This is what my girls made today. Cutting the letters was so much fun, plus a great reading and writing practice!

500 g flour
2 eggs
250 g butter, softened
130 g sugar
optional: vanilla, almond or lemon extract

2 egg yolks
sprinkles

Preheat oven to 180° C. Cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs and your extracts. Add flour. Form into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Roll out between two pieces of parchment paper and cut with cookie cutter. Brush with egg yolk and sprinkle your cookies. Bake for 10 – 15 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to rack to cool down.

Sorry for the lack of updates. I hope everyone had a lovely Easter holiday! We spent Easter Sunday on the road.. from Savannah to Atlanta, so we missed all of our annual Easter traditions. But it was worth it – our vacation to the US was AWESOME! I hope to be able to come back one day!

At home, everything is the same. The situation of my husband´s grandpa is worse, he´s very weak… and very, very sad. I hope God will answer his prayers and take him home..

Mother´s day is just around the corner and I plan to give my mom some very special cookies. She absolutely LOVES lavender, and so this will be the perfect gift:

Lavender Cookies

120 g butter, softened
60 g sugar
180 g flour
1 tablespoon dried lavender buds, minced
25 g confectioner’s sugar (I used homemade lavender sugar)

Preheat oven to 200° C. Cream together butter and sugar. Add flour and lavender, mix until combined. Form into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 15 minutes. Roll out between two pieces of parchment paper and cut with cookie cutter. Bake for 10 – 12 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes, then sprinkle with confectioner´s sugar. Transfer to rack to cool down.

(source: “Vom Zauber des Lavendels” – Tessa Evelegh)

I love the crafts my kids do in kindergarten. Lately they made those cute lil towers inspired by the art of Friedensreich Hundertwasser:

I´m slowly finding my motivation again. I started this pattern packed ages ago and finally finished a cute lil bear. I hope to get some easter gifts for my mom and MIL ready, too! I´m not sure if I can manage it before we leave for our vacation.. at least, I´ll try!

Our Great-Grandpa is doing ok at the moment. Some days are good, some are bad. But he´s very tired of life and prays every day that god may take him home. I hope god will listen..

Take good care everyone!

With my MIL being away to visit her sister near Hamburg, I took care of my husband´s grandparents, guided them to doctors and so on. By Friday everything went well. Blood tests were ok, but the amount of blood was way too low. So they send us to hospital to get a blood transfusion. And the sorrow began!

We had an appointment at 8 a.m. After half an hour they started taking blood. Then we had to wait.. and wait.. and wait.. After hours of waiting we heard them talking on the phone about our grandpa. So we asked the lady what´s going on. She told us, during the cross-matching grandpa´s blood built antibodies. Since the hospital in our town isn´t that specified, they had to take blood again and send it to Ulm. He wouldn´t get his transfusion today, we should come back Monday. This was quite a frustrating situation, they let that 87 years old man waiting for hours and hours for nothing! He was emotionally exhausted, but to this point we did not know that it would come worse! Read the rest of this entry »

I dunno if there is still someone reading this blog as it´s been quite a while.. Last year did not end too good for us. First it hit me bad with an infection and then my family was sick with the noro-virus. The new year started quite busy too.. and everytime I thought things will calm down now something new came up. At the moment, we´re very worried about my husbands grandpa who suffers from prostata cancer. To see how he slowly looses his power – physically and psychically – makes us feel so helpless..

Anyway, life goes on.. the girls are doing well. Jessica is excited as her birthday is near. I can´t believe that my lil baby girl will be 5 soon! Boy, does time fly by!

That´s all for now.. just a short update.. will do some bloghopping now!
Happy Valentine´s Day, everyone!