The Sad, Unfortunate Truth About Journalling/Blogging

I remember when I was about 14 years old and I wrote in my journal every night.  Yes, every night I'd go into my room around 9 p.m., write a page or two in my green journal binder, and call it a night.  What I wrote about, I can't really tell you, because I honestly didn't have much to write about.  Who really has much of a life at age 14?  (Well, Joseph Smith did, but that's another story)

This lasted for several months, probably a year and a half or so.  Then, I grew up a little and suddenly my life was more interesting.  I had crushes on boys, and sometimes they had crushes on me.  My friends got their driver's licenses, so we had more freedom and entertainment options than ever before.  I got a part-time job, which only added to the above-mentioned freedom and entertainment options.  Now that I finally had a life worth mentioning in my journal, I was so busy living said life that my poor, green journal binder sat on my shelf gathering dust.

And that is the Sad, Unfortunate Truth About Journalling - when you have enough time to do it, it is because your life is kinda boring, but when your life is busy and interesting, you no longer have time to write about it.

And that is my excuse for not having blogged in a couple of months.  Whether or not my excuse holds water, I can't really say, because I'm not sure my life could be classified as interesting, but it has been busy. Well, busy-ish.  More like slightly overwhelming as Brad was gone for three weeks straight and I had Christmas to get ready for.

So, here is a quick up-date on what's been happening on Bitnerstrasse. . .

Halloween:

The family of one of Adam's friends from school invited us over for their big Halloween Shindig, so we dug up some costumes and dressed up on Saturday night.

Adam as The Scream

Pepper as A Spy

Luke as Bob the Builder

Brad and I as, well, a Witch and a Vampire

Oh yeah, we're scary.

We partied on Saturday night, but the real fun was on Sunday.  Some friends from Brad's mission came over on Sunday night for dinner and much, much Werewolf playing.  Heidi and Creed Miller both served in Brad's mission, but they didn't really meet until after they were home and went to a mission reunion.  They fell in love, got married, had four kids, and now they live in Bonn, Germany because Creed works for Ford.  They were in Berlin for the weekend, so we invited them over.  Their kids are about the same ages as ours, and we introduced them to Werewolf, which we played for about three hours.  It was so much fun, I don't think our kids even missed trick-or-treating. 

Speaking of trick-or-treating, I didn't buy any candy for trick-or-treaters because I didn't think it would be necessary.  Halloween isn't really a German tradition, so I didn't expect anyone to come a-knockin'.  Well, we did get some German trick-or-treaters who were not amused by my refusing to answer their many, many doorbell rings, so they covered our front gate with confetti and silly string.  I guess they showed us.

Thanksgiving:

Sadly, I have no pictures to show for it, but we had a lovely Thanksgiving again this year.  Brad was in America for work, so he got to spend Thanksgiving with his family - a first in about seven years.  The kids and I were invited to spend Thanksgiving with American friends in our ward, and it was great.  

First, we went to the Flanagans, a family new to Berlin this year who is a lot of fun.  They set up Rock Band and got us all involved, whether we sucked or not.  I personally sucked.  My dream of playing drums for a rock band will never be realized...

From there, we went to the Sorensons', who also hosted us last Thanksgiving.  There was LOTS of food and delightful people to talk to.  Jerroleen Sorenson is a vegetarian, so she sent us home with a big packet of turkey which we enjoyed for the next two days.

The only one who didn't have a great Thanksgiving was Adam.  The kids had school on Thanksgiving Day, but I let them stay home to "spend the holiday with their family" (which really means sleep in, play video games, and eventually go to friends' for Thanksgiving fun).  All except for Adam, that is. 

The week before, Adam threw a major fit at the bus stop one morning before school and went stomping away instead of getting on the school bus.  I went home and waited, and he showed up about an hour later after storming around the neighborhood.  Well, after that little stunt, Adam had to spend the whole day in his room (which is very boring because there are no toys or electronics in his room), and he also had to go to school on Thanksgiving Day because he'd already missed a day of school for no reason.  

He was FURIOUS with me on Thanksgiving, but what could I say?  It was his choice to miss school the week before, and this was the consequence of that choice.  I have to admit that I didn't sleep much the night before Thanksgiving because I knew I was going to have a major fight on my hands when I got Adam up for school while the other kids slept.  I was right to worry - Adam pulled every tantrumy weapon he had out of his arsenal, and when he finally huffed onto the school bus and it drove away, I heaved a big sigh of relief.   

For some reason, Adam really reacts to Brad being gone.  It's like he has to try every boundary to see which ones I'll enforce.  The hard thing was, I didn't know what I would do if he refused to get on the school bus again.  He's getting too old for me to physically force any more. I guess it was the thought of spending another booooring day up in his room that convinced him to go to school, but I don't know.  Anyway, he went, and when I picked him up after school, he was as happy as a clam.  OK then. 

Random Winter Concerts:

Each of my three boys had concerts with their school at three different times, so I got lots of concert-going fun this year.  First was Adam's:

Singing his solo in Carol of the Bells

I was sitting way off to one side of the gym, and Adam couldn't find me in the audience.  He spent nearly the whole concert frantically scanning the audience for me.  I saw him mouth "Where's my mom?" several times between songs.  Finally after they were done singing, I caught the eye of Matthew, his suave, hat-wearing friend, and he showed Adam where I was.  Adam came thrashing down in his all-arms-and-legs, nine-year-old kind of way and gave me a huge hug.  It's always a relief to know that your mom really does love you.

A couple days later, I went to Luke's concert:

He started off great, very enthusiastic and into the singing.

 Then, he slowly started to lose it.  Apparently, giving high-fives to the boy next to him was more fun than singing for all the nice people.

 

 For the last song, Luke simply turned his back and refused to acknowledge that there was a concert going on at all.

 The irony was that the song he was supposed to be singing was "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine..."

 Luke's light did not shine that day.  Oh well.

Finally, Pepper's concert was last week.

Unfortunately, my naughty daughter "borrowed" my camera the day before, and I couldn't find it for Pepper's concert.  So, there are no photos commemorating his current musical genius.  It was a Middle School chorus concert, so you can imagine how it looked - a bunch of tweens torn between wanting to show off for their parents and looking too cool for school.  You'll just have to take my word for it that Pepper was the cutest boy there and he totally stole the show.

And, that is Bitnerstrasse in a nutshell.  Now I am all caught up so I can post about the visitors we had from America last week, which is really what I want to write about.  So, stay tuned...!