Advent Calendars, Pyramids, and Persimmons

I splurged and bought each of the kids their own advent calendar this year. Maddie and Sebastian got Playmobil calendars and Will got Lego (my theory was that not everything has to be sugar, and they'll get enough of it elsewhere this season, and why start the day off with chocolate at the breakfast table). This is Sebastian's calendar, and it has 24 wee boxes which were lovingly assembled and filled by very tired parents on the night of November 30.
Will's Lego calendar was already assembled and each Lego man was waiting behind its proper door. Bless those great Danes! Will gets things like a jackhammer and a man-who-waves-in-planes-with-two-flashlights and other symbols of the season.
After you open up your wee box, there is even a place to set it out. This shows the six piece bird cage that Maddie got on December 1st and the $#>?%&*! rose planter that she got today. A pox on Playmobil for bringing the some-assembly-required part of Christmas early to unsuspecting parents.
Last Friday Rob took Maddie and Will shopping for a pyramid at the antique shops in our neighborhood. They were very discriminating and they chose this one, which, as you can see, entrances all the kids, and is as compelling as pesto.

Yesterday we celebrated first advent, and we had Kurt and Anni over to help us. They brought an advent story to read and we sang songs and lit plenty of things afire and ate lots and lots of goodies with chocolate and marzipan and lebkuchen and stollen and tea . . . and after the kids went to bed we entertained ourselves for a long time by spelling words on a calculator. German is a good language for this because there are so many words with "i" and "e" in them.

Finally, I need to note here that all of the fruit stands are selling persimmons. They are called Kakis, and Rob and I are tickled, because they're spelled the same way as my cousin's nickname is spelled. I had no idea that a Kaki was a persimmon, but it makes the name even more fitting since she (my cousin) has lovely red hair. We never buy them at home because they look so foreign and forlorn in the supermarket, but they are everywhere here and we love them. Maddie and Will were suspicious until they tried them, but now they love them too.

Comments

ishtheintrepid said…
I knew that, actually (this is the aforementioned Kaki), since when I went to Tokyo in 1994, they mentioned that the Japanese word for persimmon is kaki. Cool to run into it in Berlin, though. I've always wanted to go there.
1:31 PM
Mary Ann said…
Ah! that makes more sense! Kaki doesn't sound like a word of German origin. I was wondering where it came from.
8:02 AM
ashley said…
I wish we could find playmobil advent calendars! I bought the 99 cent chocolate advent at Trader Joe's this year for each of the kids. I have been noticing that Ethan has been getting out of bed earlier than usual for the past few days and then it dawned on me that it is the lure of chocolate that gets his sleepy head off the pillow!
3:59 PM
Anonymous said…
I love this picture of Sebi.
Hope you are doing well. I mailed your card to Utah.
5:01 PM
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