We haven’t had snow in quite a while and it has even been in the 50’s for a bit, so I kept feeling like spring was just around the corner. This has been a wonderful thought…until I woke up this morning and found this…
There’s nothing like scraping snow off your car to put you in the right mood for the day :/
A couple of days ago Ethan noticed his bottom front tooth was loose and then yesterday he noticed his permanent tooth was growing behind it. When James got home from work, Ethan showed him and so naturally it became the evening project to get that tooth out. Ethan was given a few different choices of how to do it and he decided on tying a string around it and pulling it out. This was no easy task since he didn’t want anyone touching his tooth. Eventually James was able to pull it out and the other tooth was so grown in that you can hardly tell there is a tooth missing.
A couple of weeks ago I went to an enrichment meeting that was about cleaning and organizing your home. One of the ladies that spoke about cleaning mentioned that she had recently taught her 6 year old to clean her toilets. I must say my ears definitely perked up when I heard that. I thought if her daughter who is six can clean their toilets, then Ethan who is also six can definitely clean ours. Cleaning bathrooms is by far one of my least favorite tasks to do, so I thought if I had just one less bathroom to clean a week, I would be one happy mommy. I was right :) Yesterday I taught Ethan how to clean his whole bathroom…shower, toilet, sink, and floor. He was very apprehensive at first and a bit dreading it, but once he got going, I could see the pride in his eyes as he was doing it. He wouldn’t even let me help him get the hard to reach places, he wanted to do it all by himself. It was so wonderful!! So all of you who hate cleaning bathrooms as much as i do…Ethan is proof that a six year old can clean a bathroom and do a mighty fine job doing it.
A week ago we decided to take our first train trip. We thought we would start off small since we have never ridden the trains before and go to Cologne, Germany for the day. Getting there was a breeze…we only had to walk two blocks to the train station from our home, we didn’t have to fight traffic, or worry about parking…it was a stress free trip.
When we got there, we had lunch and then went across the plaza from the train station and visited the famous Cologne Cathedral. It was huge!
The architecture inside was amazing to see as well…
One of the neat features of this cathedral is that they let you (with a small fee) climb these stairs to the top of the tallest spire. I don’t think I realized how many stairs that was going to be or how out of shape I have really become. It was an endless, narrow, spiral, cement staircase that went almost to the top and then you get on some metal, flimsy feeling stairs for the rest of the way. We had to take a few breaks along the way for Ethan and I to make it to the top. We found out from this that apparently he’s a little nervous of heights, but with a lot of coaxing he made it the whole way. The view from the top made the pain of it worth it as well.
This is room where the large church bells were. You can see one of them hanging behind James and Ethan.
Here are the flimsy stairs that made Ethan really nervous, but it was the home stretch at this point.
Once at the top you could walk around the whole spire and see the city from all sides. It was a beautiful sight.
We thought it was a little interesting that outside of the Cathedral there were Egyptian protestors. I’m not sure what they thought they would accomplish from all of the way over here in Germany.
After our huge workout at the cathedral we decided to reward ourselves by visiting the chocolate museum/factory. They showed us how the chocolate is made and even let us sample some. Then, of course, we bought three different slices of cake for the trip home and a bag of chocolate. The cake was delicious, but the chocolate was definitely over priced.
At this point you might be wondering why I titled this very long post “Brussels?”
Well, we had such a wonderful, relaxed, smooth day that we knew it was too good to be true…
After the chocolate museum, we had dinner (and I had the most wonderful baked potato I have ever eaten) and then headed back to the train station to go home. While we were waiting for our train to come, we heard over the intercom, that our train was going to be 5-10 minutes late. About 5 minutes after our train was supposed to get there a train finally comes and we get on. I notice as we get on that people are bringing suitcases on with them and the train is amazingly comfortable. Our previous trains that day were similar to a run down city bus. This train is a bit closer to first class on an airplane. Both of these things should have given us a heads up. While we were sitting there waiting for the train to leave, I notice the sign up front listing some cities and our city we were supposed to be heading to was not listed. At this point I start to question it and then realized that we are on the wrong train. I convince James and Ethan that we need to get off and we start heading towards the door and it closes right in front of me. I try pushing the button to open it, but it won’t. We are stuck and the train starts moving! Now we are really panicking (ok mostly me). Over the intercom we hear something about going to Brussels. We realize we are on a high speed train headed to another country. This may seem exciting to most, but we don’t have our passports with us, we don’t have the proper tickets for this train (which could mean jail time and a huge fee), we have 10 euros in our pocket and at this point it is almost 10 o’clock at night…
To make a long story short, this train had come in on the wrong track and being our first day of the train system, we didn’t realize this. Luckily the conductor was very understanding and only a few people actually outwardly laughed at us. After a few more train changes and a long, expensive cab ride home, we made it back to Eltville at 1:30 in the morning.
Believe it or not, we had a great experience on the trains and can’t wait to try it again. However, it was a very expensive lesson we had to learn.
Here are just a few things I thought I’d share…
Last week was a much better week as far as my frustration with German. I studied harder and it’s amazing what that will do. I actually understood a lot more of went on in class :)
To top off my great week last week, James came home from a class in Ramstein and brought Ethan and I gifts. I was so excited because it really was a perfect gift. For some reason I just love Polish Pottery, but it’s just too expensive here for me to justify buying. Someday I want to take a trip to Poland to stock up because it is so much cheaper there. Anyway, he brought me home my first piece of pottery and what he picked out is perfect. We have been needing new canisters for flour, sugar, etc., the plastic ones on our counter are an eyesore. The only problem now is that I need to get at least two more to go with it :) I just love surprises (when I don’t know there’s one coming)!
Here’s my last random thought that I’m feeling a little bit bad about…
I went to a baby shower last week and actually won one of the games they played (I never win) and the gift was a little container of strawberry freezer jam! I love freezer jam!! That was my favorite thing about dinner at my grandparents house…they always had bread with strawberry freezer jam. It has been forever since I have had any. Well, as you can see from the picture I took, I have pretty much eaten it all gone all by myself. I’m sitting here typing this with a little bit of a sick stomach because I couldn’t get enough of it. I’m not feeling bad because I’m now sick, I’m feeling bad because I didn’t share any :/ I’m such a thoughtless mother and wife, especially after the very thoughtful gift I got last week. Am I horrible? I guess I could play the pregnancy card, but I still feel bad.
I think I need to find a recipe for it so I can make up for my lack of consideration…
The last two days I have been feeling very discouraged about my progress with learning German. I’m in two different classes with the same teacher for moms in Ethan’s school and moms in a neighboring school who need to learn the language and I am apparently the one who knows the least. In fact, it seems as though everyone else can understand and speak the language fairly well. Our teacher is a German lady who knows very little English and so she speaks only German. In theory, this is very good because I’m forced to use only German. However, I have no idea what anyone is saying or asking or doing. I pick up a few words here and there and am getting very good at reading body language, but typically I have no idea what is going on. The rest of the ladies are from different countries and so I have no one to speak to unless I can figure out how to say it in German. I usually tell myself that it’s no big deal and I’m doing great having only been in the country for 5 months and the other ladies have been here for 10+ years, but for some reason this week it has really gotten to me. I have been really frustrated with it and myself for not remembering the vocabulary and recognizing or understanding words. I have a lot of stories of idiotic moments I have had in class. It is a very humbling experience.
After realizing how I have been feeling I started to really worry about Ethan and what he must be going through because he is in a similar situation, but probably worse. So today after school I asked him if he ever gets frustrated with the language.
Ethan: “What do you mean?”
Me: “Do you ever get frustrated not being able to understand what people are saying to you or know what is going on around you?”
Ethan: “No. Do you?”
Me: “Very much so.”
Ethan: “You can’t let yourself get frustrated, Mom. You just have to know that it will come and keep trying. I’m understanding a lot more now and it’s getting a lot easier.”
Ethan is a very wise 6 year old! He amazes me everyday with his positive attitude and his perseverance. I’m hoping I can be like him someday.
It has been way too long since I have posted anything. So long, in fact, that I almost didn’t start again. There has been so much that has happened that I’m not sure how to cover it all. So I am just going to highlight some of the happenings of the past and try to do better in the future. Really, what more can we do than continue to try to do better?
We did end up getting a Christmas tree this year :) Here is James putting lights on it while Ethan is patiently waiting to put the ornaments on.
I’m a little sad though because I realized I didn’t take a picture of the finished product. Here’s the closest thing I have.
As you can see my mom and dad flew in for Christmas this year. It was so nice to have some familiar faces with us. They actually flew in on Christmas morning, which meant that we waited to open anything until after we picked them up. I’m proud of Ethan for being so good about it. I think he was more excited to see them than open his presents anyway.
While my parents were here, we ventured up to Berlin for a day and a half. It was really an amazing city with lots to see, but it was sooo cold, which made it a little bit on the miserable side. We are looking forward to going back sometime during the summer so we can really enjoy it.
Here are some pictures of a few of the things we did and saw…a lego santa, snow, pastries, snow, jewish museum, checkpoint charlie, the wall, spaghetti ice cream…Did I mention it was cold? because it was cold!
Whenever we are with my mom she has us take family pictures. So here are a couple that aren’t so bad. I sure do look huge, though, and I cringe every time I see these. You can see my double chin in the second one :/
That’s about all of the backlogging I can handle for now :) Maybe there will be more to come…maybe not…we’ll see.
