September 4-6: Sassy visits!

Lucky us – Italy was again the host of a conference for an ABQ friend (Bruce), so his lovely wife, Saskia, came to visit us while Bruce was at the conference. The two of them were going to bum around Italy for a week after his conference, so she needed to be in Europe anyway. But how wonderful that she came to see us!

HOWEVER, the girl is way too hard-core for me! No, that does not mean that she was wearing all black punk w/ a Mohawk and brow piercings – it means that she had her appendix removed on Friday night, and left for Italy Sunday, arriving Monday, then coming to see us on Tuesday! Needless to say, she was a tad bit sore, and a teensy bit doped up on pain pills. Didn’t stop us from having a good time though. Zac and I picked her up from the airport at 11:30; luckily I had checked the internet for flight times, b/c she was delayed an hour. Z was sleeping in his stroller when she arrived. He woke up GRUMPY after a mere 40-minute nap, and proceeded to put on a show of his worst behavior during lunch. After lunch we mostly played around the house, waiting for Art to return from his institute-wide outing, so we could join him for a late lunch BBQ at the office. We finally made it for “lunch” around 3pm and pigged out on bratwurst, salad and yummy dessert for a few hours. Sassy got a comprehensive (more comprehensive than I have ever seen) tour of Max Planck campus (3 buildings) and the various ‘cool’ machines. By then Zach was pretty much DONE. He had not yet had an afternoon nap (it was nearing 5pm), and had only slept 40 minutes of his morning nap. So serious meltdown. Not surprising, he fell asleep minutes after we got him into the stroller and onto the bus to head home. I put him into bed, and Saskia and I just relaxed until Art got home. We had a light dinner of sandwiches, put Z to bed and had an evening of chatting.
Wednesday: We decided to not go to Köln (Cologne) for the day, and decided to make it a relaxing day. Art went to work while we hung out at the house, after a trip to the grocery store. Zach took a nap, and once he woke, Art came home for lunch, though it was fairly late. The boy was tired I guess. He had awoke around 5am and I took him into bed w/ us, where he was awake for about an hour before finally going back to sleep. After lunch we all headed down to the Altstadt to look around and see the Rhine. Saskia wanted to go to a bookstore and a toy store, so we headed to the mall, where they had both. We walked around the downtown area for a while then picked a nice place along the Rhine and stopped for coffee and kuchen (cake). We opted for one kase (cheese) and one apfel (apple). Both were great – EXCEPT they oddly put raisins in the cheesecake. Not right. We stayed there for over an hour when Z finally fell asleep for his afternoon nap. After some more walking around, we headed home. Art jumped off the tram early to stop at the Extra (the fabulous new-to-me grocery store that is as big as a Kroger/Smiths/Publix!) to get an Alt Beer variety pack for Bruce. Time will tell if Bruce finished prior to leaving Europe, or if he brought some back to share w/ the ABQ Enterprise group. After a dinner of puten (turkey) schnitzel w/ jager sauce, spatzel, mushrooms, and etches, we were all stuffed. Not too stuffed to have ice cream after Zach went to bed. We all cuddled up on the couch to watch Shrek 2, since Saskia had never seen it, and needed to for Shrek 3, which she had seen on the plane, make sense.
Thursday: Boo. Sassy had to go home today. It was raining out and pretty crappy, so we spent the morning in. Saskia had the privilege of helping me collect the laundry from the trocken room – a little insight into my life here. We played a LOT of cribbage. She beat me 3 out of 4 games, and even skunked me once, so I'll never play that again. Art came home for lunch, and we all had to leave a little past one to get her to the airport on time. Zach slept late and had to eat his lunch at the airport. I stupidly sent her down 2 wrong places to check in – I will blame it on secretly trying to get her to stay. Then she was gone, and I realized that I did not take a single picture while she was here. No Zach & Tante Sassy pictures, nothing. Sigh. Very sad. I was very glad that she came for a visit, and was only sad that it was not longer! Even if she did make serious fun of me for 1) knowing the exact tram/bus/train times and the exact minutes it would take to ride them (comes at 9:37 and is a 6 minute ride), 2) how sore I was after my first adult gymnastics class (laughing about this caused Zach to drop a glass bowl he should not have had and us cleaning it up for 15 minutes), and 3) any other thing that came to mind! ☺ Now, who else from ABQ is going to come see us?????