Happy New Year's Day 2009!

Evening of New Year's Day in Germany and we're still going strong with the fireworks! We saved the bombs for this day. We had so much fun!

Lt to Rt: Lisa, Marijke, Sarah

The Boys mostly lit the bombs and enjoyed throwing them in every direction. They especially liked throwing them down man holes in the street. Boys- they get a kick out of blowing things up.

Lt to Rt: McCord, Hank, Tristan

Sparkler time came and Marijke wanted to light them all (2 boxes worth) and then give them to us. Little did she know that the flaming ball of combined fireworks would make such a big flare of light and heat toasting all of them, and nearly blinding the whole group.

She freaked out and we all laughed histerically

Luckily, we had a spare box and we all took our own sparklers and lit them.

We all had a lot of fun with them after the drama and laughter has subsided a little...

...until Hank threw his sparkler stick into the pine tree next to their house...=) Don't worry, it ended up not hurting anything, but the laughter continued, of course.

We got to experience a German new years tradition. You melt a little figure made of lead in a spoon above a candle flame, then you poor the melted lead into a cool bowl of water. Whatever picture your lead creation turns out to be will predict how your next year will go.

McCord's lead creation came out looking kind of like a dear, we thought (above lead critter). Which means he will be invited to dinner by someone and go on a cruise this year! Mine came out looking like a distinct swam wing, or a bird wing (bottom lead figure). This means that I will have good luck all year round. Woo Hoo!

More and more jokes were over the melting of lead figures, and Tristan accidentally spilled the lead water into the candle wax (which is like pooring water into a pan of hot grease)....- FIRE! A flame shot up about 5 feet in the air off the kitchen table and everyone freaked out! Nothing terrible happened too bad, just fright, but we were all laughing and rolling on the floor after this horrific night of fire. Ha ha ha

This is Tristan laughing with the PAPER lamp that was above the table. We finally decided to go to bed after almost burning the neighborhood and the house...