Forty-Sixth Week in Germany

I am adding a poll to the blog today. Greg made chocolate chip cookies this week that were great. Every other batch we've made here has come out flat. It is really hard to get the ingredient conversions just right (since 1 stick of butter doesn't really work for us). The point is I asked Greg to leave some of the cookie dough in the fridge so I could eat it at my leisure. He refused. He is totally against eating cookie dough. He thinks the baked cookies taste much better. So, the poll is this: Baked cookies vs. Cookie Dough, Which is better?

Well, I'm sorry to be so blunt but it is the German way. This week entailed much throwing up on the part of my kids and much sleeplessness on the part of their mom (no photos for this part). I don't know if there is some sort of weird virus going around or what. Avery was the only one who seems to have avoided it -- knock on wood.

We got our new cars this week. That is always an adventure. You see, we have to order them in German. The auto terms that they use on the order forms are not the type of words you find in the English-German dictionary, so we basically have to wing it. You would think that getting a new car would be really exciting but we were on pins and needles waiting to see what we were going to get.

This is what Greg ordered for his car in Avalon Grau (the color swatch is below).

This is what he got. The color was slightly bluer than we expected. Lucky for us, wagons are seen as quite luxurious here. Greg likes to refer to the color as steely blue.

For the most part, we pretty much got what we expected for my car, the Galaxy, but with the Dog Guard System which meant I had a large gate between the second and third row seats, which essentially does me no good at all with children who want to sit in the back row. After picking Avery up from school, I went to work on the gate and was able to remove it. I thought Thank goodness. You might be laughing about this but it could have been a disaster considering that we will still have this car when number four arrives.

Greg and I were together when we ordered them. We went through each line item one-by-one so how we ended up with really weird things, it is still a mystery. All-in-all it is fine, we both have cars that we are happy with and get us from place to place which is really the point. Like I said, always an adventure!

Avery had her first "new" dance class this week. She thoroughly enjoyed it, so I guess we made the right decision. She was so excited to go and isn't that the point?

Bryn is on her fourth consecutive day without a nap. It seems that she may be officially phasing herself out of them. Sometimes I put her in my bedroom because we can make it really dark in there and she typically sleeps better. Today, instead of taking a nap, she decided to open all of my dresser drawers and probably tried to climb up the drawers. When I heard a blood curdling scream from downstairs, I ran down there and she was pretty much pinned between the dresser that was tipped resting on the bottom drawer and the bed. If the bed hadn't been there, I think she would have pulled it completely over onto herself. Talk about scary. I am always worried about the girls trying to climb up the bookcases, but I had no idea she could tip a dresser full of clothes.

Bailey spent a good part of the week sick, but informed me today that she is going to be a child movie star and she wants me to get working on her portfolio right away. I have to say I think she would be great. She definitely has drive and passion, but my resources are fairly limited when it comes to Hollywood connections. I told her I would try to support her ambitions but that I think although it seems like a glamorous life, I don't think it is easy.