I'm one lazy blogger...

So, now I'm getting just plain lazy about posting huh? Haha. Now I am here and I can tell you about the last couple weeks and post some pictures! Hooray! The last couple weeks I have been a little lonely. I still go back and forth between being amazed that I am in Germany and wishing I could come home....and that emotion switches in about three seconds! No, not really. I have my good days and my bad days though. The only problem is that when I'm not watching the kids or whatever, I basically have nothing to do. I know, I have been doing my crafts and art, but it still gets a little lonely without a friend or two with whom to talk and experience new places. Luckily enough, I have the internet! Thank goodness....what would I do without it?

I do have information about an au pair club downtown in Stuttgart so maybe I will check that out and meet some other au pairs. Then in a couple weeks, I will start helping at the local school in an English class. They have a big project coming up and they needed some native English speakers to help the different groups of kids. Anette used to work at the Interenational School of Stuttgart and had some connections where she heard about this opportunity and got me in. I think that will be really interesting and it'll give me something extra to do and I'll even make a tiny more pocket money!

Anyway, I have been keeping myself busy with planning Thanksgiving. I don't think I have written about the plans before, but please bear with me if I have. I'm hosting my own American Thanksgiving here on Saturday, November 22nd. I know, Thanksgiving is on Thursday, but it had to be a weekend so that Ralf and Anette wouldn't work and I could focus on cooking all day long! Also, that makes it so that my special friends Lena and Vincent can come and join us. I'm really excited because it will be Lena's and Vincent's first Thanksgiving...not for the Fischer family though, they had an American au pair a few years ago and she cooked Thanksgiving. Although, she didn't even make stuffing, so I don't really think it counts! Haha! Anette gave me a decorating budget that I asked for so that I could really make my Thanksgiving special. I have an entire, traditional autumn table planned and I can't wait for everyone to see it. I have hand-drawn all of the place cards and created many cool ideas to make it really festive. I will, of course, share pictures when it happens.

Halloween kind of came and went here. I offered to throw a big American Halloween party for all of their friends, but they just don't understand it all the way that we do. It made me sad, but eventually I gave up. We did, on the other hand, carve pumpkins. Anette mentioned it a couple times and I figured that she must have really liked the idea, so I carved one in the daytime, while no one was here, just a couple days before Halloween. I was mostly worried about handling Jonathan and the big knives that it would take to cut the huge pumpkins they had. When Jonathan got home from Kindergarten, he was so excited about it that I decided we would try and VERY CAREFULLY carve the other pumpkin. Who gives a 5 year old boy a knife that big?! ... Apparently me! We made it a monster and I used my American expertise to use the already cut pumpkin and make them into ears for the monster. Here are some pictures: