Back in Mannheim

We returned from 2 weeks in the US a few days ago. Well, Kerri was there for 4 weeks, but I was only there for 2. Had a great time seeing relatives and friends, and were very grateful to be able to go to the Portland Holiday Ale Festival with Walt, Ben and Sandy. Northwest beer rules! (seriously...I have yet to find any German beer to compare, but I've just started, give me time)

The United flight from SF to Frankfurt was horrible. No personal entertainment systems (which we've been getting used to lately) and they showed terrible movies. All the kid friendly stuff was at the tail end of the flight when the kids were all asleep. I sat behind a lady with twin toddler girls. They cried in harmony! Also, *both* of them threw up when we landed. Felt really bad for the lady.

Anyway, we made it home in one piece and are starting to not feel like zombies as of today. I slept in til my alarm went off for the first time! We put our 2 beds together in the early mornings of the first couple of days, and unpacked everything we had in boxes so now it's all in piles which is something of an improvement. Last night we took public to IKEA (45 minutes one way) after work and bought everything big that we need and are having IKEA deliver it (90 euro) which is probably how much it would cost us to rent a van or something, and then we'd have to haul it all upstairs. Pity of it is they won't deliver til next Monday, so we are still using the outside porch as our fridge. At least we were forced to stay up til 10pm last night, although we were all pretty miserable at various points. Kerri, Rowan and I took turns having meltdowns.

We've done about all we can up to this point, so this weekend we're going to head down to Mannheim for the Christmas Market and enjoy a bit of christmas. We are kind of despairing of actually having a real christmas this year, but we may just do what we did last year and delay the celebration to a more appropriate time.