What an exciting night! Tonight Christian was rip sticking (skate boarding) with his friend Phillip and fell and broke his 2 front teeth. Let's start at the begining. It was a normal Sunday night, Dan was on his way to the U.S. and the kids and I were just finished up with supper. Then our neighbor, and Christian's friend Phillip, came running down to tell me Christian broke his tooth. I was thinking, not a problem, I've had this happen before. When I got down to the neighbors house, there was blood all over the ground and Christian was really upset. I got him down to the house and called my friend Debbie Rossi (whose been here for a long time) to ask where I should take him on a Sunday night. Off to the ER we went. But wait, I get all the way to Heidelberg and forgot my wallet. Thank goodness for the autobahn and I can go 200k (125mph) to get my wallet.
We finally got to the ER and he was able to walk right in. The poor guy didn't even get anything to numb him before he was hit with two shots in the top lip and one in the top of his mouth. Been there and done that (personally) and I have the t-shirt. OUCH! He was still feeling it when they were trying to clean the tooth out so he got two more shots in the top lip. They were able to glue one of his teeth back on. However, the other one was broken up to the bone in his mouth and they had to pull it out. Now it sounds like we are in for many visits to the orthodontist.
I told Christian extreme sports means extreme injuries. Thank God he is okay and resting well. May this be the only bad injury he ever has.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
OMG Christian!
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Magnifica
Paige had her class trip to France before we left on our cruise. She spent 2 nights and 3 days in La Petite Pierre. She seemed to have a great time. Then we whisked her off to Venice, Italy for our 7 day cruise. We spent an afternoon and part of the next day in St. Marco square before we had to go to the port. We didn't have a lot of time there, but we did enjoy a gondola ride and some sight seeing. The kids got to climb on the back and help row. What a cool experience for the kiddos.
We boarded our ship around 3 and left for Bari, Italy. We spent the first day on the boat because the weather was so nice and the kids wanted to swim and play. Dan ended up getting his legs burnt while reading his book. Poor Dan. He also got his first massage of many. Poor Dan.
The second day we went to Olympia,Greece. We took a tour of Olympia were they held the first Olympic games. We saw the temples for Zeus and Hera. This was one of Christian's favorite stops. We had a little time for shopping too. I found I can shop all over the world, everyone speaks credit card. During our evening suppers we sat with a couple from Amsterdam. They spoke Dutch and some English. We were able to talk, but it was exhausting with all the hand gestures we used.
Day three was Izmir,Turkey formerly know as Smyrna. We visited St. John's Monastery. This was the church of St. John the apostle. What a feeling to be standing where an apostle had his church. We also got to visit the Virgin Mary's house. It's recognized as a holy place of the Christian church. Mary lived there after the death and ascension of her son, Jesus. During her life time, she had carefully tried to stay concealed leaving the apostles to present Christ. I can't even express that day in words. The whole day was amazing.
Day four was Istanbul, Turkey. Christian was sick that day so he stayed on the boat. I ended up taking him to the doctor on the boat. Strep throat. Shocking, since we have been passing it back and forth since October. We saw the Blue Mosque built in the 17Th century and a Basilica that was built in 532 AD. It was built in five years. Later it too was turned into a Mosque. We finished the tour with a visit to a carpet factory and a bizarre. Back to the boat for sun and books. That night the water was so clear on the boat that we saw dolphins swimming and jumping by our boat.
Day five on the boat all day. Massages for Dan and myself. The kids and I played cards and Dan relaxed with a book.
Our final day was in Dubrovnik. It was a very clean little town. We walked their famous wall. The sea was amazing. We only wished we had a little more time there.
Saturday we ended our trip and headed back home to Germany. All together the kids have seen 12 different countries in their short lives. Dan unfortunately had to repack at the airport and head to the far East for more business. Without him working and traveling so much we wouldn't be able to do all the wonderful things we have done so far. Thanks Dan for working so hard, and being a great husband and Dad.
Tschau, Arrivederci!
Many blessings,
Ange
Monday, April 5, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Sometimes Fun Things Aren't That Fun
This is going to be short and sweet. After all the fun we had skiing it all had to come to an end. Thursday of last week I was given the news I had to have knee surgery. Nothing major just a menicus tear. Surgery was on Monday and I'm doing just fine. Dan was able to stay home with me on Monday. The only thing I was missing was a bell.
Sunday we had terrible straight line winds. It took our tramp and landed it 5 houses down from ours. I heard a lot of commotion from down stairs and Dan saw the tramp flying through the air over a swing set. It was quite a site.
The final scene of our drama is when Dan and Seth Crawford's BMWs were broken into. Seth's car was over here because it's a automatic and I could drive it. We were awoken by a police officer telling us our cars had been broken into. They took the steering wheels and the navigation sytems. I've been told this a common thing to do.
So all the fun things we have and do like skiing, our trampoline and the great BMWs we have aren't that fun when things get wrecked. What a week. I hope we don't have another one like this anytime soon. Have a great week. It's only up from here.
Monday, February 22, 2010
In Honor of the Olympics
As you can probably see we are loving our skiing. Dan and I took the kids to Garmish for a weekend ski trip. This is very close to Austria and to Cindrella's castle in Neuschwanstein. We are so lucky that we can spend so much quality time together doing something we all like. After skiing we all played in the pool. Dan was off to the saunas soon after followed by Paige. They are two in the same.
Dan had to go back to the States last week so the kids and I are by ourselves for 2weeks. Last week the kids also had a week off of school. This is due to fasching.(Karneval week) Fasching is very similar to Mardi Gras. It's also a time of breaking the rules and poking fun of government. There are many parades and costumes all around. Instead of going to the parades though the kids wanted to do more skiing. So, off we went to find another mountain to tackle. It wasn't much of a mountain though. It was more of a hill. The kids had a great time and we went through many seasons as Paige says. It was sunny when we got there, rained, snowed and rained some more.
This brings us to Saturday and Sunday of this past weekend. Our very good friend Seth Crawford went with us to Feldberg, Germany for a day of skiing. I wish I had my camera to share all the wonderful sights we saw. Sunday we stayed busy most of the day by ice skating. Christian told me he was a speed skater. Paige obviously was going to be figure skating. It's been fun exposing the kids to some of the winter sports since the Olympics are on. Now when we do our winter sports they can relate to what they see on tv.
Hope winter is coming to an end were you are. Spring brings so many new adventures for us. April Dan has planned a trip to France for us and May we are looking to hit the high seas on a Greek Cruise. Much to look forward to.
Sending all our love. Thanks for reading.
Ang
Monday, February 15, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Skiing And More Snow
To all the faithful followers of the blog sorry for the delay of writing. January has been an eventful month. We returned home from Iowa to have a delay in Heathrow airport for 7 hours. People ask if we were suppose to fly through Heathrow and the answer is yes. We were lucky that we only had to delay for 7 hours. 2 days before the whole airport was shut down due to snow.
The rest of the month we spent skiing as many weekends as we could. Thank goodness it snowed and snowed for most of the month. One weekend we went to Oberstdorf, Germany. We spent a wonderful day with friends and a couple of gluvines. This mountain was a little harder than what we skied in Serfaus, Austria. I took Paige down a black mountain sort of. Dan said it was blue...NOT. Her ski ended up falling off on the way down and she slid down the whole run screaming and snow flying. I had to laugh as we picked up the carnage on the way down. To her credit she did ski down the rest of the way with her Dad's help. She spent the rest of the day skiing on the blue hill and having a blast. One little accident didn't hold her down.
The boys had a weekend on their own last weekend. Dan,Christian and 3 other friends went skiing in Innsbruck, Austria home of the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympic Games. Christian said that it was probably a good idea that Paige and I didn't go. They skied hard. I kept hearing the same words from more than one person. Now that I hear stories of what happened I think it's best we didn't go. Christian was telling me how he was going off boxes and getting mad air. It was really "street". I saw some of the bruises and tired bodies during the week. Dan likes to say that a good time was had by all.
This weekend we were going to go to a local ski area but decided last minute Christian had too much of a cough to go. This did not sit well with him as you could imagine. Next weekend we are back on the slopes down in Garmisch. This is in Bavaria. Happy Valentines Day to us and Happy Valentines Day to you.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Catching Up on December Activities
Our week ended by Mom getting to one more Christmas market. We went down to Baden Baden. They say that because the town is so nice you have to say it twice. It was a cute little town that we wished we had more time at - the story of Mom‘s trip. While Mom was here she was a handy lady too. For all of you who know her you wouldn’t expect anything less. She hung hooks in my closet. This sounds really easy but we have cement walls and a small handheld drill. She also fixed my vacuum cleaner with the duck tape that she brought over. I love when she comes to my house whether in the states or abroad. She headed out on Friday with no problems. I was only a little upset to see her go, but she kept reminding me that we had a big trip ahead and only a couple of weeks until I would see her again. Thanks for coming over Mema.
Now onto what we did for the rest of the weekend. Dan arrived home on that Saturday and slept for the better half of the day. The Grau’s invited us over for supper and some cards the same night. It was so nice to visit, (beat Dan and Angie G. in cards) and get Dan up and round. On Sunday, I decided to take the kids ice skating in Heidelberg. I thought I would see how they faired since we will be doing some ice skating in Austria. They had a great time as you see in the pictures. The weather was wonderful. It was lightly snowing. Just enough to make the setting beautiful and get you ready for the upcoming season. I think they would have stayed all day but my toes were like ten tiny little ice cubes. We finished the ice skating with hot chocolate. If Mom were along she would have asked for amoretto in it. (Just kidding Mom). It’s the German way!
We also had a going away party that night for 2 of the John Deere families that were on their way back to Moline. Even though we have only been here for a short time, the John Deere community is very strong over here and it’s sad to see them go.
This brings me up to date on our activities. I’m now in the car riding to Austria. We have been sitting in a stau for the past couple of hours. This is a traffic jam for those who don’t know what a stau is. While we were sitting there, Dan and I noticed there were a lot of cars pulled over on the side of the road. Our friend Seth called as the discussion was going on between Dan and myself. He let us know that part of the year the Germans use more of a water fluid for their windshield. He found this out from his personal experience. His sprayers froze up on the outside of his car. Now it makes sense why people were pouring water over their windshields and their hoods were up because they were pouring antifreeze in their tanks. Lucky for us that Dan had his oil changed and they had already replaced the windshield fluid for us. The gas stations are absolutely ridiculous. People pouring out of everywhere. Good thing we aren’t in a hurry and the kids are doing great. I love vacation. Merry Christmas. Enjoy each and everyone one of your family members and all the craziness that ensues. We will be thinking of you while we’re skiing.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
London
Our adventure started very early December 3rd. I was sitting in the car as Mom realized that our tickets were laying on the table, along with all our maps and tickets to the plays. What a disaster that could have been. We arrived at the airport at 5:30 in the morning. The flight from Germany to London was only an hour.
When we arrived we hit the ground running. We were so excited, we ran all the way up approximately 100 steps with our suit case (it was really heavy). The more the story gets told the higher the steps will be. To be completely honest, we slowed way down about 3/4 of the way up we were laughing so hard. A wise women told me, if you have a good laugh you add 7 years to your life. We added a lot of years during this trip. The first day was about 21 hours for us. We went on a red bus tour, hopped off, and saw the Tower of London with the crown jewels. The red bus was to slow for us so, the"tube" was the way we went. This was much faster and we are really good at it. Mom was nice enough to let me eat at the Hard Rock. The nice thing about Hard Rock is no matter were you are in the world they still have the same American style food. I did a little shopping there and we were off to Mom's first professional musical - Les Miserables. She absolutely loved it. It was my second time seeing it and it was still so amazing it brought a tear to my eye. We finally hit the bed around 11:00. Mom said, "a $2 bed would have looked just as good as a $200 bed."
Friday was just as busy as Thursday. We had a nice breakfast and then made our way to St.Paul's Cathedral. This cathedral was originally a protestant church. They modeled some of the work after St. Peter's in Rome. After touring around the bottom and envisioning myself walking up the main aisle marrying a Prince, we climbed all the way up to the top of the bell tower. It was a clear day so we/I could see for miles. Mom on the other hand, could only see the wall because she was to afraid to look out, but she did make it up and I'm proud of her. We also saw the Westminster Abbey Friday. This is where some of the early Kings and Queens are buried, where coronation's and famous funerals are held. I would say this a center piece of London. Our evening again was topped off with American food and a musical. We ate at the Texas Embassy - Mexican food. Our play that night was Wicked. I now can appreciate how much my good friend Aven loves it. The costumes, lighting, singing, acting - just everything. I can't wait to take my kids to it.
Our trip ended Saturday with the changing of the guard and a tour of Churchill's museum. I would recommend seeing this museum also. It was very interesting how things worked in war time. The thing that stays with me the most is that the secretaries couldn't tell their families where they were working. Some of Churchill's own secretaries would work up to 18 plus hours a day with him. I could go on but I hope you get the idea. We arrived home around 1am Sunday morning. We wanted to squeeze every last drop out of the trip. I really enjoyed my trip with my Mom. Thanks for going with me Mom. I love you and hope you had a happy birthday.
Leia Mais…Monday, December 7, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Whirlwind Of A Couple Weeks
Dan has been busy traveling since his Mom and Aunt Janet have left. Paige has had strep twice and Christian has had the flu. Does this sound like anybody elses life? We've gotten to know the doctor pretty well. Now we need to stay healthy for the upcoming holidays.
We hosted card club this weekend, which thanks to Patsy, we had turkey and dressing sandwiches. I made party potatoes from scratch since there aren't any frozen hash browns over here. I like to say they were made with love.
I tried to have some of my Christmas things up so everyone could see. Unfortunately, the tree kept tipping over. Dan caught it one time. Yesterday I made the game time decision to take the tree down to the basement. Becky reminded me that every year my tree falls. There must be something wrong with me. I still have Christmas spirit though.
Today was a nice relaxing day. Dan helped me book flights, hotels, and theater tickets for London and we finished with Paige having riding lessons. Dan was there to watch.
Next week Mom will be over. We are so excited to have another visitor. In closing I would like to say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. As we start into the holiday season, we take time to consider how thankful we are for our family and friends. Even though we won't see everyone, you are close to our hearts. You have helped shape who we are as a family. Remember to enjoy the time you have together.