RTT: Happy Birthday (to me)

Well, hello and happy RTT to all!




Despite being in a blogging funk, I have loads to say today for RTT!



*Last week at Aldi, I saw an intriguing package in the fruit section.  Mini Kiwis?  What the @#$% is a mini kiwi?  Well, I had to find out, didn't I?  Of course I did.  Here's the package:

And inside this is what I found:

Mini Kiwis!  Truth in advertising.  What do you know?  They are slightly larger than large grapes and have a similar type of skin that is just slightly heavier.  And guess what?  It tastes like a kiwi!  Go figure.  They're much easier and neater to eat though.  Portable kiwi!

*I read that approximately 1/4 of all photocopier malfunctions worldwide are due to people sitting on them to copy their butts.   Now I'm thinking of all the photocopiers I've used in my lifetime and wondering how many had someone's butt on them.  Ick.

*It's my birthday.  I'm 39 still young and hot.

*We were in IKEA a week or so ago (squee!) and spotted some snazzy outfits.  I'd like to thank whoever (I think that should be whomever, but it sounds weird), thought it was a good idea to put cameras on cell phones.  You are a genius.  It was probably Steve Jobs.  Anywho, I snapped this one.  Click on to enlarge and drink it in.

*We ate at KFC last week.  Yeah, we live large.  Anyway, I thought you'd find something interesting.  Again, thanks for the cameras in phones.  I wouldn't let James Bond eat until I took a picture.   Look at the photo below.  What do you see?

 What did you notice?  If you dine in, they give you REAL dishes and utensils.  Isn't that weird?  I have to day though, that it's nice to eat at a fast food place and not eat out of or off of paper.  They should do this everywhere.

*In Australia, 'Jedi' is an official religion with over 70,000 followers.

*There is a species of earthworm in Australia that can grow up to 10 feet!

*What the hell is going on in Australia?  It's always been high on my list of places to visit, but now I don't know.

*Han Solo will be 1 next week!  Can you believe that?


*I may have shown  you this before, but it makes me laugh.

Have a wonderful RTT!  I'm linking up to Stacy and TTUT.  Link yourself!  <---hee hee, sounds dirty

Happy Birthday James Bond!

James Bond is 38 today! WOWZERS! He's OLD. ;) Saturday night I threw him a little birthday party. We had good friends over and a few bottles of good wine. What more could you ask? Oh, a cake! Indy made the cake. He likes to think of himself as a baker supreme and has a passion of sprinkles. The cake was double chocolate fudge with dark chocolate frosting. We put sliced strawberries between the layers. Indy did all the mixing and icing. I just put it in and pulled it out of the over and oversaw the stacking. He loves to bake a cake.

I think he'd had a few glasses by this point.

Indy even learned how to light the candles.  This was a BIG deal to him.

Look, it's empty!  Must have been good though.  See how happy he is?

TOM and the Contessa gave him a box of Leffe Beer, which comes from Poland.  It's so thick you practically have to chew it.  Not my favorite, but he loves it.

All told, including my mom and stepdad, we had TOM and the Contessa, Hoosier Mom and JAG, Cheese Head and Sgt Major, plus their kids over.  It was lots of fun. 

Today is his actual birthday and we went to a local American style diner for dinner.  He was off work today and said that overall it was a pretty good day, except that we had to go to the OB for more contractions (it's all okay though, so don't stress).  Happy birthday James Bond!   Here's to many, many more.

Yarrrrr! It be a pirate party!!

Ahoy there, me hearties! I mean, hello my lovely readers. I'm afraid my brain is still stuck in pirate mode. Yesterday we had Indy's 8th birthday and it were a piratin' we be was an awesome pirate bash. Indy started planning this the day before last years party.  He knew he wanted pirates and after the huge success of the Indiana Jones party, I knew expectation were high and I'd better do it right.  No pressure.  It rained for almost a week leading up to the party and I was freaking out slightly worried, but the day before the big party, the rain stopped and the sun started shining.  Whew!  I had a lot of prep work to do, but the super-duper awesome Hoosier Mom (seriously, loving you HM) did me a big solid-yo) by baking the cake for me. She baked and stacked it and covered it with fondant and the night before the party, we went to her house and ate Chinese, played a game called Yuker (which I still don't understand, but had enough beginners luck that JAG and I didn't do too bad-we played HM and James Bond), drank a lot of wine and stayed way too late considering we had a party the next day.  Oh, and we worked on the cake.  Silly me!  That's why we went over there.  James Bond drew the map on the cakes and I painted them on with food coloring.  It didn't take that long, and I think the results are awesome.  I owe HM big time.

The day of the party dawned clear and sunny and James Bond and I got to work.  We had games to set up, a party room to decorate, food to cook and a shark to carve.  Oh, that's right, James Bond was at it again with the watermelon carving.  Remember the watermelon brains for the Indiana Jones party?  Yeah, well, this year I saw a watermelon shark online and HAD to have it.  Had. To. Have. It.  I knew James Bond could do it.  It took him about an hour.

The kids started arriving and excitement was in the air.  We broke the kids up into 2 crews, headed by first mate, Indy and second mate, Mona Lisa.  The teams competed against each other for a bag of chocolate dabloons to be divided among the crew.  The losing team also got a piece of pirate chocolate each, but man they wanted those dabloons.  They also earned pirate gear with each game.  The first was "boarding."  They learned that while some pirates swung from one ship to another when attacking, others used planks to get across.  They had to cross a plank blind folded from one platform to another and not fall in or be eaten by sharks.  I stood in the middle of the blue tarp, proving that I really can do anything, including walking on water.  In heels.  ;)  They all received pirate bandannas and waist scarves for this feat.

 Me helping one of our little pirates

The second game was called "Swab the Deck."  They had to push a ping pong ball with a broom from the start to finish line and then hand the broom off to the next teammate.  This was hard, but loads of fun.  For this they earned a pirate earring.
The third game was the noisiest and by far everyone's favorite.  Well, maybe not the neighbors, but whatevs.  We tied a balloon to everyone's ankles (2 balloons per pirate) and the object was to pop the others while not getting your balloons popped.  Once both balloons were popped, they were out and had to go sit on the sidelines and cheer on their teammates.  The last person standing with a balloon won for their team.  This game went on far longer than I expected, but everyone loved it (again, except for the neighbors-12 children + balloons tied to them does not = quiet).  After this they received tattoos, eye patches and the most coveted of all: swords!  Hurrah!
While the kids battled each other on the playground for a few minutes, James Bond, the Contessa and I went to get the food.  Our menu consisted of the following:

Octopus (hot dogs cut and boiled)
Seaweed (green pasta with butter, Parmesan cheese and parsley)
Star fish and Hardtack (cheese and crackers)
Shrimp
Jellied Sharks Blood and Guts (red Jell-O with Swedish fish mixed in)
Fruit (to avoid scurvy)
Seaweed Dip and Crispy Shark Fins (spinach dip and blue corn chips)
Dried fish (Goldfish crackers)
Grog (Apple Juice and Sprite mixed together with punch ice cubes for sharks blood)

The kids loved the names of the food and took great joy in eating the "Octopus" and toasting each other with their pirate goblets.

Indy cleaned up in the presents department (mostly from mom and dad and the grand parents) and got loads of pet food donation to take to the local tierheim in memory of Miss Pepper.  You can click the box below to see some great photos.  BTW, James Bond lived up to his secret agent status by somehow avoiding being in a single photo. 

If you click the box below you'll see a lot more photos.

Scrapbook made with Smilebox

I'd like to note that it didn't take me almost a year to post these.  I'm getting better!  I personally don't think it was quite as cool as the IJ party, but Indy still loved it and that's what counts.  He's already got next year's party theme: Star Wars!  May the Force be with me.

Linking to:

Indy is 8! Legoland is awesome!

Hello my darlings! Have you missed me? I haven't been ignoring you, I've been away. We went down to Stuttgart for a few days for Indy to have dyslexia therapy. I'll discuss that on my homeschool blog in a day or so if you're interested. Since Sunday was Indy's eighth birthday, and we were close by, we surprised him by taking him to Legoland! He was so excited when he saw where we were.  I know he doesn't look excited in some of the photos, but we couldn't find his sunglasses and he said it was too bright to smile.  Huh.

In Miniland they had several German cities built along with some Swiss, Dutch and Italian cities.  It was fascinating.  Things moved and lit up!  Awesome.

In Italy, the little gondolas moved through the water and there were speakers with opera.  I loved it.

Being a soccer (football) mad country, they had one of Germany's largest stadiums in Lego.  Mr. HH shot a very short video of it.






Mr. HH, being a man, spotted this little number.  I wonder how many people do and what the builder was thinking.  Blow it up and take a good look.  Fancy, huh?

There was so much to see!  Of course it wasn't all stuff built our of Legos.  There were rides too!  They weren't built out of Legos though (thank goodness).  We had to talk Indy into getting on the Dragon Coaster.  This is him in with a knight made completely out of Legos.

And then we got on the ride.  Mr. HH filmed it.  You must watch it. It's kind of long, but it's really worth it. Trust me.



Hahahahahaha!

Here we are waiting in line for the Lego Atlantis exhibit.

Lego Atlantis was really cool.  It's a walk through aquarium with Lego divers discovering the city of Atlantis.  There are beautiful fish in the aquarium and we could have stayed for hours just watching them.  Unfortunately we couldn't get any clear photos.  Bummer.

Before we left we stopped to drop some Euros in the shop (of course).  Indy was practically a puddle on the floor.  If you've ever been over to the Captain's blog, you know he and his boys are really (really) into Star Wars and Legos (and bacon, but that's another story).  I saw something that I thought would make his head explode with excitement.

Lego Death Star!  It is HUGE.  I couldn't find how many pieces it has,but it has to be thousands.  I can't even imagine the time it takes to put this thing together.  In case you're wondering, it was 419 Euros.  WOW!  Indy has decided he wants it for Christmas.  Um, yeah.  I'm afraid Santa will have no room for it in his pack.

So, that was my baby's 8th birthday.  We have a big fat pirate party coming up this weekend. Stay tuned for photos from that!

Super Cool Pirate Invites

Yarrrr!!!!! Ahoy there me hearties. It be that time o' the year again: Indy be having a party. Yarrrr!!!

Okay, enough of that. I can't type it without actually saying it like a pirate in my head and that's just silly. Plus, I think I might make crazy faces too. Weird.
Anyhoodle, Indy is turning 8 next month (which I cannot believe, because surely we just brought him home from the hospital) and wants a Pirate party (Yarrrr!). To be perfectly honest, he started planning this the day after his Indiana Jones party last year.
We've been in full party planning mode for a few weeks now (and by this I mean obsessively browsing and buying stuff from Oriental Trading Co.) and I finally got around to making the invites.  Pretty important, huh?  Sure, sure, we could just buy premade invites and write the info in, but where's the fun in that?  Where's the mess?   Store bought invites are not for me.  This year, we were going with a message in a bottle.  I started off by making the invites on MSWord, printing them on heavy brown paper, then dampening the back of the paper (don't do the front or you'll smear the ink-ask me how I know) and sticking it into a low temp oven for a few minutes.  This makes the paper crinkly and feel old.  Then comes the mess fun!  I lit a candle and burned the edges of the paper.  There were ashes all over the kitchen.  Good times.  Indy really, really, really wanted to help with this part, but I didn't think our insurance would cover birthday party invite related fires, so he had to stand by and watch.  BTW, if you do this, do it near a sink of water in case you can't blow the fire out (ask me how I know this!).  Also, when you're blowing out the fire, blow very gently (or you may need the a fore mentioned sink of water).
See how cute?  BTW, last year Indy asked for food for a local food bank instead of gifts, but this year he's asked for dog food to be donated to a shelter in memory of Miss Pepper.  Is my boy amazing or what?

After I was sure the edges of the paper were cool, I rolled the invites up and tied them closed with twine and dripped some red candle wax on them to seal it. I made sure one end of the twine was left really long. You'll see why in a minute.

I "made" Mr. HH drink several bottle of beer that came in a clear bottle and did not have a deposit (most glass bottles in Germany have a deposit).  I soaked the bottles to get them clean and get the labels off.  After they were dry, Indy and I poured sand in them and dropped in some sea shells (he thought this was really fun). I printed off some cool labels and glued them on.

I then slipped the invite inside, leaving the long part of the twine hanging out the top, so the guests could easily get the invite out (now, you see why I left one end long), put a cork in the bottle (Really, this is the reason we drank all that wine.  Promise.) and tied a small shell to the loose end of the twine.  The label reads "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here."  Indy went crazy over these.

Here they are all finished.

We actually have a few more to make, but I ran out of bottles.  I guess Mr. HH will have to drink more beer  while watching the World Cup this week (don't you feel awful for him?).  Or, I may use plastic bottles for those guests who have younger siblings.  We'll see.
So, there you have it, our super cool pirate invites.  What 'cha be thinking, maties? 


PS.  The mother of my future DIL (she told Indy they were getting married and he said "okay") got their invite yesterday and posted this on my FB page:

OMG! You are the coolest mom ever! What awesome party invitations! You have totally outdone yourself!

See why we're friends?  She totally knows me and validates that I truly am the coolest mom ever.

Linking to:

I can't believe it' s been almost a year and I haven't posted this!

Do you remember the big Indiana Jones Birthday Party I posted the prep for last year? I promised to post photos of the actual party and never did! We're now looking at a big fat pirate party next month (pray for me) so I think it's about time I posted the photos from last year. It really was the most fun party we've ever done and now I'm under pressure to top it with pirates. Think I could get Johnny Depp to show up dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow?!?! Purely for Indy, of course. Or not.
Enjoy the photos and maybe it won't take me a year to post photos from the pirate party.

Photo album generated with Smilebox

Linking to:

siebenunddreißig

German lesson: siebenunddreißig-literally, seven and thirty, or as we would say, thirty-seven. Why siebenunddreißig? Because that's how old I am today! WHAT? Yep, I am officially in my late 30's.  Man, my parents are OLD.  They have a child in her late 30's.  ;)


Yesterday I had a funny, but very uplifting conversation with one of gate guards on post.  He looked at my id card and noticed that my birthday was the next day (remember this was yesterday).

Guard:  Ihr Geburtstag ist morgen.-(Your birthday is tomorrow)
Me:  Ja.-Yes. 
Guard: Alles Gute zum Geburtstag-(Happy Birthday!)
Me: Danke-Thanks  
Guard:  Wie viele Jahre haben Sie?- (How old will you be?) {literally:  how many years do you have?}
Me:  Siebenunddreißig-thirty-seven
Guard:  Ich denke du meinst siebenundzwanzig-(I think you mean twenty-seven)
Me:  Nein, nein siebenunddreißig-(No, no.  Thirty-seven.)
Guard [switching to English]:  Siebenunddreißig means thirty-seven.
Me [also in English]  I know.  That's how old I'll be:  thirty-seven.  [pulling my ID back out and showing him the year I was born]
Guard:  Oh, well.  You look great.  Happy Birthday.
Me:  Thanks!  {float home feeling much better about my age}


This morning Mr. HH took the dogs out for me (I usually take them in the mornings) and let me sleep in.  Around 9am, he and Indy brought me breakfast in bed (apple pancakes-my favorite-turkey bacon and hot tea), then we walked over to the flea market, but it was a bit of a bust today because it was raining on and off.  Tonight, the Contessa is watching Indy while Mr. HH takes me out somewhere.  He won't tell me where, just that we have reservations and I should dress nice.  Ooooooh.  Curious!


So, there is is.  My birthday.  Happy birthday to me!

Happy Birthday Mr. HH!

Today is Mr. HH's birthday! I threw him a party last night (because I'm awesome like that). We had a bunch of people over in our basement party room and it was so much fun! But don't take my word for it. I have photos!

Mr. HH and TOM (The Other Man). A birthday shot? Why not?


But wait! TOM needs to tuck in a towel in case that shot comes back. They had already downed a few bottles of wine at this point and were feeling no pain.

I did get a photo of the actual shot, but it was blurry. Boo. Mr. HH had a total of 4 shots. Why is it that people think they need to get you drunk on your birthday?

Here's the cake. And yes, there are 37 candles on it. We almost needed a fire extinguisher. Mr. HH asked for a strawberry cake (I may have cried a bit-that's my favorite cake) with white frosting. I also melted some strawberry jam in the microwave and put a thin layer between the cake layers. Yummy!


Can he blow out all those candles? From the faces of the onlookers, I'd say they don't think so.

But he did! And then there were gifts! Everyone knows he likes wine, so our neighbors went to Aldi and found boxes of red and white. They thought they were hilarious and classy! There's no specific type of wine, grape, region or vintage on the boxes. Just red and white. Awesome.

He got a Julia Child cookbook and someone gave him a Cuban (not illegal in Germany). Indy about had a break down though and came crying to me that Daddy was going to use tobacco and get black lungs and die. It was kind of funny and I was more than a little proud of him for his stance on smoking.

Too many drinks!

Even Handy Manny had one too many.

It was nothing fancy, but we actually had a lot of people there. I know it doesn't look like it from the photos, but I was too busy having fun to take many pictures. There were one point 22 adults and 8 kids. Good times!

TOM and TOM's Wife and their kids are coming over for dinner tonight. Steaks and wine. More good times.

Happy birthday Mr. HH!