merry christmas

dear family and friends,

whether you’re near or far, whether you’re with loved ones or just hangin’ out, whether you’re in the comfort of your home or braving the perils of eastern lands...  from germany here in the pietz house we wish you a very merry christmas and a new year filled with health and happiness.

                        

                                                all the best,

                                                delmo, cecilia, adriana, 

                                                gabby, lucas & jesse

happy thanksgiving

we had a pretty low-key thanksgiving here at casa del pietz, which was great.  it was a little challenging to get gabby to agree to have turkey this year after she learned a song at school about a kid who befriends the family’s thanksgiving turkey, names it albuquerque, and forces the family to eat scrambled eggs instead.  needless to say this would have been a non-starter for good ‘ol dad.  so after some coaxing and shameless bribery gabby caved in and even helped us make the turkey. 

the menu

brown sugar teriyaki turkey stuffed with oranges and onions

mashed potatoes and turkey gravy

bacon-onion green bean casserole

baked cranberry sauce

stuffing

pumpkin spice cake

malvasia dezzani sweet red wine

apple cider

...and a little bit of grimbergen dubbel belgian beer of course

gabby and her friends spent the after dinner period watching tinkerbell while lucas explored the living room.  the little guy added a few bumps to his head as he climbed over, under and through various tables, furniture, and toys--going though the inevitable fall, bonk, cry cycle each time.  my best guess is that he’s about a week or two from his first steps.

buddy boy with his turkey-eatin' hat

ready to go, but where's the food?

everybody say gobble gobble!

needless to say, we have a lot to be thankful for

bonus pic...
hey baby, wanna ride?

late summer update

hi everyone.  i know it’s been a while since our last post.  sorry about that.  busy times...

now that the summer trips have slowed down we’ve been busy with the normal day-to-day routine of working and taking care of these two guys (above).

gabby is doing really great.  she’s been ‘helping’ mom around the house a little and she’s really good at making her little brother laugh.  the other day, in the car, she had lucas laughing hysterically.  here was mom’s best attempt at taking a picture while driving (not encouraged).

lucas is growing like a weed.  he’s already out grown his baby car seat and is moving up to a big boy seat.  he’s coming in at about 27-inches tall (don’t you hate it when they use the word ‘long’ to describe baby height?) and 18-pounds.  he’s already on solid food -- you know steak and potatoes ;-)  here he is after a recent meal.

and after he’s done with the food, he loves to wash it all down with some of daddy’s beer.

the secret ingredient

here’s a picture of a billboard that sits outisde the supermarket down the street.  but...  what’s with the cat?  nice set huh?

jay leno had this section of his show where he would go through news headlines and ads and highlight some that were so stupid they would make to laugh to tears.  an example is posted on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwaVsLKPZ5w.  

then there’s this movie called beerfest (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486551/) where these guys trained to compete in a beer drinking competition by drinking ram’s piss.

so “what’s with the cat” you ask?  well maybe it’s the secret ingredient.  maybe it’s just the product of a terrible horrible stupid advertising decision.  or maybe it’s a tip on how to build your stamina to drink a lot of bishoff beer.  you be the judge...

fudge

i did a horrible thing!  here’s the story...  gabby has been going to summer school off and on this summer.  when she goes, she goes a week at a time.  because of how far away the school is, actually right next to the base, and since her class starts in the morning, i have been taking her to school.  

for the most part, this works pretty well and i actually like hanging out with her in the morning...  but...  it has really thrown me off of my normal morning routine.  earlier starts, hectic mornings, having to listen to kids music instead of my usual sports talk shows, etc.  well, the other day while taking gabby to school i managed to flip the radio to my sports show and keep it there for a bit.  it was nice.  while we were flying down the autobahn in the fast lane a car ahead of us in the slow lane moved over in front of us unexpected... and then he hit his brakes!  so in response, i immediately slammed on the brakes.  and, being in my comfort zome with my sports radio show on at the time, guess what else i did?

you got it.  i said something bad.  if you’ve ever seen a christmas story you know the word i’m talking about.  and it wasn’t “double-dog dare”.  i yelled “what the f#@&!”  as soon as i said it, my heart stopped in the split second of silence.  then...  gabby in the back seat goes, “did you just say what the f#@&?”  ...uh oh...  I said, “no, i said what the heck”.  suspiciously she responded, “no, you said what the f#@&”.  i was stuck.  she busted me big time.  so for the next 10 minutes as i explained to her that i said a bad word that i shouldn’t have said, and it’s not nice to say it, and i should have said “what the heck”, she quizzed me “why not what the f#@&”.  seven f-bombs later, not including mine, i decided to drop the subject.  luckily it hasn’t come up since.

but i swear, if you ask her about it...  i’ll %^& ^%$$%$&$ &%^@ ()@(&#*& (&#&%^ (!&#)(&^ %#% *#()&#)(!!

our kiddos

i haven’t posted a blog in a while so here goes...  lucas and gabby have been keeping us pretty busy lately.  but that’s a good thing.  and they’re both totally worth the effort.

gabby

she has been growing up so fast.  and as her name suggests, she is a world class chatterbox.  she’s been saying some of the funniest things lately.  some of our favorites are: 

“you’re nucking futs!”, 

“cause that’s how i roll...”, 

and another that’s more like a conversation - gabby: “can you read me a [yet another] story?”, mom/dad: “no gabby i just read you twelve straight books, but you can read it yourself [looking at the pictures]”, gabby: “okay, but can you just help me read the words?”

we have no idea where she gets some of this stuff.  certainly not school.  speaking school, preschool has been really great for her.  she’s been learning so many new things.  she knows all seven continents, can name many of the planets and even knows a few of the presidents (washington, lincoln, obama & “slick willy”) - priceless!

below is a picture of gabby at a recent school field trip to the dinosaur park

lucas

“buddy-boy” has been growing like a weed; but mostly around the belly region!  he’s been showing flashes of his personality too.  what a little charmer!  he does the typical “i’m sad” lip every now and then.  

here it is

but mostly, he’s full of smiles.  especially when he’s naked.  for some reason he reeeeally loves the fresh breeze blowing across his, um, belly.

here are a few more pictures of mr charming

happy mother's day

happy mom’s day to all the mothers out there.  on behalf of all dads and kiddos, thank you for doing your thing!  ...but just so ya’ll know, ours is the best of them all.  want proof?  click here.

tonja and gabby’s excellent adventure

lucas’ timing could not have been better - other than the two day ordeal at the hospital of course.  luckily for us aunty tonja was here to hang out with gabby while we were away.  thanks sis!

the two of them had a great time playing, reading books, playing dress-up, reading books, eating junk food, watching cartoons, and reading books.  tonja remarked later that she read more books over that two day span than she has read in a long time, and most of them multiple times!

i’m told that gabby was on her best behavior.  i think that had a lot to do with gabby getting to do everything she wanted to do - multiple times.  but tonja assures me that there was some “compromise” involved.  

they didn’t know it but we had the house bugged and we caught the whole thing on tape.  the line that says it all: “gabby, you can’t watch your cartoons until you finish your chocolate”.  the prosecution rests your honor.

seriously though, it was great for them to spend some time together and we are really thankful for that.  

(the photos on this page are courtesy of aunty tonja)

ramstein drug deals dot com

so there’s this locally run auction website called ramsteinyardsales.com.  despite the ridicule to follow, it’s actually a pretty useful site.  anyhow...  adriana has been a buying, selling, buying like a beast lately.  this is mostly good because we’re able to unload a lot of stuff that just clutters up the house - if you know me, you know i realllly hate clutter!

the site is nice because it’s local.  when you put something up for auction and find a buyer, you can usually complete the deal within a couple of days.  face-to-face, no postage required.  considering how hard it is to find certain things around here, along with the cost of the things you can find, you can imagine how fast stuff gets bought and sold.

here’s the sad part...  because of this face-to-face dealing dynamic, you have to have a place to meet up to make a deal right?  so far the most popular deal venues seem to be the bx and the burger king parking lots on base.  every day at lunch time you can witness the parking lot deals going down.  the other day at lunch i had to dodge two different ladies wheeling and dealing in the burger king parking lot in order to get to the front door.

...what?  a purse?  do i look like i want a louis vuitton purse?  

a snowy valentine’s day

we had this great idea to go over to this town about an hour away to take a rhine river boat tour.  after doing a little research on the particulars we had a plan.  when we woke up this morning it was snowing.  (i’ll come back to the snow later.)  that made the boat tour sound even better.  we figured the snow would make for some pretty nice scenery.

we all hopped into the car and headed out.  once we got there we realized that, well, we weren’t there after all.  apparently my navigator didn’t enter the entire city name into the gps so we wound up in a completely different city (rüdesheim vs rüdesheim am rhine) with no time to reposition before the boat embarked.  doh!  it’s kinda like wanting to go to panama city beach and telling the gps to take you to panama city.  anyone who’s ever been to the florida pan-handle knows - two different places.  so we weren’t able to get on the boat but it wasn’t a complete loss.  it was a nice little town with some decent restaurants.  kinda dead on a winter saturday but okay.

back to the snow...  we’ve been getting a good amount of snow the past few days.  usually some flurries in the early evening and then some more over night into the early morning.  it’s been nice.  but, here’s the rub.  the germans have a law (or maybe a rule or maybe just a general understanding - who knows) that you have to keep the sidewalk in front of your house clear of snow (apparently dog poop is okay though).  on top of that, we have some really meticulous neighbors, which is nice.  well every morning they’re out there sweeping and shoveling their driveway and sidewalks - even if it’s still snowing!

on thursday morning i was heading out to work in a rush and there were four guys on my street out doing their thing as the snow continued to fall.  they guilted me into doing my part.  the “law” is the law right?

the nice people across the street take this cleaning thing pretty serious too.  with their sweeping, their shoveling, their salting...  when we were coming home today after our missed boat tour adventure i couldn’t help but notice how nice their front yard looked with its clean driveway, its clean walkway and a little rug on each step leading up to the front door (so the mailman doesn’t slip?!?).  you’d think these guys are the most conscientious people on earth.  other than the fact that they keep parking their car right across from our garage and it requires a 47-point turn to get in and out, they’re great!

the story of the yellow balloon

about a week ago dad and gabby had a fun day out.  we ate pizza at a kids place in town.  gabby played games and got prizes.  one of those prizes was a yellow balloon - i suppose prize is the wrong word for it because i paid $1.25 for it -  anyway...

after lunch we went to the store on base (the BX) to look for a new pair of tennis shoes.  then we went to eat ice cream.  it was a happy fun kinda day until...  we realized that we left the yellow balloon in the store, presumably in the shoe department.  so after ice cream we went to the store to recover our lost yellow balloon.

as we turned the corner to go upstairs to the shoe department we saw a man with a boy with (you guessed it!) a yellow balloon.  so i asked the guy whether the balloon belonged to the boy or if they found it in the store because my little girl left her balloon upstairs.  the guy replied (in a german accent*), “no no it’s his”.  disappointed, we continued our search upstairs.  as we walked up the stairs gabby kept saying, “that boy has my yellow balloon”.  and i couldn’t help but think that either they’re giving away yellow balloons in the store or that guy was lying.

we looked around upstairs and of course there was no yellow balloon to be found.  and there we were, gabby going on and on about how that boy has her yellow balloon and me stewing over the nerve of that jerk to basically steal a balloon from a 3-year old little girl.  after a minute of planning we went back downstairs on a mission to get back our yellow balloon from that kid and his scheming dad.

we finally tracked him down on the other side of the store and i questioned the guy about where his boy got his yellow balloon.  caught without an alibi, they guy admitted that they found it in the store.  after, more forcefully this time, explaining to him that this yellow balloon belonged to my little girl, the guy relented and graciously offered to return it.  

at the end of the day, we walked away happy with some left-over pizza in a box, a little ice cream on our faces and our yellow balloon.

*you may wonder why it’s important to the story that the guy was german.  well when we moved here a guy explained that many germans have this passive-aggressive mindset where the guy who speaks the loudest or insists usually gets what he wants.  apparently there’s a german word for it but i can’t remember what it is.  anyway, i’ve seen this in action many times, usually on the road but never toward a 3-year old little girl.