Skating video

This is a short video from the end of Lizzy's show.

Ice Skating Competition

Lizzy's skating club had its annual competition today. She wore a fancy skating dress loaned by another teammate and dazzled the very biased huddle of fans at Berlin's newest ice stadium. From getting up this morning until after going to bed tonight she has been excited about the competition. She loved it. Its usually hard to photograph Lizzy with a heartfelt smile since it doesn't linger on her face. During the 5 minutes of showtime Lizzy was beaming. And when she got her gold medal (as she had anticipated) she was, if possible, even happier.

Before (first time skating in the dress and tights)

During the competition (isn't this great?) 

I am an ice princess

Scooping up a teddy tossed onto the ice after her performance (a smile for the adoring fans)

 I couldn't get both girls smiling at the same time. But here you see as soon as they were released from the podium they had to look down and check out their medals and certificates.

Red carpet time...

Check out our gold medals.

 

Winter weekend in the Ore Mountains

We headed off this weekend to the small mountains just north of the Czech border, south of Dresden, about 2.5 hours south of Berlin.  As this was a last minute trip, I struggled to find accommodation and eventually just settled with the youth hostel, which was the only place I found us a room, with the toilets down the hall.

On Saturday, the sun came out for the first time in weeks, so we enjoyed a lovely drive south and ended up in the part of Germany known for wooden toys and Christmas decorations, like nutcrackers and Christmas pyramids.

We went sledding on a big hill in Geising, warmed up in a cafe with hot chocolate (the girls' current favorite drink) and decided we could squeeze in a little ice skate before dinner at the Ratskeller.

After a cozy night in bunkbeds and a delicious German Youth hostel breakfast, we were off to take Lizzy to her first ski lesson ever.  They fitted her with skis, boots and a helmet in a little trailer and then sent her off to warm up with a soccer ball.
They started in their boots and did exercises jumping through hulahoops, running between cones and learning how to put on their skis and stop.  While Lizzy was busy falling and getting up, Jim skied, and Mommy and Katherine walked (sledded) around the town and drank hot chocolate.

At the end of the two hours (with a break for tea, gummy bears and cookies), Lizzy was able to do this:

Christmas...To be completed later! Stay tuned

Umbrellas for Christmas...what fun?

Christmas day skating with Mummy and Daddy's new skates. Katherine had hot chocolate on the sidelines with Granny and Grandad.

The next day we got dressed up in our new clothes, backpacks, baby carriers, etc. and marched to a fancy hotel looking fabulous.

On boxing day Santa visited the playroom at the hotel while Mummy, Daddy, Granny and Grandad had Boxing Day Lunch. He read the kids a story then gave them wrapped gifts.

Halloween night

As I am home with a sick little one, I will update the blog per friend and family requests.  Even though Halloween was officially more than 2 months ago, we are still eating Halloween candy and I just got a great family photo that I had to share.  The girls went trick-or-treating in Berlin on the street where most of the Embassy people live.  Houses were decorated, safety monitored by Berlin Polizei, and much fun was had by Daddies inside drinking Bayern Beer and Mommies chatting behind excited children begging for candy.

Halloween 2012

Grandma was here to do the pumpkin cleaning and carving.  Lizzy didn't like getting her hands dirty cleaning out the pumpkin, but Katherine did!

Then we had some costume practice.  Lizzy liked Mommy's old ballet costume as a martian but in the end we decided it was too cold and she went as a doctor. Lizzy also helped make pumpkin muffins for a Halloween party at school.  We added Haribo gummy bats.  After all, we do live in the land of the best gummies!

Grandma comes to visit and we go to the mountains

This is quite late to be posted, but my computer died and I couldn't access the photos.  Grandma came to visit for two weeks in October and we went to the Harz Mountains in the middle of Germany.  They are famous for Hexen, or witches in English, so of course we found a cackling witch to bring home.  We visited the medieval town of Quendlinburg, which had a great castle and tiny streets with picturesque buildings.  Then we carried on to Braulage, where we stayed in a Ferienwohnung, or holiday home, which had three bedrooms, a living room, two bathrooms, and a kitchen for only 65 euros per night.  What a deal!  Braulage is a cute town, but was rather quiet.  We took the gondola to the top of Wurmberg and walked all the way down.  The girls walked the whole way and we all stopped for some beer and sausages at a little hut halfway down.  We pretended we were riding our brooms and Grandma stopped to take pictures of mushrooms.  We even found a pacifier tree in the forest, but Katherine wasn't interested in leaving her's behind!

 An autobahn rest stop picnic

 Good thing Grandma is so small!

 Headed into a small shop with tiny glass jars-Great idea, Mommy!

 On the gondola to the top of Wurmber

 Grandma's idea to take a picture here ;)

 A sunny rest

 Riding our witch brooms

 "But I don't want to put my paci on the tree."

Waiting for the glockenspiel