The boys love watching all the activity going on when the cleaning lady is here.

We went on a vacation in Italy and I decided to do one big post, since the days were pretty repetitive. We left Monday midday, since we couldn’t check in until about 3pm. We had only about 30 minutes of bad traffic, and the rest was fine. Michael was always anticipating lots of traffic and I kept insisting that it was going to be ok, and it was. We got to Val Gardena in about 3 hours, I was kind of amazed that it wasn’t longer.

The hotel that we stayed at (Cavallino Bianco) was awesome! It was our first Kinderhotel stay and I think we chose the best place. It is located right across from the Seiser Alm lift. The views were amazing and they had lots of things for the kids to do.

Our days consisted of swimming in one of their many pools. Amazingly, we can still squeeze them into last year’s bathing suits. I guess their butts didn’t grow much since then. They had a splash pool that had 3 depths that was just perfect for the boys. One was at their ankles, the next was at their knees, then the deepest was at their butt. Rowan liked going in and out of the pool, he was too funny. Elijah slipped a couple of times and got a mouth full of water here and there, but his favorite were the big pools. He liked it when we put him on an edge, and we would count 1, 2, and on 3 he would scoot off the edge and into the water, into our arms. He loved that and wanted to do it over and over.

We also made sure not to miss any meals. Everything is all inclusive, so we tried to get the most for our money. There was breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner. The food was awesome! The dinners were gourmet and not always to my taste, but at least I felt like it was “free” so I tried everything. They had high chairs all around and bibs for the boys and for dinner, they had our table all set up for us. We decided not to bring the boys to dinner with us since it clashed with their sleep time and we could have it “low stress”. On the last night we did go ahead and bring them and I think they did pretty good. I’m sure all the wait staff was glad to see us go because we always left a mess behind us. The bread was awesome, I loved their baguettes!

There was babysitting also included but the boys didn’t do too well. We thought we could just drop them off and we could go do a climb or something, but the boys had other plans. At first, they could only stand it for 2 hours, and gradually it became more, so by the end, they stayed in for about 5 hours. If we stayed another week, we could’ve gone out more. The women who watched them were great, very energetic even though they watched so many kids. The problem was that the boys either need to have a familiar place or familiar people, they don’t do well when there’s neither. They had a great play area with lots of toys and they even had a couple of goats that the boys liked to visit.

We also made it up to the Seiser Alm, but because of poor planning, we went to late and everything was shutting down. The boys did get to play on the slide, this one actually had an easy way to get up it so they could do it over and over and over. They learned how to keep their body up while going down. Before, Rowan would throw his weight back and hit his head.

Michael also got in a day of climbing. It was hard for me because I had to take the boys down for breakfast, lunch and snack by myself. Watching two babies is pretty hard, especially since the high chairs didn’t have belts to strap them down. I don’t know why they didn’t. But I managed. He was going to take another day, but he had a really full day and decided not to. I agreed!

Other than that, we went into the town a little, did some Christmas shopping, and enjoyed it. In the evenings, the stores opened from 9 - 10:30!!! We were flabbergasted! We’re so used to the 8pm shutdown that it was a nice change.

We were hoping to get to see our friend, Daniel, but due to his hectic schedule and us not able to really leave the hotel, we didn’t get a chance. Next time!

Overall, even though we didn’t get to do adult stuff, the hotel was absolutely great and the boys had a lot of fun. We hope to return next year where they have an even “funner” program for older kids.

This morning Michael went out for a “dawn patrol”, but he came back at around 11. We had Riki, Arne and Frederik over for breakfast burritos. It was ok, but I miss monterey jack cheese very dearly. And soft tortillas. And good fresh salsa. I guess I could always make my own salsa, but that takes time.

After that, we all took a nice nap and had a hard time getting going. There was a Japanfest today across the street that I wanted to go to. I finally decided to go by myself because I figured Michael and the boys will get tired before I’m ready to go. It turned out to be really sucky, mostly just a bunch of displays with a flyer to go to the store. I expected more I guess. They also said there was going to be “japanese drumming” which I assumed was Taiko. Wrong. It was just a couple of drums that people banged on. They made a big deal about the martial arts stuff and kendo, but they didn’t have the proper kendo outfits with the helmet, it just looked like a karate guy with a sword. It was just lame. I did get yakisoba that was really good though.

In the afternoon, we filled the pool up and let the boys play, they had a lot of fun. Rowan totally cracked me up, he gave Michael his water cup and Michael pretended to drink from it. Rowan looked expectantly at him, and then opened his mouth really big and said “aaahhhh”. He was waiting for Michael to do it, but since Michael didn’t say anything, he had to say it for him. I was laughing for hours after that.

In the evening, I finished the hat for the boys. It was the first time I altered a pattern to make it bigger! And it’s exactly the right size! It’s a little bit big at the moment, but I’m sure when winter comes around again, it will fit perfectly.

Today we didn’t have anything special to do. Michael gave me the morning off and took the boys to their usual places. They go to Starbucks (to continue in the tradition of my parents), then they go to this practice hill where Michael walks them uphill and downhill and they laugh and laugh and laugh.

In the afternoon, I really wanted to go to Wal-Mart because someone said “they have a whole aisle full of American stuff”. I read this before but didn’t go to the one at Euro Industrie park, I went to the other one. So now that we have a car, it’s much easier to get to. Of course, I was disappointed with their selection of stuff, and it was certainly not a whole aisle (about 1/20th of an aisle). But I had fun nevertheless, and bought lots of stuff. I think after shopping in small stores, you can appreciate the variety of stuff in a big store. And thank goodness, the boys were really well behaved. I didn’t look around as much as I wanted to, but enough to get my fill.

We were exhausted when we got home, as all those big gigantic stores do that to us, so we put the boys to bed right when we got home.

This morning we went to our last Kindermusik class. The boys enjoyed it and came home with castinets. It is a bit too expensive for us at this point, so we’re going to try the German music classes and see if they like those too. Hopefully they’ll learn German as well (or maybe just confuse them even more).

After that, they took a nice long nap, ate lunch, and then we headed out the door again to go to Michael’s work party on the Isar. It was near the zoo, so we took the UBahn. It started to rain right when we got there, so it was kind of miserable. The rain let up a little bit after Michael arrived (he was on a beer run), and they hurridly cooked some sausages and meat. The boys liked it all. Michael went back so many times that the guy was like “got a big family, eh?”

The boys loved walking around and playing, although these two rough and tumble boys came by (they were maybe 6 or 7 and from some other party) and started picking on them. One of them was going to push Rowan down, but he saw me looking at him and then just sort of grabbed him and let him go. Then the other came around and I could tell that if I wasn’t watching, they would’ve really hurt him. Rowan was standing there kind of confused because there were kids that wanted to play with him but they were not fun. Poor baby! Michael went over to protect Rowan and one of the kids yelled in German “That’s mine!” and grabbed bread off of Michael’s plate and threw it on the ground. Michael was really confused and just wanted to get Rowan out of there. Why is it when a kid is like 6 or 7 that you know what they will be like when they’re older? These kids will definitely be the bullies in school. So sad. The parents didn’t care what they were doing either. Geez!

We got completely soaked because the rain started to really come down. It was the boys’s sleep time anyways, so we decided to go home early. At least they had a little fun.

Then in the evening, we went to our neighbor Riki’s birthday party. She had a bunch of people over and they were all really nice. We talked to a bunch of people (in English) and felt bad that we are the non-German-speaking Americans and forced people to speak English with us. I gave Riki 2 frames with portraits of her and Frederik in them. I took the pictures a week or so ago. I really wanted to get some with her and her big tea cup that she drinks out of. It’s really big. I think they came out pretty good, it really showed her personality.

We left at around 11:30, totally exhausted.

I can’t stand the heat anymore. I really can’t. It’s not just the heat, it’s also the damn bugs. If it’s hot, I have to have the windows open and then all the bugs come in. I’ve even had a bee in the house that just didn’t want to leave. That’s real fun. There’s been several occasions where I had to pull out the vacuum cleaner to get the stupid bugs off the ceiling or get their dead bodies off the kitchen counter. It’s that bad. I don’t know what the deal with Germans and their non-airconditioners. How can they work in hot offices? I’ll never know.

So, during Michael’s lunch break, we went to OBI and got a portable air conditioner, much like the one we had in Seattle. The only bad thing is that the air cannot be directed upwards, which is so dumb. But it works really well, and I’m going to fashion some kind of air director so that we can have it on the ground and the air won’t blow an arctic stream of cold in the middle of the room. We did have the option of buying this “supped up” fan, which basically blew air over a bunch of ice packs. Sounded interesting. I wonder if this actually works. The guy there said that it is just a “toy”, it won’t make the room any colder than with a fan.

This evening Michael went to Garmisch to visit some climbing friends. I spent the evening at home. I started a new knitting project. It’s the same hat that I knitted before (the colorful one), but this time I altered the pattern so that it is bigger and can fit my boys’ big heads. I added 12 stitches to the main body, and added 4 stitches to the ear parts. I also coordinated the colors better. Which reminds me, now that Mission Falls is producing their 1824 yarn again, I have to order some! It sucks how I can’t get american yarns here.

I forgot to mention yesterday that due to Elijah’s increased biting, I took out the Pack ‘n Play crib and using it for timeouts. We even bought a cheepie electronic timer. Poor Rowan, he has multiple bite wounds on his legs, even one on his eyebrow! Elijah has gotten really aggressive lately! Usually it’s when they are fighting over a toy.

But it’s not like Rowan is completely innocent. He pushes Elijah down or grabs him in the face. Yes, that’s right, my kids are hoodlums!

So what happens is if they do something bad, I say “uh oh, no …. is allowed here” and then put them in the crib and show them the timer. When I first put them in, they were happy because it was all new. But after a few times, they didn’t like it so much. Elijah gets most of the timeouts!

Another thing that they started doing is putting all their toys in there. Maybe because they know that it’s no fun in there and they want to have that in there for the next time they go in? I don’t know. It’s kind of cool that they put stuff away, but I just have to take it out again when someone needs to go in.

I had a great moment with Rowan today, just out of the blue he started “petting” my cheek with his open hand. I thought at any moment the gentle touch would turn into and hard squeeze that would leave fingernail indentions on my face. But it didn’t. I said the words “gentle, gentle” and from then on, if he even tries to grab my face, all I have to say is “gentle, gentle” and he will let go and touch gently. How cool is that??? I like to associate words with something they do, they tend to learn it really quickly, like “what sound does a monkey make?” Elijah was just making those noises, so I started saying that whenever he did and now he’ll automatically make the sound if I say those words. I love these learning moments.

We were supposed to have German speaking practice today, but Antje couldn’t make it. It’s ok since we were tired. I was supposed to make chicken but we ended up getting take out Indian. Mmmm…

Because I kind of dump on the performer, I decided to remove her name so that my friend doesn’t get into trouble…Damn Google, can’t dump on people without them knowing about it!

Today we had Alex come for babysitting. We haven’t seen her in awhile because she went home for a month and just came back. She is great and was happy to see the boys again. We also had our upstairs cleaned and it looks mah-ve-lous!

I bought tickets to see *the performer* when my parents were here. The only reason we are going is to see our friend, Daniel, play the accordion. Not really to see *the performer*. But we did know the program (bunch of french songs) because Daniel had sent us a CD of the music. It’s like French lounge music. The concert is in Kempton, about 120km away from Munich. Not too far.

We left at around 4pm and it’s a good thing we did because we had horrible traffic getting out of the city. It took us about 3 hours to get there! We were being directed to get off the freeway, only to get lost in the streets, and we saw other cars getting on the freeway right behind the policeman’s car! We found a way to get back on and it was empty. How weird. Then we hit the “real” accident. What happened was a truck was overturned and blocking all lanes. So we had to get off again. We eventually found our way and got there in no time. We stopped off at McDonalds and inhaled our food and then headed to the concert. I was hoping to meet Daniel before the concert, but now it was impossible. We got there with only 10 minutes to spare. It was really interesting, the concert hall was part of a shopping mall and the mall looked like a US suburban mall, it almost felt like home.

We sat down and the concert started. Since we were in the 3rd row, Daniel saw us and waved as he got on stage. It’s so great to see him perform. Although I think he should’ve been louder. It kind of sucked that she didn’t have the songs memorized, even though she’s performed these songs for years. She has very flashy long bright red hair. She made all these dramatic faces and motions, we had a hard time to keep from laughing. Sometimes we would look over at Daniel and he would roll his eyes. Haha, too funny! At one point, the guy next to us was singing along with her, very quietly (we could barely hear it), and then the guy in front of us turned and shushed him! Wow, how catty! *the performer* had an interesting way of talking. She is Italian, so she speaks Italian, then she would speak French sometimes, and English and German. It was very odd. Daniel said that she doesn’t really know French, just some words that she memorized. She also doesn’t know a whole lot of German even though she is very popular here. I thought it would be better if she just stuck to Italian.

We met Daniel during the break and had a few minutes to chat. It was so good to see him. He said that this was his last concert with *the performer* and then he’s headed back to Bolzano right after. Then he’s off to Bressanone to teach kids clarinet for 10 days. He is always so busy. He told me that *the performer* is 76! 76! That’s amazing. She has had a lot of plastic surgery done so that she looks more like in her 50’s, but you can tell she’s had work done. Her face is kind of creepy and pulled. But it’s great that she’s still performing.

We talked to Daniel a little bit after the concert and then we headed home. It took us only an hour to get home. What a difference! We were super tired and went straight to bed.

Today I had a really good day with the boys. They were so well behaved and fun. It’s days like these that recharge my batteries. We didn’t do much today except hang out at the house. Since I don’t have German lessons anymore, this is the first day in a long time that I’m by myself the whole day. Usually I have the day off or I have a couple hours of babysitting. It was so much fun singing and playing games, they were just great. We left the house late and met Michael at Karlsplatz since I had to pick up some stuff at Hertie. Turns out they had Bisquick AND Hellman’s (Best Foods) mayonaise!!!! Now I have to find somewhere that sells Cheerios and Grape Nuts and I’ll be set. The only place I found was a mail order place. I think I will try Wal-Mart (yeah, I know), since someone said that they have a whole AISLE dedicated to American foods. I’ve been disappointed before, so I’m not keeping my hopes up. Anyways, we met up and then went home together. I made this Bisquick baked chicken thing. It was kinda disappointing.

Today was such a good day that I wanted to write down little things that I love about my family. They are not in any particular order, just random thoughts.

10 things I love about the boys:
1. Their sweet and distinct laughs
2. The way they back up to sit on my lap and have a story read to them
3. The way they get their shoes to go outside
4. The way they sit on things and make anything into instant chairs
5. The way they can think of new ways to make each other laugh
6. They are experts on their Bobby Cars
7. How quickly they learn something, even quicker when it is something bad
8. The way they look when they’re trying really hard to do something
9. The way they loved to be tickled after I take their shirts off
10. They way they empty out their dresser and throw all the clothes on the floor

10 things I love about Rowan:
1. His messy hair in the morning
2. His favorite things at the playground are the trash cans and the exits (he shakes the gate like he’s a prisoner wanting to get out)
3. The way he grabs a handful of Cherrios and shoves it all in his mouth
4. His fake tantrums
5. His sweet hungs and kisses, always so free with them
6. His big smile and excitement when he goes to the petting zoo
7. He always will spit out the food in his mouth if something better comes along
8. He always finds new ways to make loud noises (poor neighbors)
9. When he sips water he says “aaaaaahhhh” like it was the best water ever
10. The way he quietly says “please” (with his hands together)

10 things I love about Elijah:
1. Him reading all of his books
2. The way he will only eat food if he sees other people eating it and looking like they like it
3. The suckling mouth he makes whenever he is holding his blanket
4. He loves looking at himself in the mirror
5. The way he laughs when putting his finger up his nose
6. How cute he is when doing “I’m a little teapot”
7. His “Not me” look after he bites Rowan (the biting part is bad though)
8. The way he loves new things and won’t want to part with it
9. He touches his eye or my eye and says “Ei” in the cutest voice
10. What sound does a monkey make? (Elijah’s answer is “oooh oooh aaah aaah”)

10 things I love about Michael:
1. Knows just what to say to make me laugh
2. Too obvious with planning gifts to buy me
3. Knows how to tell a story
4. Doesn’t mind doing the same routine over and over (take boys around to see pictures, throws them up in the air, then crawls in the corner to let them climb on top of him)
5. Always contemplates growing his hair long because he’s too lazy to cut it
6. He’s not afraid to watch the boys by himself for days (a week even)
7. The way he plays with the boys, so different and more imaginative than me
8. He has so much passion (even though I complain about this, I see it as a generally good thing)
9. He is so supportive of whatever crazy idea I have
10. He will wash and cook rice for me even though he doesn’t eat any rice (now that’s love)

This morning we invited Riki and Arne over for some good old fashioned american style pancakes! I ordered some Bisquick online so that I could make them. The pancakes here are too thin and more like crepes. I like them thick and syrupy! It was the first time in a long time that I’ve made pancakes so it took me awhile to get the right temperature as well as time. Pancakes sure are finiky! The boys loved them! Rowan, of course, ate immediately. Elijah had to make sure he saw Rowan eat it as well as dad before he would eat it. I swear, he was a Roman emporer in a previous life. It is fun as always to have them over.

After that was done, I went up to their apartment to take picures of Riki and Frederik for her birthday. I have this vision of her holding Frederik while drinking out of her huge tea cup that she always uses. It is really huge. I think I got some good ones.

After I got back, I was exhausted and fell asleep on the couch. Michael was kind and took care of the boys in the afternoon. We were going to go to this park near Garmisch, but he tried to wake me up and I was half dead (I was so tired that I don’t even remember him waking me). So, we didn’t go. Instead he took them around town. He took them to Starbucks and gave them a carbonated apple juice and they both hated it and cried and cried. Poor babies!

I woke up at around 6pm and got their dinner ready and fed them. They are pretty sneaky about not eating their broccoli. It ends up all on the floor. I guess I’ll have to cut it up into smaller pieces so that it sticks to the noodles more.

Watched the WC game and cheered for Italy and they won! Woohoo! We were in total shock over what that Zidane guy did to that Italian player (headbutt). What a shame.