Hodge Podge Life

Have you ever been around a person who is trying to be quiet, so they drag out every noise and instead of being quiet, they actually are super loud? Carson is that person when he's getting ready in the morning. Even opening a granola bar wrapper is frustratingly loud, because it's prolonged by trying to do it quietly, so in hopes that we'd curb some of that, I've started setting his outfits for the next day out in the living room. A bonus for him is that he doesn't have to poke around his shelves in the morning, trying to check and see if he grabbed the gray sweatpants or gray dress pants, and a bonus for me is that I'm not wildly annoyed. It's benefitting both of us, and if I had somewhere to go every day that involved picking out an outfit, I might start setting outfits out as well. As it is, I have a sort of outfit uniform - shirt, scarf, sweatshirt/ sweater, black pants/ jeans... and I brought far less clothing than Carson did, so my choices are a lot simpler. If I'm on my game, I pack a snack for Carson too. 

There's a place nearby that sells pizzas for 4 euro, so Carson will sometimes pick one up on his way home. The funny thing to me is that they don't automatically slice them for you. I think you have to ask for the pizza to be sliced, and we never remember to ask, so Carson's stuck in the kitchen trying to get the very dull knife here to slice through. 

Since the time change happened on October 30, we've been especially bad about paying attention to the time - is it 6pm or midnight? We don't know! The sun has been rising close to 8 in the morning and it sets at around 4:30 in the afternoon. It gets pretty chilly once the sun has set, so we often come home just after dark and warm up, eat dinner, watch a show or two, and I paint or organize something while we watch or sometimes we'll both read. We need to get better at going to bed on time though because it's been pretty late! We've both been under the weather lately too and that's not helping - I've accidentally fallen asleep for three hours mid-afternoon and am wide eyed and awake until the wee hours.

I thought this was funny - thanks, Carson.

I've been listening to podcasts or sermons and walking around the lake during the day here. It's nice to get out and walk by myself!

This was a night where I was up very late and got up very early. The night of the election, I was up refreshing the results, dozing off, and then checking again. I was so surprised to find out in the morning that Donald Trump was the President-Elect. I think the next four year will be really interesting, and the months leading up to the inauguration will be rather tumultuous. I'm hopeful though that once the news blows over a little bit, we can look toward the future with a little less doom and gloom on our minds. We don't know what kind of president he'll be just yet, although I guess suspicions are pretty strong. I know a lot of people are very hurt and scared by this news, and perhaps they will have a reason to fear. I hope fears are unfounded though, and I think it's probably better to wait and see before we assume the worst and start rioting in the streets for no reason. Maybe he'll surprise us all and be the best president ever? It could happen.

Moving along, someone recently asked if we had a freezer and I said yes, but I thought it would be funny to show you the size of that freezer. For size comparison, that's my hand in front of it. If I were to ball up my fist, I would probably touch all four sides of it. Soooo we aren't exactly stockpiling frozen veggies here (there were popsicles in the freezer when I took this and the two of them filled it over halfway).

Trees are getting more bare, but I'm loving the fall colors while they stick around!

There are lots of places around here that sell waffles so we tried one at the weekly market recently. We wanted a regular waffle with cinnamon sugar, but Carson thought Spelt flour was probably better and fancier, so he ordered that (it's healthier but that doesn't really make for a great sweet treat) and they heard powdered sugar instead so we didn't really get what we wanted but for 1.20, it was still pretty good!

We went to the top floor of a local department store the other day and discovered that it was the children's section. Not only did they have children's clothes, but there was a large toy and game section. We enjoyed browsing the games and spotting familiar ones in a different language. The Game of Life has always been a favorite of mine. We did notice that these games, which aren't too pricey in the States, were quite expensive here. We were looking for a puzzle because we thought that would be an inexpensive thing to do together, but I don't think we looked in the correct spot!

A care package from Mom! I haven't been able to find any of these things here, plus she sent our mail which was pretty great too! I check the mail excitedly every day and there's rarely even junk mail, so it's so nice to get something fun! Carson sent me a letter from his office one day last week because he wanted me to find something in there for me - haha! If you'd like to send a postcard or something, let me know and I'll give you our address!