Big D is 3! ... and other news

Big D turned 3 last week and we celebrated by taking him to the local zoo, which was tons of fun.  His best buddy from Borken along with his parents joined us and Dylan had so much fun that every day since then he has asked if we can go back.

Dylan and his friend spent the whole day running around, pulling a wagon together through the entire zoo and being super silly.  I think pulling the wagon was a bigger attraction for them than the animals, but regardless, by 4 pm they were tuckered out.

After getting pizza (Dylan's favorite) for dinner, we came home and opened presents.  Bryan says I went "overboard" on the presents, but it was just so much fun shopping for him that I couldn't help myself.  Yesterday Dylan asked me if I would re-wrap all of his birthday presents so he could go through the fun of unwrapping them all over again.  It was a good birthday.

This is as close as he would get to the donkeys.

Checking out the elephants.

These boys shared wagon-pulling duty all day.

Big gorillas were in there.  I had to keep telling the boys to stop sticking their heads through the fence.

Awesome presents!

We were waiting for the seal feeding to begin and the boys got really silly.  They put on a little "pre-show" of their own.

He's trying to show us on his fingers how old he is.

We now have jam sessions every day.  Dylan calls it "playing musics."  

In other news, the shingles are slowly healing but still quite painful.  Since I'm pregnant I'm trying to avoid any pain medication and it's been several days since I've had to take any.  My skin is super sore and now very itchy, but it's definitely getting better despite being massively uncomfortable.  

In apartment news, we're STILL waiting for our kitchen to be installed.  We ordered this kitchen on May 8 and right now the installation date is June 19.  It's really frustrating going so long without a kitchen.  We have a microwave (thank goodness!) a toaster and a coffee pot, so we're pretty much eating a lot of PB&Js, canned soup and going out for pizza.  Dylan is getting bored with the food regime and keeps wondering why we don't have any milk or cereal.  I'm on a mission to get some kind of discount / rebate for the delay.  German customer service is not as flexible or apologetic as America customer service and most people here just grit their teeth and deal with these delays, which aren't unusual.  The customer service / sales people like to pass-the-buck on responsibility and, of course, our sales person has been on a 2 week vacation, so her replacement has been unfriendly and unhelpful in speeding things along.  The basic answer for "What's taking so long?" is "I don't know, but that's the way it is. There's nothing I can do about it."  This response just wouldn't fly in America.  Actually, in America, no one would EVER stand for renting an apartment or buying a house that doesn't come with a kitchen because it's the stupidest system in the entire world, so no one would be in this ridiculous situation.  Dylan moved his toy kitchen into our kitchen a few days ago and said "Look Mommy, now your kitchen has an oven and a sink."  It made me laugh, but it's also kind of sad.

Here's what our kitchen looks like right now.