Ausfarht

Get excited, my first entry. i dont know if i will keep it up, but hopefully ill start posting pix and this can be our digital scrapbook. no promises on grammer; punctuation or Spelling...(haha)

 

House/Neighborhood

**still no furniture, but we've been living like this for 2+ months, why change now? fear not, we have two giant TVs with a slingbox, everyone let out that sigh of relief.

**i actually spent 5 1/2 hours in Ikea. it closed at 10 and i was still there at 10:30 having people escort me around.with no real english being spoken:) and i bought furniture for our entire house in those 5 hours. i was delirious...but everything being delivered Monday (clearly paid for assembly)!

**we have already met some nice people...the neighborhood is great, our neighbors on both sides are American and we are doing thanksgiving with them and they are coming over for Rosies bday (but we don't have any furniture...hmm)

**the actual house is great too - huge with basically 5 bedrooms! and lots to clean...

**just like the kids are better behaved, the dogs are too! no dogs bark or really need leashes, its amazing. its like every kid and dog in germany was trained by the dog whisperer

 

Breth -

- I spend a lot of free time recycling, breaking down boxes, separating items. they are big on recycling here, which is an understatement. we used to think we had a lot of garbage, but turns out we really just have a lot of things to recycle. now we only have one bag of trash a week!! but we also have a bag of plastic, paper, glass and "bio" (food scrapes, leaves, etc)

- I've been running more because: 1) we are so close to the rhein and these amazing trails it seems silly not too and 2) i need an excuse not to do housework  and 3)i am killing time until i make all these best friends who will fill up my social calendar

- i saw him rake leaves the other day, was super excited about that

- he says his job is fine and not worried about it...as usual even keeled brett has no worries, well once we had the tv set up his troubles melted away (but he HATES going to an office

- first three weeks we were here he traveled to Budapest, England, Belgium and Sweden and now one more trip to Poland before Christmas and that's it

- i am still up because cam has been puking all night - same puke, different country

-i forgot my wallet after i went through the crazy check out line at Aldi (bag your own and do it QUICK or you will get dirty looks)

 

Kids -

- rosie still seems to be enjoying school. students from all different countries...but ends up with the americans:) shes turning FIVE on Sunday. she wants a "rock star" outfit and to ride a horse. there are - Cam finally enjoys school and still wears hockey jerseys everyday here. when we went ice skating on Saturday he did 100x better than he did 2 months ago in Chicago...he actually stood on his skates and didn't fall!! hes been really into rosie since we got here and it is cute (but annoying to rosie). his school is german/English and i imagine he will pick up german

- Mallory is lovely + crazy...she has an infinite amount of energy that seems to force her to run as far away from me as possible and explore AT ALL TIMES. and she only explores adult items (the recycle bins of course). she runs up to EVERYONE and they all speak to her in german and i just smile awkwardly. she really likes to take off her right boot. we have lost (and found) three of them this week! i gave up and let her only wear her left shoe.

 

Food (clearly)

- my kids LOVE the sausage here, thank god. actually rose and cam have been great about the eating and trying different things.

- german bread is amazing - how did i not know this? all types of bread, one better than the other. even my kids have started eating bread here. BEST BREAD EVER (another reason to run)

- i will conquer the baking aisle and meat counter at grocery stores/butcher. its a bit intimidating, not going to lie.

- we bought another fridge/freezer combo and it still isn't as big as our ONE in America, but it is what it is.

- so my year of german cooking has begun, i will be cooking one authentic german recipe a week from a book aptly named "The German Cookbook" from 1966:) this week was pork chops cooked in apples, onions and purple cabbage. yummy

- brett just ate some pigs knuckles and blood sausage at a work dinner

Ausfarht means exit when you are driving:)

Happy Thanksgiving - miss you all and wish we could pick you up and move you here!!