Acht ist Pracht

I don't even know if that really makes sense in German. Probably it doesn't and no one would ever say it. Probably it's an adverb or something or needs to be attached to some other word or said in some other order. Oh well. Fluent Germans, feel free to laugh at me behind my back. ;) To the rest of you: Acht is eight if you didn't already know/assume that...my kids made the "oct"/acht octopus connection early on.

The obvious title for this post in English would be something like "Eight is Great!" so I was trying to be all clever in German "Acht ist...." but I know all of, like, 5 adjectives auf Deutsch. And the only words that rhyme with "acht" that I could think of were, like, conjugated verbs: macht (make), gemacht (made), bracht (which I think can mean vomit among other things)... So then I was going to be all "eight is wunderbar" and then it suddenly came to me: pracht. There is a café run by Christians here called "Prachtwerk" and I was thinking, "I don't know what the name even means"... ('Magnificent Work' according to Google Translate) and when I typed in "Acht ist Pracht" Mr. Internet told me "Eight is Grand".

Perfect.

And if the internet says so.... well then...

Moving along.

Dalton is eight!


Last Monday the 23rd was our little man's big day. And, by some lucky coincidence, their teachers had some sort of training so the boys didn't have school! Happy birthday to Dalton indeed!

Jason took the day off work and we kept Autumn home from Kita to have an all-about-Dalton day. He woke up to gifts and Dunkin Donuts:


Hey look, it's an 8!


His actual birth time.


This photo op has oft been a tradition for our family, but I wasn't really feeling it this year as it was technically still Sunday the 22nd in Colorado (where he was born) when it was 7:57 a.m. here in Berlin. Oh well.

After breakfast he dug into a few gifts:


And when he had opened them all and was already content with what he had received, Jason whipped out the first clue of a small treasure hunt (we did one for Easton and we knew Dalton was probably hoping for a hunt too). Eight clues for our eight year old. And at the end?! Treasure indeed: his very own iPod Touch!


We thought about taking the kids to a museum for the day but Dalton was perfectly content to check out his iPod, play Xbox with Easton with the new figures he received, and build new Legos. In his jammies. With all his family around. Truly a perfect day for Dalton. I spent part of the day making cupcakes as we had some afternoon fun to look forward to...



We had talked about some possible party ideas for Dalton...we found one that sounded cool but then they said that ALL party guests MUST be at least 8 years old (his closest friend is only 6 and then there's Autumn) and, when they didn't have school, I proposed, "hey, how about we go see a movie with a few friends on your actual birthday?" He loved the idea. He voted for Paddington but it was long gone from theaters here so the only other English version "kid" movie was:


We (me and mein Mann) hate SpongeBob, actually. I have never let the kids watch it. I think it's rubbish. But....whatcha gonna do? They're much older and actually exposed to much "worse" now so SpongeBob "Sponge Head" it was (seriously, that's what 'Schwammkopf' means. How redundant. 'Square Pants' would be something like "quadrathosen" if I'm not mistaken. Anyhoo...).

So, around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, we headed over to the Sony Center where the movies are most often screened "OV" (original version = ENGLISH!). We met our few friends there and settled in with popcorn. The movie was so so. Hardly any of it was "3D". And Jason even nodded off at one point. Shhhhh. ;)


After the movie we hopped on the train with everyone back to our flat. Jason rode one stop further to pick up some pizzas. Dalton showed off and shared his new iPod while we waited for Jason to show up with dinner.


And Murray gave me a hand with the cupcake toppers. I don't use artificial colors in food/frosting so I like to add décor in other ways. I forgot to have Jason print anything at work the week before so I had to hand draw them myself. And then, I stupidly miscounted how many kids we'd have, so Murray saved the day by drawing two more characters for me:




We ate. (Our friend from India asked for ketchup to dip his pizza in.) We sang and had cupcakes and, as the next day was a school day, our friends left. Dalton got a couple of FaceTime calls and a recorded Skype message from family in the States and he went to bed an exhausted and happy camper. After the kids were in bed I had to rally and whipped up some brownies for Dalton to share at school the next day. Brownies are definitely American but everyone liked them (according to Dalton) and Easton's teacher from Ireland (who teaches Dalton something or other) asked if she could have seconds...and Dalton told her no! Ha! He was like, "Well, since there's not enough for everyone to have two..." which is a perfect response had it been another student. I had a big laugh over that. Oh, our Dalton!