Mr. Poopypants

Making up for lost time again. I think we are going to do about half an hour a night from now on, if not just to have a kind of a journal for our time while we are over here. It would sure be a shame to not write some of this stuff down while it is fresh. That being said, lots of events to recap in the last few months while the blog (I can't stand that word) enjoyed the abyss. So, let me set the scene again. We came to Germany (still figuring out why), set up a kitchen, went to France and Switzerland, lost a toenail, swore a few times, and, am I missing anything? Swore until blue smoke filled the apartment? Nah. Which leaves us around the beginning of September...

Jodi's Birthday

Jodi's actual party on the 7th was most enjoyable. Me and the kids decorated the apartment::

I tried my hands at a lemon cake with lemon drizzle and lemon icing and sprinkles. I thought it turned out really well::

Ok, well at least it actually tasted good. I kept adding more and more icing to try and mask the cracks because I tried to take it out of the pan way to early. Here's the gist of the celebration, in video form. I think I really captured the mood::

A real shaker. I sure know how to plan them. The next week, the real birthday celebration began. We started with breakfast at the local bakery (Heitzmann), which was relaxing and nice to be alone and away from the kids for an extended amount of time. We then picked up a rental car (after running back 15 min to the apartment because I forgot my licence), and started the drive nice and sweaty across the autobahns to Füssen, in Bavaria (land of the white sausages). The drive was beautiful through the Black Forest, and across lots of rolling, green hills. The directions were incredibly difficult to follow though, and included no less than 25 turns. (Seriously, goofy Google maps, not sure what I was thinking). We arrived safe and sound, and after a quick lunch, headed to the main attraction: the castles of Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein (Hoh and Neu for short, respectively, as much as I want to type those again). Hoh dates back quite a few years, and the castle at DisneyWorld was actually modeled after the Neu. The atmosphere was great: misty and rainy, although a little cold. This was also the first time that we were at a major attraction where lots of the visitors spoke English, and it was definitely easy to hear some loud, ignorant English speakers. We started at the Hoh, and I really enjoyed it::

Jodi is actually the little brown speck in the first picture at the bottom. They even had a little outdoor bath for some tub talks (Jodi's trying to get in above). The castles aren't too far apart, and we could see the Neu in the distance::

We chose the hike over instead of the horse and carriage (they sure tried to maximize their profits - 10 people/carriage) and warmed up considerably, and also stopped for a 5 euro coffee. The Neu was incredible, even though it was only about 1/3 finished, as the guy building it mysteriously croaked in a nearby bog. Politics. He was pretty eccentric and there were some crazy rooms and elaborate paintings. Sorry, we couldn't take pictures inside. We got a book. Here's the Neu from the 'front'..

We stopped for a fun but terribly bland/disgusting supper, and then made our way back to Freiburg. The only problem was, I didn't write down the massive instructions for the return journey, so we added on about an hour and a half to the 3.5 hour drive. At one point, we knew we had followed the wrong road for 30 minutes when we came upon the customs checkpoint at the Swiss border. Preceding the border, there was an instance when I completely locked up the brakes and pretty much stopped on the autobahn as Jodi got a little confused with a German road sign and thought we were on the wrong side of the road or going down a one-way highway or something like that. Needless to say, we got home around 1 a.m., which kind of tainted the conclusion a bit..

Jeff and Jodi