Halloween is a ghost town

When we first moved to Germany, Halloween was basically non-existent. There were no trick-or-treaters, elaborate costumes, jack-o-lanterns or zombies. It was tough for the kids since they were still quite young and therefore did not understand why Germans were so clueless when it came to Halloween. Sterling did have a pretty fearless friend named Sven. They did go out and knock on doors. What they got was typically confused or angry old people and sometimes just a little candy that some people had lying around.


Over the years, Halloween has grown in recognition and popularity, but oddly it is not a children's holiday. There are still relatively few trick-or-treaters (our street was a ghost town last night), but now adults are dressing up and having Halloween parties. As if Europeans need another excuse to dress silly and drink alcohol...What do they think soccer games are for?!? A travesty of the candy harvest I say!


My daughter had a Halloween party with her friends last night. A house full of 14 year old girls is scary...so Sterling and I retreated to the comforts of shooting virtual zombies.

Update on getting rid of stuff:
-Playmobile Zoo: SOLD!
-1 book: given away!

Go outside!

Like most teenagers, our children spend what seems to be a huge amount of time in front of either the computer, the television, or some other kind of electronic device that you hold in front of your face. It probably isn't as much as it seems and I cannot really tell them to reduce their time since I spend a lot of time on the computer and Jenn even got a Netbook so that she would not take away valuable Left4Dead time from me. Yes, I spend quality time with my son by killing zombies.

While the summer has not be overly awesome in terms of weather, these last few weeks have been pretty nice indeed. We always talk about doing stuff outside, but we often do not get around to it. For example, we live quite close to the Alps, but we have never gone skiing in our 8 years here! We just never seem to get around to it. Lame. So anyways, we went for a 2 hour bike ride yesterday through the villages south of Munich and today we are going on a hike in Schliersee.

It is really cool to be able to do these activities so easily and while we have not taken advantage of the Bavarian countryside as much as we should have in our years, we will definitely miss it. Or we will at least miss the possibility to do these things. Let's see what Chicago has to offer...

Here is a bike ride shot from May 2005

Hiking in Sept 2006

Sterling is playing Mass Effect right now...