Germ Theory

 Saturday, Public Bus in Decin, Czech Republic:

Tuesday, snuggling mommy at home with a fever:

Science.

Book Report: Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

While perusing the book store in the Berlin airport on my recent solo trip the US, I was reminded that I wanted to read Yaa Gyasi's second book Transcendent Kingdom. 

Shockingly it turns out it's easier to casually peruse bookstores when traveling with this baggage:

vs

Also packed for four days. More on this trip in the next blog post. 

Yaa Gyasi's second book is very different but similar in that I find the themes very interesting while the rest of the world likely does not willingly dive into these weighty thoughts. It is the kind of book that makes you want to google to get more of the back story. Thankfully the NYTimes delivers here and here. 

One of the aspects of the book that I find most interesting to my current stage of life, is her flashbacks of her days in Sunday school. While hanging laundry today, I listened to a part of the book where she writes about reading John 1 for the first time as a child. As it turns out, last Sunday night we read John 1 as a family for home church. 

We're working through this devotional given to us by our Berlin Methodist church as a parting gift.

Carmen is equal parts enthusiastic and disruptive.

Our next thought is they would pay attention if they ate cheetos while listening. 

Apparently we need to work on the Ten Commandments next for the "Thou Shalt not Steal..." reminder.

As you can see from my facial expressions, home church is a work in progress. It is our best current church solution until kids' church starts again in the fall. The relief of not having to keep our kids quiet in a big sanctuary is worth staying home. It is also nice to not start the week after a late Sunday night. We'll be adding in some music, animated Bible stories, and Play Doh for next Sunday. Prayers welcome.

Life in Germany: Intro to Freundebücher

I'm going to write a riveting series on life in Germany for new folks/future residents. Mid-term elections are just around the corner, so I just want to give my fellow US Citizens some options about a Plan B escape. Plan A is being civically involved either giving money (thank you Oregon Political Tax Credit) or time if you don't have money, do not live in the US, or if you are like me - averse to giving into this nauseating problem with money in politics. We do give to one campaign aside from our Oregon Political Tax Credit. Paul's college friend, Brooke Lierman, is an exceptional person and candidate. The US needs more politicians like her. As is often the case, I get waylaid with political commentary... 

My last post was inspired by my sorting through photos for a Kita Friend’s Freundebuch or Yearbook. Usually a child will leave the book above a friends' cubby, and we all take turns filling it out. Here is Hugo's page:

Crosby carried the team, as he often does, when it comes to Kita "homework".

I went for the photo of Hugo being a boss "cooker".

Meh zucchini muffins + Chocolate glaze = Happy campers

Crosby also helped with Carmen's page:

I wasn't actually sure what Crosby drew under the bicycle in the tree. Snot coming out of her nose? Barfing? Nope, that is Carmen eating pizza. I wrote "Essen" or "Eating" on top, just for clarity. 

I had the book for about a week, which is bad form, but shocker, it is hard to find a photo of the kids wearing clothes. This is Carmen's photo:

As you can see our kids are very German, embracing coffee and cake culture.

Speaking of going German, look who's learning German:

Two nights a week, Paul is holing up and studying with linguist Micheal Thomas. It's an online program highly recommended by maven friend Amber. Maven = Malcolm Gladwell's term for someone who knows everything.

There is current talk in Germany about making dual citizenship possible. The requirements are not completely laid out yet, but likely it will be similar to the current requirement for German citizenship: passing a B1 level language test (the equivalent of 200 series US university level language), passing the German citizenship test (we will likely know more about the German constitution than than the US here soon), residing in Germany for at least 6 years, and so much paperwork that I just don't want to think about yet. I'll likely be taking tests in the fall and then help Paul get ready to test in the spring.

Speaking of other awesome German things, from June-August local rail travel will cost 9 Euros / $10 a month to go anywhere on local transportation. Our favorite English language news The Local wrote an article on how to get across Germany using the eligible local trains. If I was in a different phase of life, I would be all over this. Please, please someone do this and give me the full report.

This summer we'll be in Berlin hosting family and friends. Expect to see more photos of this:

And this:

A week in photos

Today I'm sorting through photos for one of the girls from Kita's Freundebuch or Yearbook. I'll explain more about the Freundebuch on my next post, but in the mean time I found a lot of photos that didn't work for the Freundebuch but were too good not to share:

Kinder Kaffee Time

With Carmen it was hard to pick just one Freunde Buch photo, I mean:

Seen here wearing Hugo's new school backpack. He won't need it for a year. But when Paul spotted this at a garage sale for a tenth of the price of Crosby's bag, we had to jump.

Seen here napping in the box bike. She started nodding off uncomfortably when we realized that not all kids are Hugo, and a little bed is better for her.

Hugo on the other hand, is still the reigning "nap on the go" champ.

He found our first bikepool a snooze fest. Ella's mom, Diana, rides with Crosby and Ella in the morning. Ella and Crosby ride behind me in the box bike on the way home. This first day I figured I could take the long-tail bike because Ella and Crosby wouldn't be on the bike. This proved to not be the best plan as Hugo fell asleep on the bike seat while I was waiting at a stop sign:

Thankfully we were close to home so I could bring Hugo in and then ride Ella home.

On Fridays Ella stays at school later so I ride home with just Crosby. As Crosby doesn't love riding, I thought I would do him a solid and load his bike in. Hugo managed to fall asleep while Crosby held his bike and supported Hugo's head:

Hugo was not happy once his headrest started slacking:

Even Hugo has limits to his nap anywhere abilities.

However, we are committed to building character and not using Russian oil. Hugo is also getting in on the anti-war effort.

We are trying to not use our drier, so the boys are helping hanging and sorting clothes. Yes, we know Hugo's hair was as awful, so we did this:

And this:

Both boys were much happier with their hair cuts this time because we let them keep it long. 

I needed to build up the "bank of goodwill" before introducing my new Mother's Day tradition: family photos. This tradition, like many of Team Biggs', is a mash-up of Biggs and Beckley traditions. The Beckley tradition of Mother's Day is doing something that mom likes but the kids don't ie. a walk through the Rhododendron park in Eugene. Whenever you're with the Biggs, you better be ready for photos. And so, I present to you:

Recently injured Hugo at 4:30 pm after a warm afternoon at the park. This photo is also an in memoriam to Hugo's lobster shirt which was destroyed in a very predictably unsafe go-cart chariot mishap. Thankfully the shirt took most of the beating and I think we can agree it was worth it.

This mother's day was especially bitter sweet as we said our goodbye to our church in Charlottenburg. We were thankful we had the community during corona and while our kids were too little for Sunday School without mommy. However, the Sunday evening two-hour round trip bike ride was too rough a start to our week. Monday mornings for Crosby were just awful, and even worse now that he doesn't love the twenty minute ride to school. This was my last kids' message at our church home for the last 3+ years. 

Intro: Who knows what today is? Someone: Mother's Day!

For some of us, Mother's Day is happy holiday where we snuggle our mom and have all these happy memories. For some of us though, it's also a sad day - we miss our moms because they don't live near-by, or they are no longer living. Honestly, maybe we are sad we never had a close connection with our moms. However we are feeling today, the good news is that God hears us, God cares, and God loves us. 

In the two years or so we were able to meet in the church building, most of the real "learning" at Sunday school happens here at the beginning of big church. The rest of the hour we run around and eat Rebecca's delicious baked goods - hopefully not at the same time. As most of you know, today is Team Biggs' last Sunday here. As I look back on Sunday school, we never know what seeds we will plant with little or big kids. But, my hope for these kids and adults is that they will always know that God listens to them, God cares about them, and God loves us more than we can ever imagine. 

As we know, I'm a big "movement helps us learn" person, so we're going to sing our Sunday school song with the biggest hand movements: Peace Like a River

Song: Peace Like a River

Prayer: God, thank you that you hear our prayers and care about our lives. We pray that we would always remember how much you love us.

 

xo