Thankful Advent

a prayer by Robert Louis Stevenson

Lord, behold our family here assembled.
We thank you for this place in which we dwell,
for the love that unites us,

 for the peace accorded to us this day,

for the hope with which we expect the morrow;
for the health, the work, the food 

and the bright skies
that make our lives delightful;
for our friends in all parts of the earth.
Amen.

Chris turns 30!

What a big birthday! We went out to eat with friends, had a babysitter, and even crammed thirty candles onto one cupcake. Thanks to our friend Laura for these pictures from church!

Atlanta Botanical Gardens

We recently visited the Atlanta Botanical Gardens in the evening to see its Holiday Lights display.  One of Daisy's friends, Piper, came with her parents, too!

Warm, leafy, and Christmas-y

Daisy and Piper

These white lamps changed colors in rhythm to the
Christmas music pumped into the gardens

The greenhouses had poinsettias and fantastic
orchids with millions of green laser lights

After dinner, it was dark!

Miniature trains chugged around this little city

Fun to be here with a good friend!

Magical

The lights were really well done. I enjoyed sipping a hot drink with our friends and finding carolers in hidden corners. I love it when we can do something fun while also letting Daisy be an energetic three year old and run around. She was exhausted by the end of the night! This is going to be a long Christmas season...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Through our preschool's social events and workdays, we've had the opportunity to meet some amazing families who don't necessarily have children in Daisy's class. One Swedish/German couple we met sends their 4 year old daughter to the German School on Saturdays, so we've bonded over that and now carpool together. Here's a video of Daisy and Smilla playing in the leaves after class last week:

We hadn't really found a time to hang out before Thanksgiving, so the holiday seemed like a perfect opportunity to get our busy husbands together. We were so thankful to celebrate a delicious meal with them in their beautiful home, watch the girls absorb themselves in play, and talk about Europe and the US. Here are some of Helena's pictures from the feast: 

It was a meaningful day for us, reflecting on how much we are grateful for. After four months in Atlanta, we've found a lot to appreciate!

Atlanta Fall Wins

It is November 17 and I am wearing long sleeves and sandals; in other words, the weather is perfect. Although summer is ridiculous here, fall just about makes up for it! It's by far the longest, most colorful, and most quintessential fall I've ever experienced.

Here is the beauty we see from our living room window:

Dirt paths

I've found them - dirt paths, which was the only way I knew how to verbalize the idea of an authentic outdoorsy walk. Someplace to go on a nice day. A walk away from road noise and mailboxes. Just minutes from our place! Hurray for inner city nature trails.

Ballet Observation Day

Daisy completed her first session of ballet, and the next one doesn't start until January! Parents were invited on the final day to observe and take pictures. Since Chris couldn't come, I documented extensively. Here are some of my favorites!

Classes are held in a mansion-turned-fine arts center. Isn't this an amazing room?

Daisy loves the other girls and following the teacher's moves. She's combining music and movement, talking about things like beat and sequence...to me, it's less dance education than body education.

There was a little rhyme to this about Cinderella tapping on her glass slippers.

This was part of building an ice cream sundae. Sprinkes.

Hard to capture these sorts of things. Cute, though :)

Beautiful.

One of the other girls brought flowers for everyone. Her parents own a restaurant, and we're going to visit next week when we don't have class!

I took some video, which I'll upload some other time!

A 3-Year-Old's Halloween

Princess Daisy helped design a jack o' lantern...

...allowed her mom to play with her hair...

...played in a decidedly un-princesslike way at the playground...

...walked through a neighborhood parade with her friends from church...

...and did her first trick or treating! She tried to fish inside the buckets for M&M's most of the time, but her chosen candy to eat was a lollypop.

We went to about a dozen doors before quitting - I had chorus, and besides, goodness gracious, it was already almost 7:00! Plus, I could already imagine how long that 1/4 filled bucket would last her at one candy per day.

Another girl we passed on the streets was dressed as Snow White. The two girls stopped and chatted for a bit, then hugged. Princess Sisterhood!

Happy Reformation Sunday!

We've been attending a Lutheran church near us - perhaps because of the large Midwest contingent and the frequent references to Germany! - and today's Reformation Day celebration was really fun. Someone brewed Martin Luther's purportedly favorite beer recipe, there was a bounce house for the kids, and Daisy keeps exclaiming about the "dark red scarves" that the pastors were wearing today (they've been green since we moved here). Chris and I kept thinking about our trip last year to Wittenberg, Germany, also on Reformation Sunday. In honor of the day, I dug up some pictures from last year that I never posted on my other blog:

The church he preached at - we went to an English service
here on Saturday night

Outside the 95 Theses doors - we attended
church here on Sunday morning, and got to
exit through these doors

Our seats on that crowded Sunday (way up high);
we sang "A Mighty Fortress" about 25 times, I think

Luther's hymnal

Power Issues

Fresh eyes see certain things better than accustomed eyes. For example, by the end of my time in Muelheim, I hardly noticed graffiti, whereas I constantly thought about it at the beginning. I'm wondering if that is how it will be with the cable lines in Atlanta:

These pictures are from a quiet street in a residential neighborhood. I don't quite understand what these 7 different cables do:

After looking online for information about the pros and cons of underground and overhead cables, I learned about different factors that people consider when installing power lines. It may be that Atlanta has too many tree roots to cut through and would have a harder time fixing things after a flood if the lines were underground. However, falling branches and debris surely damage a good share of overhead cables. Underground cables are more expensive, but they're aesthetically worth it to me.

So, the 7 cables run down the length of the street, and each house has a cable tapping into the "spine."

I wonder if there is a way to be wireless with all this. Perhaps physical wires criss-crossing the earth will someday seem primitive.

So, is it my fresh eyes syndrome? Do all neighborhoods look this way, or is it that Atlanta is especially wild with its overhead cables?

Flip Flop

Today at the playground, I struck up conversation with a German au pair. She just moved here three months ago, just like we did! It was really fun to talk with her.

When we lived in Europe, our mindset was T-R-A-V-E-L.  So many times, we heard from our German friends, "Wow, you've seen more of Germany than I have." We understood that it was a unique phase for us, and we took advantage of the opportunity to see what we could. Now that we're back in the US indefinitely, travel is not only not urgent, it's not as exciting. Nothing is particularly drawing me to Alabama or Arkansas, let's just say.

Contrast the "new me" with this au pair. In the same amount of time that we've been sittin' around in Atlanta, she has been to Florida, Savannah, Hilton Head, Charleston, Puerto Rico, New York City, Washington D.C....and even Alabama. Later this year, she's going to Nashville, Las Vegas, California, and Chicago. Her dream is to go snowboarding in Canada.

I smiled as I told her, "Wow, you've seen more than I have!"

"Ellijay is for Apple"

...or so I read on advertisements for the apple capital of Georgia. Two weekends a year, Ellijay hosts Georgia's Apple Festival, and several orchards offered "U-Pick" apples yesterday. It is a couple hours' drive due north of Atlanta, at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Driving down winding roads (or relaxing while Chris was driving), flanked by trees of fiery colors, seemed like a necessary rite of fall, and I was happy to be there.We joined the mayhem at Hillcrest Orchards, packed full of families wanting to experience the live bluegrass bands, activities for kids, pig races, and everything apple related.

Some hand-me-downs that suited the day

We got into the farm-life activities a bit, like sitting on a very tranquil bull and milking Buttercup, the cow.

By far, the highlight of the visit was filling up our bag of apples. Daisy loved it both in theory and in practice. And I'm pretty sure that, with her help, it actually won't be an issue polishing off the bag before they go bad.