Just in case you missed it

Due: April 2013
It’s a boy

Welcome December

Let it snow… and snow.. and snow… ok, so we only got about an inch, but that is quite a bit more than nothing.

New shelves

I mentioned two Ikea trips – these are the shelves we bought on the first trip – the Billy shelf.
source – Ikea catalog

Rather dull, but with potential and big enough to give us plenty of space. We decided one wasn’t enough – we bought three! I also thought the plain white looked a bit dull, so thanks to some ideas from the Ikea Hacker website, we covered the cardboard backing with blue wall paper. Here is how it all went together:

For those of you with a straight eye – we eventually did get the shelf on the left in the final picture to stand straight. Imagine now if you can the the shelves are now full of books. Yes, between the two of us, we really do have that many books.

Ikea

We have made two trips to Ikea in the past month. Two! It takes about an hour to drive there (and of course one hour back). This is how the back of our car looked after the second trip. On our first trip we bought Ikea shelves – they were so long, I needed to sit in the back while Robin sat in the front and drove. On this second trip, we bought two dressers, a few things for organizing, and cupcake liners (because they were cute!).

Makes me laugh

I commute – one hour each way. Some days it can be a bit dull – get on the train, find a seat, put on headphones OR pull out Kindle, ride the train to destination. Sometimes my “destination” is where I transfer trains, in which case the trip includes hurrying from one train to the next. I try to keep my eyes open for things to bring variety to the trip, for example, some girl with her pet rat on her shoulder, or a man with a well groomed handlebar mustache. One day this week I saw this advertisement for a tanning studio. I just had to laugh! It translates to “Only tastes good when tanned”. Raw chicken, only tastes when tan… hahaha. Other than this billboard, it was a normal day with a normal commute.

Trip to the USA

We took a trip to the US in August. We got to spend 10 days there and it was a whirl-wind trip! We landed on Saturday night in Seattle. Early Tuesday morning, we drove down to Salt Lake City (it took the whole day). Thursday, was the start of the Bennett Family reunion and we stayed down in Orem. Friday, the whole party went on the road and we drove up to Heber Family Camp. Saturday, Robin and I drove up to Logan and stayed with some friends there until late Sunday afternoon. Sunday evening, we started our trip back to Seattle arriving early Monday morning. Thursday morning was our flight back to Germany. The trip wasn’t very relaxing, but we had a wonderful time. We took lots of pictures too…. or not….

View from the passenger side of the car. We saw plenty of the freeway during our trip.

Coming down the mountain from Heber Valley Camp. The camp was waaaaaaaaaaay up in the mountains.

We took a garden tour of the Conference Center  in Salt Lake. This photo was taken from the top of the Conference Center.

Robin go a chance to enjoy the swing at my cousin’s house

Hello Oregon! One of the rest stops we stopped at. Once we got out of the car, I realized I had been to this rest stop before – the last time I drove from Seattle to SLC.

Robin took a picture of himself during the drive. It could get a bit dull in the passenger seat.

Curtains

Just in case anyone is interested, I made curtains for the very first time. We found a duvet cover at Ikea that had fabric I liked. We bought it and I turned it into curtains for our bedroom. I am quite impressed that I could do it. They may not be the best curtains ever, but they serve their purpose and make me smile.

Ludwigshöhe

Robin and I went to Ludwigshöhe yesterday in Darmstadt. Other than that it has a really great view, I don’t know anything about it (and at the moment I am too tired to read up about it on Wikipedia in German). So, enjoy the photos.

The panoramic view

The Tower

Source

Me on the stairs on the way down from the tower

The spiral staircase looking down

A few garden photos

I love go out and look at my garden. Every morning and every evening it looks just a bit different. Here is how things are going:

The morning glory arch – it looks AMAZING. We get several blooms every day and they are a lovely shade of blue. The vines are up to the top of the arch now and we have it growing along the top of our balcony ceiling.

This is a view from the street. If you look carefully, you can see the laundry I hang to dry.

Tomatoes – we have lots, but this is the first one to turn red

We at this strawberry yesterday. It looked ready to be eaten. It tasted quite nice. There are several more strawberries on the way too.

Zero to Sixty

Remember the trip I took to Frankfurt a few weeks ago? I posted pictures of the Occupy Frankfurt camp? I was at the European Central Bank (ECB) for a job interview as a Website Administrator. I got the job. I started on the 13th of June. Now my days are quite busy – I am gone nearly 12 hours each day – 51 minute train ride each way. I put my time on the train to good use by reading or listening to programs from the Mormon Channel on my MP3 player. It is pretty interesting working at the ECB. I am learning quite a bit about the Euro and the European Union. Lots of information about monetary policy is posted on the ECB website which I am still struggling to understand (even to a small degree). I think I will be able to learn quite a bit at this job.

Here is the view from my office

This is how it looks at the train station – pretty busy most of the time.

Occupy Frankfurt

I was up in Frankfurt today and saw the Occupy Frankfurt camp. It is located just outside the European Central bank (the big Euro sign belongs to the bank, not the protesters). It looks like the protesters have set up a nice place for themselves there considering that they are living outside. There were tents of different sizes – for one to six people, there are areas for getting together – complete with sofas and ottomans, a kitchen (which I did not see), and even an herb garden. It was raining pretty hard while I was there, so not much was going on in the camp.

The big Euro sign outside the European Central Bank

They made a nice sign to let us know they are still here (according to Wikipedia, the camp has been here in Frankfurt since October 15, 2011)

Source – I think it is pretty nice that they have an herb garden. It looks like it is doing very well too.

A big tent – probably one of the common areas

On the left, you can see the welcome desk – I guess they want to help people have a pleasant stay in their camp.

According to Wikipedia: The Occupy movement is an international protest movement against social and economic inequality, its primary goal being to make the economic structure and power relations in society fairer. Different local groups have different foci, but among the prime concerns is the claim that large corporations and the global financial system control the world in a way that disproportionately benefits a minority, undermines democracy and is unstable. Although most popular in the United States, Occupy has seen protests and occupations in dozens of other countries and on every continent. Each Occupy site set up a camp - including tents and outdoor kitchens - in a park or other public space, often near the city or town's financial district, to establish a semi-permanent protest area.

The Garden Grows On

Our balcony garden is still doing very well. It is fun to go outside every morning and see what is new. The morning glory vines have reached the top of the rose arch, are a just about to the end of our first pea harvest, our 6 tomato plans are taking up more and more space every day, and our petunias are flowering like crazy.

Our tomato plants already have little tomatoes!

I counted over 40 petunias blooming the other day.

A whole handful of pea pods

Big, lovely, blue morning glories. The flowers only bloom for one day, then die and the next day a new flower blooms. We have a different number of flowers every day – one day we had 9, another day we had 6, I think today we have 5. They are so pretty.

Robin Bakes

This past week Robin was home from work recovering from his surgery and concussion. He decided to try out a new recipe for Apple Muffins (it seems here in Germany cupcakes and muffins are the same thing and the words can be used interchangeably). He chose the recipes, did most of the baking, and frosted them himself. They look good, but he wasn’t satisfied with the end result (they taste fine, I think it just wasn’t what he was hoping for).

Decorating the cupcakes

Just before I took this picture, I asked him if he would mind if I took a picture. His answer was, “Will I be famous?” He just loves it when I take a picture of him and blog about it.

Leaving the Nest

This spring, it seems that several bird families have taken up residence in by our apartment. There is one nest in particular that we could see directly into from our balcony. Compared to the other bird nests, these birds were very loud. The little birds kept the adult birds busy from morning to night with their cries for more food. Then, something happened… the story is shown below. One of the baby birds decided it would be fun to leave the nest. He waited until both the adult birds were gone (the picture below shows him peeking out of the nest and waiting for the adult to fly off). Then, out he comes! He tried out his wings a bit and hopped around some. Then, it seems he decided it wasn’t so great outside the nest and wanted to get back in. He couldn’t.  So he landed on a bit of wood and waited (and he cried)… until help came…. I don’t know what happened to him next, but the next day, the nest was empty. It seems the adult birds decided it was time for the little birds to be out on their own… they all left the nest.

Balcony Gardening

In our new apartment, we are lucky enough to have a nice size balcony and lots of sun. I started planning our garden in February – drawing diagrams, researching plants, and buying/starting seeds. Our garden is doing really well so far - we have been having really nice weather to help things along. These are some pictures I took a few weeks ago – everything looks different already. The top right photo is of live plants that we ordered online – that came just like that in the mail. We have morning glories growing on a rose arch – they are already over 3 feet high, had TONS of flower buds, and it looks like we might see our first bloom tomorrow or the next day. Our peas are going crazy – we have lots and lots of pea pods growing now and more coming. Our tomato plant is now at least triple the size it is in this picture – it has several buds as well that are starting to bloom. Our petunias are doing wonderfully– I counted over 20 blooming flowers today. It is nice to see all the effort in our urban garden paying off – it isn’t even officially summer yet… I am excited to see how things go over the next few months. No doubt, I will be writing more about it and posting more pictures.

Robin’s Tonsillectomy

Warning: at the bottom of this post is a somewhat graphic picture of Robin’s tonsils four days after the surgery. If you don’t want to see it, don’t go all the way to the bottom :)

After having trouble with Robin’s tonsils for quite some time and at the recommendation of two doctors, we decided to have Robin’s tonsils removed. The operation was last Wednesday (May 16th). It is a fairly standard procedure and our Doctor was very confident that everything would go fine. So far, I would say the recovery has not gone quite as planned. In Germany, a short hospital stay is to be expected after the surgery – for Robin it was 5 days. Between day 2 and 3 in the hospital, Robin lost consciousness in the bathroom. He fell and hit his head resulting in a concussion. He spent the next day in bed feeling dizzy. He came home on Sunday morning. He had a few things to eat (ice cream, water, a slice of cheese) then took his medicine and threw up. There is a risk of bleeding after the surgery, so I had to check the vomit to make sure there was no blood in it (there wasn’t). After that, he decided to stop taking his pain medication because he felt it was the cause of his queasiness. After that he was feeling better and the pain was manageable. Tuesday night he woke up at 2 AM, told me he was tasting blood and proceeded to spit saliva into a cup. Again, due to the risk of bleeding, I got to check the saliva. Some blood, but not too much. We waited… slowly, there was more and more blood (until he was only spiting out blood). We left for the emergency room. By the time we arrived in the hospital Robin’s spit was not quite as bloody. The nurse on duty called the ENT (ear, nose, throat)  doctor. Once he arrived they started checking things and yes, Robin was bleeding – not much but it was not stopping very quickly (we were about 2 hours into spitting out blood at this point). To stop the blood Robin received a shot of adrenaline and got to stay in the hospital for 48 hours for observation. Only 5% of tonsillectomy patients experience bleeding afterwards – Robin now belongs to the 5%. Assuming everything goes well, he comes home from the hospital tomorrow. The nice thing about the whole experience is that we have learned quite a bit about hospitals and dealing with doctors. It isn’t quite over yet, but we think everything will work out fine in the end.

Robin turns 33!

We celebrated Robin’s 33rd birthday last week.  He decided he wanted a Fanta Cake (which I had never heard of before, but I found a recipe and it turned out pretty well). We also went on a walk in the fields near our house and enjoyed a nice evening at home.

I made an invitation for him (yes, I made an invitation for just him to his own birthday party. What fun is a party if you don’t get an invitation?)

His cake

A tree we saw on our walk.  I can see this tree from other places and I find it fascinating that this lone tree is just standing out in the middle of the fields… it is all alone and has to face the wind, rain, snow, and whatever else comes it’s way year after year.  It must be a strong tree.

This was another tree we saw on our walk, it had such beautiful flowers that I just had to take a picture.

Some BUNNY is watching me

This army of chocolate bunnies has been occupying my house for about two weeks. At 9 inches tall and with 200 grams of chocolate each, they make quite the impression. Very intimidating. They seem to pop up when least expected. They never do anything, they don’t say a word… they just sit there. Staring. We will be evicting them this weekend. They are Easter gifts for our neighbors.
So long bunnies! See you again next year!

The big 3-0

Yes, I (Erin) turned 30. It seems strange to me because in my mind, I am still 21. We had a nice little celebration at home the evening before. Typically in Germany, you absolutely do not celebrate a birthday or wish someone a happy birthday until the day of their birthday. You can also celebrate or wish someone a happy birthday after their birthday, but not before. I’m used to being more flexible than that. Besides, my birth certificate is wrong and says I was born March 2nd, when my mom insists I was born March 3rd… so, I get two birthdays :)

My cake this year was something special. Really special. I have been wanting to try out using fondant. I made the fondant myself using marshmallow fluff. I made two layers of a pound cake I enjoy. I saw somewhere that chocolate chip cookie dough could be used as a filling between cake layers, so I tried it out. I think the cake tasted good, but one slice (per day) was enough (maybe a little more than enough).

This is us singing Happy Birthday to me (yes, I sing along on my birthday, I can’t help it).

The next day we went to Hessen Park. “Delve into a fascinating world of more than 400 years of rural life in Hessen. This includes originally furnished houses, permanent exhibitions – e.g. about tower clocks, a historical post office and glass smelting – as well as historical craft and farming technique presentations and a great variety of events. On nearly 150 acres and in over 100 historical buildings the Hessenpark Open-Air Museum offers you a unique opportunity to experience at close quarters how people lived and worked in days gone by. “

I quite enjoyed it. The buildings were lovely.  There is a market place that is open to the public (it includes shopping and restaurants/cafes). We spent so much time in the market area that we didn’t actually make it in the museum.  Fine for me – we saved the entrance fee and it gives us a reason to go back.

Entrance

An example of the buildings. They were really pretty and many of the doors were amazing too. One thing I didn’t get a picture of was writing that some people put on the house. They would write who built it and when. For example, one house said it was build by Johann and his wife (I forget her name) and even though the house is theirs, it isn’t theirs because it will go to those who come after them.

This is the market place. The weather was cold and misty (I can see it in the picture).

They had a whole house filled with printing things. There was a man there had planned to make a career working on printing presses (like they used to do) but as time went on and new technology was introduced, he had to change and learn the new ways. He loves printing presses and explained it to us. I forgot to take pictures until the end, but the room was closed, so this is what I got from the door.

Proof that we were there.

This picture and the next one were things that struck me as funny. Can you imagine someone putting this sign on their desk?!?

This is a mini-sized abacus. They showed all kinds of calculators older and newer and this little abacus was just sitting there in the middle.

We had a wonderful day!