1.27 Bochum, Germany - Dunkin Donuts

We have been trying to take outings that are only a few hours away from Dusseldorf by train, to start seeing some of the country and practice traveling w/ Zach. On 1.27, we went to Bochum to see the mining museum. It was very interesting and we all enjoyed ourselves. On the way to the museum, we discovered a very American place that some of the family LOVES. So, for those of you who are addicted to Dunkin' Donuts, here you go, it is possible to get that excellent coffee, even in Germany.

2.22 ZMC New carseat

Sigh. Zach is getting bigger and bigger. He finally outgrew his infant carseat and we had to buy him the next size up carseat before we went back to Germany. It is so huge compared to his cute little infant carseat. It makes me sad to have to put away that carseat until baby2, whenever that may be.

2.19 Zach's first trip to the Zoo

Zachary has visited the 'aquazoo' here in Dusseldorf, but this was his first trip to an actual zoo. On Feb. 19th, President's Day, Zach went to Zoo Atlanta with his mom, Aunt Staci and Nana. As expected, Zach did not care for many of the animals, but he DID get very interested in the Golden Tamarin Lion monkeys. He started and stared at them as they were jumping all over their cage. Unfortunately for Nana, the baby panda was asleep when we got there. Lucky for her, you can view the cute baby panda on the Zoo's Pandacam (www.zooatlanta.org). We got in for 1/2 price, because it was too cold to have all the animals on exhibit. It was about 45 degrees when we got there and they expected all the animals to be back on exhibit later in the day when it got to 50 degrees. We missed out on the Tigers, monkeys and several others, but the main reason we went was for the Pandas and they were on exhibit - sleeping of course. We got to watch the Elephants as they were being fed and put through their 'paces'. The kangaroos were neat - I don't remember seeing those before. After about 2 hours, we left and went to have lunch at Chili's. Zach slept the entire time at Chili's, he did not even get to eat his own lunch. I guess all that animal watching wore him out.

Happy 100th Birthday Oma Sweet

Team Counts-Dusseldorf arrived in the United States (after a 10 hour flight - Zach did great - loves those flight attendants and 2 year old boys named JJ) on Jan. 31st. We came to the States for the sole purpose of celebrating Oma Sweet's 100th birthday. It was a great weekend in Mullins - the entire family was there. Zachary loved playing with his cousins - except for a time when Andrew stole his paci (Karl E. has a great video of this). It was wonderful to see everyone. Oma's party was a huge success and she looked great. Joel and Emily Eaton (plus Sam -4 and Andrew -11mon) came down from 'Raleigh' for the day. It was wonderful to see them again and catch up. Art had so much sweet tea it was coming out of his pores!

Art and I did pretty well adjusting to the time change quickly, but Zachary struggled quite a bit. Every night for about 5 nights had us up with him, holding him and trying to get him to go back to sleep. More than once we had to get up and start our day at 5:30am (as opposed to his normal 7am). He is not a great sleeper anyway and just needs any excuse to wake up and scream.