2008 January - My personal year 2007

It went by like high speed dubbing 32 x, and totally unplanned, which is extremely not normal for me…

First things first, set aside the 2006 Christmas and New Year's, 2007 started as usual with my birthday. It was the 41^st that year. Yes, even I get a tad bit older each and every year ;-)

It was kinda disappointing though. Why? Oh well, a real big thunder storm named Kyrill burst into and over Germany, made it nearly impossible for my friends to come over for birthday dinner. AND my b-i-l Harry spent his last days on earth. *sigh* He died 3 days before his 50^th and 2 days before my b-day.

It reminded me so much of my lately defuncted sister Barbara. His last days were like hers. Like her, he had cancer. Like her, he didn't make it to his 50^th birthday :( My friend Birgit and her husband, my other b-i-l Jo, almost didn't wanna show due to all this.

The school kids and all the government offices closed at lunchtime, because everybody was so scared of this dangerous storm!

Biggy and Jo came by late and left early, too. But we had an excellent dinner. I made Spagetthi, real spicy ones with pepper and garlic, with a wonderful tuna & crab sauce, corn, tomato & cucumber salads as side dishes.

It was a nice get-together despite the circumstances.

And I'm very thankful for that!

Next big event was Sabrina's ski trip from school. She left for a whole week! Her very first time on skis, my very first time of having to let go… She never was gone for such a long time (yes, I know, I gotta let go, she's 14 in the meantime) :(

But we used the time without her wisely: we worked on her room. My ex-workmates made a fixation for her bed heaven, and we finally put it on the wall for her, did some fixing up the wall above that heaven, and I lay out all her stuffed animals, so it looked like they'd expecting her, haha.

Sabrina had a wonderful time away from her parents though!

Then the usual occurrences like every year happened: Easter, German Fathers Day, German Mothers Day, birthdays of my friend Karin's daughter Carina (she turned 9), and my God child Vanessa (she turned 5). Somehow this year Carina's First Holy Communion mingled in there, too.

Next extraordinary event was our trip over to the Western City at Dasing. They played Winnetou II. A friend of Peter works there on the sound and light machines, and we got several free tickets, and were permitted days before the crowd, for their dress-rehearsal. It was so cool, they had Winnetou's sound, and you could almost touch the actors, that close they came. The horses, the Indians, the cowboys, one famous German actor starred in there with his daughter, and I actually collected their autographs (!). Winnetou himself was a young, very good lookin' stud, I tell ya! :) You just had to melt away, once night set in… *dreaming*

That evening we ended up at Burger King's with our friends, shortly before midnight.

Just two days later we went to the area in Germany, where the Castle New Swan Stone is located. But not for sightseeing, but to climb a mountain (yeah, right, I took the elevator up there…) and we attended a mountain sermon up there. It was great, first we ate something on the hill, then grabbed our blanket and sun covers, and sat amongst the cows (with clinging bells, haha) to listen to a very boring priest. We had a great view. It was wonderful and hot weather and a fantastic panorama! Well worth it.

What else? We were invited to a BBQ at a friend's house, listened to our daughter performing at the city hall with her school choir. She has a wonderful voice! This was her last concert for a while, because her school teacher got pregnant, and she won't lead the kids into concerts for a while (plus nobody else wants to do that much work… too sad I think, usually they held a Christmas concert each year, which was dropped off the schedule this winter).

3 people of my husband's bowling club wanted to participate at the local rafting cup on our famous ice channel. Mostly non-pro's, clubs or companies sent their people. Actually Peter's team was pretty good. They started out on Saturday, becoming 58^th in the 1^st run out of 81 participating teams. They have a weird system, so the good ones had to fight against the bad ones on Sunday afternoon. The bowling team had to beat the 7^th team in a head to head, and it was really close, actually the better team wasn't so good at all, but they couldn't both pass through those two big stones, the run was pretty tight (can I put it that way?).

And guess what? They wanna do it again next year, but just with a full male raft… Do I need say more?  ;-/

Birthdays, visits over at friends' followed the summer through, then the summer break off school began, and my daughter and I started it out with a Hula course. It was called Hawaii Feeling, and we attended two of those dance lessons this year. We're actually pretty good, and had to get pareos and Hawaiian necklesses and stuff. We filmed, photographed and recorded a lot.

Sabrina attended an American cook course with Karin's son Tim. And we still didn't get to taste her recipes, although it must have been a blast! Oh well, in the meantime she gave away a coupon for Christmas cookies, and we're impatiently expecting the baking to happen as well, haha.

We kinda liked it at the Western City in Dasing, and we wanted to entertain our daughter during her holidays, to let her experience new things. So Peter had the idea to make a trip to Pullman City in Egling by the sea. It's about a two hour drive from here, and we booked a hotel room for 2 nights, close by Pullman City.

In one of my other blogs you can see all the photos we've made their. My favourite memory will be the line dance lessons we got taught there, the yummy Mexican food, the costumes and mood, the American way of life everybody enjoyed there (mostly unknowingly, haha), and then the famous Indian: Hunting Wolf! He told us about his tribe, Indians in general, played his flute for us. He sounded kinda like Pierre Briece though (German's know the actor, he looks like Winnetou, in fact used to play him on tv, and he speaks German with a French accent). He led a trail of bisons through town in the main street parade! I just had to buy Hunting Wolf's CD, it has wonderful relaxing, spiritual music on it.

Sabrina now enjoyed the swimming pool at the hotel the most… And I had never experienced such squeaky beds anywhere else, they had sprung bed-lattice like straight out of the 50's or so :( They also had excellent food, valuable prices, and swarms of gnats!!! Guess who got stung the most? Sabrina, then me, then Peter. But his were the biggest ;-)

For summer vacation we wanted (again) something to suit our daughter. It had to be something interesting. First time camping was the decision. Now go find a country that suits our wallets, my illness (had to be moderate temperatures), and then fit into the summer break from school! We decided on Euro Camp. I wanted to go to Spain or France, but keep in mind that I don't have a drivers license, so Peter would to have the driving all by himself, and both countries would be too hot for me during August and half of September… Sabrina and Peter searched the web and came up with a brand new camp in the Netherlands. Right between Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Den Haag. 5 kilometres away from the North Sea Coast.

This Camp (in Duinrell) actually had a fun park included, and a big swimming pool with 10 water slides. They promised babysitters for teenager. Oh well, as we found out, not during the time we spent there, which was early September. In the camper, in the children's room, we had 3 beds, that's why we decided to take Tim with us as well. This cost just 35 Euros extra, and Sabrina had a friend to keep her busy. All her girlfriends didn't suit me, they would have been too stressful for my MS, and Tim is just 11, Sabrina was 13 then, so why not?

We had a great time in Holland, sightseeing, activities, swimming, biking, board games, movies, the wax museum, a cinema, the robot zoo, the ocean, and eating on a famous pancakes boat (all you can eat)… Those 9 days passed extremely fast. Please go have a look at our photos at one of my blogs, I've posted the best of 'em.

We returned on Sunday, and school started again on Tuesday. It was an extremely exhausting vacation, because all of us caught a cold there, but the weather was always fun, with almost no rain at all, and temperatures starting 68°F and higher. Not to bad for September in Europe, huh?

The three of us were still in vacation mode, even though it ment back to school for Sabrina, and back to work for Peter, so we scheduled a get-together with friends at our house for a Mexican dinner.

For those of you who don't know it, I used to be married to a Mexican American, lived in California for quite some time, and I was taught how to really cook Mexican by my daughter's Mexican Greatgrandmother! Now my friends say my cooking tastes even better than the food at the local Mexican restaurants (which I still can't believe), but everybody craves for my Mexican dishes, haha. That's why we invited 4 grownups and 2 children over to our place, and I made them 8 different dishes! Such as Quesadillas, Chimichangas (Enchiladas), Burritos, Tacos, tomato rice, Guacamole, corn salad, and Chili (I'm still confused about the correct spelling, but oh well… it sure tastes good though, no matter which spelling). Afterwards everybody was stuffed like Chili Rajenos, hahaha. Yummy, but a whole lot of work!

I was fortunate enough of being able to see my favourite American female priest LIVE in GERMANY this year! All I had to do is find someone to accompany me all the way up to Essen, figure out how to get there, and book me a hotel room. I was so sad that this didn't work 2 years ago, when JOYCE MEYER visited Karlsruhe, that I made it happen this year, yeah! My American friend Melanie wanted to see her too. We drove up all the way there, it was a real adventure to even find our way up there, lotsa stress, but well worth the long trip! Please be so kind (if you're interested) to scroll through my old blogs, because I wrote a long, detailed one about it, with a couple of photos.

Let's just say: I would do it again in a heartbeat. And I sure hope that she'll come again over soon.

My daughter turned 14 this year, and her gifts were pretty expensive. At first we took her on a surprise tour to Munich. There we explored the airport, a couple of airplanes, had fun in a soundproof booth, watched movies about work at an airport, and then we wanted to take her out to a fancy restaurant. But we couldn't find one. We also wanted to celebrate our 10^th year (or call it 25^th year) anniversary. Oh well, we ended up at the Olympic Park Restaurant, and she still didn't know about our surprise…

It was a ticket for the Rod Stewart concert! It was fantastic I tell you!!! She said it wasn't her taste, but good, for an old man kinda…

For her birthday we also treated her to a self defense course with a girlfriend of hers. This kinda martial art is called Ving Tsun. The lady used to be a Japanese nun, and she invented this technique out of the natural movement, so you don't need lots of strength or power to defend yourself, but you need to know the right moves. Hope it'll be of help for both girls one day.

And the most surprising gift she got was this ticket for the fancy 'Crime for dinner' at a local 4 or even 5 star hotel, with fancy waiters, and such. A four course menue, and while you sit and eat, you're in the middle of a theatre play you can even get involved. You can catch the murderer, you can dress up in a costume and play, too, or just sit back, relax, and watch it. Sometimes they make you sing or decline something, it's real funny, and real expensive… ;-)

We never took her there, and we ourselves just went there on special occasions in the first place. This time it would be at year's end. Sabrina was really delighted about it!

So we still haven't done our 10-year-anniversary-dinner thing… but on our anniversary day I had tickets for a musical medley at the city hall, called 'Over the rainbow' and my girlfriends Karin, Birgit, and Sylvia were supposed to accompany me over there, when we found out that Sylvia had serious health problems, and she was supposed to stay at a hospital for quite a while… That's why my other friend Melanie filled in for her.

We had a great time there, collecting some more autographs afterwards, and going to a Mexican restaurant together, Melanie's boyfriend Sven accompanying us.

The fall season of this year ended as busy as it started: a theatre play with friends, the 43^rd b-day of my sick friend Sylvia, which us girls celebrated at a Chinese restaurant, a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner over at Sven and Melanie's house, with lotsa friends and family, Melanie's famous X-Mas event at a club (with a lingerie show, a Gospel concert of hers, and an alternative rockband, where she performed in also), then our 'Crime for dinner' at the Steigenberger 3 Mohren Hotel, Christmas, the Original USA Gospel Singers (again with friends accompanying us), and Silvester (New Year's Eve).

Some of those events you will find in my photos, some I made slideshows of, and some of them are in my pictures. It is really worth it taking the time to scroll and read through all of this, believe me. At least for me it is, because it is MY LIFE.

I did this because some of you inspired me to do that. Who? Misty with her personal blog about her unbelievable year, Andy with his annual Christmas letter via e-mail, and Karol's Christmas letter via postal services! I don't know whom I wanna share my year with, but at least with my MySpace friends & family ;-)

Sadly enough my friend Karin's mother died on January 2^nd 2008, and we attended her funeral on the 8^th this week. The lady got 83 years old, and she was very sick. It was such a big loss for my friend and her family. Very, very sad. We shed lotsa tears.

Guess what Sabrina's and my Christmas gift was from Peter? Well he got laid off work, but we knew that like 2 years ago already, so he was prepared, got compensated very well, and he took time off now for a whole month. Now he made us go on a ski trip to Austria from the 1^st till the 5^th this January 2008!!! How very generous is that? He knew I wouldn't be able to afford luxury like that. He also knew I can't ski. I'm the most un-sportive person in the world :( But his intent was actually to make our daughter ski some more, get some more experience, and me get into wellness mode with relaxation, swimming, massage and alike =]

For those I didn't tell about it in advance I've posted photos of it. And let me just wrap it up by saying how relaxing those Ajurveda and accupunt massages really were. I swear I have anti aged, depilated, pedicured, peeled, creamed this body so much on this trip, that there is scarcely an inch left untreated at all, haha ;-) I am actually relaxed as much as possible…and ready for new challenges to come…

As there will be: no. 1) me becoming a call center agent for my friend's nailstudio, and no. 2) teaching English to preschoolers and day care kids!

Enough said. I hope I didn't bore you guys too much, or keep you from anything more important. Wrapping this all up I just want to thank you all for becoming my friends here on MySpace, and I hope we will share much much more exciting stuff from both sides in the year 2008.

I am especially grateful for my daughter's family who's keeping in touch with us here, and for my very dear friend Misty, who always has new spiritual insights for me, and who I'm very fond of, whom I got very attached to. Misty, you're my long lost twin sister, you're of big value for me, thank you so much for being my friend!

I love you all friends! Have all a wonderful, and spirited year 2008.