Happy Birthday Heather!

Yesterday was my birthday. Julia made a lovely marble cake with chocolate icing and little chocolate hearts. We had that with the kids midday.

Around 5:30, Gabrielle and Stuart came over to watch the kids for us, at 5:58, we all took a shot of feigling, and at 6pm our limo arrived.

Yep, our limo. See, at Chris's birthday, it was when we'd all ordered a drink with dinner that someone asked "Who is the driver tonight?" And noone wanted to volunteer. At that moment I said "For my birthday, we'll get a limo and it won't matter!" So that's what we did.

It was an 8 passenger limo, we started out with Chris, Julia, Dirk and I. On the way in to Duesseldorf we picked up Bethany and Karyn, then proceeded to the city to get dinner and drinks. (We did allow Brady and Keira to go in and see it before we left.)

We had wanted to go to Outback Steakhouse, but as the place was available for lease... we were unable to go there. We found another steakhouse in the Altstadt, which was delicious! It is called Maredo.

After a lovely meal, we attempted to meet up with Susi and some others from school. At this point, our directional and... conversational skills were being tried (thanks to the champagne, pina coladas and whatever Susi was drinking!)

She was at a bar called Siam. When we asked for directions, she said "Next to Mcloughlin's, and near anaconda" When asking my group where Anaconda was, Dirk replied with a hearty "In my pants!" followed by roaring laughter.

So our group of 6 meandered through the altstadt, and finally found Siam. (But not Susi) So another call was in order, and Susi had changed venue to Anaconda. We decided that Anaconda was too smoky, so we went to Mcloughlins for a couple of drinks, and dancing. OH! On the way to Mcloughlins, we saw Francois (A french teacher from our school) and met his friend Igor (An English teacher in the French school) and they joined our bunch.

After a couple shots, (Slippery nipples in the irish bar are made with baileys and ouzo- UCK!) and a couple ciders for Julia, we decided it was time to move venue again. Just as we chose to leave, Susi showed up with Rory! (Her friend from Ireland) We walked down the street to "Chillout" which was labeled "An american bar"... but in fact was a hookah bar. We were mesmerized by the whole hookah ritual, and chose not to take part. We each had one more dirnk before meeting the limo again at 12:15.

We dropped Bethany and Karyn off again, and got to Wegberg around 1:30am. After a little conversation with Stuart and Gabrielle, off we went to bed. It was a very fun, relaxing time with friends that made for a great birthday!

Found a pediatrician!

Bad news.. Keira has an ear infection and has been up the past few nights with a terrible cough and fever of about 102. She's not been eating, and we were quite worried last night.

Brady has had a bad couple of days too. A little boy at his kindergarten bit Brady's finger on Friday, and it got infected over the weekend. Brady also managed to stab his lip straight through with a fork on Friday at dinner, but other than hurting, it's healing fine.

On that note, we had to find a Dr. to deal with our little kids. There is one.. yes ONE English speaking pediatrician in this town. We took our chances, and wow I'm so glad we did.

He is young, nice, gentle with the kids and explains everything (IN ENGLISH) to them and to us. Before now, we've been used to 30-45 minute waiting time in our U.S. pediatricians offices. Well, this waiting room was more like a playground, with a slide and and wooden stationary car for the kids to "drive"... but we were only there for 5 minutes! The nurse took us to our room, took some basic info, and the Dr. was right behind her. All in all the visit took about 20 minutes, in which he cleaned out Brady's wound, and bandaged him. Then he diagnosed Keira and wrote prescribtions for antibiotics for both.

Chris and I walked out of there (After NOT having to pay a DIME!) absolutely pleased with the socialist medical care system. To state it bluntly, this is the best care our kids have ever recieved at a pediatricians office.

Disneyland Paris

This week, my school had Fall break. For a couple of days at the beginning of the week, We went to Disneyland in Paris. We stayed at the Newport Bay Beach Club (Similar to the yacht club in Florida)

The castle is lovely at the Magic Kingdom, It's pink like the castle in California, but Tall like the castle in Florida. You can even tour it and see the story of sleeping beauty!

They had the park all decked out for Halloween, and made a big show with the Villains from all the stories. We got a couple pictures with "pumpkin people" that I'll post later.

Space Mountain, Mission 2 is much better than space mountain in Florida! It actually is a blast coaster, and goes upside down 3 times!

One notable difference between the two resorts is that in Florida, you don't need heavy coats or scarves, but in Paris in October... you do!

We spent Sunday evening at Magic Kingdom, Monday at Hollywood Studios, and Tuesday at Magic Kingdom. It's abuot 4.5 hours away, so we even thought about getting an annual pass! We didn't this time, but we're still considering it.

Here are a few pictures from the trip.