Pete English breezes through town

We sure do love it when the U.S. comes to town and squelches any home sickness we might have been feeling. We never would have guessed that one of those said visitors would have been the one-and-only Pete English from Jeff's high school days. It was great to see him as he breezed through town!

Will's First Trip

With our home visit to California looming at us in February, this nervous new mom wanted to get a trip with a baby out of the way to work out any cobwebs she might not anticipate in a 14-hour plane ride. What does every new parent do as a trial run? Florence, naturally!

In January, the Zabel 3 hopped aboard a 7-hour train ride to Florence, Italy. It poured rain most of the time, but it didn't stop us from exploring the city, eating gelato, climbing church towers for great views, and taking in the art.


The verdict? We're set to travel! Will is a trooper. Train rides are fabulous because we can feed, change, and walk him around whenever he wants -- no need to pull over our car to the side of the road to do so. Traveling during non-peak times is to die for! Who would have guessed we'd walk right into the Academia and only have to share Michaelangelo's David with about 30 other people. Sign us up!

Lunching with the LoAHFers

Well, it's April 1st and it's snowing, no fooling. Just noticed (ha!) that our blog seems to have forgotten about posting itself since November . . . . let's see if I can catch everyone up.

One of my favorite outings during the week (before and after Will) was my weekly lunch with the LoAHFers. Yes, Munich has it's own League of Accidental Haus Fraus that eat at various restaurants every week. It's a lively gathering of formerly professional women who now find themselves footloose and fancy free due to their husband's expat assignments. We laugh as we share the ins and outs of German living such as the wonders of Persil, where to find decent Mexican food, and any other such giggles of the week. The picture above is from a few weeks ago once most everyone had cleared out and us hard-core haus fraus remained.

Will and I haven't been to as many as of late, but nonetheless, there's always next week!

Red Bull Crushed Ice

Another fun outing we had in the winter time was a trip to Olympia Park for the Red Bull Crushed Ice Tour. Basically it was a downhill, ice-skating race. We were hoping more for a roller-derby meets Nascar kind of knock-outs and blow-outs, but it proved much tamer and COLDER than anticipated. Thank goodness we all stayed warm thanks to gluwein (for us) and Will's warm snowsuit (for him). Nonetheless it was a great time spent with good friends Andreas, Lauren, and Lawrence!

Passing away the Winter Weekends

With more snow piling up and the walls moving inward, what's a Bavarian to do other than drink beer? Sooo . . . . we just decided to leave our wohnung and try some of the amazing brew houses around Munich. Yes, yes, Sundays are rough around here.

Dad's funny

My dad is a funny guy. He was getting ready for work this morning and put me on top of the washing machine. I laughed at him because it was funny to sit on.

3 months old today!

Hi guys, guess who's 3 months old today! That's right, me. Don't I look dapper in my duds? (Mom dressed me.) Check out how much I've grown below. Mom and Dad love my smiles the best and I talk to them all the time now! My latest trick is sucking in the top half of my right lip and smacking it too. Mom and Dad are still trying to figure out how I learned this trick (was crazy Uncle Pete here for 24 hours again?!). I do it when I'm bored so I have something to do:)

3 Months Old!

2 Months Old

1 Month Old

Grandparent tag out!

We were so blessed to have my parents for two weeks after Will's birth and Jeff's family for one week after that. Their visits overlapped by about 15 minutes literally! -- Sarah's parents flew out on the plane Jeff's parents flew in on! We had a family celebration with both sets of grandparents outside of security at the Munich airport.

Will's first 3 weeks of life were spent in arms and arms and arms of the people who love him most (no offense to our loyal friends and family reading this blog entry!), sleepless nights with various family members keeping Sarah company during feedings, and overall enamored adoration mixed with exhaustion that comes with the blessing of a new baby.

Upon leaving, both moms made reference to the fact that there's a reason why women can't have babies when they're older -- it's all too tiring! :)

Venice Babymoon!

Our first trip in Europe and last getaway before our duo became a trio was our babymoon to Venice. The Germans couldn't believe that we drove all the way just for a 48 hour stay. But to us it was just like driving to Los Angeles for a long weekend and cheaper than flights or a train ride . . . Or so we thought. We are now more educated about the cost of Austrian autobahn passes and Italian toll roads! Ha!

Venice was absolutely wonderful and beautifully warm. We stayed at a beautiful b&b run by a nice family, ate our fill of gelato, checked off an item on Sarah's bucket list by going for a gondola ride, and had fun just wandering the alley ways just to see where we'd wind up.

We purposely made sure our trip coincided with the Regatta Storica: Venice's annual boat race. There was a historical parade followed by men's and women's 8-man, 4-man, and pairs races. It was so fun to watch it all go down the canal, listen to the play by play announcing over the town's loudspeaker, and hear from the locals about their favorites. The men's 2-man race was last, and apparently there were two rival boats. The brown pair was known for their rigid training schedule and strict diets--several years ago they had won the regatta three years in a row. Their rivals, the blue pair, were known for their lackadaisical practice schedule and overall drunken debauchery--these guys had won the last three years in a row and were going for their fourth- something no pair had done before. So who won, you ask? . . . Unfortunately, with one flawed turn of their paddle, the blue team flipped their gondola in the grand canal, leaving the brown team with an easy win. Must have been one limoncello too many the night before!

Tour of Our Place

Hey, Will here. Welcome to my home in Munich! Let me show you around!



Here's what you see when you walk in our front door. The hallway now has many hooks and cubbies for coats, hats, and scarves for all three of us seem to be wearing a lot of them right now, however my mom took these house pics for our blog before I was born and she'd rather play with me than retake them all. So if you want to picture the current status of each room, envision pictures hung on the walls and baby toys, burp cloths, and other baby paraphernalia strewn about in every room. :). My dad is now an expert electrician (All lights you see were installed by my dad since no German apartment comes with them), mason (stay tuned!), and Ikea assemblyman. He tried to add plumber to this list but he was 1 for 2 in this category, so mom says it doesn't count.



The first room on the left is our bathroom. It's got a toilet alley, washer/dryer combo (dad's successful plumbing installation) that mom seems to be using a lot more since I came along, and bathroom cabinets my parents bought, assembled and installed. * note: when German assembly instructions say it will take 2 adults 3 hours to assemble 1 cabinet, they're right!





The next room on the left is the kitchen. Uncle Pete helped us assemble the island and daddy got to install his dream of a wire lighting system that turned into a nightmare. It was his first, but not last, battle with German concrete. After this first project, dad began a rock collection from all the rubble that fell out of the drilled holes in the wall. Mom and dad also learned how to fix said holes once the drill bits grab a pebble and make the hole 2times bigger than they need: throw in the support and glue the heck out of it, wait for it to dry, then screw away! When all else fails borrow cement from a friend at work, fill the hole, wait for it to dry, and start over again. Both methods are successfully suspending our Ikea lights across our kitchen and we hope it stays that way for the next 18 months!
The dishwasher was an adventure in itself. Dad successfully navigated a German electronics website to order many thing for our house, but our dishwasher came without a front plate. The one on the website was stainless steel- where did we go wrong??? Went to ikea, bought a cover, got it home only to discover it would only work with ikea appliances. Nice. Mom, armed with 'geschirrspüler' - the German word for dishwasher- spent an entire day going from kitchen store to kitchen store trying to find a panel for their 80s kitchen cabinets. No success. Nice. Even our landlords tried to help by scrounging two different junky fronts they had lying around. Thoughtful, but no thanks. Dad was ready to give up but mom wouldn't stand for a dishwasher door that sprung up and hit you whenever you opened it because there wasn't the weight of the front panel to hold it down. A solution was reached: buy a piece of wood and drill it to the front. Have grandpa paint it after I'm born. Done and done. *note: this dishwasher is the aforementioned failed plumbing attempt. However, I would like to give my dad huge kudos for his perseverance with a dremel, quick action in response to the leak, and intelligence in understanding German water valves.



The only room off the right from the hallway is mine. I love staring at the sports balls on the wall over my changing table. Mom loves the "football" ceiling light she found while shopping one day. My room is big for German standards, so there was even room for a guest bed. Come on over and play with me! Usually mom and dad will have a sleepover in my room which is fun for all of us.

At the end of the hall is our dining room/living room. It instantly felt like home with all of our furniture from California. The three windows face the elementary school on the other side of the street. Mom likes to watch the kids come and go. A recent highlight has been watching snowball fights after school.

Thanks to dad's awesome friend Chris, we have a Slingbox, so my mom watches the today show in the late afternoons and dad watches Sunday morning "night" football over dinner. Mom really liked me being born during football season because Dad would always volunteer for night duty on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday so he could catch the games back home! Mom would like to extend a special thanks to coach Harbaugh for a great season, thus many extra hours of sleep for her and plenty of midnight male bonding time for us Zabel boys. :)

The hallway makes an 'L' and at the end of the turn is our half bath affectionately named the outhouse because it has no heat. Mom refuses to use it in the middle of the night because it's too cold, but my dad thinks it's a great place to store wine!


To the right is my parent's bedroom. All three closets in this room were purchased at Ikea (all rooms in German apartments are just four walls-nothing is ever built in) and assembled by my uncle Pete and dad. The tan closet in the corner was my dad's arch nemesis for awhile. My parents had originally purchased pretty mirrored doors for the closet, but seconds after hanging the doors and drilling the closet to the wall they heard the scratching, ripping sound of cement giving way only to see the entire closet beginning to fall out from the wall and onto them! It was like something out of a movie! Luckily no one was hurt. Dad disassembled the doors and mom pulled the boxes out of the dumpster oon the rain so they could make their 8th trip back to ikea to finish the house before I arrived. However, it took them over a week to fix the gaping hole of concrete on the wall (remember the previously mentioned masonry reference?) and make it back to Ikea because mentally they were d-u-n with it all. Nonetheless, it got done eventually.
I'm sure you are wondering what's behind the screen. . . Well, it's all the diapers and wipes my mom bought before moving out here. She's proud that she accurately estimated the number of level 1 diapers I'd use for I'm almost out of diapers as I'm almost ready for level 2. Dad is skeptical whether we'll use the 7,84746373 Costco wipes we brought over, but I'm doing my darndest to make sure mom's right on her estimate here too!

Hope you liked my tour. Feel free to stop on by and see it for yourself!