der Truthahn - a Turkey

April and I with THANKSGIVIN'!

Mathis grew up quickly. He also enjoys Thanksgiving.

April and I rocked Thanksgiving this year. Not only did we successfully explore Rheda-Wiedenbrück in the snow with a large dog and a baby, AND find all the right ingredients for American style food including the little fried onions for green bean casserole, but we ALSO cooked a turkey! A bigger-than-Mathis turkey! And the first for us both! The Germans were not informed enough about how you don't eat the entire day before Thanksgiving (I blame myself) and were completely shocked by the amount of food on the table. I think today, one week from when we celebrated last Saturday, all of the leftovers are finally gone. My favorite part of the meal was watching Bernd and Marko attack the turkey with scissors. Yes. It was awesome.

Operation Turkey Carving

Before April left on Sunday, we were able to squeeze in a trip to Paderborn with Sandra and Julia to see the new Harry Potter in English. I had already seen it once in German and am still proud of how much I understood. It is finally past the point that I can understand not only from the context and the body language, but actually the language. How cool! Anyways, a few notes about going to see movies in Germany.

1. Their popcorn is sweet and concessions cost way less than in the States.
2. You have assigned seats, with rows and seat numbers and such.
3. There are so many television type commercials before the standard movie commercials.
4. One of these commercials could be for ice cream, which leads to all of the lights being turned on and movie theater employees walking up the aisles selling that particular brand of ice cream. like a baseball game.
5. Sometimes, in the middle of movies all of the lights come on and you take an intermission. The German’s really like turning all of the lights on suddenly in theaters. 
6. Sometimes, you get to go eat at Mexican restaurants before the movie! (not really a standard, but it made me super happy so I thought I’d add it.)

In other news, countdown until my family gets here: 15 days!