Fieldtrip

Some old ruins we visited last weekend... looks better in real life

{Altleiningen}

Sunsets

Robin says the prettiest sunsets he has ever seen have been in the town where we live... here is an example of what we have been seeing almost every night for over a month.

Laundry

We have been having great weather here. Nice weather really helps with getting laundry done. We have a dryer, but I try not to use it all the time. In the winter, I usually hang my laundry to dry in the basement. It is cold, dark and the laundry takes about 2 days to dry. This takes some advanced planning.... In the summer, I can hang the clothes outside and they are dry in about 2-3 hours. Much faster.

New Bedspread

You may have seen (or heard) in previous posts that it is pretty normal here for couples to have their own set of covers (and their own mattress - the two mattresses are set next to each other and held tightly together in a bed frame). I wanted cute bedding and I found and bought a king-size Martha Stewart duvet cover for our bed last summer when I was in the US. It was exactly wide enough for our two duvet covers but about 10 inches too long.
I finally got around to sewing the cover so we could use it on our bed. I sewed ties in the top of the cover so that it can hold the two duvets in place. I also used Velcro to help keep the two duvets together in the middle. It looks cute. It also works out pretty well...

Locked out

So... I locked myself out of the house last week... and the car.
I had my hands full of stuff (to put in the car) and grabbed some keys and went out the door. I got to the car and realized I grabbed the wrong keys. Great! So, there I was with a whole bunch of stuff no keys to get back in the apartment building, no keys to get into the car and Robin was at school in the middle of a class. What to do, what to do...
I decided to try to get back in the apartment building to leave my stuff there and then go for a walk. One of my neighbors must have seen me, because when I got to the door someone unlocked it for me. I took my stuff up to our apartment door and tried to get a hold of Robin. (See picture of me sitting on the floor in front of our door)
I got a hold of Robin and he decided to come home from school early to let me in. I decided to go on a walk until Robin could get home (which would be about an hour and a half). I locked myself out at about 12:30... an interesting thing happens in our little town around 12:30. Most shops close for lunch and stay closed until 2:30 or 3. So, I walked, and walked... the local drugstore was open so I hung out there for a while... then walked some more. Luckily, the weather was nice - sunny and about 76 F... at least I got to work on my tan.

Update from the Garden

The little garden on our balcony is doing well.

This week we found a few little flowers on our pea plants.

We also found little, tiny, green strawberries.

The German word for strawberry is Erdbeer which means earth berry. Clever, huh?

Garden

Way back in March, Robin and I started some seeds to grow on our balcony. We weren't really sure how well they would do, but I would say so far we have done very well. We planted some flowers, carrots, beans, and spinach. When I left to go the the US the we had planted the plants outside but they weren't very big yet. When I got back, they looked like this. I am still not sure if we will get much of a harvest from these plants - our balcony has very little direct sunlight - but we are willing to try it out and see what happens.

It's not a "piece of cake"

I can handle baking cookies - I like cookies, it goes pretty fast, and I mostly get it right. Cakes are a different animal. I don't do cakes. I can never, ever get them to come out of the pan. EVER. No amount of butter, flour, non-stick spray, or grease has every worked for me.

While I was at my parent's house, my mom asked me to make a cake (gluten-free of course). I said sure, and didn't think much about it, until it came time to put the batter into the bunt pan. Then I remembered - cakes never work out for me. Too late then. So I greased the pan as well as I could (about 5 times) and hoped for the best. This is the result. You many notice something is missing here. Most of the outside of the cake (the part touching the pan) stayed in the pan! The rest of the cake came out. So, it looks a little weird, but it certainly tasted good.

Convenient

I must say, one thing I miss about America when I am in Germany is the Self-Checkout at the grocery store (and other stores)... Sure, you have to bag your own stuff, but I "get" to do that here anyway.

Eternal Spring

Once, when I was in middle school (or high school) I did a report on Guatemala. Several of the sources I used said Guatemala is the land of the Eternal Spring. I thought that sounded nice.
This year has been the year of the Eternal Spring for me. Spring was well underway here in Germany when I went to the US. The daffodils had already come up, the tulips were already coming up, and popcorn was popping all over the apricot tree. Seattle was a few weeks behind us, so I got to relive it all over again. It was lovely.

During my trip, we went to Utah. Spring had not come to Utah. They were in the middle of an eternal winter. The day we went home, we woke up to this...

Two inches of snow! It didn't stick to the roads, but it was on the sidewalks enough to make it difficult to take our suitcases out to the car.

After our trip in Utah, it was back for a few more days of Seattle spring. Then back home to Germany, where continuous good weather had already brought us into late spring, early summer. I certainly didn't mind going from rainy, 50-degree Seattle weather, to sunny, 75-degree Germany weather.

The one problem with eternal spring, is that I have had eternal allergies...aaachooo!

Blowing things up

Everyone likes to see things blown up in an controlled environment, right? Well, I like it anyway. Several weeks ago, Robins parents invited us to see a pair of old chimneys get removed (aka. Blown up!) to make way for a new subdivision. Robin had to work that day, but I went. I made a film, enjoy.

Long time, no post

It has been quite a while since my last post... my excuse? Well, there was this, then that, then a trip to the USA, then this and that some more, and so on.
So, I suppose I can update my blog with some of the things I have been doing.
I got back last week from spending almost three weeks in the USA. While I was gone, Robin made a book of all of my blog posts from 2010. He did a really great job. Robin really wants us to have a way to record family history. A blog is one way we have found to do that. He was really excited to get it all published into a book. I really like it :)