No Phone Service at the New House

We were excited about getting our new sofas yesterday but were very disappointed when the telephone man can to get our phone up and running. We already knew that the modem that we needed to access the internet hadn't arrived yet but we were hoping that at least the phone would work none the less. The phone at the new house has been an ongoing saga. We've been customers of the Deutsche Telecom since I moved to Germany (not always happy customers I would add). We saw the move as a chance to change to a different provider. We contacted one and thought that we were good to go only to find out that they had already filled the quota of numbers that they have in our area. Then we contacted Deutsche Telecom and made arrangements for the phone and internet service to be available on December 1st. After several phone calls a technician was scheduled to visit us yesterday. In the last call the Christine made, she was told that they didn't know when they would have our modem in stock. The technician told us yesterday without the modem we're unable to use our analog phones. The phone at our appartment is scheduled to be turned off effective December 18th, so then we will have no land line!!!

Bye for now...

Darryl

The new sofas have arrived!

Our new sofas arrived yesterday (December 14th). Here are a few pictures of them and you can see how different the living room looks now. The 2nd and 3rd pictures are of Anna and Oma. The big move is now tomorrow.

Bye for now...

Darryl

Kindergarten Pictures Winter 2006

Here are some pictures that were taken a couple of weeks ago and that we just got back. A neighbor of ours is a kindergarten teacher in a near by village. She let us know when the photographer was going to be at their kindergarten and the girls had these pictures taken. Christine and I were very impressed when we looked at these pictures. Sarah's appearence has changed so much since we had pictures taken back in March! Anna looks more and more like a young lady!

Bye for now.

Darryl

Anna's Christmas Pagent 2006

Anna started Jazz Dance in September. Her class performed at the Trebor Weihnacht's Markt December 9th. Anna was one of three angels. There were also 15 Santas. They all danced to "Santa Claus is Comming to Town" by Mariah Carey. It was really cute and Anna really seemed to enjoy herself!

Bye for now...

Darryl

Rüsselsheim Chirstmas Market 2006

Germany is famous for it's Christmas markets (Weihnacthts Markts). Most every good sized village and city will have one for at least a weekend. In the case of Wiesbaden and Mainz, they run for about a month. These markets offer various things but when it is cold most of the adults enjoy a Glüh wine, which is a hot red wine with spices, while the kids can enjoy a hot fruit (kinder) punch. In most of the markets you can buy some nice Christmas presents including a lot of toys made of wood.Here are some pictures from the Rüsselsheim Christmas Market on December 8th.

Bye for now...

Darryl

Nikolaus Comes to Geinsheim

December 6th is Nikolaus Tag (Day) in Germany. Most kids clean their shoes (or in our case the girls cleaned their rubber boots) and put them in front of the door. In the morning the kids open the door to discover that he has left them candy and other goodies.

The first picture shows both sets of boots before the door. Sarah's are on the left and Anna's are on the right. Sarah is wearing princess gloves in the last 2 pictures. Anna was all excited because she got some kiddy gum. She had asked Christine the other day if there wasn't kiddy gum that wasn't so spicy after trying some mint flavored gum.

Bye for now...

Darryl

Brenden's 3rd Birthday

December 7th was my nephew Brenden's 3rd birthday. All of the pictures here are our from our trip to the U.S. in July 2005, so they're not that current, but is also nice to look back at older pictures too!

The first picture is from his baptism day. Long-time family friend Janet Elledge is on the left and his mom, Nicole is on the right. The 3rd picture is of Sarah pushing her cousin in his buggy at the anual Heron family picnic. The last picture was taken on the back porch of Brenden's house.

I hope that you had a wonderful birthday.

Bye for now...

Darryl

Progress on the Play Room

Here are some pictures showing progress on the Play/Guest Room...

Sarah got to pick the color for their room in Geinsheim, so this time it was Anna's turn to pick the color(s). Anna choose red and pink. I'm not sure how this will look to you all on your computers but when I looked at the pictures from this room, it didn't seem as though I was looking at the true colors. We're happy with the way that the pink turned out but we're so happy with the red. For the time being we're going to keep it as it is. I put on the second coat of white yesterday and am now done painting (till next year when I do the stairs, front entance, and kitchen)! The past few days it seemed like I was always cleaning brushes and rollers, so I'm glad to be done!!

Progress on the Girls' Bedroom

Here are some pictures showing progress on the girls' bedroom...

This room was originally painted white and after applying a coat of white, it didn't seem to be doing the job, so we decided to go with the same color as the living/dinning room.

Progress on the Living/Dinning Room

Here are some pictures showing progress on the Living/Dinning Room...

This gives you and idea of how the room looks now. In the corner next to the window there was wallpaper. We had originally thought that we would just paint over it, but on closer examination we decided that it was best to remove it and then paint. I haven't worked too much with wallpaper, and although some people tell me that it is easier to wallpaper than to paint, it seemed like an awful lot of work to remove the old wallpaper!

Progress on the Master Bedroom

Here some pictures showing work done on the Master Bedroom so far...

Last summer we repainted the girls' room in Geinsheim with this lime green, we liked the color so we decided to paint our room with this color. A second coat was applied on Saturday and Sunday evening the room was tidied up.