Painting during "Quiet Time" at Papa and Nana's House

No Cavities!

An "Elf on the Shelf" straight from the North Pole

The girls learning all about our new visitor who will be staying at Papa and Nana's until Christmas!  

Mario the Elf!!

FUN at Disney on Ice & Visiting with Santa:)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

After 22 hours...we made it to IOWA:)!!

Here we come USA!

Frankfurt Airport

The Countdown...

The countdown is on…only TWO days until we are hugging Papa Donavon, Nana Becky and Aunt TC at the DSM Airport!!

Thankfully, Matt made it safely back home from Ukraine this morning.  He left Hannover on Wednesday and headed to the Ukraine to meet with various customers with the goal of learning more about the farming operations in Eastern Europe.  Since arriving home, Matt has shared with me some fascinating and yet very troubling information re: his stay in this very impoverished area of the world.  Many of the wages consist of solely the produce from the farms an employee works on. Thus many people were selling sugar by the side of the road.  The farmers shared many stories re: the dissolution from the Soviet Union just 20-years ago and how the political liberalization impacted their farming operations.

Once Matt got settled back in we celebrated his birthday!!  The girls were excited to give him their gifts and have him try the heart-shaped strawberry cake we baked him yesterday.  But honestly, I think his best birthday gift was the Cyclones HUGE victory last night!!  And to Matt’s delight, the game was being shown here via Skye television at 11AM.  Even though he knew the outcome of the game, the girls and I could hear him yelling and cheering all the way from the third floor!! It was so much fun being able to talk and email with friends at our time around 10:30AM because they were still up celebrating the huge victory in the USA at 3:30AM Saturday morning!

The girls wanted to throw Matt a "Spiderman" party:)!

And now for packing for the USA!!!!!  I have the clothes we want to take organized and set out, but now for the process of elimination.  Since I will be traveling with the girls alone over to the USA, I am only taking two carry-ons, one large backpack and one large piece of luggage.  Thus, I cannot take all that I would like to take but only the items we really “need.”  And, I must remember, what we do not have with us we can always buy in “land of the familiar.”  Then, when Matt comes over he will bring with him two empty suitcases for all of our Christmas gifts:)!! 

The guest room is the "packing headquarters!"

So, I may not Blog again until I am on American soil.  We leave Tuesday morning at 8AM for the Frankfurt Airport.   Our flight leaves at Noon from Frankfurt and we will arrive in Des Moines at 6:30PM.  So, it looks as though our entire travel time is only 6 ½ hours, but really it will be a total of 13 ½ hours!  If I can just get us through Customs (in Chicago) and get on our connecting flight we will be on the home stretch…

Please pray for safe travels for us!  We will see so many of you very soon! 

And the winner is..........

And the winner of “Tractor of the Year” is…the John Deere 7280R!!  As many of you know, Matt is currently attending Agritechnica in Hannover, Germany.  On Monday, Matt shared with me that it had been officially announced that the John Deere 7280R had captured the “Tractor of the Year” 2012 award! 

A few details as to why this is such a huge victory and why I am so proud of my husband:):

*When we moved to Cedar Falls in September of 2007, it was for Matt to become a part of the PLMT 7R (Product Line Management Team).  The team consisted of seven people with many different professional skill-sets (Engineering, Quality, Supply Management, Marketing, Product Validation and Verification, Manufacturing and Process Pro); Matt was hired as the Product Marketing Manager.  Since that time period, Matt has been driving specific features for this tractor, based on his personal interviews and data collection from large-scale costumers in Europe and North America.  There were a lot of “bumps” along the way, but an award of this magnitude offers some feelings of reward to those who have worked so hard.

*Since moving to Germany, Matt is still very closely tied to the 7280R.  Though now he is involved with marketing all Large Tractors in Region II, he is still very partial to “his” 7R.

*An excerpt from http://www.thecombineforum.com “During the award ceremony on the first official day of the Agritechnica the John Deere as the overall winner in the end. Massey Ferguson in the form of the 7624 Dyna-VT tractor the best designed, and thus wins Golden Tractor for Design award. In the category Best Of Specialized (narrow, compact), the victory went to the Antonio Carraro TRH 9800.  This prestigious prize is awarded by an expert jury of editors from magazines from 21 European countries, including the "Trekker" from the Netherlands.  For the Tractor of the Year 2012 title was nominated the following seven tractors: Case IH Puma 230 CVX, Deutz Fahr TTV 430, 724 Vario SCR Fend, John Deere 7280R, Massey Ferguson 7624 Dyna-VT, T8.390 New Holland, Valtra T213 Versu.

* http://www.agritechnica.com/home-en.html

What is Agritechnica (I have asked this a lot as of recently:)??  It includes over 2,500 exhibitors, including some 1,270 from abroad.  Agritechnica has been described as the “top international event for the agri-machinery sector, where individual companies are proud to associate themselves with their countries’ technologies and export activities, and enjoy the unique sense of prestige that comes with exhibiting under their nation's flag."  A total of 48 different countries participated in Agritechnica this year.

Ladies Day:)

Elle "helping" Britta look at the camera

 After months of Elle asking to observe Britta participating in her German Musikgarten class, I finally said, “OK” even though it was Elle’s Mittwoch to bring bread and butter to school for “healthy breakfast” (meaning we still had to stop at the school, run in the bread & butter before going to music).  It was A LOT of fun having Elle at class with us, especially since it was Britta’s last class this semester.  And, Britta LOVED that Elle was there with us.  And, freakily on Elle’s ONLY day of attendance we sang the first and ONLY song ever in English, “My Bonnie lies over the ocean, 
My Bonnie lies over the sea, 
My Bonnie lies over the ocean, 
Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me
. 
REFRAIN:
 Bring back, bring back
, oh Bring back my Bonnie to me, to me
, Bring back, bring back, oh 
Bring back my Bonnie to me.”  THUS, when we started to sing this song Elle looked at me with huge eyes and said, “I thought you said this was a GERMAN music class Mom?!!???”  I am going to see if Elle can join in on a couple of classes next semester, due to us all having such a fun time together singing and dancing to the music. 

After music class, we made a stop at Globus (a.k.a. my “American” Target), Britta and my usual shopping spot after music class.  Thus, Elle and Britta both “had” to ride the car after we were done with our shopping.

Then tonight, a friend of ours knew that Matt was gone and invited the girls and I over for pizza.  We now know of a great German pizza place close to our home!

Overall, it was a very, very fun “Ladies Day” as Elle calls days like this:).

Weekend Recap: A Visit to the Gutshof Kappeler

This weekend, two of my most favorite fellow John Deere Expat Wives/Mothers and I packed up our kiddos and headed to Gutshof Kappeler (“Kappeler Estate” or better understood as the “Kappeler Farm”).  We decided to have a weekend get-away with the children since our husbands were all attending AGRITECHNICA in Hanover, Germany; AGRITECHNICA is the world’s largest exhibition for agricultural machinery and equipment (including 24 exhibition halls, over 320,000 m² exhibition floor space and more than 2,600 exhibitors). 

My friend Kari organized the trip and invited Nicole and I to come along! Initially, I found it a tad amusing that we were going to be visiting and staying the weekend on a farm, considering I had grown up surrounded by farms & agriculture and with my in-laws owning a large farming operation (and us a lot of piggies:), but I knew that visiting farms in Western Europe was very popular and a common European family holiday (a.k.a. vacation).  I also knew that my girls would have the time of their lives being able to play with the other children and interact with various farm animals all weekend long…and I was 100% right.  Elle even got to ride a horse all by herself for the first time (pictures below)!!

And, I found that staying on the Kappeler Farm was different than staying on Uncle Ryan’s Farm:).  The Kappeler farmhouse was built in 1885 and situated in the valley of the Upper Danube River, between the Black Forest, the Schwabian Alps and Lake Constance.  The landscape surrounding the farm was very beautiful, peaceful and relaxing, with limestone cliffs and colorful forest slopes (though it was not relaxing to drive through the beautiful cliffs to get to the farm:).  All of the kiddos were able to participate in the daily activities on a farm.  We stayed in a holiday apartment located in a restored barn, dating back to between the 11th and 13th centuries and still featured the original oak beam from this time. 

Thus, as you will see in the pictures below everyone had a lovely weekend.  So, now to UNPACK…and PACK for the USA!!!!!!  I cannot believe that NEXT WEEK we will be flying back to the USA!!  And once again, be surrounded by a lot of farms:)-LOL!!

The kiddos getting settled in...

The kiddos having fun playing "musical chairs!!"  

Celebrating our friend Ellie's 8th Birthday!

The girls and I Saturday morning...Elle was not interested in taking a picture with Mommy and Britta, but rather, trying to figure out where all the animals were:)!!

Britta saying, "Look Mommy...horsie, horsie!!"

The girls feeding the rabbits

Elle getting some help from Frau Kappeler to feed the horse

Elle LOVED, LOVED brushing the horse

The kids receiving instruction on how to properly/carefully ride the horses.

Since Britta was too young to ride the horses, she cuddled with one of the farm cats...so sweet:)

This is probably one of my favorite pictures ever...Elle was so excited and was laughing SO HARD when the horse started to trot...the look on her face makes me so happy every time I look at it...it was so much fun!

Warming up with some hot cocoa with friends...

Britta running down the trail...

The landscape surrounding the farm

Britta jogging back to the farm with Ellie

The girls throwing some rocks into the river...

All six kiddos!

The girls saying "good-bye" to the rabbits this morning...Elle said, "we will be back rabbits!"