Merry Christmas

David, Kelly & Sydney wish you a wonderful Christmas. We hope you have a great time with family and friends and all the best for the New Year.

Saudi Arabia

During the month of November, I spent 4 weeks in Saudi Arabia doing a field survey as part of my diplom thesis. Most of the time I was out in the desert doing infiltration tests on different soil types. So I saw a lot of the desert in and around the capital Riyadh. During one occasion I was driving in the desert and stopped by a big dune. When you drive over the edge it's like driving into nothing until the front of the car finally drops down and you can see the sand again. It was a wired feeling to drive over the edge without seeing anything.

Sometimes I had to talk to people to get permission to do the field survey on their property. Most of them were very friendly and I had no problems what so ever. In fact it was more of a challenge to get away from them because they would offer you tea or coffee and would invite to over for lunch or dinner. Most often I had no clue what I was eating but, it always tasted good.

I drove a Toyota Hilux 2500 Diesel which was good because I had to carry a lot of water on the bed in order to be able to do my infiltration test. But the best thing was the gas price. 1 liter of diesel cost only 5 cent (Euro). It was fun to buy gas.

November was also the best month to go there. It was between 20 and 30°C the entire time, so not too cold and not too hot.

Fun at Oma & Opa's

Sydney and I have been at David's parents house for the past week while David is in Saudi Arabia working on his Diplom thesis. Anyways I promised David I would take lots of pictures and videos. Sydney is walking. She started before Halloween with a couple very wobbly steps and now she's much more confident and walking when ever she can.




Sydney has also been enjoying having a full sized bathtub. She loves water to start with but she goes crazy in the tub here. WARNING: naked baby.

She's Walking

Yesterday, the 30th Syd took 3 steps one after the other for the first time. Up until now she had done one step from one piece of furniture to the other. Now she walks with one of us towards the other person and takes the last steps by herself, and she does this with the biggest grin on her face.



Sydney also celebrated her first Halloween yesterday night in the traditional American way. Lots of candy, people of all ages in costumes and a spook alley. Too bad she is too young to enjoy any of these activities - but she looked really cute in her pink butterfly costume.

Flowers & Shoes

My husband is the greatest. What does every girl love, flowers and shoes. Well on Friday my husband brought me flowers just cause he saw them on this way home and thought they looked nice - which they do, he got me 7 different colors of roses all mixed with fall colored leaves. Then on Saturday, he actually told me to go and buy shoes - which is a very rare thing, seeing as I have a closet full of shoes. I love him and all the sweet things he does for me.

Sydney's new toy

Who ever said that kids need toys is wrong. All they need is the packaging from the toys. I opened up a package today, and Syd was going crazy dancing and going round and round the box. She circled it for over 45 minutes today. It was just too funny to not take a video. Enjoy

I HATE Traffic Jams!!!

So on Thursday we left just after 1pm to head off to Jahnsdorf (400kms away,) to go to a cousin's wedding reception. Okay, so 400km, plus traveling with a small baby, that should take what 4 1/2 to 5 hours right. WRONG.
There are so many things I love about Germany, but Traffic jams on the Autobahns here have to be the number 1 thing I hate about Germany. It took us over 7 hours to drive just over 400 km due to countless construction zones and endless traffic jams. We obviously weren't on time but we still did get to enjoy the reception.
The rest of the weekend was spent at my In-laws, so Syd could play with Oma and Opa.
Sunday around 2:30 we started back towards Stuttgart (also just over 400 kms away) The first 2 1/2 hours were fine, very little construction or traffic jams. Then just after 5pm, we saw a km sign and figured we'd easily make it home by 7:30.
Not even 5 minutes later we entered probably the longest traffic jam ever (at least for us), not only were the regular commuters head back to work, but there was also the people coming back from the long weekend. There was one construction zone that we were stuck in it was 8km long and only a single lane, David was so happy driving through this section. The only benefit of driving on the German autobahns is that once you finally get out of the traffic jams, you can drive as fast as you want. So David drove up to 180km/h. He would have driven faster but we only had a small car which didn't go faster. Anyways, we finally made it home at 10pm, almost 8 hours for a 400 km stretch of Highway.