We have snow!!

It snowed today!! There isn't any snow on the ground anymore because there wasn't that much of it, but it was definitely snowing. When I left the house this morning there were a few tiny little flakes that were floating around, and later on while I was in Cologne it was snowing a little harder. I tried to take pictures of the snow as it started to blanket the ground, but I forgot the memory card for my camera in the computer this morning, and the camera itself doesn't have any internal memory. I was kinda pissed, because it was our first snow and I couldn't even take a picture of it. I don't think that I've ever actually been somewhere while it's snowing, and it was fun. I like being here while it's cold and snowing. It's now official: I cannot and will not live in Southern California for the rest of my life. Now that I've experienced something better, I won't accept monotonous San Diego weather anymore. (Sorry, guys)

The crappy thing about today was that I had to spend basically the entire day trying to retrieve a package from my mom that was being held hostage by German customs. She sent the freaking thing 3 weeks ago, and Saturday in the mail I got a letter saying that I had to bring my passport and the invoice for the purchase of the context of the package to the customs office so that they could charge the appropriate taxes (wtf?). Apparently they thought that I was buying stuff on Ebay and having it sent here from the United States without paying the taxes required by German law. And to make it worse, it wasn't just being held at the airport customs, or the post office or something. It was in BFE and it took me over an hour to get there. I had to take the S12 train from Koenigsdorf past Cologne and get off in Wahn. And, like an idiot, I bought the wrong freaking ticket this morning and ended up with a child's ticket instead of an adult ticket for the train. I nearly shit a brick when they came to check the tickets and pointed that out to me, but luckily I had bought a ticket for 4 rides and they just stamped it a second time to account for the cost difference. Then I had to walk to the bus stop and take the 160 two stops to Kornblumenweg and from there walk another 200 meters to the building. When I got there I had to explain that I didn't buy anything, it was a gift from my mom for the kids. They made me open the package (which, by the way, had been damaged to the point that the protective, padded filling between the layers of the envelope were spilling out all over the place) and tell them the price of its contents. It was 2 children's books! It was such a big pain in my ass for no reason at all, and even the guy who I was dealing with didn't seem to understand why there was any problem or why customs was making me go through all of this crap. Anyway, I got the books and came home and now all is well.

Olaf and Esther went to Ikea tonight at around 6 to buy furniture for Esther's new office. She gets the keys to her office tomorrow, and she didn't have a desk or anything. At some point tomorrow we're going to take all of the new furniture over and she and I can start to get her office set up. She's really excited that she doesn't have to work in the cellar anymore. While they were gone I was responsible for the kids, and there weren't any problems at all. At 6:15 they came upstairs with me to get ready for bed, and even Gustav didn't try to fight with me or run away every 2 seconds to go play with something, or just leave because he's a turd. Then we went downstairs to eat a small dinner and at 6:45 I turned on the TV so the kids could watch their show, Sandmaenchen. Both Gustav and Pauline sat right next to me and in my arms the whole time. After the show we sat at the table so the kids could drink some warm milk before we went upstairs to brush their teeth. I read one of the new books from my mom for their goodnight story, and when it was over Gustav crawled right into bed and turned out his light. Both of the kids were in bed by 7:45 and Gustav was sound asleep before 8. Pauline started crying after a little bit, so I had to get her out of bed and take her downstairs for a little while to make her some more warm milk. She was back in bed and sleeping before 8:45 and there hasn't been a peep from either of them since.