Cookies

Case and I made cookies today. He thinks he is in charge of the mixer, turning it off and lifting the arm when it is time to add things. He also likes to taste after ever step, seeing how things change with the addition of ingredients. It is fun homework to cook snacks together to work on his manual dexterity-grabbing the thin handles on measuring cups is hard but cookies are a pretty good motivator :)

Snow

The day before Case and I flew back to the states, it snowed. Case thought it was awesome and spent quite a long time stomping footprints and repeatedly yelling "Snow!" (If you don't have a big vocabulary, make good use of the few words you do have.)

It was really neat that he got to play in the snow there; it has been two years since he has seen snow outside a globe.

Hohenneuffen Castle

Hohenneuffen Castle ruins. Pretty but so cold it hurt. We visited there on January 4th. Any photos of Case smiling are completely accidental, as he whined EVERY SECOND that we were there. It was such a short drive and walk though, that it didn't last long enough to build any resentment.

Having a whiny kid who coincidentally has a black eye from falling in the hotel room when he should have been sleeping is awesome.

Heidelburg

Happy New Years! It is 3:00 pm local time, so far a really quiet and a little boring because everything closes here on holidays. Yesterday was great fun though.

We went and saw the castle in Heidelburg yesterday. It was beautiful and cold and wonderful and we had a lovely time.

Case's favorite thing in so far in Germany remains:

The BX indoor playground.

Flight

Our flight to Germany went very well; Case played Leapster for a while then slept for 5 or 6 hours, all the way until I had to buckle him in the seat for the landing.

Case's feet would occasionally stick out in the aisle, and I would smile apologetically/indulgently to people who had to step over his feet, and thought to myself how much happier everyone was that he was sleeping. Also that they didn't have to sit in front of him.

Merry Christmas

Tomorrow morning Monkey and I begin our perilous journey to visit Marc in Germany. I have plenty of Leapster games plus some cough syrup with codeine to assure that Case has a great flight. To celebrate, here are some of the fifty pictures I took trying to get a good photo for Case's passport, arranged from cutest to goofiest.

My little jet-setter! Christmas in Germany, then next summer we are off to Okinawa! (Did everyone hear that we got orders to Kadena? We will be there by the end of July!)

Arrrr!

The other day Case was scratching his ear so much it was bleeding, so I tied up his head like a pirate to slow further agitation.



I know that it is a lot of pictures of the same thing; but catching photos of him smiling is still so awesome and novel to me. The camera continues to pay for itself.