Germany in the Summer

I can hardly believe that it's September already and that I am back from summer vacation and halfway over jet-lag.  The summer that I looked forward to for so long is over with.  But we had a great time. This is mostly for memory sake, but I tried to limit the number of pictures.  There are tons of pictures. :) Not surprising with Steve around.

We left our house at 1:45 am to head to the airport.  Our first...shall we say adventure? met us in the check in line.  After a 30 minute wait in lines that weren't really moving, we got up to the counter and found out that they didn't have Miss A's reservation.  We had called a few days before to request child meals for our kids.  But then the lady called back and said that she would not be able to do it because the airline we were flying with from Doha to Frankfurt had us in an exit row and because we booked the flights through a US online agency, which doesn't allow children in an exit row, the airline couldn't add child meals without canceling the reservation. So we went without the child meals and I regretted even calling them.  Half an hour later they got it sorted out and off through passport control and security we went.  Oddly enough, we weren't in exit on either flight that day.  Not sure what happened there.

We enjoyed seeing different parts of Germany again.  And it was much warmer, even though we still had to wear jackets for the first few days.  I think I was almost blinded by the green.  :)  It was so beautifully green.

 It rained when we arrived and afterwards we enjoyed a beautiful walk in a nearby cemetery.



Miss A found every mud puddle and had to splash in it. Unfortunately for her, she didn't have any closed toed shoes at all.  I was waiting until we got to the States to buy them. So she was in socks and sandals.  I'm sure her feet were freezing. But she was happy.






Big E enjoyed a KinderJoy egg everyday.  The prizes were surprisingly appropriate.  Cars and trains.


Though Miss A didn't get an egg each day, she enjoyed playing with the plastic egg that the toy was in inside the chocolate egg.

On Friday we went to Hessen Park, which is an open air living museum.  They have taken historical houses and buildings from around the state of Hesse and relocated them to this park.  It was really fun to go see.  They set things up as if it was a village. I wish we could have taken more time to look at things, but with little kids...and sometimes big boys ;)... it's hard to see everything.
At Hessen Park, there were these natural rock formations.  Big E liked to climb them.


While Big E climbed, Miss A perfected "the look".


Here are some of the buildings in Hessen Park...

I got to spin rope.  Not many places at actors or workers about, but this one did and it was fun.

This building now houses a restaurant and that's were we enjoyed a yummy lunch.  I tried a CurryWurst and it was so good.



As we were walking out of the park, Miss A started humming and then hummed herself to sleep.  :)


We then got in the car and drove to the Limes, which was nearby.  The Limes is the remains of an old Roman fort and palisade.  The ditch on the left was dug by Romans and the mound as made by them as well.  There was also a mile markers. This is the northern most boundary of the Roman Empire.



The fort is reconstructed on the remains of the original fort.  There were house cellars outside of the fort where families lived. Well, not necessarily in the cellars, but the houses were outside of the fort. There was a museum inside the for that had the most amazing things.  There were a number wells in the fort and leather sandals have been pulled up from the well.  The water in the well preserved the leather.  Of course there were weapons, but also medical instruments, and coins and jewelry.


The kids slept all the time in the car.  We didn't have to entertain them much during our drives.


On Saturday we decided to drive back down to Heidelberg.  The forecast said rain was possible during the afternoon, but as luck would have it, it rained the whole drive down and the whole time we visited the Heidelberg castle.  I borrowed a jacket from my mother-in-law as it was chilly and the jacket I brought wasn't enough on its own.


My sister is serving a mission in Japan right now.  She says that the Japanese are fascinated with Americans.  They way they look and everything.  Well, while were in the courtyard of the Heidelberg Castle, Big E was walking around like this:

(Cute, isn't he?) Then some Japanese girls saw him, ran in front and snapped a few pictures of him and ran off.  It honestly is beyond me why people take photos of people they don't know.  To me it's a waste.  Anyway, as we were leaving the castle, the rain stopped and it cleared up. By the time we drove to the town, the sun came out and it became a very pleasant day.  We walked around the old town and to the river.  Since the clouds went away, we got a much better picture of the castle from the old bridge.  We also stopped and ate some yummy pastries.


One the way back to Frankfurt, we drove on the Autobhan, which is the highway.  In the left lane, you can go as fast as you want.  We were already going 150 km/hr (93 mph) with the flow of traffic. Then we saw this Ferrari.  I'm not a big car person, but I can appreciate the power this car has.  There were two cars ahead of him who were passing others.  I think everyone was just waiting (I know we were in our car) for the other two cars to move out of the way.  Then as the last car finally moved over, and the Ferrari stepped on the gas.  Within seconds he was past the horizon.  It was pretty awesome.


We enjoyed a nice bike ride around residential parts of Frankfurt and had a snack in the park.

We celebrated Big E's 4th birthday. 

The last two days we went to Eisenach to see the Wartburg Castle, which is where Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German. We stopped by a park to eat lunch when we got there and as soon as the car was parked, Big E got car sick and threw up all over himself.  I only had two pairs of pants total for him for this entire trip, and one of them was dirty as I didn't get it washed before we left for Eisenach, and now the other pair had throw up on it.  So he wore his pajamas pants for the rest of the time.

In Eisenach, we visited the Lutherhaus, where Martin Luther lived for a while with a family while he went to school.

Walked along the town square and chased the pigeons.

Stepped into the church that Bach was baptized in and also played the organ in.  Martin Luther also preached in this church for a time.

We then headed to Wartburg Castle.  It was a beautiful drive up the hill and then a good hike farther up.  I couldn't get enough of the green.

Most of the this part of the castle has been reconstructed throughout the years, but there are in places up to 60% original materials.  This was the first part of the castle to be built. 

This part was on the way to the area where Martin Luther stayed while he translated the New Testament. The ceiling of the walkway was so low.   I didn't have to duck but Steve certainly did.

This is the room that Luther stayed in.

The only thing that is original to the room from when Luther stayed here is the whale vertebra.  He used it as a foot stool.

We climbed the tower next to the castle that also housed the dungeon.  It gave an incredible view of the area.

For dinner we went to a restaurant that was made to look like a restaurant Luther's time.  They also served food that would have been common back then.  You can't really see it well in the pictures, but there is straw all over the floor.  For appetizers they brought out a tough bread with lard and a leek cheese sauce.  Miss A would just dip her fingers in the leek cheese sauce.  It was pretty good. You can imagine what the lard tasted like.

The table had holes in it where there were chairs.  When they brought out our drinks, the cups were pointed at the bottom.  So you had to put the cups into the holes.

We stayed the night in a bed and breakfast outside of town.  No one spoke much English, but that's okay.  We went for a nice hike in Drachenschlucht (dragon canyon), which legend has that a dragon lived there and that St. George killed the dragon there. It was a beautiful hike.  This is the Wartburg Castle from where we began the hike. 

Then we headed off to Bachhaus, were Johann Sebastian Bach was born and lived until his parents died.  We also got to hear some of the kinds of instruments that he played.  The presentation was only in German, so I have no idea what they were saying, but it was neat to hear a clavichord  and an old organ, and a harpsichord in person. I did think of my piano teacher while I was there.

We then drove home in the rain. As it was our last night and Big E hadn't ridden on a train/trolley yet and he had been talking about it all week, Grandma was so kind to take Big E on a train ride.  He was in heaven.  I don't think anything made him as happy that week as riding on the train.  Doesn't this smile just make you happy?

A Big School Boy

Sunday was Big E's first day of preschool!  (It's called KG-1 here) I took him to school and walked him to his class. He seemed a little nervous and wouldn't even whisper his name to his teachers or even point to his name from the name tags that were on the table, but as it turns out, our neighbor's 4 year old is in his class and he was so excited to tell me that she is in his class.  If anyone asked how his day went, he'd just say, "good," in a matter of fact way.



I can hardly believe that he's in school.  It really does seem like last year that I was spending all day with just Big E, and now he's living up to his blog name.  Miss A asked for him throughout the day, "Where's E...?"  The house was also much quieter.  Last week I had 8 kids including my two all day Sunday through Thursday. Sunday I just had three, including Miss A.  Today was just Miss A and me for the morning. We talked and played with the little pots and pans.  I'm hoping to give Miss A some one on one time as she almost never gets it from me.

There is a bus that supposedly picks up students.  But Steve and I decided that I would take him to school and pick him up, and now I'm glad that we made that decision.  We planed to use the bus only in an emergency.  But there has been quite the fiasco.  The first day the bus didn't come to the compound until 2:30, 50 minutes after school got out.  It took me 10 minutes to get home.  We were told that the school had it's own bus.  So it shouldn't have taken that long.  The next day the bus was full and two of the girls that I watch didn't make it on the bus.  The school failed to call me as their care giver or the parents of the children who didn't make it on the bus.  The school found another way, but it wasn't a QF bus/van.  It was from a taxi service.  And the driver hadn't been around long and the girls had to tell him how to get to my house.  This doesn't inspire confidence.  As of today, the story is that there is a bus, it is not just for Qatar Academy Sidra (QA Sidra), the school Big E goes to, it is for all the schools in Qatar Foundation (QF).  According to the person my neighbor talked to at QF Transport, it is a first come first serve basis and an adult should accompany children.  What??? How does that make any sense?  If the bus is full, how are these kids going to arrange another ride? And if an adult should accompany children, how will there be enough room for all the kids and why on earth would an adult ride the bus if they could just take them home themselves??  Sooo glad I'm taking Big E, though I still have to stress about it and be up to date about it because to all the kids that I watch that go to that school.

edited to add: I should mention that Big E goes to school Sunday through Thursday 7 am -1:40pm, except on Tuesdays when school's out at 1:00.  It's not my ideal, but that's what there is around here.  There isn't such a thing as half days or only on certain days, unless your child is under three and goes to a nursery school, which is just day care.  

Disney on Ice

Disney on Ice came to Doha at the beginning of the month.  We considered buying tickets, but not for long.  The cheapest tickets were like $40 and we didn't want to spend that much money on it.  And it turns out Qatar Foundation, who sponsored Disney on Ice, had free tickets that they were giving away to QF employees and their families.  Steve happened to be on working on his computer at work when he got the email, and immediately responded.  And he got the tickets!

The tickets we got were for the 4pm show.  Steve doesn't get home until 3:35 and I have to wait until all the kids I watch are gone. But we made it.  It helped that 1) the convention center is almsot literally across the street from where we live, and 2) nothing ever begins on time here.  Usually number 2 is an annoyance, but on this day it was nice.  The show didn't actually start until 4:15.  And when we were coming in at about 4, so was most of the audience.

The arena had to be made specially for Disney on Ice.  The bleachers were not permanent.  I was imagining what I would probably see in the US, a huge arena, but it wasn't.  But that meant that even the "cheap" seats, weren't far away.  Big E and Miss A weren't too sure about things before it started. We dont' go to many loud events, but they warmed up to it.  Big E was never jumping up and down or singing along to the few songs he knew, but he enjoyed it.

This show was a compilation of the past 100 years of Disney.  All the Disney princesses were there, including Pocahontas and Mulan.  The only ones that Big E knew were Buzz, Woody, and Jesse from Toy Story, and Simba and Nala from The Lion King, and The Incredibles. Well, and of course, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, and Donald.  He enjoyed the electric light parade.  There were some "fireworks" during the finale and Miss A got really excited and "ooohed" and pointed at them all.

Of course I'm glad we got to go.  It one of those things that if you don't go, you aren't too sad because you don't know what you're missing, but  we had fun.  It did make me want to show Big E all of these movies that I grew up with.  I hope my mom still has some of them.  We may be watching some this summer.

This one is from Aladin.  Those are genies down there.

Big E sat this way for most of the first half of the show.

Happy Birthday Big E!

Big E has been to a number of birthday parties since we've moved to Doha.  All of the kids in the compound have had birthday parties and we live in such a small compound that if you invite some, you invite all.  Big E has never had a birthday party with friends before.  So I decided to throw a birthday party for him before we left Doha.

Big E loves Thomas the Train. Sometimes it's on TV in the mornings and I'll let him watch the episode.  So the theme of the party was Thomas the Train.  When I told him about the party and asked if he would like that, he said, "Yeah, I think that would be good," with a content smile on his face.  Thomas the Train, if you can find it in Doha (occasionally you can) is very expensive.  I only found Thomas and Friends things, but no Thomas.  But I did find a pack of 4 trains that was about $5. Big E saw the blue one with red stripes and said, "Look!  It's Thomas!"  Awesome.  If that works for him, it works for me.  He was with me on the shopping trip as the train was actually for the cake.  He wanted a train track on the cake with a train on it.  (I showed him some ideas that I could do and he chose that one.)

Here's Big E helping me trace a Thomas.

I made train tracks that led up to the club house across the street and Big E was very excited about that.



We had a Platform for food, cake, and baggage.

We played Pin the One on Thomas, and had a train race.  After eating food and cake, and playing games, we went to the pool and swam.

Here is Big E playing with a toy he got.

Big E's actual birthday was while we were in Germany visiting Steve's parents, we are serving a mission in Frankfurt. So we celebrated again.  This time Big E got to open the gifts after he got up in the morning.

Miss A got to play with some, too.

After lunch and an early nap for Miss A, we went to the Frankfurt Zoo.

Big E's favorite parts of the zoo were the giraffes and the park.

After dinner we had some cupcakes, which Big E helped to make.

I can hardly believe he's 4 already.  I would never have thought when he was born that we would celebrate his 4th birthday in Germany.  He's so fun to be around.  We have our moments of normal frustration, but he's such a good big brother, he is thoughtful and kind.  He will let Miss A sit on his lap and read a story to her.  He often offers to share his snack with me and Miss A.  I'm so glad he's part of our family.  

Creepy Crawlies

One morning about two weeks ago, I noticed a bug with wings crawling on the kitchen floor.  I thought nothing of it, smashed it and threw it away. Then there was another, just like the first.  He got the same treatment. A little bit later there was another one, only he didn't have wings.  This was starting to get suspicious.  As I looked there were some crawling around.  I got rid of them and tried to find where they were coming from.  It wasn't hard really.  If you recall my post about the dust storm, there is a gap in our back door.  That would be the most obvious place for them to come in.

This is what I found


What are those? Those are wings.  So the bugs come in and drop their wings. See that nice gap right by the brushy bottom of the door and the door frame?  Also, where the brush is, there's no wood, it's just a gap, which you can easily see from the outside. I made a mental note to call maintenance to have them come and look and went about my morning (it was barely 7 am).

Then Amelia needed a diaper change.  I keep diapers and wipes in the downstairs bedroom so I don't have to go upstairs every time she needs to be changed.  While I was in there, I notice a lot of bugs, all the same as I saw in the kitchen, crawling around the floor.  And I inwardly groan. I hate bugs.  So I quickly finish changing the diaper and get the dust pan and hand broom.  Not sure why I grabbed that, but I did.  I swept some up and threw them in the toilet.  But the more I swept up, the more I saw.  I finally looked behind the bed, where the window is.  This is what I saw:



Wings, wings, and more wings.  Down in the track there were bugs crawling around.  I took a video, but I have yet to successfully upload a video here.  But maybe you don't want to see that.

I quickly called maintenance, and then did some research.  From what I can tell, they were swarming termites, thankfully not worker termites, but still just as gross.

The maintenance man came, had a look, then left to go get some spray.  I generally don't want them to spray because I don't know what they use, and I'm quite sure the standards here are not up to what the US has.  But this was another matter.  When he came back, he and another guy went in there and closed the door.  When they had sprayed, he said, "Don't go in...two hours. My cleaner come two hours." And he locked the door.  I put a towel at the base of the door, and then we left the house to go to LuLu express to play.  LuLu is a grocery store, but in the one by our house, there is some outdoor play equipment inside that kids can play on.  So we played there until the the cleaner was supposed to come.

But he didn't come until 4 hours later.  He cleaned, some. I decided that I'd turn on the vet in the bathroom in that room and we wouldn't go in there for another 24.

So far I haven't seen any more bugs, except for the roach that crawled out from underneath the piano the other evening.  Yuck.

Humanitarian Aid

Our stake had an amazing opportunity to do three different donations to help Syrian refugees.  LDS Charities gave our ward $25,000 to spend on hygiene kits.  These aren't the normal hygiene kits that the church does.  These had laundry soap, dish soap, two bath towels, hand towels, sanitary napkins, shampoo, toothpaste, and toothbrushes, and bar soap.  The sister who was in charge had to do a lot of this stuff from scratch as it hadn't been done here in Doha before.  So she had few connections to work with. But through a miracle from God, she got all the donations.

On Saturday not all of the supplies had arrive yet, so people got together to get things ready.  They taped up 700 boxes (each kit was in it's own box that was made for this purpose with each item printed on the box), folded 1400 bath towels and 3500 hand towels, etc.  They told the sister in charge that the last two trucks would come by Sunday evening, but it wasn't definite. So the plan was to meet on Monday evening to assemble the kits.  But then on Sunday evening (remember it's a work day here) Steve and I were putting our kids to bed and our phones kept ringing.  The trucks were coming that night and they needed people to help assemble kits.  Qatar Charity was willing to ship everything the next morning.  So there was a rush to assemble 700 kits in one night.  (Qatar Charity doesn't do charity in kind, they'd rather send the money there and have a charity there buy and distribute the supplies.  Through a miracle they said they were willing to ship, under the very clear distinction that we were not partnering.)

I got there around 8:30 (Steve went on Saturday so it was my turn to go on Sunday).  There were people already working.  Some people were taping the tops of the dish soap, others were in the assembly line. People from the other Doha ward were there as well.  I kept the bath towels stocked on the assembly line.  At first I kept that and the dish soap stocked as well, so that people on the other side of the tables could take each item and put it in the box.  There was a person for about every item. So there wasn't a lot of walking.  They would stay in one spot and the same person put in the soap in each box etc. After a while, there was enough people that each spot had at least one person, some had two people.  I had someone at first just bring me boxes of towels when I emptied one.  Then he just kept the box behind me full.  It was like the cruse of oil that never went dry.  I always had towels.

We started the assembly line even though the toothpaste and shampoo hadn't come yet. It was amazing how fast the line moved.  With an hour and half from when I arrived all the boxes were assembled, even with the toothpaste as it came in the middle.  We had a break, then the shampoo arrived. Those were taped, put in boxes, and the boxes taped up.  In a rush of work, we were done by 11pm.

It was amazing to see how many people came at a phone call and worked late when everyone had to be up in the morning. I'm so glad that I got to help with this.  Hopefully 700 refugees in Turkey will benefit from the hygiene kits. 

Dust Storm

I have a few things I want to write about, like a second dinner we were invited to to celebrate a student from Steve's school graduating, about winning free tickets to see Disney on Ice, and a swarm of termites, but first I'm going to write about the dust storm we had this week.

Now, this was nothing compared to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, or apparently what happened in Saudi Arabia where they had a wall of dust moving along.  There was no wall of dust, but rather more like a snowstorm, but with dust instead of snow.  There were times when we were out and about that we couldn't see very far down the road and there were ribbons of dust blowing on the road.  The dust would hit the windows of the car and sound kinda like rain.  It was awful to go outside, so we went out as little as possible.  But unfortunately, I had a lot of errands to run this past week.  So we were out in it a few times.

Our villa, though is big and nice, isn't weather treated very well.  And when I say very well, I really mean not at all.  There was absolutely no weather stripping around the doors and the windows had holes were the two panes met (they slide left to right to open rather than pushing it up). So we bought some weather stripping and put it in the doors as best we could.  Steve also cut small bits and put it in the holes in the windows to try to minimize the amount of hot air coming in.  But we can only do so much to compensate for poor construction.

The wind blows from the west and the back of our villa faces the west. I could hardly believe the amount of dust that came in the house.  The storm started last Friday (June 7) and we left for church before I could put a towel in front of the back door (I can see day light from a gap at the bottom, so of course mountains of dust come in there). I didn't think to do anything about it until it was too late.  The kitchen was covered in dust.  The microwave and counters were visibly dusty.

Steve decided to sweep the Saturday after the storm started (June 8).  He said that he swept up about a cup of dust from the floor in two rooms.  After that, he gave up. I didn't bother dusting for a few days, and then I couldn't stand it any longer and Big E helped me dust.  At some places in the house, I brushed the dust into my other hand.  I also didn't bother to clean the kids' bathroom.  It's on the west side of the house and even with just a little dust in the air, the bathroom gets gross.  And this time it was really gross.  I didn't want to waste my efforts and have to clean it many times during the week, so we just didn't use the bathroom.

The dusty wind finally calmed down a bit, and I finally cleaned the bathroom this past Thursday and this is what it was like before I cleaned it:

It's still been windy outside, but it's not as dusty.  Last Thursday was the first non-dusty evening all week.