Picture my life just for a sec. At this very moment, my house is totally trashed, every room needs to be hosed down and started over, I have probably 12 loads of laundry that need to go in, the refrigerator is jam-packed with Thanksgiving leftovers, guidebooks are strewn upon the floor, have various forms of currency lying about, crates of German beer bottles that need to be recycled, I’m on the couch snuggled up with my cats and my computer, and my stomach muscles still hurt so much from laughing that sitting up is a struggle. I’d say that’s a sign of a wonderful week.
We’ve just spent the last 8 days with our old Peoria neighbors, the Bakers. Oh my goodness, did we have a great time. First of all, I’m just so grateful that they are crazy enough pull their kids out of school, miss work, and skip Thanksgiving with their families to come see us. (Seriously, I have no idea what they were thinking, Tim and I are not that cool.) Laurie and I have been on the phone nearly everyday planning for this adventure, so actually even still today I’m feeling a little postpartum. (Or as best friend Susan called it, Post-de-partum.)
They arrived here a little bleary eyed at the BCD (that’s butt-crack o’ dawn) after what I think was a little bit of a hairy travel day. Pretty sure the alarm didn’t go off at the right time (or at all) and Mark may have swore in front of his children on the way to the airport. Whoops. Luckily things picked up as soon as they made it through customs. Dinner that night was at the Bishopshof Brewery (yes, the high ranking priests here in Germany make darn good beer) with our group of friends. My favorite moment of the night was while discussing Thanksgiving, Mark commented to our British friend Ewan that it’s a celebration of “us getting the heck away from your people.” Brilliant. The fact that Mark said this just a few minutes after trying to relieve himself in the woman’s bathroom began the abdominal workout of hysterical laughter that would carry me through the week.
I want you all to know that I really, really tried not to kill them with too many frigid Death Marches. These are great friends of ours and we want them to still like us, but, I did just about lose Emma one day. It was Monday and we’d gone to the Alps to check out Crazy King Ludwig’s (Luddie) castles. Well, we were about halfway up the gigantic climb to Neuschwanstein that you must do by foot when Emma, who is 12 going on 19 most days, forgot her favorite scarf at the bottom of the mountain. So the three girls (Emma, Laurie and myself) took off back down to get it. Found it—no problem, but then you’ve got Emma who is just over 5 feet and Laurie who’s maybe 5’4” attempting to keep up with me at my towering height of nearly 5’20”! It just wasn’t quite fair. Thought we were gonna lose little Em, but she pulled through. (Picture her little legs just a-scurrying away.) She slept the whole way home, poor thing.
Other highlights of the trip: Pretty sure Andrew and Mark were quite pleased with the beer here in these parts. We did our best to expose them to the true German culture, by making them try many different beers as we could. Honestly, they did not put up much of a fight. Think their favorite was a Franzenkaner in the Ratskeller just below the Munich Marianplatz. Perhaps the Jacob Dunkleweissen as a close second. I think Emma was most affected by our trip to Dachau, the concentration camp. (Dear God, please don’t let her have too many nightmares.) In true Emma fashion, she held my hand and was trying to make sure I was okay the whole time. (I miss this munchkin so much it makes my heart hurt sometimes.) As for Laurie, taking her to Prague was like taking a toddler to Toys R Us. Thought she was just going to weep looking at the amazing architecture. The two of us have already decided to come back to spend a few days antiquing here when the weather’s warmer and we’re not frozen!
Highlights for me were less cultural and more about just spending time with our friends. Again our house was filled with music as Mark played the piano, Andrew played the guitar and Emma and I sang to our hearts content. We stayed up late goofing around, as we’ve always done with the Bakers, replacing their porch that we lived on in Peoria with our couch. In fact one of my favorite memories will be Laurie and I baking pumpkin pie at 1:00am from scratch. Think it only took 4 phone calls home, one to her dad, one to my mom, one to her mom and one to my aunt Marty to get the job done. Leave it to two dance teachers to do heavy duty baking! My other highlight was Thanksgiving…but that’s gonna take a whole ‘nother blog to conquer that one.
We dropped them off Sunday morning at 5am for their flight back home. I cried like a baby, even though I’ll be heading stateside in just a little over two weeks. Silly. I’d love to have them here for longer, but I guess Bakers can’t be choosers.
We’ve just spent the last 8 days with our old Peoria neighbors, the Bakers. Oh my goodness, did we have a great time. First of all, I’m just so grateful that they are crazy enough pull their kids out of school, miss work, and skip Thanksgiving with their families to come see us. (Seriously, I have no idea what they were thinking, Tim and I are not that cool.) Laurie and I have been on the phone nearly everyday planning for this adventure, so actually even still today I’m feeling a little postpartum. (Or as best friend Susan called it, Post-de-partum.)
They arrived here a little bleary eyed at the BCD (that’s butt-crack o’ dawn) after what I think was a little bit of a hairy travel day. Pretty sure the alarm didn’t go off at the right time (or at all) and Mark may have swore in front of his children on the way to the airport. Whoops. Luckily things picked up as soon as they made it through customs. Dinner that night was at the Bishopshof Brewery (yes, the high ranking priests here in Germany make darn good beer) with our group of friends. My favorite moment of the night was while discussing Thanksgiving, Mark commented to our British friend Ewan that it’s a celebration of “us getting the heck away from your people.” Brilliant. The fact that Mark said this just a few minutes after trying to relieve himself in the woman’s bathroom began the abdominal workout of hysterical laughter that would carry me through the week.
I want you all to know that I really, really tried not to kill them with too many frigid Death Marches. These are great friends of ours and we want them to still like us, but, I did just about lose Emma one day. It was Monday and we’d gone to the Alps to check out Crazy King Ludwig’s (Luddie) castles. Well, we were about halfway up the gigantic climb to Neuschwanstein that you must do by foot when Emma, who is 12 going on 19 most days, forgot her favorite scarf at the bottom of the mountain. So the three girls (Emma, Laurie and myself) took off back down to get it. Found it—no problem, but then you’ve got Emma who is just over 5 feet and Laurie who’s maybe 5’4” attempting to keep up with me at my towering height of nearly 5’20”! It just wasn’t quite fair. Thought we were gonna lose little Em, but she pulled through. (Picture her little legs just a-scurrying away.) She slept the whole way home, poor thing.
Other highlights of the trip: Pretty sure Andrew and Mark were quite pleased with the beer here in these parts. We did our best to expose them to the true German culture, by making them try many different beers as we could. Honestly, they did not put up much of a fight. Think their favorite was a Franzenkaner in the Ratskeller just below the Munich Marianplatz. Perhaps the Jacob Dunkleweissen as a close second. I think Emma was most affected by our trip to Dachau, the concentration camp. (Dear God, please don’t let her have too many nightmares.) In true Emma fashion, she held my hand and was trying to make sure I was okay the whole time. (I miss this munchkin so much it makes my heart hurt sometimes.) As for Laurie, taking her to Prague was like taking a toddler to Toys R Us. Thought she was just going to weep looking at the amazing architecture. The two of us have already decided to come back to spend a few days antiquing here when the weather’s warmer and we’re not frozen!
Highlights for me were less cultural and more about just spending time with our friends. Again our house was filled with music as Mark played the piano, Andrew played the guitar and Emma and I sang to our hearts content. We stayed up late goofing around, as we’ve always done with the Bakers, replacing their porch that we lived on in Peoria with our couch. In fact one of my favorite memories will be Laurie and I baking pumpkin pie at 1:00am from scratch. Think it only took 4 phone calls home, one to her dad, one to my mom, one to her mom and one to my aunt Marty to get the job done. Leave it to two dance teachers to do heavy duty baking! My other highlight was Thanksgiving…but that’s gonna take a whole ‘nother blog to conquer that one.
We dropped them off Sunday morning at 5am for their flight back home. I cried like a baby, even though I’ll be heading stateside in just a little over two weeks. Silly. I’d love to have them here for longer, but I guess Bakers can’t be choosers.
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