Flour Flour Everywhere, and not a bit to bake

. . . Or at least until recently. Sorry guys, no photo this time. I had a great idea for this post yesterday night, but I forgot to take the pictures. Here in Germany everyone sells flour, but yeast, baking soda, baking powder and cream of tartar are really difficult to find. One store had yeast (only), another had only baking soda. I finally found baking powder last Saturday (they didn't have baking soda - or yeast I think). I'm still looking for cream of tartar. I heard you can find it at a German pharmacy (where they sell monistat but not nursing pads). Strange place, Germany, sometimes. Anyway, until a few days ago I wondered why in the world sell all that flour when there's nothing to leaven it? Don't try to tell me that all the Germans bake their own flatbread, dumplings, and nothing else? (I think even dumplings take baking soda). And please don't tell me they're all eating tortillas. Even that takes baking powder. Anyway, having found yeast, we made pizza twice this week. Fresh mozzarella, prociutto, basil, sun-dried tomatoes, salami milano, roasted bell peppers (we had a couple of different kinds of pizza). . . it was great. We had Ingo and Margret over for dinner last night and showed them phase ten. They had a lot of fun. Speaking of phase 10 and other card games. We found a place that sells tons of toys (we saw a German phase 10 there). It's rather expensive, but there's no place like Wal-mart (or even Target) here. Remind me to tell you why Wal-Mart failed in Germany (yes, I said failed, . . . miserably). It's pretty cool.

Sleeping with his eyes open

Okay, he's not on his boppy this time, but he's been doing this slightly eerie trick of sleeping with his eyes open. Maybe he's trying to grow up to be a wizard. Well, the poor little tyke's cold has turned to a cough (me too). We've been getting good at going out anyway, though. I promise that I'll start taking pictures of Germany instead of Joe, but he's growing so fast. He'll be three months tomorrow (I'll see if I can't take some video). I've decided to get out of panic mode (forcefully) and start planning things like Christmas and Thanksgiving. That's so much less stressful (at this point in time) and so much more fun. I've still got some unhappy to dos (like moving again next week), but soon I'll put up cookie recipes and other fun stuff to prepare for Christmas. Until then, enjoy the creepy cute stare of a sleeping Joe.

Maybe I Could Yodel

Sometimes I just don't feel like getting up in the morning. Sometimes I just don't have the time/energy to publish my blog. Sometimes life's just hard to get going. Joe's had a cold this past week, and is having trouble not letting mommy sleep at night. He's also having trouble eating and breathing at the same time, necessitating the use of that bulbous blue snot sucker, which he hates. So this morning when George went out to breakfast I called him back and said, "take him! take him! Put him on his Boppy while you eat! Let me sleep!" I felt guilty later because it almost made him late to work, if not late to class. But, even though Joe's still feeling rather like this:

I feel like letting out a good ole cowboy yipee kai yai yay! Why? I just remembered! We signed for our new apartment yesterday. The only thing that's even more sure is when they put the key's into our hand and we sleep there. Not only that, but we also got paid today. Yay! I can finally balance the budget (almost). There's still a few things that we can get the government to give us (something called the Kindergeld for one: everyone gets paid for having a kid - about 150 Euros a month I think). Every little bit helps. It's nice to have things like that working.