WOW! Almost a MONTH gone by!?!?

Wow, can't believe I let our blog get almost a month behind! Where did the time go?
Guess I'll give a bit of a recap of the previous weeks.

The first couple weeks in May were basically the typical routine with Gerhard working hard having a full appointment calendar. I kept up with my Nordic walking to pick up the post for him in Weil der Stadt and helped out in the office some. On May 6th I photographed the wedding of friends at church and from the reception photos where I had each family write a greeting on photo safe paper I made a 5x7 album for their wedding gift.

Mom arrived on May 16th. Here's a shot of mom with Tyler. Tyler is pointing out the airplanes (airbames). She stayed at Christie & Roland's house.


On the 19th, we went to the Wild Animal Park not far from where we live. The admission is free. There are boxes of food sold from machines around the park. The animals just gobble it up.
Here's the gang being surround by hungry goats...I'm behind the camera, not one of the goats.



Mom held out her hand full of animal treats expecting this buffalo to eat like the goats & deer, but instead, his tounge reached out for the treats leaving a thick pile of slime all over her hand. Totally gross!

ONE...TWO...THREE...SWING!

A favorite past time of Tyler. That's Gerhard on the left & Roland on the right for those of you who can't distinguish between the two.

After the wild park, we stopped by a Beer Garden down the road for a yummy lunch. (not just beer is served at a beer garden, for you Southern Baptist reading) :-)

On another day mom & I went to get our hair done. I just had a trim, but mom got a new style and highlights. Turned out very nice.
We also went to see Pirates III at a theater that shows movies in their original language. Gerhard went along with us even though he's not a big fan of the Pirate movies. The "fish people" are just too far over the edge towards SiFi for his liking. At one point with the gross scene with Davy Jones and the English man Gerhard said "I'm outta here!" I made him stay though so he closed his eyes and dozed off. For me the movie was great and I hope they make a #4!

The highlight of mom's visit was naturally Tyler's 2nd birthday on May 27th.
Here he is opening the Treasure Box I made him. It was filled with all sorts of his favorite things. Chapstick, lotion, a brush, sunglasses, gummy bears, M&M's, coins and several other things. Mom's new hair cut is a bit squished under the Elmo hat...hee hee. Next to mom is Gerhard and then his mom.





One of the first things out of the treasure box was the lotion which he squirted a large blob onto his hands that had to be passed around the table which is what Gerhard is doing in this shot, rubbing in extra lotion. Meanwhile, Tyler discovered the sunglasses!

June 1st brought Gerhard & Roland's 36th birthday as well as mom's return to Charlotte. We had breakfast at the McDonald's airport. I sent mom home with a CD photo book of several photos I took during her visit.

It's made with used CD's like the ones AOL sends out. Drill two holes for the book rings. Cut out paper to fit the cd's add photos and a few embellishments and a ribbon to tie it closed. Tyler says "See Ya!" when he says bye, so that's on the back. There are 26 photos in the little album, one per disc side.

For Gerhard's birthday, we went to a nice restaurant in our Coupon Book (allowing one meal for free). It was very yummy! Afterwards, we went to Breuninger Land (a mall near the restaurant) to spend his b.day money on a Wii game and to walk our lunch off before stopping by another yummy place located in the mall for a coffee and chocolate cream cake. For his birthday, he got a game called Take It Easy! and three Wii games, Pinball, Excite Truck & Eledees (called Elebits in the US). Eledees is so far my favorite Wii game though it is very addicting. I've made it to level 25, Gerhard is somewhere under level 10 due to me not giving him a chance. It is also fun for mulitplayers up to four.

On the 2nd I had to photograph another wedding at church. This one was much more difficult since the service was much longer & to top it off, a storm came up just as the reception started outside, so a make shift reception was quickly set up inside. I've still got to finish editing the almost 400 photos I took. Guess you could say that's the negative of digital as well as the positive. Digital allows for so many more photos to be taken affordably than with film, but the work afterwards of editing and sorting takes a lot longer than just hoping for the best when the film is developed.

I've also got to upload the photos I took while mom was here onto Kodak Gallery, but for some reason my multi upload program is not working - anyone have any tips out there.

I think I'm in the mood for tacos & burritos for lunch today and I just happent to have the fixens for them! It's 11:30am here, so I'm starting to get hungry. Gerhard comes home every day for lunch at 1pm, though today he's taking the afternoon off, so he has to get finished up before lunch, so it may be a bit later. Hopefully not much since I'm hungry!

Hope you all have a fun weekend!