Luckily no pictures

It isn't always beer and skittles here, woke up incredibly grumpy the day before yesterday. Well, that is version A. I prefer version B which goes a little like this. I woke up joyous and whistling (think Disney Snow White where there are little bluebirds flying around her) then kids managed to complain about everything, get under my feet whilst trying to get breakfast and annoy each other so the complaining turned into crying and I turned into the Wicked Witch. Luckily everyone got out the door in one piece, well actually 5 pieces as there are 5 of us and one piece would have been a bit uncomfortable, no one was wearing their underwear as a hat and we even made it to kindergarten/playgroup at a reasonable time. Then I went for a swim. Nothing like a swim and thoughts of Christmas whilst swimming to cheer one up. The swim was so good (I am having thoughts of the next Olympics it was so good) that I forgot Germans tend not to strike up random conversations especially whilst wearing a swimming cap and started chatting to the lady in my lane. Luckily for me she was happy to chat back. I followed this success up with a loud "Morgen" whilst in the showers to an old lady then thought I'd better not push the Australian/ German friendship so stopped talking and started whistling vigorously Snow White style in my head.

Whilst I was using my ability to whistle for the greater good of humanity or at least my family the Bear used his new found ability to completely embarrass his father. We go swimming nearly every weekend (we bought yearly passes and we must now get the best value for money we can) and far from being a well oiled machine we tend to rabble around and have been told off no less than twice by the Schwimmeister (it says it on their shirts) for wearing our shoes in the wrong area of the change rooms. So back to the core issue. Herr Fitz takes the Bear to the showers and I take the girls then we meet up dry our hair and, put our shoes on. When I found the boys this time Herr Fitz was shaking his head and looking a little red faced. Turns out that whilst in the showers 3 very fit young men had come in, and as customary here began showering naked. Bear stood sizing them up for a minute or so then just simply let out his favourite new noise...a wolf whistle. Needless to say the rest of the time felt like an eternity to Herr Fitz and we are still trying to explain to the Bear why wolf whistling is not acceptable.

Accidentally ended up with a house full of people for a pizza cook up yesterday when the weather was too bad to take a gaggle of playgroup kids to the Autumn Fair. It was great fun we had North America and Asia covered this time in our attempt to have all continents present but unfortunately no South America (they are on holidays). Bear may have agreed to marry his friend here after all the hugging and saying of "Ich liebe dich" (very happy he got his grammar correct) and I asked about Miss I in Australia. I then had to explain that while having a girl in every port whilst being practical, is far from polite behaviour.

Had to add the photo of the fabulous traditional (for the 70's) nibbles that Tante G made!

The Monkey has decided to fill the world with song lately which is beautiful even if she has inherited my vocal stylings and the Mouse turned 1 and a half this week and had her second bleeding nose after falling off the sofa (that is just bad parenting I say), at least she didn't drop her mandarin and she just kept saying her favourite sound E! She loves talking and her other words at the moment include ball, teeth, more and woof woof when she sees a dog.

Herr Fitz is also jumping for joy as our TV got changed from cable to satellite today in a random move by our landlord and he can now watch Al Jazeera in not only English but also Arabic. When I pointed out that he can't actually speak Arabic he said it was beside the point. Now we have 170+ channels in about 5 languages. The possibility for channel surfing is immense.

Finalised the grandparent birthday presents for next week (hopefully they will make it in time) and even started a bit of Christmas shopping. For the record I love Christmas and am looking forward to a cold one this year.