Monday, December 3, 2007

A bit of a disastrous weekend!

We went to visit Brian about 3 1/2 hours away. We met him at this famous Christmas Market in Nurenburg. He got Hannah out of the car and shut the door only to hear the all too familiar dramatic cry that she does for various unimportant reasons, like not getting to put her doll in her carseat before getting out of the car. However, this time there really was something wrong. Her finger had been shut in the door. Brian quickly opened it. Nothing was broken (although I was sure it would be), and this was the foreshadowing event for the whole weekend.

The Market was nice, but with the kids it was hard to really look at things and enjoy it to the fullest. Hannah got to talk to the German Santa and tell him what she wants for Christmas. We ate Lebkuchen (Gingerbread) and Sausage (there's plenty of that around here). We tried to see the Christmas Angel, but couldn't fight our way through the crowds to see her. We heard her though.

Saturday we went to a Bazaar and to a giant new store. At the Bazaar, we bought some interesting Belgium cheeses. One was cheddar with cloves in it. I am going to save that one for Christmas. And another Italian named cheese with olives, garlic, and sun dried tomatoes in it. At the store, it was very crowded and we were in line to check out. Hannah was in the middle of the shopping cart playing with Brian when she slammed her face into the cart so hard that her mouth filled with blood immediately. She, of course, started wailing and Brian took her to the bathroom to clean her up and try to stop the bleeding. He said there was another man in there that just about passed out because of the amount of blood. So, Brian took us all to get ice cream to make Hannah's lip feel better and possibly to make him feel better as well. It wasn't his fault. Hannah is just very ditsy and clumsy unfortunately. She fell off the bed once we were back in the hotel too bumping her head pretty good.

Sunday was not any better, although no one got hurt. The girls were horrible during Mass which is not generally the case. Usually Hannah causes a problem or two, but nothing too bad, and Genna is fine unless Hannah pesters her. However, yesterday when we went to the German Mass, they just took turns the entire hour being loud and disruptive. Brian and I were very embarrassed by the time we left. In these old churches there is NO WHERE to go with loud kids, except for outside in the freezing cold. Well, when we got back to the room, Genna threw fit after fit until it was time to go get lunch. At this point I was tired of all the crying and dreading the drive home. Lunch was better, and the drive was OK until the end. They slept the first half almost, so I listened to Christmas music to cheer me up. The weather got really bad at the end and Genna became discontent asking for things that I could not give her. When we got home the winds were 4omph and had knocked over our patio furniture and almost blown away the kid's slide/swing. So I went out in the rain to drag everything in the garage because I didn't want anything broken or banging against the house at night. Then Hannah threw a huge fit about the crayon box. I am hoping their behavior was due to just being overly tired, but at the time was questioning my entire ability to raise them well.

Altogether, not the most fun weekend, but there were moments in between the chaos and the crying that were nice. My favorite moments were when Brian played with the girls and had them cracking up. I suppose that made the trip worth it in the end. The girls miss their daddy when he's gone, and it probably would not have been much better if we'd stayed home. Hannah was playing this morning with her dolls and I heard make one doll ask another doll, "Do you miss your daddy?" The other doll answered, "Yes, I do." How sad!

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