My Once Upon a Time...

We had a crazy dust storm here in Phoenix last night. Let me just say, I love storms and I love monsoon season. After we saw the severe weather warnings on TV, we rushed outside to watch it. While I used to hate rain when I lived in Germany (probably because there was nothing but rain), I love it here. The smell of rain, the sound, and if it's combined with thunder, it's almost as soothing as the beach to me. There is nothing better than falling asleep to a thunderstorm. Take a look! Gestern abend hatten wir einen verrückten   Sandsturm   hier   in   Phoenix .  I ch liebe   Stürme   und ich liebe die   Monsunzeit . Nachdem wir die   Unwetterwarnungen   im Fernsehen sahen , eilten wir nach   draußen, um das Spektakel mitzuerleben .   Während ich  Regen in Deutschland hasste   (wahrscheinlich   weil es nichts anderes als Regen gab ), so liebe ich es hier .   Der Geruch von  R egen, ...

My lion is no longer a lion.  What a sad day it was.  Yes, I am THAT "mom". The one that almost cries about a first haircut. I said almost! Mein   Löwe ist  kein  Löwe  mehr. Was für ein   trauriger Tag   es war. Ja,  ich bin DIESE "Mutter" .   Die, die   fast  ueber den ersten Haarschnitt heult. Ich hab FAST gesagt, okay! Katie tried to convince me to get him shaved for months and I was fighting it with all I had...and lost in the end. She couldn't deal with the mountains of hair in our house anymore... and here I thought I was the neat freak.  She thought it would be much more comfortable for him in the summer and while this might be true, I miss my fluffy lion.  Katie   versuchte mich seit Monaten davon zu überzeugen , ihn rasieren zu lassen und  ich   kämpfte   mit allen   Mitteln dagegen an   ...   und verlor   am Ende doch.   Sie kam ni...

I’ve been having these recurring nightmares. It’s always the exact same dream and it’s so frequently, you wouldn’t even believe me, if I told you. But I'm telling you, so believe it! So here it goes: I’m on vacation in Germany, having the time of my life. Hanging out with my family, having a blast with my friends and visiting all of my favorite places. So far, seems like the best dream ever, doesn’t it? But wait, the nightmare is about to begin! It’s my tenth day in Germany and I only have a day and a half or so left and all of the sudden I realize, that I haven’t even been to any of my favorite restaurants yet! This is the part where I start to panic, basically totally freaking out about the fact, that I wasted my vacation and missed out on all of these awesome meals. It’s like nightmare central at that point. So I’m trying to figure out how in the world I can get as many meals in my last day as possible, when it occurs to me that I don’t have a car I don’t even have a fre...

Can one have too many hobbies?  I remember when I was little and people would ask me what my hobbies were, I had about two things on my list, dancing (competitively) and reading. While I gave up dancing a long time ago, the reading stuck and probably always will. The problem is, with much less time on my hands than I had back then, I find myself interested in so many different things that I don't know when to do it all. It actually came to a point last week where I wanted to start something new - yet again - and I had to tell myself: no, that's too big of a commitment and I need to "conquer" my other hobbies first. I know, this seems so silly, but if I tell you that this new thing I wanted to try was taking piano lessons, you might understand.  Kann man zuviele Hobbys  haben ? Ich erinnere mich daran, als ich klein war und gefragt wurde, was meine Hobbys waren, ich hatte immer zwei Dinge auf meiner Liste, Tanzen (in der Garde) und Lesen.  Während ich das Tanz...

Katie took me to see a D-Box Movie last weekend and after experiencing it for the first time, I don't know how I can ever go back and watch a regular movie in the theater. Oh wait, yes I can, the $18 per ticket will probably do it! I could say now, that it's a total rip off, but if you haven't seen a movie at the d-box yet, I say, go see one! It was AWESOME. I really really loved it.  First of all, the theater was beautiful, I've never seen anything like it and you're escorted to your seats, which kinda feels awkward, but whatever. The seats are bigger and you have more leg room, but that's probably not reason enough for anyone to spend $18 on a movie.  Once the movie started, the seats started to move as well, they're programmed for that specific movie you're watching, so i.e. when they were driving in a car, the seats vibrated lightly to give you the illusion of driving with them. Once the action scenes start, the seats jolted back and forth more v...