Up, up, up

So I'm trying to stay positive and up, and it's not really working. But who wants to read a blog post from a Negative Nelly? This might be bland and dry, because I'm sticking to the facts of the day and not really going off on my usual tangents.

We went to a egg hunt that my dad's wife's old playgroup put on. It was just at a neighborhood park, not unlike the one that's by my house. But my neighborhood certainly doesn't have this in the middle of it:


We tried to get a pic of all the kids together, but that wasn't happening. So I had to take individual ones. By the time I got to Miss S, her face was covered in green frosting from her cupcake. So I threw the pic through Photoshop and got this:


No more frosting! Not bad. I'm learning.

Mini-Minion has a lot to learn about egg hunts. First of all, she's still completely uninterested in most other kids. She likes her cousins back at home, and that's pretty much so it. The cousin closest in age to her is basically the only child she has taken much of an interest in other than Mr. A obviously. So she mostly did her own thing.

Second of all, she doesn't get the concept of putting eggs in her basket. She kept throwing them BACK into the bushes. Mr. A had to keep giving her his eggs (well, not KEEP giving them, because she wasn't asking), and she would cart them around for a little bit. In the end, I think she ended up with one. I think.

(Mini-Minion and her discarded eggs)

Mr. A was very popular today, as usual. He's a pretty good sport about younger kids. He ended up pulling the little ones around in a wagon toward the end of the day.


On the way home, Mini-Minon threw a fit for a million different little reasons until her savior (Mr. A) came to the rescue. No, she's not really pulling his hair. It's a game they play.


And at the very end of the day, I didn't eat dinner until 10PM, Mini-Minion and Mr. A fought me on bedtime for two hours, I'm down 7 posts at work, I'm dead tired from getting up at six, working, dealing with the kids, going to sleep after midnight, and starting all over again, and I'm starting to just not care anymore. But as I was uploading my pictures, I saw this, and it made things a little better.

(During their 5-minute game of "I love yooooooou.")

So much for no tangents.

Passport Progress & Half-Eaten Cookies

So my dad's wife made these adorable cookies for Easter. She really did a good job. Until this happened:


That does NOT say Mini-Minion on it, yet she got to it anyway. Little bite marks on the egg and bunny. The other bunny has. . .sharpie. . .on it. Because that is just logical. Mini-Minion is NEVER allowed to have crayons, pencils or pens. And this is why.


This afternoon, the kids pushed the various tricycles and cars up the little hill on the side yard and raced them down. It was all great fun, I'm sure. We were a little paranoid, because down the street is a nature preserve (kind of a sketchy thing in Florida if you think about the wildlife here). It practically runs up against the backyard. Anyway, early this afternoon, we had a little friend in the form of a black snake come to visit the backyard. It swam in the pool for a bit, annoyed the dog, and decided this wasn't the place.


Yesterday, I sent an email to the German Consulate in San Francisco, hoping to ease my passport application process by getting in writing that there were no other documents I need to apply for a passport. I did the same thing for my dad before he applied in Miami, and the vice-consul sent an email saying everything was in order, which was REALLY helpful when Dad applied.


I got an email back today saying:

"if you do have a chance, could you please scan the below mentioned documents and have them sent to this E-Mail-Address?
It seems very likely that you still hold German citizenship. Please also indicate if and when your father joined the US Army.
Sincerely,
Mr. XYZ
Vice Consul
German Consulate General"


Yes, I still hold German citizenship. My father currently has a German passport. He has never been in the military. But hey, this is positive. So I'll scan everything and send it over, and hopefully it will facilitate the entire thing. *Fingers crossed!* I'm hoping to get everything scanned tonight and sent tomorrow. Maybe they'll get back to me next week, and I can print these emails and take them with me for my appointment. If I have some sort of written confirmation from the vice-consul, I doubt it will take much time at the consulate.


I'm obsessing. But I've got a lot riding on this. Five years of my life boils down to two appointments. One is already done (Dad's) and now I've got mine in 19 days. Nineteen days. And because I'm already on a 19-day tour, I know how fast 19 days can go.

(That's marker on her face.)

Four days down, 15 more to go. . .One last picture of my self-proclaimed April Fool: