Christmas in Germany...

...was actually more fun than I thought it would be. I did miss my family though (and the first white christmas in 5 years in Kansas which was actually a blizzard that shut down our annual christmas eve celebration).


We did have a bit of snow here. Made for some pretty pictures.



Nora's back yard


We met Daniel's parents, brothers and the Trautner family for a goose dinner on the 23rd. Here's Daniel with Nora and Walter.




Christmas eve we did our last minute shopping (the line for the checkout at REWE grocery began at the front door and snaked around the store) and then headed over to Nora's. Here's an ornament on her tree - Daniel drew it when he was 11 years old.



The major drama was when Chou Chou attacked Carl's hand.



The victim



The perp


When all the guests arrived, we did our gift exchange. I ended up with a basket of homemade goodies from Nora's friend Hardi and Daniel got a Vanessa Paridis CD from Nora's friend Doris. Ruth's daughter Rebekah got Daniel's gift of chocolate and Helga's son HW got my gift of dessert tea, hot chocolate and a mug. Then we had fondue for dinner.


Florian, HW, and Daniel relax after the meal



Christmas day we hosted a lunch for Daniel's father Micha, stepmother Mietzie and all 4 brothers. I made sweet potato cassarole, baked potatoes, and brownies and Micha made steaks and brought salad. We had drawn names for this gift exchange and we opened them youngest to oldest and I took a picture of each.



Frederick (and a good view of our tree!)




Carl


Florian




Daniel


Steffen (with his Zombie from Daniel)



Micha





(according to Daniel, Mietzie does not want her pic to be posted, so I am honoring her wishes)


Next Christmas, Frederick will be in pilot school in Phoenix so not only will I be home for christmas but we might just bring the whole German crowd with us again.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and thanks for reading my blog this year.

Happy Birthday Dad!

We love you! Hope you had a great day despite being practically snowed in.

Last christmas..

Just wanted to share a funny photo from last christmas day at my father's house.

That's Hans (with the bow) and Sydney on christmas day after they've ripped into all the wrapping paper. Silke wanted no part of the action and sat on Sandy's lap. Wild dogs!

Busy December

There is always a lot going on in December, hence the lack of updates.

Monday the 10th we went to the "leaving Franfurt" party of my former boss at Ogilvy, Folker Wrage. Folker is German but he is one of the few German copywriters that I have met here that can also write copy in English. He was a copywriting mentor for me at my first copywriting position and I learned a lot from him. He's not going too far - just to Hamburg.



On Wednesday and Thursday (Andrea's birthday) we were over at Andrea and Oli's to visit them and little Levi. Daniel totally monopolized Levi's time.





Friday I went to Neue Digitale's christmas party. My first ND christmas party was 5 years ago and it's amazing how much has changed. At that time there were 40 employees and now there are 150 in two locations. There are only about 7 people (including me and Roanne - below) that were around 5 years ago. The dinner was delicious and the company amusing - but since it was a private party, smoking was allowed which I am totally not used to anymore.

Roanne and me


On Saturday we visted Daniel's father and stepmother in Wiesbaden and we went out to Hausen to eat rabbit at Daniel's mother's place. There were two big pieces. Nora, Daniel and I ate one. Then we went to look at christmas trees. We picked out a small one and Henning (the employee there) cut it down for us (soooo sad!!). Nora picked out hers and we drove back. Then we discovered that we had left out the other piece of rabbit and the dog had eaten it. Oops!

On Sunday we went to Butzbach to visit Daniel's friend Florian and his wife and twin sons. Daniel is their godfather. Florian has a cafe there where parents can have a drink while their children play. Daniel did the logo for him (as seen below). I tried to get pictures of the twins, but they were just too fast for me.




Daniel was in the hospital for three days for a routine surgery. He got out yesterday is kind of puttering around now, but is happy to be back at home.

La Coruna, Spain

Last weekend we went to Spain to visit Weina who works there at Zara Home designing rugs. Daniel had a cold so we didn't do much on our first day, besides flying in on Iberia (Friday).

Saturday, Daniel felt somewhat better. We went to the main shopping street in La Coruna and walked around. Then we went to the beach for lunch and a walk around. There was a kitten there who was all over us trying to get our food. We took many pictures of it which are hilarious!

Weina and the cat

Daniel on the beach

Sunday we went first to a place to eat Churros - donut like pastries that you dip into hot chocolate.

Then we went to Santiago de Compostela where we visited the church and sat in on the end of the service. A nun was singing and the acoustics were amazing - what a special experience. Here's the outside of the cathedral, an UNESCO world heritage site:

By the time we got back to Weina's apartment that afternoon, I was feeling quite sick. I stayed in and watched a couple of movies from her collection - Hollywoodland, Casanova and Star Dust - while Daniel and Weina went out with a few of her friends.

Monday we flew back with Iberia, and this time we checked in one bag of stuff we bought in Spain (on the way there, we were strictly carry-on) and prayed they wouldn't lose it. Iberia has a very bad rep for losing luggage, so we were wary (Weina's luggage has been lost 5 out the 10 times she's flown with them). Fortunatly, our bag made it. Not that I would book on Iberia again unless I had to.

MIA

I haven't posted in a while for 3 reasons:
1. On Monday November 26th, my 4 1/2 year old HP laptop gave up the ghost
2. From Nov 30-Dec 3rd, Daniel and I were in La Coruna, Spain
3. I am sick with a nasty flu - fever, cold and the whole works

Hope to be back soon :)

In the meantime, I do want to congratulate the Mullins family on the birth of their 3rd daughter Miriam and Andrea and Olli on the birth of their son Levi.

A day in Dusseldorf

I had to go to Dusseldorf to buy some clothes at the Tommy Hilfiger Denim store there so that I won't look so terribly out of place at their Fall/Winter 08/09 line opening in January. Daniel and I decided to make a day trip out of it, taking the opportunity to look in a few other stores as well - it is a great city for shopping. We had a delicious lunch at an Italian place on the Koenigsallee and went to the K20 art museum which has an awesome collection of Paul Klee's work (in addition to other 20th century artists).

The Christmas market was also already in full swing. Daniel got his favorite - roasted chestnuts and I got mine - cinnamon stars.

Heisse Marone - get 'em while they're hot

Zimtsterne fresh from the oven

The mulled wine stand lights up the night

Giving thanks for thanksgiving

Tracy and Marshall had us over for the 4th year in a row. This year, Marshall's mother came over from the states and we still had a full table despite many of the regulars leaving this past year. We have always been really thankful to have a place to go on Thanksgiving - and this may be the last year as Tracy and Marshall will most likely move next year.

Daniel did placecard drawings for everyone again this year.

And there was a feast! Marshall makes a great Turkey (coated with bacon) plus there were all the other thanksgiving staples like stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, biscuits, pumpkin cheesecake, and my contribution - the sweet potato casserole.

A strike, a new chair and free rice

Well, I think I am finally over my jetlag (they say it takes one day per time zone crossed). That is one of the things I don't look forward to on my trips!

Friday we were supposed to go to the dentist. I saw beforehand that the train strike would affect our route so I picked a train that was supposedly still running. When Daniel and I got to the station, we got our tickets and went up to the platform only to discover that our train was not on its full scheldule and our train wasn't coming. With no alternate way to get to the dentist (Florian had borrowed our car) we had to cancel. Surprisingly we were able to sell our tickets to some Swiss guys - so at least we didn't lose our 4 Euro.

Saturday I finally bought a decent chair for my home office. It's an Aeron chair by Herman Miller - stylish and super comfortable. My cheapo IKEA one was breaking my back by the end of a long day.

Last night we went to Turm Palast, the only English movie theater in town, to see Atonement. I really enjoyed the novel so I was quite excited to see it. BUT, the Turm Palast really knows how to put a damper on your movie going experience though. The staff is usually surly (not uncommon in Germany to be sure), many seats are broken or have gunk on them (the last renovation must have been right after WWII - ha!) and last night the print had a big green line down the middle and the sound was ear-piercingly loud. There is always the rumour that they'll finally tear this junk pile down and rebuild which is sorely overdue. Of course where will we see films in English in the meantime? I don't want to have to resort to seeing dubbed films.

And finally, let me introduce you to my current Internet addiction: http://www.freerice.com/
For each vocabulary word you get right, they donate 10 grains of rice to help end world hunger. I always hover between a vocab level of 43 - 46. Some of the words in the upper levels are insanely obscure.

PS - Happy birthday Florian (Daniel's brother)!! Scoot on over to Daniel's Daily Drawings to see the wonderful present Daniel did for his dear brother.

VIP Tori Amos experience: Lawrence, KS

One week ago, Nick and I had the pleasure of meeting Tori Amos for the first time after being fans since 92. I was lucky enough to snag Platinum VIP tickets (only 24 total available) so we got to sit in on a portion of her soundcheck & meet her and have something signed (+ we had 8th row center seats and got a VIP bag, hat and tour booklet).

This is what went down: we arrived at 5 pm and got wristbands and our loot. Tori was running late so she had just started soundcheck when we got there. The doors were so heavy that we couldn't hear much through them but we did recognize that she was doing Clyde (introspective doll)'s songs so we knew we'd get her (a relief for me since I did not want political Isabel for the third time out of three shows). I also heard a bit of Sugar which was exciting and gave me hope that I would finally hear this favorite live.

It was after 6 pm before we were finally able to go in. Nick and I got seats in the front row and then she came out. She explained a bit about soundcheck and then played Spark and Concertina for us. She messed up on Concertina, but otherwise it seemed more like a private concert than a soundcheck - very cool.

Next, we were ushered into a back room to meet Tori. By this time my low blood sugar was kicking in and I felt faint from not eating anything since a light lunch. When she came in with her bodyguard, we also got a glimpse of her 7 yr old daughter Tash. Tori asked Tash if she wanted to say hi to us and she got a little shy. She gave Tori a hug and skipped away. Tori then turned her full attention to us and people went up 1 or 2 at a time to talk with her. Nick and I were mid-way through the line so we snapped a few pictures while we waited. Here's one (that is a wig btw):

Finally we were up. We talked with her for a few minutes about her music (I told her Winter had been our father/daughter dance at my wedding) , that our first concert had also been in Lawrence back in 96 (she said "You seem really young to have been going to concerts back then"), about Neil Young (apparently he wants to tour with her) and then I requested Beulah Land and asked about Velvet Revolution (she wrote them on her hand and said "Well, they can come out again"). She then signed my copy of her book Piece by Piece and Nick's tour booklet. We also posed for this picture:

Before the concert, Nick and I just had time to go out and grab a pear (me) and granola bar (Nick) and check out the Phelps protesters (they claim Tori Amos is a "gay enabler" because she has many gay fans).

Opening guy was Yoav again who is growing on me - I do like the song Club Thing quite a bit.

Then Tori as Clyde comes out with

Bouncing off Clouds

Little Earthquakes

Juarez *

Little Amsterdam

Beauty of Speed *

Girl Disappearing *

Tori as Tori's set was

Big Wheel

Crucify
Sugar *
Cornflake Girl
Mother Revolution *
Caught A Lite Sneeze

Frog On My Toe *
Mother *
Virginia *
A Sorta Fairytale
Code Red
Precious Things
Hey Jupiter

* Songs I heard live for the first time!! Amazing considering this was my ninth show, 3rd this tour. She really does change it up.

Nick and I both adored this show - definately the one I enjoyed the most this tour. A lot of fan favorites plus a couple of rarities and FINALLY hearing Sugar which totally rocks live.

Got the bootleg (http://www.toribootlegs.com/) already!