Hello from German Souvenir Land!

Hi everyone! It's me again, after a while of not blogging because I've been busy and blah blah blah nobody wants to hear excuses.

Joe is back - got back on Friday night after only a 2.5 hour delay. His luggage also arrived. Which was good. Because it's never fun to have to drive back out to the airport 3 times looking for your luggage (the Savannah "international" (ha) airport tends not to let you know that your luggage arrived 2 weeks ago and they left it sitting in the middle of the terminal for any unkind person to take it).

Unfortunately it rained all weekend. Hard. As in, we were on CNN for flooding. But! At least Joe didn't let it dampen his spirit:

Kayaking in the back yard! Because we had a lake back there! The neighbors now KNOW we are insane. But oh so quirky and fun. Heh. Aren't we quaint and charming?

Also, it was good because there were gifts in said luggage!! Yay!

Here is a short list of wonderful stuff he brought me:

Joe's mom bought me a beautiful wooden Chinese fan when she was in (surprise) China! It smells like sandalwood and has pandas painted on it. It's very sweet that she thought of me while on her vacation in China. Isn't it pretty?

His mom also got me some knitting magazines (in German!), a Dirndl Revue magazine, and a Burda patterns magazine (http://www.burdamode.com/Burda_World_of_Fashion,1270777-1000019-1512001,enEN.html). Now the cool thing about these sewing magazines is that they have all the patterns in the magazine photos actually IN the magazine. They have the big sheets with the patterns overlaid, so that you have to trace the pattern onto another piece of paper and how cool is that? They used to do those in old newspapers back in the Victorian era - you got the sports page AND a new dress pattern, all in one! So awesome. Vielen dank, Edeltraud!!

Can you believe all of those garments are patterns in the book? AMAZING. I love this!

Here's what the dirndl patterns look like, and the Burda patterns too - all on one big page. Wonder what an authentic dirndl looks like? Check out: http://www.stoff-reich.de/store/ and look at the photos in the middle of the page. Pretty, aren't they? The fact that they're still so popular but are traditional costume is really fantastic. I'd love to make one.

Ok, so other than awesome knitting and sewing stuff, he also brought over 4 pounds of German chocolate. OH YUM. You really haven't lived until you've eaten Kinder Schokolade or a marzipan truffle. We now have a fridge drawer full of chocolate, and no you can't have any. Sorry. The bars that say Nussbeisser, in case you're wondering, have whole hazelnuts in them. DROOL.




Also? Because Joe is wonderful, follow this link: http://www.ketchupworld.com/hecugekedeg.html Oh yes, a HUGE bottle of curry ketchup. It's over a foot tall, this bottle. We've dug into it a few times already - it's sooooo good on potatoes.

And the last thing he brought me was a set of advertising booklets for my favorite car, the Smart. Isn't this car just too cute? Sigh....

So we had a nice weekend catching up, playing xbox, eating sushi, and just chatting.

Today I splurged and bought some comfy shoes (to help protect the ol' knees). Fortunately they were on sale. Unfortunately they had to special order them because they didn't have the color I wanted in stock, so I have to wait. They look Dutch, I know, and would look smashing with my (future) dirndl, but they're designed for nurses and are super comfortable. Should hopefully be comfy enough to be worth the money, since I waste money on crap shoes that cause my feet to ache. Here's a link to the shoes: http://www.dansko.com/Product_Detail.aspx?StyleName=Professional&ID1=706&ID2=220202&VID=1770 I'm getting the Professional Black ones. The cute Courtney ones were on clearance but they're hard to match and wouldn't be too great for work. Anyway, I'll let you know how they work out and if you also have foot/ankle/knee/back aches, you might look into these. Nurses swear by them!

Oh, and on another topic, I went to the mailbox yesterday and got excited when I saw a package in the box!

Then I realized it's the baby sweater that I mailed TWO MONTHS AGO. The stupid post office returned it, saying that Joe's sister refused it. Which isn't true, since they were expecting it. Sigh. At least it wasn't lost forever. The question is, how do I get it to Germany without risking losing it again?

That's all to report for now. Time for more chocolate.