My love of Quiet Sundays….

I know I’ve spoke before about how much I enjoy Sundays here in Germany.  There is something to be said for taking such a forced break from your every day life.  It’s impossible to DO anything on Sundays because everything is closed.  IT’s kind of like the forced recycling here, you do it because there is no other way to get it done.  Brilliant as far as I’m concerned.  I get the groceries on Saturday because I have to but what it also frees up the entire day for the family.  I’ve even taken to doing the laundry during the weeks so I don’t have that looming over my head on Sundays.

The kids have really embraced the idea of Quiet Sundays and any loud activity will get you a “shhhh it’s quiet sunday” from Mr. Magoo.  I went up to get changed and this is how I found them after lunch.

I wanted to spend some time with the two of them together today but it’s hard to interrupt quiet kids!  I thought is best to interrupt before the fighting started and therefore allow for a congrats on the great playing, and give a reward.  Usually I wait too long and end up with missing the opportunity to give them positive feedback for how well they played together.  Today I hit it just right!  We moved to the dining room and made some banana bread and dutch apple cake!  It was a hoot.

I’ve never made Dutch Apple Cake before, but I had the ingredients and some apples that needed to be used up!

Normally I would have just made an apple crisp but since there is only weird brown sugar here in Germany (yeah yeah I know you’ve found it at some store in flubenhauben or duosloohoof but I haven’t found it anywhere!)

And now Scott is playing frisbee golf on the wii trying not to swear (and failing) and we are all anxiously waiting for the wonderful smelling stuff to come out of the oven!