Oh Tannenbaum

The Christmas season begins.

The kids had school on Thursday so we ate tacos that night. Last night, we finally sat down to an authentic Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be be beat with some friends of ours. The food was great and nobody was arrested for littering.

After church this morning, we went to a local, medieval themed Christmas market. They had blacksmiths, bards, and venison stew. I couldn't verify whether the venison was poached from the king's deer but I'll concede that the stuff they included (e.g. mice races) was more fun than the bits they left out (e.g. the plague rats and the stockades).

After getting home, we decorated our tree and watched The Grinch. Everybody sang along.

The advantage of celebrating Thanksgiving on Saturday is that we got to skip the whole Black Friday nonsense. Pretty clever, these Germans. Click below for photos.

Thanksgiving

We have a 48-hour delay on Thanksgiving here. The kids are in school and any German friends we might want to invite don't have the day off. So many of us have our turkey fest on the weekend. Case in point: we leave in an hour for a neighborhood get together with two other families.

This year on Thanksgiving proper I got to go to the woodshop with Andy while the kids were at school. We didn't work on work, or the house, or travel plans, or administrative stuff. Instead, Andy bought some mahogany and ash planks and spent hours shaping and planing them into the boards he needed.

It was fun to watch. Mike, who runs the woodshop, is an industrial arts teacher who worked in London for years before coming here. He now gets to manage a craft center with rooms of saws, drills, lathes, everything for shaping wood or taking off fingers (Mike is very safety focused).

I watched as, millimeter by millimeter, rough planks became smooth, even boards. Wood grains and pattern popped out. It took hours. So many spiritual implications of watching what it takes to shape something that will be beautiful and strong.

Thursday, I was thankful for wood, the smell of sawdust, and the potential of what things become.

Today, good smells are starting to float from the kitchen. Two ice cream pies are in the freezer and waiting for the chocolate/caramel lattice topping. The turkey is browning, surrounded in the pan by tiny red potatoes brushed with butter.

Why is that nothing makes me miss family and friends faster than cooking more food than we can eat in a week. I miss you all.

This week's Questions

Would my daughter scream louder under torture than she did tonight when I tried to make her eat split pea soup?

Given that I only worked 30 hours this week, while does it feel like I worked 60?

How much was the piece of mahogany worth that I butchered with the band saw last week?

IJM-Deutschland

I got to spend the weekend in Heidelburg with six earnest but really fun uni students as International Justice Mission Germany came into existence by the notary action of a judge somewhat grumpy for having to work on Saturday.

Some of you may have heard of this group. I've tried to contact them off and on for years in the States. I guess sometimes it means moving to Germany to work with an American NGO.

So excited.

A Personality Test

Day 2 of Piper's trip. She called home tonight to see how we were doing. She asked each of the kids to tell her what they did today.

Tess told her what book she read.

Maddie told her what movie she watched.

Micah told her what he ate.

If the irony is lost, their answers reflect what is truly important to each of them.

Random Bits

Random musings, partially incoherent.

Things at 5fordhams are slow today. I am sitting at home feeding my addiction to noir dystopian drama by watching the AMC remake of The Prisoner... good fun but you needn't watch it if you haven't heard of it since it's appeal is limited to a nerdy fringe few.

(Ditto this weeks installment of Dr. Who, wherein we slowly sip the last few moments of David Tenant's awesomeness.)

More mainstream reflections.

Maddie was out sick today. By the time I got home, she was tearing around. Fever gone. All better. I wish I could bounce back like that. I also wish I could stay home when I was sick.

Piper is gone all weekend leaving me to watch the kids. I'm laying down provisions to weather the coming siege. Various oddments of "food-n-a-box" that they beg for when their mother is gone. Mostly involving combinations of processed carbohydrates and cheese food. Also, cookie mix. And pancake batter. There will be bloody mutiny without pancakes. There's no comfort food like Daddy food.

Christmas shopping continues, mainly by mail. Maddie briefly wanted a dragon having convinced herself that they were real based on a picture book at the library. She's moved on to even less realistic preferences.

Travel plans are firming up for a Finland visit.

Swine Flu

Half the school is sick.(This is Tess by the way.)Swine flu is going around. Don't worry we're all healthy well that is Micah has got sick(not swine flu)he got better.They had to cancel one of the classes because the teachers got sick,and 9 out of 19 kids were there.

Quote of the Day

Micah: "If a giant robot was chasing me, I'd run to mommy."

Me: "What about daddy, would you run to me?"

Micah: [thinks]... "No. I'd run to mommy."

--exchange between Micah and I while watching "Monsters vs. Aliens"

Quiet Monday

The snow is falling slowly, periodically switching to rain.

MAA is curled up in my bed, listening to They Might be Giants ABC's and nursing a fever.

The calm will be broken when my two girls come home and groan because they can't go to ice skating today. I'll enjoy the still until 3:30.

Vienna

We took a few days out of the fall school break last week to drive to Vienna. At a mere 678 km, this was a pretty ambitious drive for such a short visit. Fortunately, we were blessed with good travel kharma and not too many construction delays. (German road crews are hired year-round so they're always digging up something.)

We were also blessed with a great audio book to break up the drive. It turns out that Brendan Fraser is even better reading than he is running around killing mummies (who knew?).

Warning: Side effects in children under 10 include fascination with brownie spit and dragon fire and a propensity for speaking in bad Scottish accents.

First stop in Vienna was the Schloss. This is Andy's favorite palace in Europe, thus far. The landscaping was uniform and precise. Everything was clearly designed by people who understand that all furniture should be placed directly adjacent and perpendicular to the nearest wall. I felt soothed and at peace amidst it's perpendicularness.

Also on this tour was a visit to the zoo and our very cool friends the Hunters.

We drove back on Saturday just in time to go trick-or-treating in Little America on the base. Costumes were whatever we could find. All credit goes to Piper for putting together 3 decent costumes in less than 30 minutes.

Click on the picture below for photos.


Piper and I have been napping this afternoon. I have been trying to ignore the sounds of children sneaking candy out of their bags in the living room.