This Saturday was John’s 25th birthday, and we spent the day together celebrating and relaxing. I got up a little before him to make his favorite blueberry muffins for breakfast. We spent the rest of the morning relaxing and watching TV. We had leftover pizza for lunch and then headed to Mannheim to the mall to look for some long underwear for me. We needed it ASAP, because we’re going skiing this coming weekend in Garmisch (the place where John proposed to me in the Alps).
After the mall, we had to make a stop at the acute care clinic at the hospital kaserne, because I had some sharp pain in my elbow that started in the morning and was still hurting when touched by late afternoon. The pain was so bad that when touched, I would cry. Unfortunately, the doctor wasn’t very good and just said “it’s a head scratcher” and sent me home with ibuprofen. Blah. It’s still hurting today (Monday), so I may make an appointment with family practice to get a referral to a specialist if it doesn’t improve by tomorrow.
After our stop at the acute care clinic, we came back home, and I whipped up the icing for John’s cake. He’d asked for a German chocolate cake, and I didn’t want to make a boxed cake, so I attempted a German chocolate cake and icing all from scratch. Please don’t judge the photos. It was a difficult cake to make look nice, and the icing was less than cooperative. I wanted to write “Happy 25th Birthday, John!” on the cake, but 1) there wasn’t enough room and 2) the icing was not sticking the the coconut icing and was making a mess. Eek!
Well, after I made the icing, we went to the Brauhaus zum Ritter in Schwetzingen. We hadn’t eaten there before, and it was very good! It’s mainly a steakhouse, so we both got steak and a baked potato. We also both had the schwarzes Bier (black beer), which is really flavorful and yummy. They brew it at the restaurant!
Dinner was followed by yummy cake at home and some tv-watching and a couple rounds on Guitar Hero. It was a nice, relaxing day, and I really hope John had a good birthday.
Yesterday we had our normal Sunday brunch at the Kaffeehaus (coffee house) in Schwetzingen and then took a drive. I’d seen a news report that it had been so cold for so long here in Germany that some of the rivers had frozen. The Neckar River runs through Heidelberg, so I wanted to see if it, too, had frozen. Surprise — some of it had! Of course I had to go back home and grab my camera for a few photos. John and I had fun taking pictures and driving around. We ended the afternoon at Königstuhl (all you Austinites…König is the same thing as Koenig, as in Koenig Lane). Königstuhl is at the top of the hill next to Heidelberg and is about 1800 ft above sea level (1450ish ft above the town). We got there at the perfect time of day, when the light made everything golden. It was beautiful! Unfortunately, we were having a bit of a hazy day, so we couldn’t see out very far, but it was still neat because we were above the haze.
Today I am a bit under the weather. I started coughing a bit last night, and I’ve felt sick since I got up today. It’s been a couch/tv/reading/computer day, which is fine, except I wanted to get laundry put away!
Anyway, I will post the frozen river pictures soon. I don’t want to take away from John’s birthday photos, though. Here they are (sorry we didn’t take more):
The cake
The birthday boy after I sang a solo rendition of “Happy Birthday” (it was not pretty, and I love him for still letting me sing however bad my voice is!)
Cutting the cake with the awesome cake server Helen got us at one of the wedding showers
