Family Update

Well I have been letting Mike take the reigns with the blog lately. We both love doing it, but he has really enjoyed blogging about the World Cup. Last night was a big disappointment as we watched the Dutch lose to Portugal. The ref was all over the place and set a record for yellow cards in a World Cup match. Mike was arguing with the TV as if it was his job.

Though this means an end to our neighbors blowing their airhorns, we are sad to see it ending for the Dutch. On the news today they showed many despondent Dutch business owners taking down their orange signs, and even a baker throwing away pan after pan of orange-iced cakes. Couldn't they just put them on sale? It is hard for me to believe that nobody could bring themselves to enjoy a nice orange-iced cake, only if through their tears of disappointment.

The teams we feel any conection to, however remote, are quickly disappearing. The US was almost immediately eliminated, now the Dutch are gone. Australia just lost moments ago to Italy. We are now following the English team. They play Portugal next, and we are very eager to see Portugal eliminated. Fortunately for Mike, Wimbledon is now on-- so there is no lag time in sports enjoyment.

That is about it on this front. We are so glad to be back after such a restful trip. It was one of those trips where you don't realize how exhausted you have been until you rest for three days. We had a lovely time and James' repertoire really expanded over the week. You can see him making connections more than he used to, he was able to climb a little more on the low furniture of the rental house (actually a relief that we don't have to deal with that here yet), and he really started sitting down to enjoy books. For months books have just been something to toss aside if in his way. Now he is really having a good time turning pages and laughing at the books that "do" things. It is nice to see him having fun.

Our toy box is fast becoming a repository of found objects. His favorite thing these days is a small, "purse size" pack of tissues. If he sees one across the room he stops in his tracks. Since we've all had colds over the last month-- there have been a lot of these around. His other top choices are the highlighters I use for work, plastic "discount cards" from Mike's wallet, eye glass cases, cd cases, and empty egg cartons. Not exactly sure what this says about our baby or our parenting, but we seem to be keeping it under control for now.

Here are a few more from the Sauerland:
Mike with Keska on a hike in a national forest
Family portrait
The Schloss in Bad Arolsen
One sweet guy