Trick or Treating!

We decided to go to dinner tonight at a little Greek place a couple towns over. Figured we would have a quiet Saturday night, nothing special. Well, on our way back home, we saw a couple kids, dressed up in costumes trick or treating! So we hurried home, shoved Luna into 3 more layers of clothes, and then into her pumpkin costume; before heading out the door. (Fortunately, we always eat out early!) We just never expected it! We made our way around our street a bit, and I think even the houses that weren't expecting anybody went ahead and found something, just because Luna was so darn cute. When they opened the door she would say... "TwickTweet - Canny?" And then "Danke!" after getting the bounty. Too cute. We then loaded into the car and went over to the neighborhood across the lake, where we knew a lot more ex-pat families live, and quickly learned from some young American girls that the places with pumpkins or porch lights were the ones to hit. And in the end, Luna made out pretty well! She was thrilled! So were we...

These are our neighbors across the street. She's a doll and helped take care of our place while we were on vacation. She loved Luna's costume. 'So süß!' she said! (So sweet!)

And here's Luna with the goods after getting home.

Some of the stash...

Yay! I guess we should have expected it after a group of teenagers knocked on our door last night at about 11pm - they must have spied our jack-o-lanterns... but I just never thought that there would actually be so many kids out!

Happy Halloween from our Little Pumpkin!

I decided to make Luna's costume this year, because there was relatively little hope of finding one in her size here. They do have them, but their mostly scary, and mostly too big. So I made her a pumpkin costume, much like the one I had when I was about 3 years old. There was no hope of finding a pattern, so I even did that myself. She won't be able to trick-or-treat, but at least we have pictures of her in a costume!




Uh oh, fell down... now what am I supposed to do?



And yes, of course some candy... actually I had to bribe her with it just to get the costume on - she was NOT having it!

Happy Halloween!

First 4 Word Combination...

Luna had her first four word combination yesterday... It was "Papa goes in shower!" or more literally... "Papa... go... in... tau-tau!"

Foggy Morning

As any of you who have ever been here might know, it can be very foggy here. And we're not just talking a little morning fog that burns off - it can stick around all day! So while driving on a country road recently I saw a family of swans sitting in a mucky green pond, and with the fog I thought it would be the most gorgeous picture. So when it was foggy again this morning, I decided to see if I could go get the shot after I picked up Luna. Only to discover that they had drained the pond! (Most of the ponds around here are carp ponds, and they drain them in order to harvest the carp.) While I was very disappointed I did stop a few other places to see what kind of shots I could get, here are some of them...

Luna's New Lantern

Last night Bas was invited to Luna's kindergarten to help her make a lantern for St. Martin's. Here is the little guy they came home with! Pretty handy, huh?

Pumpkins!

Well, we are definitely the only ones on the block, but we carved pumpkins this weekend! I think everybody likes them though! Luna sure does!

Hiding Hotdogs

Luna's lunch lately has been several hotdogs in succession. Not cooked, straight out of the package, and not in her chair (as usual.) But hey, if I can get her to eat, I let her do it anyway she wants!

Anyway, today she was on her second hot dog, and she came into the kitchen while I was trawling Facebook, and said "Dog Buikje!" (Dutch - pronounced Bauchee, and means tummy.)

So I was like "Yeah? - did you eat your hot dog?" And then, as she patted her tummy, it occurred to me that she doesn't know that when you eat something it goes into your tummy! Something seemed fishy! So, upon further investigation, I discovered that she had stuffed the hot dog down the front of her turtleneck onesie! Very clever little girl! But that's not eating!

So after extricating the hot dog I went back to checking FB statuses, and a couple minutes later, I feel something cold and clammy being placed up underneath my sweater onto my lower back. Yep, now the game had evolved into stuffing hot dogs into Mama's shirt! And now the hot dog was in several pieces, so we got to do this several times! Yay! Nothing like a hot dog in your pants!

I can't imagine what her teen-age years hold in store for us!

Entertaining

Tonight some of Bas's colleagues from work are coming over for dinner. We're having a barbecue, and it's "bring your own meat!" We'll be serving for 8, so fortunately I only have to do all the side dishes. And fortunately Luna is in kiga this morning so I was able to get teh upstairs cleaned this morning (I did downstairs yesterday.) So this afternoon will be side dish prep.

I'm making:

cream cheese corn (this should be interesting - first time I'm doing it with canned corn and not frozen - will be a good trial run for Thanksgiving and Christmas!)

mashed potatoes with cheddar and sour cream
cucumbers in a dill dressing
garlic bread

and as a starter - chips and camembert, artichoke dip

dessert - assorted cookies (I wanted to get something nice from the bakery, but they had nothing today!)

I'll let you know how it went!

St. Martin's Laternen

Here in Germany they don't celebrate Halloween, but they do celebrate a holiday called St. Martin's. All of the kids make lanterns, and then walk through the streets carrying the lit lanterns and sing songs. Since Luna is in kindergarten now, she will be going next Tuesday. And since she is a bit too young to be making her own lantern, I made one for her. Stay posted for pictures from the walk, but here is the lantern! I'm so excited about it now. I wasn't sure what I was going to do about it, but then I found a magazine in the supermarket today that had different ideas, and this is what we ended up with! We still have to get a stick and a light for it, but it should be done soon. Can't wait!

And the Souvenirs...

And here are our souvenirs... generally we like to buy a black and white print of any city we visit, so that we can build a little collection. (My parents did this when we lived in Europe, so I owe the idea to them.) It's a nice way to have something from the places you visit, without getting too much "stuff" but sometimes it's quite hard to find one. Unfortunatle most people like to buy the kitchy stuff. We did find a nice print for Prague, but we also picked up a couple other things which are fun to share...

Here's the special cup that we purchased to drink the waters in Karlsbad. The handle is also a spout, which is the traditional form. It also matches the blue and white in my kitchen perfectly!

And these are the funky little nesting, Matrushka Santa dolls which we bought in Prague. I love them! It'll be time to get them back out soon!

Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad)

These are a little late, but I didn't want to post all of our travel pictures at once, and then they got a bit away from me... but here they are...

On our way back from Prague we stopped in Karlsbad, which is close to the German border. It's an old spa town with natural springs, where people have gone for hundreds of years to "take the cure." It was a great spot to stop, at about half way back, and was a nice little place to walk and have lunch.

There were lots of iron colonnades and walkways like the one below...



The town sits on steep hills on the banks of a river, with lots of beautiful art nouveau buildings, like in Prague.



Here's another colonnade, which houses lots of different hot spring fountains. You can just walk up, put your special cup under the water and drink up!



Here's another one, more spring fountains again...



And here you can see the geysers right in the river...



This geyser is a bit like Old Faithful in Yellowstone, except it doesn't quite go as high, and it erupts constantly. Oddly enough they built a building around it! Can you imagine that in Yellowstone?



Some more springs inside the same building...



This guy was in a window at the place where we had lunch. Fun little Czech army guy!



And another one out front...



This was the grand hotel, down at one end of the town. The building was huge, and absolutely gorgeous. This picture shows about a third of it!



Here we are getting our dosage with our special cup...



And don't worry, the water is too hot to be dirty - those are mineral stains in the fountain!



Bas didn't appreciate the flavor...



This was interesting... it was that day's date spelled out in flowers. I guess they change it every day!



We saw these billboard type signs all along the highway. I snapped the picture, because it looks so eastern bloc - but it's really a brand of mineral water...



And no trip would be well documented without a shot of Luna entertaining herself in the back seat...