Riemer Family Adventures: Christmas 3.0

When Liz and Stephanie were here a couple weeks ago they came bearing a gift certificate for the kids from Liz and Ed and Oma and Opa which entitled each child to a shopping spree in Berlin. Wow!! The best part of this was that Liz was going to take them shopping. She is SOO much more patient and open minded when shopping with my kids. Josie can be so indecisive and Benjamin often chooses some junky type things and I can't bite my tongue. Liz lets them choose whatever they want and take as long as they want. They ended up spending over an hour in one store and actually came away with some quality stuff.

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Today the kids had early release (at 10:30 - why bother really, but whatever) It was the last day of 1st semester. How can this really be? How can half the year be over already? Anyway, we decided to spend the early release day and first day of winter vacation going to lunch and shopping and we all had a ball. Grandma and Papa had also sent money over for the kids for Christmas and Kim and Fred had given the kids money for their birthdays (yes, the have saved it!!)
We hopped on a bus that took us directly to the coolest toy store in Berlin. Josie immediately found a ton of Japanese erasers that she wanted and Benjamin found a huge, black mirror or glass marker. I really tried hard to channel my inner Liz (who is always so cool when she shops with the kids and lets them really direct what they buy) Then we had to get some lunch because Marty had to head home to do his radio show.
We ate at Marty's favorite falafel place, Jasmin. It is really just a whole in the wall but seriously the best falafel either of us has ever tasted. The kids wanted to wait so that after shopping they could hit the food court at the mall... lame, but whatever. The kids ended up eating half of our falafel platter either because they were starving or they are coming around.

Marty headed home and we headed back to the cool toy store because I wanted to pick up the Berlin version of Monopoly. While they waited for me to buy it they both found huge lego sets that they wanted to spend their Christmas money on. They agreed that they would each pay half of the two sets so technically they each owned both of the sets. Neither of them have been really into Legos the way most kids are. Our neighbor, very generously, gave us an enormous box of lego pieces when her son outgrew them but neither child has had one of these huge sets before.

So now that they have two they were in heaven. And I assume that enormous box of Legos back at home will get played with a ton more now that they each have a large structure to add on to.
So after the cool toy store we headed to the mall for their "mall food" Benjamin's favorite is Butter Chicken at the Indian restaurant and Josie's is fresh spring rolls at the Vietnamese. They never waiver from these choices.

After a quick lunch we head upstairs because I needed to renew our bus passes. Normally Marty does this but since he had to go back to work it was on me. I have to say with my 3 weeks of German I'm doing quite well in these situations and even if the person kindly starts speaking English back I was able to get the conversation started and mostly carried it in German.
The kids kept looking while I was at the BVG getting our bus passes because they both had some money left. Benjamin found a used video game that he has been dying to have and Josie found a stuffed animal.... again, bit my tongue on both of these purchases.... channeling my inner Liz.

To top off our little outing, the kids had an ice cream cone and then we headed to the bus loaded down with their new purchases.
Once we arrived home they torn into their new Lego sets and didn't stop playing with them for about 4 hours that night and another 6 the next day as they finished putting them together. I have to say I'm a big fan of Christmas 2.0 and Christmas 3.0