’d see at a small town 4th of July fireworks show.  We were standing on our friends’ balcony (on the 5th floor of their house) and could see across the whole valley.  It was fantastic.  The fireworks exploded pretty much at eye level and surrounded us on all sides.  Next year we plan on letting our kids stay up and experience a German New Year celebration first hand.  It was unforgettable.

Now, onto the next two days.  Ben and I had originally planned to drive down and explore the Black Forest region.  Upon reflection, and a realization that everything would most likely be closed on New Year’s day, we amended our plans and took the two days to explore a couple of towns nearby us. 

Worms -

Worms has a pretty sweet Romanesque Cathedral.  It, the Speyer Cathedral and the Mainz Cathedral are all kind of alike. 

                  

The Baroque altarpiece (added several hundred years after the construction began) really looks out of place to me.  (In other words, I didn’t like it – I think something stark and modern would look better.  Or something wood and heavy, and, well, medieval.)  We really enjoyed the Christmas decorations in all of the churches we visited during the Christmas season.  Each church had a nativity scene set up, some of which were quite elaborate. 

                            

The lighting that day really was this bad.  It was grey, drizzly and cold. 

                            

                

Worms is where Martin Luther went on trial and defended his 95 theses.  This monument commemorates Martin Luther’s contribution to the reformation.  He is front and center.  The men at the four corners are others who contributed to the Protestant movement – Savonarola, Hus etc.

                           

There are a lot of other neat things to see in Worms, but unfortunately (it was New Year’s Day, after all) they were all closed.  The town was dead.  It was also filthy.  You wouldn’t believe the firework debris and liquor bottles that were in the streets.  And Germany is usually so clean!

Mainz -

We spent Saturday in Mainz.  I enjoyed the juxtaposition of our trips to Worms and Mainz, because Mainz is where Johannes Gutenberg printed his first Bible.  Without easy access to scripture, I doubt if the as many people would have joined the Protestant movement.  We visited the Gutenberg printing museum and saw two copies of the New Testament and one of the Old Testament printed by Gutenberg himself (dated mid 15th century).  We also saw a copy of Virgil’s Aeneid that was 507 years old.   It was so wonderful to meander through the museum and look at the exhibits without having a child tugging at my hand the entire time whining that he/she is hungry/tired/bored/needs to go to the bathroom/wants to go home.  Overall we’ve had good experiences in museums with the kids, but they always reach their saturation point before we do, so it was nice to spend the time we wanted to and to leave on our own terms.

Here is the cathedral in Mainz…

                         

As you can tell, the weather was much nicer that day than it was during our visit to Worms.  Unfortunately the cathedral is completely surrounded by buildings – there’s no large square or piazza adjacent to it from which I could get a good picture of the entire building.  This cathedral was begun in the year 975(!) and celebrated its 1000th anniversary the year Ben was born. 

                   

Another favorite stop in Mainz was the church of St. Stephan.  It was almost completely destroyed in WWII, and has completely rebuilt.  Unlike many of the churches in Germany which have replaced the stained glass windows that were destroyed with clear glass, this church was able to commission (I think with the help of local banks and sponsors) beautiful stained glass windows designed by Marc Chagall (who was in his nineties at the time).  Chagall designed the windows in the front of the chapel and put the detailing on them himself after they had been installed.  The final picture is of one of the side windows, which was designed by the window maker with whom Chagall had collaborated.

                      

                                               

I really loved this church.  It was beautiful and peaceful. 

So there you have it – two obscure (to Americans anyway) German towns that I will happily visit again, especially with friends or family.  Any takers?

A Fresh Start

It’s been a long time since my last blog post.  A really, really, really long time.  It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write about the things we’ve been doing, I have.  I’ve just also had a thousand other things to do.  On top of that our laptop and our desktop died within a couple of months of each other.  Fortunately everything was backed up.  I (confession – Ben has done most of the following) have, however, had to reload all of our programs, re-load pictures, re-install Windows Live Writer….you can see why the blog entry has been delayed.  I’ve also been hindered by the fact that I am so, so, so far behind on my blogging.  I think my last entries are about events that took place last April.  It’s overwhelming. 

For this reason, I have decided on A Fresh Start.  I really prefer to write about things as they happen, so that’s what I’m going to do.  If I happen to have extra time to fill you in on the missing 7 months of our lives, I will.  I’m not, however, going to stress about it.  So, here goes. 

The holidays were very busy, but very fun for us.

We had Thanksgiving with our friends the Dawsons and the Browns.  It really stinks to be without family year after year during the holidays, but having good friends really helps.  I made pies.  Of course. 

 

Yummy.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to enjoy the leftover goodness of these pies (I usually eat pie for breakfast for at least 3 days after Thanksgiving) because Friday morning I took off on a road trip with 3 of my good friends. 

Our first stop was Seiffen, Germany – a little town on the border of the Czech Republic that is famous for nutcracker/Christmas pyramid/wooden toy construction.  The octagonal church in the picture is the one that you see on many of the wooden Christmas decorations that come from Germany.

                                               

I wish I had been more into taking pictures in Seiffen, but I wasn’t.  We stayed in Schloss Purschenstein, an AMAZING castle that had only recently been renovated and converted into a hotel.  (It had only been open a month.)  Maybe if it hadn’t been dark when we checked in and dark when we checked out the next morning, I would have taken a picture.  In any case, I definitely plan on going back.  I’ll get a picture then.

Our next stop was Boleslawiec, Poland.  As a town, Boleslawiec is nothing to write home about.  The pottery that is produced there, however, is.  Check out what I saw on the wall of one of the shops we visited…

                                                  

Timpanogos and Robert Redford, no less!  I think my parents have that very image of Timp framed and on their wall.  Anyway, we purchased some pottery, enjoyed massages and pedicures at the fabulous Blue Beetroot Inn, and ate yummy, yummy food.

Our final day we spent wending our way home.  We stopped in Dresden for a few hours.  I had expected Dresden to be thoroughly modern and boring (it got hammered in the war) but its Altstadt is beautiful.  I can’t wait to go back with the family.

The Dresden Christmas market…

  

The famous Frauenkirche…

               

     (Reconstruction finished in the nineties.  The black blocks you can see are all that was left of the original church.)

The wall of kings…

                                                   

                                   

This wall is composed of around 24,000 ceramic tiles and survived the bombing.  It is longer than a football field.  I only spent about 3 hours in Dresden – just long enough to realize that I want to go back.  Another place to add to the list!

December was a flurry of Christmas celebrations, musical performances, Christmas markets and daytrips.  Every year I think that I can make Christmas time more relaxed, and every year I fail.  Today Ian went back to school and Ben went back to work (Naomi still has a few days) and I feel like I need some more time off to recover.  Anyway, here are some pictures of our Christmas adventures…

The Christmas market in Michelstadt…

  

                               

                 

It was freezing cold that day.  I think that the high temperature was 11 degrees Fahrenheit.  The town is beautiful, and we’d love to go back sometime when it is WARMER.

The Christmas market in Heidelberg…

                          

The rides and the treats are what make Christmas markets doable with kids. 

                          

At the Heidelberg market Naomi and Ian went in the stall behind the green pole to pet some donkeys.  One tried to eat Naomi’s glove.  It actually bit her hand quite hard.  I had hoped that the experience might temper her enthusiasm for animals and instill some caution, but alas.  Within 20 minutes she was asking to go back and pet the donkeys again.  There is no hope for her.

The Christmas Nativity play….

 

                                                   

                        

We had 24 people in our little apartment for Christmas Eve dinner/caroling.  Some of our guests spoke only Albanian and Italian, so I got to use my rusty Italian to explain everything that was going on.  By the end of the evening, my brain hurt!  It was a wonderful evening, though.  I think everyone had a good time.

Christmas morning…

    

We’ll leave it at that.  I see no reason to expose you to pictures of Ben and me in our pajamas.

The Strasbourg Christmas market…

                                                          

            

                                                

               

                                           

                                   

                    

The pictures here don’t tell the true story.  Naomi was impossible in Strasbourg.  She broke down every 5 minutes.  Or maybe every 3 minutes.  I had read online that there was a village for children at this market, so we’d gotten her hopes up with promises of cookie decorating and coloring and toys.  Well, there was one room with some lame board games.  Yippee.  Strasbourg, however, is beautiful.  Maybe some day I’ll go without kids!

That’s all for now.  I’ve been working on this for over 2 hours now, and I really ought to take a shower.  And go to the post office.  And clean up my house….  I’ll be back soon!