Videos from Munich

Kimber giggles to Munich


Glockenspiel in Munich

Monk.

Did you know that Munich/München means "monk"? I didn't either! It is Germany's 3rd largest city, and our longest getaway of the year so far.I uploaded all our pictures to picasaweb with detailed captions for most of them so this will just be a quick recap of a few things we did over the weekend.

We went to the BMW Museum...
...picked out the cars we want...
...had fun traveling with a baby...
...ate a lot of yummy food from famous places...
...saw lots of German things...
...took a free tour of the city...
...saw lots of buildings and learned lots of history...
...went to an engineering museum......visited the first concentration camp......and headed home.

On our way home we found Dr. Pepper. That was one of my goals on this trip. :o)

Check out all the pictures!

being brief

I helped decorate a surprise birthday cake! (all the pictures are on picasaweb)

It was fun! New hobby one day? I vote YES.We are going to Munich this weekend. It's for a beer festival, and that's why we're going...ha! You know I'm kidding. We will go to the festival to see everything and drink our favorite beer festival beverage, Spetzi, but then we'll be touring Munich for most of the time.

More when we return!

Project!

Boxes boxes boxes! I've gotten 3 boxes in the mail this week! One from each of our Mothers and one that I ordered.

Since I've gotten into cross stitching I decided to make Christmas stockings for us (thanks to Janice for the great idea :o) ...I'm copying her). My family never really did the whole Christmas stocking thing, so this is really exciting for me! I found 2 different patterns online that I liked and ordered them. Although, they both provide new challenges for me. One (David's) is just a pattern - so I have to buy everything in order to make it, and the other (mine) is not even a cross stitch. It's needlepoint. This is similar, but different! So...It'll be an interesting challenge.

That is a picture of my stocking needlepoint "kit". There is so much thread, and it's so much bigger than my cute little teddy bear! Which is finished by-the-way.

Like my grass? That is my personal contribution to the pattern.

Anyway...

Setting up is very time consuming. First I have to separate all the colors, then I have to separate all the threads! And there are a lot of them! And there are even beads and ribbons. I'll be taking pictures as I go, like I did before, but the progress may not be as evident since I'm working with a painted canvas (see first picture).

So "yeah!" or lots of free time to try new projects!

Rearranged.

We rearrange our apartment every now and then. Each time we move things around we like it better than the last time.

David went to scuba diving last night without me because if I had tried to dive my head would have exploded thanks to my allergies. So, I made use of my free time by rearranging!
We've had similar arrangements, but this one is kind of nice. We like the cozy feeling of where the couch is now, and regardless of that lovely pole in the middle of the room, you can see the TV from any spot on the couch.
In high school I would get bored with my room all the time. Sometimes I would be sitting in my room, trying to fall asleep, and get some idea about how I should move my furniture around. Then, no matter how late, I'd just start moving stuff! This happened the most at ridiculously late hours at night when everyone else was sleeping. But it was fun! I wonder if, when we have a real house, my rearranging habits will continue.

Can't wait to find out!!

He's growing.

I'm expanding the range of my talents. I'm cross stitching now. It's fun! This is the cross stitch I've been working on... my birthday present from Janice. Here are some progress pictures. It's fun to see the progression.
I've also already ordered some other projects to work on after this one. They are a bit bigger.

...we all fall down!

Originally, I was going to post on a different subject today, but something happened on my way to the grocery store that merits an entry.

Today it's raining (big surprise). And, if you've ever lived in France you know that people dress up to go just about everywhere. Where Americans would wear sweatpants to the grocery store, women here wear high heels.

So that sets the stage.

While walking, a girl came around the corner and slipped and fell. She fell straight down on her hiney!Well, instead of getting up, she just stayed on the ground, laid down (in the wet street!) and closed her eyes. ??? So these people started going up to her to see if she was ok. They were tapping her, shaking her, questioning her, and she didn't move. So then a bunch of people start getting out their cell phones and begin to call ambulences etc etc. And all of a sudden...she wakes up! (And very dramatically I might add) Now, remember when I told you she laid down in the street. She didn't hit her head, she didn't faint, she didn't break a leg... she was acting!

Ok, I get that she was embarassed, but come on! People were calling ambulances for her! Why the drama? Why not just get up, admit you fell, and next time not wear high heels...in the rain!

At least she gave everyone a good story to tell. Thanks girl that fell! I wonder if she'll admit to any of her friends that she was faking it. It was terribly obvious.

l'économie??

We have some terribly sad news. Our favorite bakery for baguettes...is closed! For the last few weeks it has been closed with a sign on the door that said they were closed for work. Either work on something inside or because they were doing work on the street and we thought it may have been affecting something in the bakery...

But, a few days ago, we saw THIS:
The "available" sign in the window...they're gone!

According to David "this is a monumental moment in our lives!" And I can't agree more. Now we have to walk a whole minute up the street to find another bakery...but we don't really like that one, so now we have to go a whole 5 minutes away to the next best one! It was just too nice to be able to walk down our 4 flights of stairs and around the corner for a fresh baguette.

So we were trying to decide whether it was because of the economy that they closed. Then we remembered...we're in France! Everyone buys baguettes! Bakeries are the LAST places that will go under! So...what's the deal?! Oh well. Life goes on!

'Twas my birfday

why the weird title? i really don't know.

Yesterday was my birthday! I am now 25. No, I don't feel different.

To start my day, I did what I do everyday... I took Duncan for a walk! Most people would think that is a terrible way to start off your birthday, but I like walking with Duncan. Especially when the weather is nice, and the weather was nice! The sun was even out!

Then I got ready to go to lunch with Janice! We went to a place called noodle. It was fun! We each tried some asian noodles with a sauce we have never heard of. Anyone know what saté is? Anyway, we had some egg rolls too, yum.

Then we did some shopping! I've been wanting to get an apron ever since I started deep frying things, and making homemade cookies, dough, and biscuits. So I got one! And I replaced our oven mitts, because the old ones were getting pretty ugly. I'm enjoying the colorfulness of them. Most things in our apartment are black or white or wood. I'd love to paint the walls but David thinks we'll have to paint it white again before we leave. ?? Oh well. The plan isn't to be here so long that I can't live with white walls!

Janice also got me a little gift. She's been doing a lot of cross-stitching and she bought me a small one to try. I think it will be perfect to cross-stitch a baby's name onto the side of this one day:
Isn't he cute? So, at first the directions were really overwhelming, but then I read them :o) And it wasn't too bad. This is all I've done so far.And I'm going to wait to continue until I ask Janice some other questions. I think it will be fun. I've got lots of things to do now, between scrap booking, cross-stitching, the dog, english lessons, and my other everyday stuff. I can't wait to add going outside in the sunshine to that list.

So after shopping we went to the grocery store, did some shopping, and then parted ways. I went home and played with the beast (this is what David calls Duncan). And started my cross-stitch, and tried to trick David into telling me what we'd be doing that evening. I was almost successful!

Eventually, David came home and told me what we would be doing, then where we would be going and to go put on nicer clothes. Then we took a picture so that everyone could see what we looked like on my 25th birthday. About the same, huh? (this is not meant to be an opportunity for you to make one of your comments Matthew! :oP ) We decided to take a picture in front of our map...but we failed to center it properly - sorry Mom! You taught me better than that. :o)

Off to the restaurant! Thierry Saveur et Cuisine (You can even view the site in English)
The atmosphere was really cool. Fancy, gormet, and we were the first people there for the evening so we had 3 people serving us. They must have been bored because they were always looking over at us to see if we needed anything.

I didn't bring my camera but you can see what it was like at the website. I did find this picture on there. This is a small view of the exact table that we sat at. I thought it was neat that it was one of the pictures on the site. We ordered a 3 course meal (menu) and everything came out to us looking beautiful. This is another one of those restaurants were the food is more or a decoration for your plate. But I'm impressed with how it can look so good and taste great too. I guess I just never went to restaurants like this at home. Or else the places we went always served so much food that there was no room for decorating. We didn't leave stuffed, but just full enough. That should be more of a habit for us. We can seriously put some food away when we want to!

Our appetizers was beef and foie gras made into a loaf thingie with some sauces around it. yummy. The main course was sole (fish) and calamari with rice and some other sauces... I think one was called dog sauce (sauce chien)! And for dessert we had french toast! It was not the French toast you are invisioning. It was fancy. Served with apples and a little melted ice cream (which I think was a huge mistake! There should have been a nice scoop of ice cream right on top instead!) But it was still really yummy, and now we can say we've had real french toast.

That's about all that happened on March 3, 2009!