Travelog for: *-Cookie-*

Getting ready for Relay for life!

A good meal from Lindy's is in order!

Luminaries were our favorite part!






A funny gag! Mesquite police were on hand to raise money! They'd arrest anyone you wanted...for a price!




Sunset was beautiful!

Its hard work!

resting between laps



after party @ Denny's!




We raised $225. Our team raised over $14k! and the event was a HUGE success!

It was a fun, exciting month!
Left Miss Kristy's car at the shop for an oil change. We walked to Grandy's to wait. It rained really heavily on us on the way back!




Another day, we had jack in the box at Kristy's aunt Carol's


We of course went to Denny's several times. We're regulars now!

we like storytime at Denny's. Miss Kristy's kids got her an ereader for Mother's Day.




We spent the 4th of July at Denny's too! We saw fireworks, but not so close as to hurt our ears!


























after the fireworks, we went back inside and ordered from the kids menu. Then, we colored the menu!


We really like chineese food, too!

Lindy's home cooking is a local favorite! Nolan 's Grammy was with us one day


The hot water heater broke! We went to the laundry mat. It was fun!






We went to see Kristy's Dad


We stopped at burgerking one day. The original chicken sandwich just isn't what it used to be!

We adored Island Burger!


Ghengis grill was fun! We picked ingredience with the same starting letters as our name, then Miss Kristy made a bowl adding a few ingredience of her own!

Salmonella Left us to go to Germany! We will miss the pink, but we are very excited for her!

birdt is leaving us to new adventures in Switzerland! We are sad to see Birdt go, but excited for him!
As usual, we spent a lot of time at Denny's this month. We love it there. Especially when Mr. Jim is our server.








We had to drop by the bank, so a visit to The Corner Pocket in downtown Garland was in order!





Date night was spaghetti warehouse. YUM!





We went to Island Burger again, too

Hello world!

This is Cookie 2 writing. I'm Cookie's twin sister and mummy took me with her and Scritches on her trip to London, UK. 

First we saw Nelson's Column on Trafalgar Square.



There are big lions at the foot of the column. They were a bit scary.

Then we explored the city for the day and in the evening we went to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.



Look, it was already getting dark at 4:30 p.m..

The last place we wanted to see for the day was Buckingham Palace. Since we got a little lost on our way it was really dark once we found it.



Can you see the flag blowing on top? It means the Queen was home when we visited. 
Also it was the second time I saw a castle. Even though it was a palace this time it still counts towards my life mission.

Today we spent another day in London. And it was also Mummy's birthday today! 

We visited the Tower of London today. This complex is way bigger than we had thought.





Do you know about the legend of the ravens of the Tower of London?
It goes: "If the Tower of London ravens are lost or fly away, the Crown will fall and Britain with it." So there are always at least 6 (plus 1 in reserve) ravens on the grounds. You can find more information here.

To celebrate Mummy's birthday we even went on the big ferris wheel, London Eye. It was really special up there - seeing London from above when it was already dark.



But it was really hard to take good pictures in the moving wheel in the dark. So there's only one without me. 

Tomorrow we'll be leaving already again. It was lovely visiting this awesome city and I sure want to come back some day! 

We went to the Balch Springs Chamber of Commerce awards gala! It was nice! Kristy even wore a dress!



Denny's!



Wendy's


Back at Denny's!



We went on vacation! Nice hotel room and the waffels were shaped like TEXAS!!







Back to Denny's! The nachos there are awesome, especially when you sub seasoned fries for the chips!


Different day, different Denny's. We're a bit addicted!


Special night! We went to razzoo's!! We didn't have alligator, though. They were out!


Working at Denny's! Kristy does her best thinking there!

This is Cookie 2 again. While my sister is taking a break in Texas I will continue to travel for her.

Today we used the fact that all of us are at home at the moment and took a group picture of Henri, Lieselotte and myself.



Aren't we all looking good? 

Today we helped Mummy bake a cake for her mother’s birthday. 

First we gathered all the ingredients we needed for the base cake.



Then we melted some butter in the microwave. Wow, so fast!



We let the butter cool down and grated an apple. I held the grater while Lieselotte grated the apple and Henri observed everything from a safe place high up on the coffee pot.



After that Lieselotte and I mixed sugar and butter and Henri cracked the eggs.



After mixing the eggs into the sugar butter mix we had the important task of weighing the flour. Look, we are hard at work here:



Then I cut open the almond pieces and added some to the flour.



Lieselotte added a pinch of cinnamon and I added a teaspoon full of baking powder.



We mixed everything well, added the grated apple and put it into the oven.
While the cake was baking we got out more ingredients to make custard. And we tested out the pot.



We poured some apple juice into the pot and let it heat up while Mummy mixed the other ingredients together with the custard powder. And no I didn’t get my feet wet here.



While the custard was cooking we grated chocolate – lots of chocolate. *phew*



Then we had a little break while the cake was still baking and the custard was cooling down in the fridge. *yey* When the time was right Lieselotte took the cake out of the oven and Henri cut it into pieces to make it cool down faster.



When everything was cool enough we crumbled the cake and mixed it with the custard.



Then Mummy melted the chocolate while we watched from a safe distance so as not to get all choclatey.



While the chocolate melted we formed little balls out of the cake-custard-mix and stuck sticks into them.





Because the chocolate didn’t turn out as it should have we opted for a chocolate-free icing with lemon juice, water, powdered sugar and colourful sprinkles. 



Our cake pops turned out very yummy!



Of course we had to try one. Can you see the empty stick in the bottom right corner? Yes, we snatched it while Mummy wasn’t looking. 



And Mummy’s mother was happy with her unconventional birthday cake as well. 

Something very exciting happened today! 

Mummy brought a big envelope inside from the mailbox.

We all really wanted to see what was inside.



Mummy opened the envelope carefully so we could all peer inside.



We saw a cute little pig in the envelope and told it to come out as we all wanted to meet it. The little shy piggy did as we told it when we all smiled our best smiles. 



We all gave it a welcome hug.



And we learned that in fact it is no "it", but a "she" called Oink. She was sent to Mummy from
Strunki, her prevous host.

And she brought chocolate, a postcard and a real treasure map. We asked her to tell us all about her previous adventures. So she gave each of us a piece of chocolate because story-telling is so much better with sweets and told us all of her travels in the Bergisch Land and beyond.



Wow! 

We are really looking forward to showing her around in the coming days! 

Today we went on a little walk around Uchte - or more precisely the neighbourhood around the retirement home and the industrial area and showed Oink around a little.

But first we had to send 2 postcards and then we posed on the mailbox.



On one of the meadows behind the retirement home we saw some goats. Two came running to have their pisture taken with us.



Around the corner we saw a huge blackberry bush.



After some more steps we saw a big construction site:



Here the buildings belonging to the agricultural cooperative society and the freight depot had been pulled down after a big part of them were burnt in a fire earlier this year.

Here we are posing in the construction site fence in front of a big pile of rubble:



A little way down the street we posed on a street blockade in front of one of the many corn fields.



Can you spot us on the barrier?



Also we have all been wondering what the street signs are supposed to mean. "Please only crash here" maybe?

At the end of the street we saw a field full a solar panels.



What a strange crop!

On our way back home we found this lovely pear tree hanging very full with fruits *yummy*, but without a partridge in it though.



Where one of the little streets is today there were many little garden plots. The street was built when Mummy was little so she remembers all the nice little gardens and she was very sad when they were all removed in order to build the street. Luckily a few of the gardens still exist today.

This one has a nice vegetable selection. Here you can see big cabbage plants:



And here are more different plants:



And we just had to pose in front of these beautiful sunflowers:



It was a nice little walk with lovely weather!

Today we all helped Mummy bake cupcakes for her aunt's birthday.

First we had to gather all the ingredients for the cupcakes.



Look, how well we fit into the bowl! 

Then we had to grate an apple.



Or more precisely Lieselotte and I grated the apple while Henri observed us and Oink snacked on an apple slice.

But Oink made it up when she took over the important task of weighing the sugar.



I mixed sugar and butter together while Lieselotte and Henri weighed the right amount of flour and Oink measured the baking powder.



Everyone watched while I mixed everything together well.



Then we let Mummy fill the dough into the muffin tray and we snacked on the leftover dough. *yummy* 



While the cupcakes were baking we weighed ourselves.



Look, all together we weigh a little over 200g.

Then we measured the red currant jam for the topping...



... and mixed it together with butter, powdered sugar and crème fraîche.

To make the finished cupcakes look like apples we had to make some decorations from marzipan and colouring.



Here you can see the results:



The cupcakes fresh out of the oven...:



...and decorated:



Sadly, we couldn't taste them just now because they were for the next afternoon and had to be put in the fridge overnight.
But tomorrow I'll try one! 

Today is the day of cupcake-tasting! 

We took them to the apartment of Mummy’s grandmother to give as a present to Mummy’s aunt. We set them nicely on a cake stand (another present) around 2 smurf figurines.



Looks good, doesn't it? 

And finally after so much work and waiting we got to taste one of them:



Very good! (And yes, in case you were wondering they were supposed to look like apples so some of them even had marzipan worms. *eek*)

Because of the bad weather we have to stay inside mostly and spend our time often in the kitchen. It's actually much fun and we’re learning a lot of new things. 

Today we made a fairly exotic dinner: jasmine rice with red coco curry.



First we all weighed the rice and Mummy set it to boil on the stove.



(Well, technically we watched Mummy cut the chicken meat first, but we didn't want to put any pictures of raw meat here because it's a little yucky and we are considerate of others.)

So we only show it after it was already in the pan.



While the rice boiled on its own we took the coconut milk and red curry paste...



...and mixed them together in the pan (after removing the meat).



After a while we added the meat to the mixture again and let it simmer.



We also added the rest of the coconut milk and some almond pieces and cooked everything until the rice was ready to be served.



We served the rice in a heart shape and put the curry around it. It tasted very good – very spicy and totally different than what we are used to here. And the whole house smelled amazing.



We also learned how to eat with chopsticks, but we weren't very good at holding the chopsticks with our paws. So there are no pictures of this embarrassing endeavour.

Even though we don’t get outside much at the moment we have a lot of fun and we are certainly well fed.

We went on another sightseeing tour. Today we went on a long walk around the Landschaftssee, an artificial lake that was built as a recreation area.

But first we stopped at another nice place overlooking some fields.





On the way to the lake we even saw a dragonfly. And it stayed still long enough for pictures.



Then we finally reached the lake. It's very green and peaceful there. Plus only very few people were around which made it seem even more peaceful and secluded.





About halfway around the lake we sat down on a bench and enjoyed the beautiful view and the nice weather.



We also saw a pretty blue dragonfly. It was gone too fast for more pictures, but I want to show it nonetheless.



On the other side of the lake we saw two swans. Can you spot them both?



A hint: One is looking for food with his head under water in this picture. 

On our way back we saw the Uchter Mühlenbach (millstream of Uchte) also called Beeke which is Middle Low German for rivulet.



We followed the rivulet until we reached one of Mummy's favourite places:



Mummy used to play here often as a child - also in the forest you can see on the left side in the background. Btw the bridge is a railway bridge.

From here we followed next to the railway tracks until we reached this huge rock:



It came from Scandinavia and was transported here during the Ice Age. It weighs 31 tons.

This was our last stop today before we went home on the railway tracks.

Today we started on a trip early in the morning. First Mummy went by car to a fellow Postcrosser who would take us to Soltau with him.

We had a look around once we were allowed out of the backpack in Mummy's car for a minute.



In Soltau Mummy met with some more postcard-crazy people. First they had a little sightseeing tour and of course some postcards were bought. But after a while we went into the Lüneburger Heide (Luneburg Heath) where the humans found a nice place to sit down.

We had a look around:









Doesn't the purple look nice?

But after such a long time we were very hungry. Luckily every Postcrosser had brought something to eat or drink and we had a picknick.



Doesn't it all look yummy? 

Coincidentally we also met lots of other toyvoyagers.
Here we were inspecting a big stack of postcards (it was a postcrossing meeting after all) :



And of course we had to have a group picture taken:



So many TVs!  Most came from different cities in Germany, but one was on holiday from the USA and another was raised in China (where a Postcrosser found him). 

This stone marked the place where we had settled down.



Yes, it was definitely a beautiful view! 

Of course we needed a picture close up with some heather.



And when all of that got too boring we played hide and seek and catch around the heather bushes. 



I also had to say goodbye to Mummy and my fellow toys because I'll be going on my next big trip now.



At the end of the meeting I went into sannah's bag to go with her back to the USA. Exciting!