I'm a Closet Slob

Housework is something you do that nobody notices until you don't do it. ~Author Unknown


It's time for me to come out of the closet and just admit it:

I'm a slob!

Before becoming a mommy I admit, I was a total slob! Probably worse. I vacuumed once a month only after the cat hair piled so high on the rugs that they appeared to be a different color. I washed the dishes only when the stink coming from the sink would make you gag upon passing it. I washed clothes only after the hubs and I had both gone through not only our good clothes but also the ones that were to big/small/had holes/etc (and sometimes we even wore those more then once). And I dusted, well I never dusted! And aside from a few close family members, the world was none the wiser.

Anyway, things have definitely changed since having my daughter. Now I wash dishes and sweep every day. I vacuum every other other day and dust once a week. My entire bathroom gets a scrub down two times a week. And laundry is done several times a day. It's a total 180 and I have only Ava to thank for that. But for all the wonderful changes she has done for the cleanliness of our house there is one negative that she has caused. She has trashed my car! No joke the thing is a total night-mare of nasty. I am certain that if we drive off the road and crash into a 10ft snow drift and are trapped there for a week waiting for help we would be able to survive solely off of the crumbs in her car seat. Terrible I know. I figure that since I had to wait for a year to finally get my own car out here that I really should take more pride in it and clean the thing up. I realize that this should be something that I do at least once a week. I might give it a try but I don't suspect that it will last!

So with that being said, love me or hate me but just don't judge me based on my filthy car!

Kitchen Capers

Quick photo op before we begin. Looking good!
Today's flavor: Kiwi banana
(for recipe go to http://weelicious.com/)

Time to start our first smoothie in the new super cheap thrift-store blender. Hope this turns out alright it's not like I can return the thing.

Ava loves helping prepare meals/snacks, and I love letting her even if it does mean that we are all eating off the floor!

Here it is, the finished product! Looks a little gross doesn't it?

The official taste test. Looks like we have a winner. Well kind of.
Results: Kerry hated it, I liked it, Ava was indifferent (she would drink it a little bit in between bites of her snack but she didn't like it enough to chug it)

Muffin Tin Monday

It appears that all the super cool mommy blogging sites do this thing called Muffin Tin Mondays. Basically you just feed your kiddo out of a muffin tin every Monday during lunch and document it in this blog version of a food diary. So since all the cool kids are doing it, we thought we would give it a try too! I don't have a fancy six muffin-muffin tin so poor Ava had to eat out of this cheap foil version. How on Earth does she manage to even survive around here! :P

Contents:
Top (left to right): Raspberries, Carrot sticks, Grilled cheese sticks
Bottom (left to right): Grilled cheese sticks, Graham crackers, Blackberry dipping sauce (for the graham crackers)

Medieval Festival

Since it is summer in Germany this is an all to familiar sight. I guess one would have to expect to see a lot of road construction during the summer months since not a whole lot of outdoor work takes place during the snowy winters.
There is road work approximately every 50 ft (and that's only a mild exaggeration). Ridiculous!

Funny how men seem to listen so well if they figure they can get a laugh out of it. I couldn't roll down the window in fear that the gust of wind would wake my sleeping princess so I had to take my construction pics through the windshield. I simply asked Kerry to clean them BEFORE I started to take pics. At least he did try to clean them even if it wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

This yellow detour sign is strategically placed on almost every main road around here, simply to strike fear into the hearts of every non-German speaking, really bad sense of direction human being that happens to cross its path! This person I speak of would be me of course. So naturally when we came upon this I panicked. I was certain that we would never find the festival. Luckily, we managed to decipher the signs and find our way (only adding 20min to our drive time).

Put on your happy face! It's time for the Medieval festival! I wasn't informed that people who showed up in costume got discounted tickets otherwise we all would have been decked out.

Well here it is, the Medieval Festival. I know it doesn't look like much (it gets better keep going) but it was the best festival we have gone to so far this summer.

There were tons of vendors and people demonstrating different crafts common during this era. This man was craving designs into stone.

These ladies were spinning yarn from wool.

This guy was craving masks. He even made little ones that the kids could wear on their fingers.

This guy was blowing glass into beautiful designs.

Hmm, wonder what this vendor is selling?
Can you spot the dead rats hanging from the lanterns?

The big kids got to practice shooting arrows.

Ava got to watch a puppet show (even if they were speaking German and we had no clue what was going on).

There were lots of singers and musicians. This was clearly a popular profession/pastime in medieval times.

There were knights in shining armor.

There were guys who could chop watermelons with swords. Check out the mean watermelon chop shot I got.

There were even unicorns! How magical!

There were lots of different birds at the festival. Like this owl,

And this falcon,

And this vulture.

Watch out, Ava has a sword and she knows how to use it!

Who wants a piece of me?

Today's festival food was that yummy flat bread pizza that I absolutely LOVE! We tried it with bacon and potato on top.

Like usual, Ava refused to taste it!

Yippee! We got to make a candle. Mr. German Beeswax Man tried to get Ava to smell the wax before we started our project, but she was having none of that!

He then showed us how to roll the wick up in the wax.

This little candle sure took a lot of rolling!

Ta-Da! The finished product! Thanks Mr. German Beeswax Man!

Umm, why on earth did this lady bring her pet rat to the festival? Sorry I am easily distracted!

Seefest at Ohmbachsee

Ready for the festival and rockin her brand new Hello Kitty hat!

Me, I want a hula-hoop

Ava can do tricks too!

You don't even know how badly I wanted to steal one of these ponies. Wonder if anyone would have noticed if I shoved one up my shirt and ran off?

Here's the one, the only Zantac (please take one in the morning and one at night approximately 30minutes to 1 hour prior to eating).

This was his best trick. He made Dory (from Disney's Finding Nemo) move along the ropes hanging from the board. Then he made Nemo and Marlin appear on the other ends.

The dragon boats

Well here is the spectacular finish. The blue team (the one to the far left) won!

Doughnut booth! I wish I was taller. I tried to stand on my tippie toes and take a pic of the inside but I am just to short. They had a mini conveyor belt in there that was dropping the mini doughnuts into a bowl. So cute!

Here's one. These bad boys were so yummy. To bad they cost 7 Euro for a kline (small) bag. I mean there was only 8 in that bag and they were mini!

Ava definitely approved! :)

Went to another festival this weekend (Seefest at Ohmbachsee). Wish I had an excellent getting lost, talking to google-eyed folks type of story to tell but I don't. We totally found it with no problem (probably the first and last time that will ever happen).

Anyway, this particular festival was centered around a lake. Well what the Germans refer to as a lake but it was really a pond. It cost us 4 Euros a piece which I believe is a total rip-off, but what do I know? I was informed that the dragon boat races started at 2pm so I had originally planned on arriving shortly before that. I checked the website early that morning and it said that the races started at 12pm so a quick change of plans and we are all loaded in the car and headed that way. We arrived (completely sidestepping adventure, frustration, and an all around interesting time) around 11:45 and I was so pleased that we had made it in time. Here's the kicker, the website was wrong! Imagine that. The races started at 2pm (like originally informed). Bummer, now what were we going to do to kill 2 hours? Okay, okay let's not panic here. There had to be a couple of interesting things to do.

First we took a walk around the pond where Ava decided to drop something from her stroller approximately every 10 seconds. After playing a fun little game of I'll drop it, you'll pick it up, we decided she needed a little playtime break. Then we found Zantac the magician (that's right he is a magician that also can relieve your heartburn symptoms). He wasn't starting his performance for 30 minutes but he did have some toys set out. Excellent this should go over well for germ-a-phobe mommy! After an ample play time (and plenty of sanitizing hand wipes) the show began. Not exactly the best performance I've ever seen but it was interesting and in the shade.

Finally, the event I had been waiting for...the dragon boat races! Yippee! Oh, what a let down. There were only 4 boats involved and the race lasted a total of 1 minute (that's right folks it took them longer to paddle to the starting point then it did to complete the race). Oh well, at least we got out of the house!