Christmas Day 2011

Tina let the boys pick their own breakfast for Christmas morning.  They chose a special holiday version of Cap'n Crunch.  Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like sweetened corn and oat cereal.

Christmas Eve 2011

Some families we know open presents on Christmas Eve but we make our children wait until Christmas Day.  We spent Christmas Eve getting ready for Christmas day.

White Wings basketball

The wife of one of my coworkers is a cheerleader for the Hanau White Wings (a professional basketball team based out of a medium-sized town about 15 miles east of Frankfurt).  Tiffany (the cheerleader) noticed that two of the players on the basketball team were Americans and in talking with them and their wives, the topic came up that both of them (Chris Miles and Logan Magnusson) had played college basketball together at BYU.  Jamie (the coworker) mentioned this to me at work since he thought I might be interested in seeing them play (I was).

Christmas decorations, Narula style

Here are some of the ornaments on our Christmas tree:

Army Mail

When we get mail from the United States, it is delivered to our post office box at the Army Post Office (APO) on the local military base.  As a benefit to citizens living overseas on military orders, the cost of mailing things to overseas locations is subsidized (the cost to the sender is the same as mailing the item to New York City).  This means APO mail is a lot cheaper than other international shipping services (FedEx, UPS, and others).  We get a fair amount of mail via the APO and are grateful to have this convenience while living in Germany.

Brussels, Belgium

Last week a coworker and I drove to Belgium for some meetings at NATO in Brussels and at SHAPE in Mons.  We spent the night in Brussels at a hotel that was a five minute walk from Grand Place.

Auf Wiedersehen, Frau Bauer

The local Army base offers German lessons for Americans that want to improve their German language skills.  I started taking classes with Frau Bauer in early 2010.  I took four of her classes and was looking forward to a fifth this fall.  Tina had also taken two of her classes and was signed up for a third.  Her classes were really good for me and I learned a lot.  I always felt like I got more out of the classes than I paid for.

Soccer, Fall 2011

The boys played soccer again this fall.  The league is sponsored by the local army base with volunteer coaches.  Each team gets to choose its own team name.  Oscar's team was "The Dragons" and Calvin's team was "The Little Green Monsters".  Calvin's coach was somebody we know from church.

Halloween 2011

Tina made costumes for Calvin and Sara (Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse).  Oscar's costume (Harry Potter) was purchased.

Sara at the park

Sara at the park, 30 September 2011.

S is for Salzburg

Starting on October 10th, Oscar had a two week break from school so we took advantage of the time off to go on some trips.

License plates in Germany indicate the city in which the vehicle is registered.  When I see a license plate that starts with "S", I know its driver is from Stuttgart.  We saw lots of "S" license plates during our recent trip to Southern Germany and Austria.  In this instance, however, "S" stood for Salzburg instead of Stuttgart.

London with Tina

Tina and I spent three days in London during the second week of Oscar's fall break from school (in October).  Sara stayed with a family from church and the boys stayed with a different family (also from church).  I cashed in the last of my Hyatt points so we stayed at the Andaz Liverpool Street for free (same as when I took Oscar to London in July).

Calvin turns five

Calvin's fifth birthday was on October 9th.  We had a Lightning McQueen party at the house with some of his friends from church.

Hyandrea buds

Hyandrea plants grow buds in August and September.  The buds lay dormant over the winter and then new growth (and eventually flowers) comes from them when the weather warms up in March and April.  I noticed today that the potted hydrangea plant we have on our front porch has set its buds for next year.

Frankfurt Auto Show 2011

I left work early on Friday and took the boys to the Frankfurt Auto Show.  Tina was not interested so she stayed home with Sara.  The boys really liked looking at the fancy cars.  The show was absolutely huge -- each building was massive and there were eleven of them.

Liquid paint: not for luggage

I spent the week of September 12th in Boston (work paid for me to take a Group Policy class).  Tina needed some primer for a craft project so she asked me to bring some back for her.  She had previously tried to get some primer at Hornbach (a German home improvement store similar to Home Depot) but had been unable to find it there.  It seemed strange to me that this would not be available in the German stores, but I did not have a chance to check myself before I left for Boston.

For the return trip back to Germany, I had a gallon of liquid paint in my checked bag (nonflammable liquid paint is not prohibited from inclusion in checked bags).  When I picked up my bag from baggage claim, there was white paint soaking through the zippers and I knew that the contents of this bag were going to be a total loss.  Things that were ruined in this suitcase:  Tina's paint (there was none left in the can), socks, t-shirts, jeans, swim trunks, my favorite hat, dress shoes, Adidas slippers, my course notes from the Group Policy class, my favorite German/English dictionary, and the small green notebook I had been using to record thoughts and impressions.  The green notebook is the thing I miss the most -- it is the only thing that cannot be replaced by buying something new.

I will probably never know exactly what happened.  It is certainly possible that somebody opened my bag to inspect the paint and then this person did not properly close the lid.  It is also possible that the change in cabin pressure caused the air in the can to expand (this would have increased pressure on the lid, causing it to pop open).  I never approached Lufthansa about the damages -- this was a risk I knew I was taking when I put a gallon of paint in my suitcase and now I have to deal with the consequences.

Lots of people tell stories about travel disasters.  At least mine has pictures.

Apple picking

Oscar walks to school with a boy in his class whose parents own an apple orchard.  The orchard is located just a few minutes from our house.  Last year, Oscar's whole class took a field trip to the apple orchard.  They got to ride on a tractor and Oscar came home with some apples, a large sunflower, and really muddy boots.  On weekends in September, the orchard is open for people to come and pick their own apples.  I took the boys there today while Tina stayed home with Sara (it was nap time).  Fortunately there was no mud this time.  The boys had a great time picking apples (mostly Gala) and we also bought some fresh-squeezed apple cider.  We ate some of the apples tonight after dinner and everybody thought they were delicious.  I expect we will go back again to get some more.

Mattress hopping

Several of my coworkers asked me which hotel I used while I was in the States.  My answer: all of them.  Not really, but it sure was a lot of hotels.  In fourteen nights, I stayed at seven different hotels and I never stayed at the same hotel two nights in a row.

A thunderstorm, an earthquake, and a hurricane

I returned to Germany on Monday morning after spending two weeks in the United States (business trip).  The trip began with extreme of weather at John F. Kennedy Airport (New York City) and ended with extreme weather at Washington Dulles International Airport (Washington, D.C.).  Sandwiched somewhere in the middle was a rare east-coast earthquake that was felt all the way from North Carolina to Toronto.

Sunflowers

The boys bought me some dwarf sunflower seeds for Valentine's Day.  We planted them in a pot with some potting soil in May and have been watching them grow ever since.  The first one started to bloom a few days ago.  The others are not far behind.

A new old iPod

In February 2009, when I found out I had been selected for my current job in Germany, I got some German instructional CDs from the public library in Maryland and started listening to them in the car as I was driving to and from work.  Over the next few months, I listened to 100+ hours of German CDs and I felt like I learned a lot.  Since coming to Germany, I have taken several German classes offered at the local Army base but I want to start again with listening to German instruction in the car.  Of course, I can always just turn on the radio.  That has been the biggest reason I haven't really pursued other options.  The problem with the radio is that it hasn't really helped me develop vocabulary.  I can definitely understand some of what is being discussed in these radio conversations but when I miss something, there is no way to go back and read what was said or look things up in a dictionary.  So I have been wanting to try something else.

Calvin starts German Kindergarten

Calvin started German Kindergarten on Monday.  He doesn't speak much German but we hope he will learn quickly.  After one week, he says he really likes going to Kindergarten.

Back to school for Oscar

Oscar's German elementary school started again this past Monday after taking six weeks off for a summer break.  Oscar is in the 2nd grade this year.

Another Birthday

I turned 34 at the end of July.  Tina made a tasty carrot cake and the boys gave me a book I had been wanting.

Jetlagged

I remember how hard it was for our family to adjust to European time when we first arrived in Germany in 2009.  We had come from the Eastern time zone in the United States (six hour difference) and it took almost a full week before all of us felt comfortable with the time change.

London with Oscar

I took Oscar to London last week for four days and three nights.  The trip report is divided into sections.  Most of the photos have captions over at Picasa (see links to Picasa albums at the bottom of the post).  Picasa also has some photos that don't appear below.

Oscar finishes 1st grade

AAFES gives students who get good grades a booklet with some nice coupons in it.  We picked up Oscar's booklet on Friday.  They gave me a hard time about him not being enrolled at the American school but I don't see that requirement mentioned in their press release.  Oscar got a free slice of pizza.  I threw in some Fruity Bussi candies for dessert.  Then we walked over to the bookstore where he picked out a free magazine.  He wanted a race car magazine but most of these have half-naked women on the cover.  We settled on something a bit more appropriate.

Frankfurt Natural History Museum

Oscar and I made the short 20-minute drive into Frankfurt today to visit the Natural History Museum.  We had a great time looking at animals, bones, and fossils.

I gave Oscar an old digital camera and told him to take his own pictures.  He was so busy taking pictures (coming soon) that he didn't complain when I slowed down to take a photo.

Schloss Heidelberg

My brother and his girlfriend flew into Warsaw a few weeks ago and have been touring Europe.  I picked them up at the train station here in Wiesbaden on Friday.  They are staying with us until they fly home on Wednesday.  Yesterday we drove to Heidelberg for a day trip to its famous castle.  The day was overcast but I didn't think it would rain so I suggested that we should leave the umbrellas in the car.  Naturally, it started raining after we had been walking around the castle for about an hour.  We got a bit wet but were not soaked.  Oscar used the rain as an opportunity to spike up his hair.

Farewell, Shumways

One of the unique things about living among Americans overseas is that almost all of us are here temporarily.  Although the length of time spent overseas can vary, most families come for three-year assignments.  This  means that about one third of our American friends and acquaintances will pack their household goods into boxes and fly home this year.  To minimize the impact on school-aged children, most of the moving happens between May and September.  In this respect, 2011 is no different than any other year.  We are sad to see our friends in the Shumway family fly home to Utah on Friday.  Since we arrived in Germany in July 2009, our families have shared memorable experiences at church, church activities, birthday parties, dinners, lunches, movies, and more.  Oscar and I met the Shumways at the bowling alley tonight for one last get-together.

Cleaning the Odyssey

Oscar and I washed and waxed the minivan yesterday.  This was long overdue -- it had not been washed in at least a year.

Before:

After:

Strawberry Picking

Oscar and I went to the local pick-your-own strawberry farm yesterday.  The strawberries were yummy and cheap.  We filled our bucket for €1,20.

Separation of powers

Tina got home from her adults-only trip to Bavaria on Tuesday afternoon.  On Thursday, she left again -- this time to the States for four weeks (mostly with her parents in Las Vegas).  Calvin and Sara went with her but Oscar stayed in Germany with me (he still has two more weeks of school).  We looked at getting tickets after Oscar was out of school but leaving a few weeks later would have cost a lot more money.  So Oscar and I are by ourselves in Germany until the evening of July 6th.

Father / Son Camping Activity 2011

Each year in May (or early June, as was the case this year), the six English-speaking LDS military units in Germany (Baumholder, Bitburg, Heidelberg, Kaiserslautern, Ramstein, and Wiesbaden) combine for a fathers and sons camping activity that commemorates the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood (15 May 1829).  Last year we went to Manderscheid Castle (Google Analytics tells me that the blog entry I wrote about last year's trip has become the second-most visited page on this blog).

This year's trip was to the American Military Cemetery in Luxembourg.  Before the location had been announced, I did not know that the United States had a cemetery in Luxembourg.  I have since learned that the American Battle Monuments Commission maintains 24 permanent military cemeteries on foreign soil (there are 124,909 U.S. war dead interred at these cemeteries; 30,921 from World War I, 93,238 from World War II, and 750 from the Mexican War).

Last year I took the boys in my car but this year I took the minivan because we had some extra passengers in the car.  The boys' friends in the Shumway family were going to miss the camping because their parents scheduled a cruise (without the children) that would have them somewhere off the coast of Italy on the night of the camping.  I thought my boys would enjoy the company so I volunteered to take two of the Shumway boys along with us (they have four boys; Ryan Green brought the oldest boy with him and the youngest boy stayed in Wiesbaden with the family that is watching the children during the cruise).   Zach and Rex are very close in age to Oscar and Calvin so they have a lot in common.  A few days before the activity, I heard that somebody else from our unit would also not be able to attend because of some ongoing car trouble that was not likely to be resolved before the weekend.  Paul Woolston and his wife are empty-nesters with five grown children so I offered him the passenger seat in the van and he accepted.

The plan was to camp on Friday night and spend Saturday morning helping with an Eagle Scout project (cleaning grave markers and repairing the ones that have been damaged by lawn mowers).  The church people who organized the activity brought pancake batter and sausages for breakfast on Saturday but campers were responsible to make their own arrangements for dinner on Friday and lunch on Saturday.

Last year I arrived at 6:30PM and had to simultaneously struggle with hungry children and the need to unpack the car, set up a tent, and get everything situated before nightfall.  To prevent a repeat of this situation, I had planned on getting an earlier start this year.  Obviously not everybody can just pack up and leave work in the middle of the afternoon (or take the day off, as I did) so I thought it would be nice to have a group dinner on Friday night for the people that came from Wiesbaden.  Beyond offering a nice chance to eat together, a group dinner would also allow late-comers the opportunity to eat as soon as they arrived.  I wasn't sure how much interest there would be in this but I figured it couldn't hurt to offer it as an option.  I sent the dads an email offering to organize a group dinner with hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, cookies, marshmallows, and soda.  We ended up having seven or eight families participate in the group dinner.  Debbie Woolston added a nice selection of raw vegetables to my menu of fat, cholesterol, and empty calories.

I decided to not go to work on Friday so I could spend the morning loading up the van with camping equipment for my family plus the two Shumway boys.  Once the tent, sleeping bags, and camping equipment were all packed up, I went to the grocery store to buy the food for dinner.  I had quite a bit of food in the car -- 16 frozen hamburgers, 16 hot dogs, 32 buns, a box of 45 bags of chips, 48 cans of soda, two packages of Oreos, 12 1.5L bottles of water, and more.  Needless to say, space in the van was at a premium.  I was pretty full after I picked up the Shumway boys around 1:15PM but I still needed to stop and pick up Paul Woolston.  I wasn't prepared for the amount of camp gear he had planned to bring.  We had to pull a lot of things out and do some creative repacking but we were able to get everything to fit.  The boys all ended up with decreased legroom because of the fold-up chairs, sleeping bags, and tents we stuffed under their feet.

We arrived around 5:00 (later than I had wanted) but discovered we were one of the first ones to arrive.  The plan was to unload the van, get the tent set up, and then get dinner ready.  The unloading part was easy.

5:21PM -- The van has been unloaded and the boys are playing with leaves.

I expected the tent to take about twenty minutes.  I had not used this tent in several years (last year I rented a smaller tent from the outdoor shop on the local army base because we had been told that space at the castle was limited) so I didn't remember how it was assembled.  Tina had used it several times in the last few years to take the teenage girls from church camping so she was more familiar with the tent.  Her comment to me was, "it just pops right up."  It actually did take about twenty minutes to set up.  But that was only after several people spent and hour and half trying to untangle it.  The ladies really mangled it when they put it away.

5:31PM -- A tangled mess...

6:31PM -- Still a tangled mess.  At this point I was thinking we would be sleeping under the stars...

6:53PM -- It should not have been necessary to separate this piece from the tent.  Now we could finally untangle the tent...

7:14PM -- Almost two hours later, I finally had a tent.

Since I was preoccupied with the tent and four boys who were throwing leaves and playing with sticks, I wasn't able to help much with the dinner I had planned.  Fortunately, Paul Woolston (who did not have children to supervise) cooked the hamburgers and hot dogs.  I was able to help slice a few tomatoes and get the buns and chips organized but Paul did most of the work.  Here we are eating dinner a bit after 8PM:

I enjoyed getting to talk with the other dads.  We had one family that arrived after 8:15 -- they were hungry and tired so it was nice to have dinner already prepared for them.  We had a brief devotional meeting about 9:30 and then I got the boys ready for bed.  Unfortunately, the tent was downwind from a campfire and the smoke kept Calvin up coughing most of the night.

The weather on Friday had been really pleasant and Saturday was more of the same.  It was a bit cool on Saturday morning but by 10AM the boys had taken off their jackets and changed from jeans into shorts.  Here they are eating breakfast:

The boys played horseshoes while they were waiting for everybody else to finish eating.

After breakfast, we walked through the cemetery.  There are 5,076 American soldiers buried in the cemetery.  General Patton is one of them; his grave is featured between the two flagpoles but I forgot to find it.

Visitors Center

Jewish soldiers have the Star of David on their grave markers.

Day Turner was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

Over 13,000 people of Chinese descent enlisted in the Army during World War II.  Not all of them came home... 

"All who shall hereafter live in freedom will be here reminded that to these men and their comrades we owe a debt to be paid with grateful remembrance of their sacrifice and high resolve that the cause for which they died shall live eternally." -- Dwight Eisenhower

371 of America's missing soldiers are remembered here.  The small markers next to some names indicate those whose remains have since been recovered and identified.

We spent about twenty minutes cleaning grave markers and posing for photos but the boys were bored and they weren't really helping so we didn't stay very long.

Here is one that needed to be repaired (notice the chip near the bottom).

Russ Tillett from Heidelberg helped repaired it.

After our visit to the cemetery, we packed everything up, loaded up the car, and drove home.  The boys ate lunch while Paul Woolston and I loaded up the car.  For the second year in a row, lunch on Saturday was supposed to be peanut butter sandwiches.  And for the second year in a row, I forgot a key ingredient.  Last year it was a knife; this year it was the peanut butter.  They ate bananas and chips instead.

Everybody had a nice weekend and the boys are already looking forward to doing this again next year.

Abandoned with children

Tina left on Saturday morning to go to Bavaria with her friend Debby.  She called tonight to say she will be back on Tuesday in time for me to go to German class.

Sunday evening report: the kitchen is a disaster, the only milk we have is skim (there will be tears in the morning), nobody made the bed this morning, and there is a pile of camping gear at the bottom of the stairs that needs to get put away.  We can definitely make it to Tuesday without doing laundry but at some point I'm going to have to empty the dishwasher.  Maybe tomorrow...

A new look for the blog

I updated to a new blog template because the old template was not compatible with some of the advanced features that Blogger makes available via its popular Blogger Template Designer.  The new template is wider than the old one (so now I can post larger images) and it uses a more modern font (Calibri from Microsoft).

Old template:

New template:

My preference was to make the new template even wider but apparently 20% of you still browse the web at 1024 x 768 (why?).  To prevent these users from having to scroll horizontally, I kept the page width as you see it now.

I also updated the banner image for the first time in six months with newer (and larger) photos.

05 June 2011:

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 25 October 2009: