How do Ben and Ellen kill time while waiting for a baby to show up?

Well...

I've been baking an awful lot. Just today I made peanut butter brownies, and in the past couple weeks I also have made macarons, honey ice cream, some other peanut butter blondies (Ben's boss had asked why I don't make peanut butter stuff, so I've made a couple things for him. He's one of my loyal fans and I like to keep my fans happy), and cupcakes.

The cupcakes, though. I needed to make them. You see, I had leftover chocolate ganache and vanilla buttercream from making macarons, and I also had a brand new toy to play with. I saw this mechanical pastry bag on the Williams-Sonoma website a little while back, lusted after it, mentioned it in passing to my mom, and then magically got one in a box a early birthday presents from my parents. I'm pretty much in love with it.

So I whipped up my favorite almond cake recipe, filled some with cherry preserves and topped them with chocolate ganache AND vanilla buttercream.


Yum. I didn't eat any, but Ben said they went over really really well at work.

We've also been going out to eat as much as possible. We've been out every weekend for the past four weeks, and it's been great. The last two times we went out, we went to The India House, an indian restaurant in Maastricht. I had been wanting good indian food for a while, but it's not easy to find around here, so eventually I just googled "good indian restaurant in Maastricht", and voilà! It's delicious and the people who run it are nice and it's delicious, and when Ben asked if they can do take out (for when/if this baby ever comes) the guy said "Sure!" Yay!

We also like to walk around Maastricht after eating, and usually end up at the Fun Photo booth at the train station

It is terrbily fun.

And of course we've been going to Starbucks (as usual)



And if we're lucky, while walking around Aachen after our Starbucks trip we stumble upon free entertainment.

This was the "Dance Wizards", a hip hop dance group. By American standards they were pretty bad, and Ben and I laughed and laughed and laughed. And laughed some more. But by German or Dutch standards they were pretty good. They're good at fried foods around here, but not so great at the dancing thing. I told Ben that those girls totally stole all my moves, the ones I use when I'm at home alone and nobody can see me. I could be a star here!

Even funnier than the real dancers was the older woman standing next to us. She was gettin' down.


Other than that we're still just sitting around, waiting, walking the dogs, watching movies, waiting. And to answer any questions, I feel great still, baby is great, no sign of anything happening, and as of today I am 9 days overdue. I guess the kid is just happy in there.