Oh, yeah...

I went to the dermatologist today, and all of my moles look fine. So no skin cancer. Yay me!

Winter has us in its clutches

We got some snow about a week ago, enough that Hannah could go sledding once.



There was snow on the ground for a week, people! Right after it snowed, a high pressure system moved in and froze everything.



In Holland, the canals have frozen over, for the first time in like a dozen years, I think I heard. Here in Germany, a lot of the rivers have frozen, bringing ship traffic to a halt. There was a segment on CNN yesterday about ice breakers having to let through coal ships so the power plants have enough fuel.



Even the Neckar has sheets of ice on it. Here’s the collection of photos I took on Tuesday.


Yesterday it snowed for a few hours, adding to the overall whiteness, coldness, and wetness.

Today it warmed up, and the ice on the Neckar broke up into small sheets that look like paving stones. I guess if you weren’t worried about drowning, you could hop, skip, and jump across the river on them.

And so ends the story of my descent into winter madness.

Except I just remembered that even my 5L watering can is full of ice and frozen down to the tiles on the balcony. WHYYYY??? Oh, yeah, because I keep filling it with the run-off from the condensation clothes dryer.

Bye-Bye, Brunette

You may remember that Hannah talked me into putting semi-permanent black dye on her hair 2 summers ago.




Over the xmas holidays, she pestered me into giving it another try. Here, her last moments as a natural brunette:




And here she is in mid-dye:



I have to make a note that we should have bought 2 bottles of dye. One problem is that I have no idea what I am actually doing, but Hannah has SO MUCH HAIR. Her hair is thick like John's (almost as thick as her Aunt Kee's), so it was impossible to get the dye over all the layers.

Want to guess what color she ended up with?




The bottle says “pomegranate red”, but I like to call it “strawberry shortcake”:




She was disappointed that no one noticed the new color when she went for a play date last week—that didn’t stop her from pointing it out herself—but she got a gratifying round of “no way!” when she went back to school yesterday. It’s nice to be validated.