Umbrellas

A true story about umbrellas before posts about our Christmas vacation to the States.

Once upon a time, Brian and Beth moved to Germany with five suitcases.  The night before leaving, Beth decided to take some things out of her carry-on suitcase and move them into the checked baggage.  One of these items was a black travel umbrella. 

Upon arrival in Germany, Brian and Beth unpacked all their suitcases and stored them in a closet.  It rained a lot in Germany, so Brian and Beth needed umbrellas.  Fortunately, there was one umbrella in the apartment where they were living.  Unfortunately, it was only one umbrella and not two.

Beth soon remembered that they had taken a black travel umbrella along in their suitcases.  Unfortunately, it was no where to be found.  Beth checked all the closets, all the suitcases, and even called her parents to see if it had been left in their living room where the rearranging had been done.  None of these places proved to be the place where the black travel umbrella was hidden.

Almost five months went by without sight of the black travel umbrella.  Brian and Beth bought a new big umbrella in Germany, but still missed having the black travel umbrella that fit easily into a backpack or purse.  Eddie Bauer was having a sale, so Beth decided to replace the black travel umbrella with a new black travel umbrella.  Unfortunately, the new black travel umbrella was sent to the United States and Brian and Beth would not see it until Christmas.

The time came for Brian and Beth to pack for their 2 1/2 week trip to the United States for Christmas.  The big suitcases were pulled back out of the closet and objects to be packed were placed on the bed for ease in packing.  Since utilizing all space was a must, Brian opened up every pocket in every suitcase to make sure that they were all filled to the brim. 

In the process of preparing the suitcases for packing, the black travel umbrella was found!  It had made it to Germany!  It was in the smallest pocket of the biggest suitcase!  Brian and Beth were very happy!

Now Brian and Beth have a family of 4 umbrellas - the green umbrella that was in Germany originally, the brown umbrella that was purchased to replace the lost black travel umbrella, the new black travel umbrella that was bought to replace the lost black travel umbrella, and the original black travel umbrella.  Despite having more umbrellas than really necessary, Brian and Beth are pleased to have 4 umbrellas because they can now provide umbrellas for their guests in the coming year.

The End

Deutschland

Just thought I'd quick update that we are back in Deutschland after being in the States for 2 1/2 weeks for the holidays.  We made it back safely with all our luggage and now are trying to get over jetlag and back into a normal schedule.  I will update the blog with some pictures of our time at home once I get through all the pictures.  Check back soon!

Home Sweet Michigan

The holiday parties have ended momentarily, so I finally have a bit of time to update here.  For those of you who haven't seen us in Michigan yet, we made it to Grand Rapids safely.  Our car rides and planes all worked out safely and easily, so we got into Michigan on Wednesday evening.  We hit up a few stores on the east side of the state before heading over to the west side. 

Thursday morning we had breakfast with Brian's friends while they were all still in town at Russ'.  The refills on the hot chocolate were amazing!  We spent the rest of the day running last-minute errands for a few Christmas gifts that we weren't able to buy online before coming.

Friday was a pretty quiet day because we didn't really have anything planned and many stores were closed because it was Christmas Eve.  We did make our first trip to Meijer and kind of just stood in awe at the great variety of food in the grocery store. 

Saturday we went to church in the morning, relaxed in the afternoon, and had the Pfruender family Christmas party in the evening.  We had fondue for dinner, opened presents, and then played a few games.  We also got to meet our nephew-dog, Widget!  He is much calmer than Pixel ever has been and did great while we were opening all our presents.  Brian and I got some much needed bike stuff along with lots of other stuff.

Sunday we went to church in the morning and had lunch with Brian's parents (chicken lasagna!) before heading to Holland for the Branderhorst Christmas party.  It was great to see all my cousins again since we had missed all the previous get-togethers this year.  We also got to meet my cousins son, Owen, for the first time. 

Monday we got new driver's licenses in the morning, I had lunch with a previous boss and co-worker, and we went to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader with my family.  In the evening, we had the Ponstein family Christmas party.  It was wonderful to see all our nieces and nephews again and see how they've grown!  It was lots of fun to see the excitement they had while opening their presents.

Today Brian helped my dad blow in insulation into the attic.  Brian claims that the house is so much warmer now, but I'm not quite feeling it yet.  :)  My mom and I went to the funeral of a friend's grandpa and then went to check out the new Kentwood Public Library.  I got some audiobooks and discovered how I can get them online so that I can continue to use the library when we go back to Germany.

We are here through the 8th of January, so if we don't already have plans to see you and you would like to see us, shoot us an e-mail and we'll see what we can do!  We are enjoying ourselves here and the time we get to spend with our families.

Michigan...here we come!

It is finally almost Christmas and that means we get to go back to Michigan for 2 1/2 weeks!  Tonight we packed since our plans with friends for dinner fell through.  They are Germans who work for MTU in Detroit.  They flew yesterday from Detroit here to visit family for the holidays and ended up spending a half day and overnight in the Paris airport...yuck!  They also don't have their luggage yet, so it was just going to be too much to go our for dinner with us.  There has been a lot of snowy weather across Europe the past few days that has delayed and canceled a lot of flights.  We're praying that everything gets cleared up for us before Wednesday morning!

Packing was quite interesting because we plan to take more back to Germany than we are taking to the States.  We have one suitcase packed and then put it inside another suitcase so that we have an extra for when we come back.  Brian has a very small carry-on that will probably go inside another one on the way back so that he can have a bigger carry-on. 

We each took our clothes out and put them on the bed so that we could figure out which suitcases we needed to take.  Here's the results:

Can you guess which side of the bed belongs to who?  :)

We are pretty much all packed now and ready to go.  Here's our itinerary:

1:30am Wed. (7:30pm Tues. MI) - drive from FN to Stuttgart and park our car to take a shuttle to the airport

6:30am Wed. (12:30am Wed. MI) - fly from Stuttgart to Amsterdam

8:10am Wed. (2:10am Wed. MI) - arrive in Amsterdam

2:20pm Wed. (8:20am Wed. MI) - fly from Amsterdam to Detroit

5:15pm Wed. - arrive in Detroit where my parents will pick us up to go out to dinner and then drive to Grand Rapids

We are definitely looking forward to being in the States and seeing our families again.  This is the longest that either of us has been away from them and it will be good to see them again (and see how big our nieces/nephews are and meet our new nephew-dog!).

Merry Christmas!