Joey turns seven

My big girl turned seven last week.

We had absolutely no plans. But somehow her birthday celebration this year lasted days and days.

Our next door neighbor (Pam) has a son who turned two the day before Joey turned seven. So Pam invited us over for cake and ice cream for both kids.

Pam also invited some fun families from church. They even brought gifts (totally unexpected, and Joey was thrilled). Can you tell?

(She read the book she was given the next morning before anyone else was awake.)

She was so excited to have so many friends around (especially since I told her we weren't having a party this year).

Here is Cooper (in the chair). He's the other birthday kid:

 

Cooper started crying when all the kids and adults sang Happy Birthday. I guess it was pretty scary. :) But Joey was happy to blow out his part of the candles for him. Thoughtful girl.

On Joey's actual birthday, Erick got up early and made her pancakes:

Lets take a closer look.... ah, yes. That would be gummy bears on her J-shaped pancake. Erick said it stood for "Jo-bear," a nickname we gave Joey soon after she was born.

For dinner that night she chose her usual, sushi:

It was good. We all gobbled up every bite.

The next day, Joey took cupcakes to school for her whole class.

She still tells me that she is seven about four times a day. I'd say it was a good birthday.

 

Read below if you're curious about my awesome windows.

I love my house: The windows

Okay, I'm going to start a short series on all the reasons I love my house.  And this is the first edition: The windows.

But before I get started, I have to explain that we STILL do not have internet access. I steal from the neighbors long enough to post occasionally, but that is it. So if you have emailed me, Facebooked me, or anything else, I apologize for not responding. I will do my best to get all caught up when the miracle of internet once again blesses my home. :)

Now to my windows.

This is a picture of the window in TJ's room:

The first reason why I love my windows is because I have so many options for opening them. The window above is closed.

I can open each window (and glass door) in the house like a door. It swings open like this:

This is fabulous for washing the windows. It swings all the way open until it hits the inside wall.

Or I can open it from the top like this:

In this position, it will only open a few inches, but it is just enough to get some ventilation without the kids being able to fall out (believe me, it's something to consider when dealing with a three story window).

Here is a close up:

And the windows can be locked in any of the three positions (closed, opened from side, or opened from top). It takes a key to unlock it. This means I can sleep soundly at night knowing that my kids won't fall out a window AND that they won't leave a window open to let the house freeze in winter. I guess I just love having all of that control.

Another thing that I love about my windows is the shutters. Every window and door (excluding the front door) has shutters. We are not talking about quaint rustic wooden shutters. We are talking about high tech "now-you-see-them-now-you-don't" shutters.

They are controlled by a strap inside the house on the wall next to each window:

The picture below shows the shutters halfway closed:

Here are the shutters completely closed:

No blackout curtains needed here. We just shut the shutters and TJ takes great naps in the middle of the day and Erick and I can watch a fun movie.

It's also reassuring to know that no one can break into the house through a window.

Here is a picture of some windows from the outside of the house:

Obviously, the shutters on the left are closed, and the shutters on the right are open. But notice that once they are open, they are completely gone, hidden into the wall.

I love my windows!

Floor plan

Tomorrow our household goods are coming. Hopefully within a few days, we will be moved in. When that happens, I will definitely post more pictures.

But before that, I want to show you the floor plan of our house.

Please note that this is an exact mirror image of our house, so everything is exactly opposite. But you'll get the idea.

First floor:

The kitchen actually has countertops on three sides, not just two sides as shown. Also, the entry way/hall has built in closets, so it is a straight hallway, not L-shaped as shown.

Second floor (our bedroom, TJ's bedroom, an office, and a large bath):

TJ's room has no closet, and neither does our bedroom. We use the huge closets on the landing (labeled "hall") for our clothes and things.

Third floor (storage and the girls' room):

 

Believe me, the girls' room is much smaller than it looks; the ceiling is vaulted, and less than half of the room is usable space. They love it though. They are like princesses in their tower. The top floor is a fun place to be.

Basement (toy/game room, storage, and laundry room):

Well, there you have it. What do you think?

Continue below to read about our family movie  night.

Cloudy with a chance...

Saturday evening we went to a movie.  It was our first experience going to a movie on an Army base.

For one night only, this was playing:

Now the movie itself was okay. It had funny moments and bizarre moments. The kids liked it, but I don't think I would buy it.

But the best part was the whole Army base movie experience. Let me list all the reasons it was great:

1. First of all, it was the least expensive movie I have seen in ages. We paid about $15 for our ENTIRE family of five. (The last movie Erick and I attended, we paid more that that for just two of us.) 
   
2. Before the movie started, the entire audience stood. I was a bit confused at first. Then our national anthem began playing to a video/picture collage of soldiers and their families. It was beautiful. And apparently it happens at every movie. So cool! 
   
3. The movie theater also doubles as an auditorium complete with stage (no stadium seating here). The chair backs are really high, too high for some children to see the movie screen. How do we solve this problem? Easy. Bring your own booster seats in from your car.
   
   Every family with kids came in with booster seats. We quickly followed suit, and Erick ran out to the car to bring in our boosters:

We had a fun evening! We will definitely be back when they have another family movie playing.

Painting the girls' room

I am so excited because we are allowed to paint our walls in our house. The only rule is that the color has to be light enough to cover with white paint (after we leave) without needing to prime.

There is an office on post that will give us free paint brushes, rollers, plastic tarps, and even paint. The only problem with the paint is that we only have four colors to choose from: yellow, green, baby blue, and powder pink.

None of the colors will work for our living room, so it looks like I may be spending some money to buy paint from the hardware store down the street. They don't mix paint here; you buy paint dye and stir it in yourself. Sounds like it will be another adventure!

The only color I really liked (that was free) was the yellow, so we decided to paint the girls' room with it. Here are Bailey and Joey painting their room:

My girls are natural painters. No messes. I was so proud.

Here are Bailey and Joey showing off their first finished wall:

Joey helping with wall number two:

By this time we realized that we did not have enough paint to finish the entire room. So we taped off a section and called it the "bed cave."

The bunk beds should fit perfectly into our yellow "bed cave."

You can see the line at the top right in the picture below:

It is now painted all the way to the floor. We plan to finish painting the entire room eventually. But for now, the girls love their "bed cave."

I will show more pictures later when we have our furniture back and set up. :)

The weather

The leaves are turning here in Bavaria. Autumn is in full force. Actually, today it is snowing, so I wanted to show you the fall colors while they last.

We took this picture on Monday while driving on the Autobahn:

My household goods will be delivered on Tuesday. Hooray! That means I will get my furniture, my kitchen supplies, and my decorations.

I was too impatient to wait for household goods to bring my decorations (they were not scheduled to arrive until mid-November). I needed to bring some of this wonderful fall color inside, so I got a little something for my front kitchen window:

I love autumn!

Drive-thru with a twist

One of the many reasons I love my house is that I live right across the street from two little grocery stores, Lidl and Norma. It is so convenient to walk across the street to buy milk or bread or anything else I dare to try.

Both of the grocery stores are designed exactly like the Aldi stores in the states (any of you that have been lucky enough to shop at Aldi know what I'm talking about). They also have Aldi here (it is a German company after all), but the closest one is several blocks away and under renovation.

Back to the reason for my post: Attached to both Lidl and Norma are bakeries. If I'm not careful these bakeries will kill me. The buttery, flaky pastries are constantly calling to me. Norma's bakery even has a drive up window.

The other day, Erick called me outside to take a look at the drive-thru at the Norma bakery. Here is what we saw:

 

A block from our house in the other direction is a home for the elderly. I guess it was bakery day. They may not take walk up orders at the drive-thru, but these guys each had a set of wheels.

We had a good laugh, and I had to share. Take a closer look:

Have a great day! Come visit soon. :)

The City Center

Please forgive me for my long delay in blogging. I still have no internet to speak of. There was a mix-up somewhere with the internet company and our modem was never delivered. But we are working on it.

Yesterday our unaccompanied baggage arrived. This is very exciting because it means my kids have coats (it has been pretty cold here lately) and I have more than one pair of Sunday shoes to choose from. Very exciting!

Our first weekend in our new home, we decided to go for a walk. It was a beautiful Saturday morning. We didn't know where we were headed. We just walked.

We ended up in the center of the city where every Saturday and Wednesday they have a local farmers' market. (We didn't know about it at the time. I have since returned to purchase some delicious fresh produce).

In the picture below, I was trying to show off the building that creates a bridge over the street. The streets were packed, and with so many people around, it was hard get a good view:

The spires you see in the background in the picture below are from a local church. We hear the bells ring every day:

In the middle of the town square there was a stage set up with a German girl singing for the crowd. She was singing all American songs. It was pretty funny to listen to her pronunciation:

 

This is the building that served as a backdrop to the stage. It is our city hall:

Did you ever wonder how you say city hall in German?

"Rat House." Isn't that funny?

I can't get over all the flowers in this town. Nearly every house (except mine) has flowers in every window. I am determined that mine will have flowers next season (hopefully I can keep them alive):

Here is a view of the back of city hall and the back of all the vans and trucks from the local farmers working at the market:

Few buildings around here are very old because most of the buildings were destroyed in The War. But the buildings are cool nonetheless:

The girls got balloons, so I took a picture:

Actually, I didn't take this picture for the balloons. I took this picture to nonchalantly take a picture of these guys:

 

Don't you love the lederhosen?

The one with the short shorts was drinking a pint of beer just moments before this picture was taken. I guess it's okay to drink beer for breakfast if you are wearing lederhosen?

It was a great day. Have I told you I love living in Germany?