Friday, August 24, 2007

at last...one more breakfast!



between two kids, a wife, a double new job and looking for a house I all too well forgot that there maybe friends out there desperately waiting for another post. I guess I would have to tell them about this blog first, but what fun would that be, especially with all but now three blogs posted. Well, dear diary, we can almost rename you...letters to Pablo. How are you amigo!


Anyhow, once we pick up speed, we will be blasting through the universe with so many blogs posted u won't know which one to read first. Soon I will have to travel overseas for a business trip and will be stuck on a plane for something crazy like 12 or so hours - that may give me time to write something useful like our friend Pablo always does...but until then it will just be stories right out of life...reflecting back onto them.

So we did manage to go to breakfast again with Johnny, and it is always so pleasant to do it. An American breakfast is an American breakfast, and nobody seems to mind to stand in line for it and wait a good 30 minutes. After all, where else can you get your coffee refilled 23 times with a smile? Lucky Luc was a happy camper when he had the tractor all to himself just outside of the breakfast palace (palace = another word for place).

Then we went back to the fleamarket where the weekend before we had spotted a desk - though back then Raoul wasn't convinced at all - but what wonders a week can do and how much sense some reasoning that didn't make sense at the time can make when you look at it again or really listen to it like you should have the first time: but judge for yourself - is this a smart desk or what!?!


We didn't have any money left for a chair, and who wants a chair anyway when the guy selling it says something like: "If you want it cheaper than that, why don't you go to Walmart"...bargaining is not what it used to be...where did I put the picture of that guy.


To Luc's dismay the train he obviously was waiting on never came by, so we promised to drive along the tracks until we would see one (yup - these are the kind of things you actually do when you have kids - it all makes sense when you think about where all that free time that you didn´t have before actually goes). But the lucky charm was on our side that day. After the almost life ending disaster of not seeing a train we cut the deal that we would drive over the tracks (on a regular railroad crossing of course), and just as we cut the corner to do that, the barriers came down because a train was coming. A TRAIN WAS COMING. Oh what joy. So there we are sitting at the crossing, waiting for the train, and soon enough it shows up, and why not count the wagons: one, two, three, four, five...thirteen, fourteen....twenty-two, twenty-three.....thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine.......sixty-four, sixty-five....eighty, eighty-one, eighty-two....ninety seven, ninety eight, ninety-nine....one hundred-two, one hundred-three, one hundred-four, one hundred-five, one hundred-six, one hundred-seven, ONE HUNDRED-EIGHT! The big smiles on our kids faces were priceless. Who could have asked for more. Life can be so simple and so great.

Well people, getting ready to move into the new hood. Talk to you again soon.

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Rowing on Lake Crabtree...

this fun activity we actually got into last Sunday, I just haven't gotten around to publishing it...but since amigo Pablo has linked our site on his, I better get going with more stories than just breakfasts at infamous places...

Anyhow, last Sunday we decided to drive out to Lake Crabtree near RDU airport (actually right behind it) and although it has been 8 years since I lived in Raleigh, we hit the right exit on the first try. Driving into the park brought back many memories of bike rides, playing Frisbee on the field, or just laying out on the grass...today it was a beautiful day and before we went out onto the Lake Luc had to inspect the playgrounds and Lya certainly didn't mind. The playgrounds were really nice (while being completely deserted - this is always still a shock to me after moving back here from Barcelona - I guess it still surprises me to see so few people everywhere).

After running up and down the platforms, sliding down the slides, peeking out through plastic bubbles, and turning wheels, we walked out to the dock and boat rental building, picked up our life preservers, and got everybody into the row boat. Right there at the dock mosquitoes were present in the hundreds (causing everybody to relentlessly spray around with their bug spray) but once we got out on the water this at least no longer was a problem.




The attention span of our 1 year old girl Lya and our 3 year old son Luc didn't last very long and quickly caused us to become more inventive (for example ropes turned into snakes that continuously had to be thrown overboard). Especially Lya didn't turn out be the sailor we would have liked here to be - but fortunately she did come around in the end after we had noticed that she was sweating tremendously under her life preserver (we had also managed accidentally putting her life preserver on Luc and his on her).
In the end we did stay out for about an hour and Sabine was all smiles once we got done and everybody was still in good spirits.