Please take special notice of the pink rain boots. I hate to get my pants wet in the snow and we had about a foot of snow. The pink boots coved my pants enough that they didn't get wet. They didn't do too much for keeping my feet warm though.
This is Robin looking for our car (ok, not really, but I thought the picture was funny).
This was how our car looked. It took several minutes to get the snow off of it enough to drive.
Me, hard at work clearing the snow from our headlights.
Ice covered our license plate.... When we finally did get going, our car got stuck getting out of our parking spot. I got out to push (I don't drive well in snow). Luckily, there were 2 men in a car behind us that helped push us out of our spot. After that, we were on our way :)
One night for Family Home Evening this month, Robin and I colored and cut out this nativity. I spent a while looking on the internet for nativity puppets and this was what I eventually found. We wanted to somehow use the puppets to act out the nativity, film the "play" and send it to people... well, that didn't all work out, but we had a fun time coloring it.
A year ago today, Robin and I got engaged... it all started on a bench at Mukilteo beach. 
Each year my mom likes us each to write a Christmas wish list. It isn't that we will get any of the things on our list, I think mostly she likes to know what we think we want at the stage of life we are in. This year, I don't expect I will be getting anything on my wish list - no matter how realistic the wishes are. So, I decided to go all out and post things I really want, but no one can afford to give me. I think some of the wishes are a good reflection of where I am at in my life right now. While I was going to the extreme with my wish list, I figured adding an additional step or two and making it into a youtube video was no big deal. Now the whole world can enjoy my wish list. Merry Christmas :)
The pool with a current. Yes, it is outside. You get in the pool inside and swim outside. The water was warm. It was snowing outside while we were there.
Amethyst pool - some sort of wellness properties... I don't know....
The big slides. You walk up a spiral staircase to get to the top. One slide is steep, the other one goes round and round.
Another quartz pool. This one was rose quartz I think.
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I don't like winter. It is dark, rainy, and cold. Some mornings you have to scrape frost off the car before you can leave. You have to wear big thick coats and lots of layers of clothing. Overall, not a nice experience. Here in Germany they have something that is nice about winter - winter flavors of tea, chocolate, and yogurt. Oh, yummy goodness. Here is an example that I had to bring home from the grocery store yesterday - a chocolate with vanilla cookie in the middle. The candy bar literally spoke to me as I walked past it in the store. I knew it wanted to get into my cart and follow me home. I told it no. The second time I walked by, I couldn't resist. I let the chocolate bar jump off the shelf and into my cart. I started eating it in the car on the way home. Oh, yum - thank you winter for bring us these wonderful winter flavors. Other flavors I want to try: marzipan-orange and spiced apple.... No doubt, they will be just as good.
I got my German Drivers license today. Non-EU citizens are only allowed to drive for 6 months on their foreign drivers license. After that, they have to get a German one. In return for a German license, they took my American one. That is the policy. I want my American one back.... I just feel bare without it......
The gate on the bridge. There were about 50 other tourists on the bridge with me, so it was hard to get a good picture of it.
View from the bridge to the castle. The left tower of the castle is being renovated. It seems like they are always working on some part of the castle. They finish one section and move on to the other. I guess when a building is several hundred years old, it needs constant renovation.
A yummy ball of goodness only to be found in Heidelberg. I dream of these things - seriously. It is called Schlosskugel - or Castle ball. It is chocolate nugget, surrounded by a soft cake, surrounded by a thin layer of marzipan, dipped in chocolate. So yummy. We went to the bakery to get one and split it. A few hours later, I was still in the mood for more Schlosskugel, so we bought another one and split it again.
View from the castle to the river. On the left side of the river, you can see part of the bridge.
Robin and I at the castle.
This is the laundry I did this week - three loads all folded up and fit into one basket. The past two weeks, I have been struggling to get laundry done. I wash the loads on Monday (usually about 3 loads) but I can't quite seem to get them folded until Thursday or so. Robin doesn't mind if I take that long to do laundry. When he was single, he made sure he had all the clothes he needed to go at least two weeks without doing laundry (he never knew when he would have time to do it). I do have a problem however - I have enough clothes to go about a week and 3 days without doing laundry. That means, if I don't fold the laundry by Wednesday, Thursday morning I have nothing to wear. How annoying.....
This is a view of the entryway from the bathroom... it was the best place to take the photo from. Directly on the right (not in the photo) is the door out of our apartment. Directly to the left (also not in the picture) is our bedroom. The door on the left is the kitchen. The thing hanging on the was that looks like a giant slipper really is a giant slipper. It is where we put our hausschuhe (slippers). The door with the glass window is the entry to our living/dining room. The curtain on the right of the door is the curtain I made to hide stuff in the corner. The door seen on the right is our storage closet.
The project I finished this week is painting this rectangle on the wall. It took me a while to get the pictures printed and deciding how big the blue rectangle should be.... Anyways, it is finished - for now.
No this is not a recipe... there are plenty of those out there. This post is just to say Robin loves banana bread. We are already on our 3rd loaf in about 2 weeks. I usually only eat one slice....
View from our apartment 
Decorations in our entry way
Tree by our Church building
I don't have a problem with humidity. I like it. Or, I guess you could say I like it if it comes with sunny 80 degree weather, coconut trees, and nice beaches. When it comes with cold weather... I don't like it.
This post from a few days ago pretty much sums up what happened here. You can just add to the end, that I repeated the performance again this week.
A while ago I was reading some information on FlyLady.com about keeping up with house work. One of the suggestions I found was to set a timer for X amount of time and work on one area of the house for that long. It keeps you from getting distracted by other things and you know how long you will be working on that one thing. So, I decided to try it out. One night I told Robin I would work on the dishes for 5 minutes. Then, he could have his turn working for 5 minutes. The dishes got done fast and neither of us felt like it took too long. We have been doing this for a few weeks and it is working out great. Most nights, I don't even have to do my 5 minutes because Robin finished all the dishes during his turn. 
I love living nextdoor to Holland - it means we get wonderful flowers inexpensively. I got this nice little bouquet at a flower shop the other day. I paid 2 Euro for this... I also got supplies for wrapping it. It was so nice and made just for me to fit exactly in the vase I brought. Only 2 Euro that would be US $2.79. I don't think I could ever get this sort of bouquet in the US.
This is an egg. It fell off the counter. I was making something and set this egg on the counter for a minute while I did something else... While my back was turned the egg rolled off the counter. SPLAT! I turned around and looked at it. I wasn't really sure how I could clean a whole egg off the floor. So instead, I grabbed my camera. I did eventually get it off the floor, but I thought I would share the picture.
