Meeting Isa/ Painting the Wohnzimmer/ May Day

Our new niece  Isabella Marie Siqueira Dawson was born on the the 23rd (she has the same birthday as her uncle Andrew!). We were sad we couldn’t be there in person like we were when Celo and Abbie were born, but we did get to see her two days later via Google Chat. Morgan was in China, I was in Germany, Vironica and Isa were still in the hospital (getting ready to be discharged), and Marcel was getting Celo ready at the house to go to pre-school for a little while – isn’t technology amazing? We can’t wait to see her in person at the end of June!

Morgan got back from China on Sunday and had a few days off to relax at home… so what do we do Monday? – Paint the living room! We had to go buy the paint and a few other things, so we didn’t get started until 2:30 and several times I wanted to call it quits and finish the next day but, Morgan wanted to press on so we finished the entire room around 9:30 that night. It was a bright blue and now it is Seidiges Beige. One of our walls is slanted because of how the roof-line comes down in the front of our building so you can’t really hang paintings on it (without rigging something up special) sooo I’m thinking about painting some stripes on it (like the picture below)- just subtle stripes, using a color that is just a shade or two lighter/darker than the one already on the wall. For now we’re going to leave it… but it may end up with some stripes in the future!  In addition to painting, we worked on getting the paint off the glass in the pocket doors. We couldn’t scrape it off because of the etching on the window, but thankfully paint thinner did the trick and now they look a lot better.

May 1st is called May Day here in Germany and is a holiday sooo we went on a bike ride with a few other couples to Knollmeyer (a bier garden that also has a high ropes course, putt-putt, etc). Morgan described this trip to me (before hand) as a short ride to a bier garden in Osnabrück (I assumed he meant in the city limits, turned out it was about 6km away!- so technically it is within Osnabrück, but within the county not the city).  Needless to say I thought I was going to die. For someone who hadn’t ridden a bike in about 4 years, a 9 mile bike ride is pretty tough.. especially when you are with a bunch of Germans (who have been riding bikes long distances regularly since they were 3) and your husband who is a mountain biker! When we did get to our destination we were surprised how many young people were there.. there were probably 500 16-20 year olds hanging out in the lawn in front of the bier garden drinking. They all had wagons they had pulled on their walks there full of beer and liquor. It looked just like a tailgate that had gotten really sloppy (haha). Other than one guy who was being taken away in an ambulance, it seemed like they were all having a good time. We had some drinks and brats with french fries and then some ice cream before starting the ride home.  The ropes course and putt-putt looked like a lot of fun, so hopefully we can take some of our visitors there later this year!