The Four Food Groups

I'm a little worried that my readers may be fearing my family is malnourished due to the constant mention of chocolate in my blogs, so I just wanted to reassure you that we are hitting the four food groups: Dairy--chocolate ice cream and hot chocolate; breads and cereals--nougat bits (see pix) a cereal which is crunchy chocolate on the outside with a fudgy chocolate middle or nutella type spread on bread; protein--let's not all be stupid it is called a cocoa bean, right, which, by the way, should also count for vegetables. With all this healthy eating, we occassionally sneak in a dessert, such as a chocolate bar or other such chocolate treats, which really can't be that bad for you if they are milk chocolate (emphasis on milk) and brimming with antioxidants. I think I'll go eat healthy some more.

A Semi-Authentic German Breakfast

This morning we were celebrating because we have finally got clearance to move off-base, so we had a semi-authentic German breakfast, which includes processed meat like salami or ham with cheese (Emmentaler this morning) on a hard roll (we didn't have any, so we used bread), german yogurt (the kind we ate today actually had little choco-bits in it) with muesli (granola, also a kind with chocolate bits) in it and apfelsaft which is carbonated apple juice. In the picture I'm demonstrating using my very own meat slicer, which, for all you Seinfeld fans, also does a great job evening out my high heel shoes. The real work starts here because it's no easy task finding an apartment to rent in Germany, especially one that will fit 6 people and not cost a kidney to obtain.

3403 Poplarstrasse A3

"Good night Ward, dear." "Good night June, dear." This is what Garrett and I say to eachother before we go to bed, since the picture of the 2 single beds above is actually Garr's and my room. The first hotel we stayed at in Germany only had single beds and most of the hotels are like this. I figure that's why Germany has a negative population growth right now. All the furniture in our apartment is military temporary furniture, until our stuff comes. They would only allow us to have a double bed for Garrett and me and we decided to continue to explore this negative population growth and keep the kids single beds and give Jacob and Joseph the double bed. It's like "Leave it to Beaver" at our house every night, with more color. Our sponsors, the McLeans let us use some sheets, but because we have such a big family we were dividing the sets up so everyone can have a bottom sheet and then a blanket over the top. Currently Garrett sleeps on Tinkerbell sheets and a leopard print pillowcase! If that's not emasculating, I don't know what is. (Not a homo like one of our dear friends--we won't mention any names.)

We are living at the left, closer end of the building on the third floor (38 stairs up, which is no easy thing, if you're trying to bring in groceries). If you look hard in the apartment building pix you can see the boys at our building entrance.

I included a picture of the towel warmers in the bathroom so you could all get the impression that we're living the high life. They are actually the towel warmers and radiators for the bathroom. The whole house if warmed with radiators. Air conditioning, what's air conditioning? Germans don't use air conditioning period. We're still working on living off-base, in a German apartment, but we'll see what happens.

Just Monkeying Around

So this is us today, just monkeying around. Mason is wearing his monkey b-day mask (mom, from the card you sent!) and drinking Coke Light (it's diet Coke, but they call it Coke Light here). I'm not sure if you can tell, but the package on the left that Sam is holding is brown sugar and this is the BIGGEST box of it you can get at the Commissary (Military grocery store). I'd shop for it off-base, but they don't even have brown sugar in Germany!



Joe is sporting his new t-shirt. We let each of the boys pick their own new t-shirt because they've been stuck doing so many grown up errands lately. Mason is demonstrating how to flush a European toilet: push the big button behind the toilet. Some toilets have one smaller circular button inside the larger circle button so you don't waste alot of water if you're only going #1. The last picture is the only smart thing we put in our 45 day shipment--all the boys legos. It was like Christmas when they came and since this place we live in is so big (5 rooms) and we don't have any other stuff yet, we have an entire room for the boys to spread out all of their legos. I figured Jacob must have Jewish roots when he had the savvy to tell me, "Don't show our Grandmas that picture or they won't send us as many legos!" The Fletchers and Isaac Bradford are drooling just looking at all the lego possibilities, I'm sure! Sorry Shayla, no pink legos here!