germaricans

haircut

2008-09-30T20:25:00.006+02:00

post no. 100 has to be:
Juju´s hair is gone.. well, not all gone but he long hair that was down to his butt when wet and that turned into a heap of corkscrew curls when dry had to go. And yes, I still miss it :-)
he just looked way too cool but it was summer and it got increasingly hard to brush through it so off it came. He still carries it around and claims it´s an animal.. ha ha..

the day before the haircut I braded it so it would not get tangled too badly overnight...

what a sucky trade.. a lollipop for my hair.. hmm...

is that meee??? with the short hair??? BUT... I look like a BOY now?!?!

Isa got her first haircut as well, just a little trim and afterwards they gave her a cute french brade - she felt like a movie star.. ha ha..

To Blog or Not to Blog...

2008-09-02T22:34:00.002+02:00

yup, exactly my question.. and it has been for a while, good thing reality had me very busy as well on the side or you´d get the idea that I actually put alot of thought into it 8)
I know that there are a couple of people that read the blog simply because they care about us, love us, miss us and want to be part of our lives even though we´ve all been scattered around the world. Those are the people I truly take the time to post pictures for - my family and friends (used synonymous in most cases!). There seem to be others that stop by along the way, be it by stumbling across it by accident or be it curiosity about whatever it may be they are curious about.
Well, after my last blog in February I received very negative comments because obviously I offended someone. And that someone wanted me to stop posting pictures and posts that might offend that person.
???????
I tried to put myself in that person's shoes and looked at it from many different angles but whatever the angle, I came to this conclusion:
DON´T READ MY BLOG IF IT OFFENDS YOU!!!!!!!
simple, huh?
I don´t intend to change my ways and frankly, I don´t see why I should either.
I´ve never intentionally hurt anyone, never leash out at anyone, that´s just not my nature.
Having said this - the answer to my self-imposed question is clear:
TO BLOG

Now that the computer is running again, my overtime at work has been decreased (yippeh) and hopefully with the switch to Windows Vista on top of that my camera will stop fighting me when I download the pictures, there will be ALOT more posts these coming weeks.. because there has been ALOT going on over here!

I think my very first post will have to be Juju with short hair. Short. It wasn´t even short when he was born. I miss his long hair.. it was down to his butt.. wait - let me save the sniffles for the actual post with the pictures.. lol

So yes, we´re back :-)

Origami X-Wing

2008-02-05T15:05:00.000+01:00

Helau! Since I have not posted in .... hmm.. a month? .... I figured it was time. I just need to resize the pictures and off we go :-)
Meanwhile, I found these very cool X-Wing Origami instructions.. geeky? yup.. :-)
and way cool!

http://www.union.ic.ac.uk/scc/icsf/library/history/picocon22/xwing/folding.html

enjoy!!!!!!!

little pre-christmas bowling

2008-01-02T16:26:00.000+01:00

It´s funny how I can be this much older than the kids but they still kick my butt when it comes to bowling.. well - maybe the little bumper rails helped.. he he.. but let´s face it: I SUCK! ha ha ha
But we all had a great time so that´s all that counts.

Bowling at Dexheim :-)

go Isa go!!!

I rock :-)

sssstriiiiike!!!
wonder if I´ll hit anything.. lol

look Mom, THIS is how you do it.. (thanks Juju...lol)

Christmas Pictures

2007-12-17T18:14:00.000+01:00

For the last couple of years at the christmas treelighting ceremony at the WAAF, our favorite Santa aka "Emily's Husband" endures hours of taking pictures with crying children, screaming parents and frantic grandparents cheering their offspring on to smile for Santa...
Since neither of us can pass up an opportunity to dive right into that AND it is his last year here in our community since Emily, the Art Director of the Römer Art Center, has decided to retire in spring, we got these pictures taken. My favorite is another picture though that has nothing to do with our family but makes me laugh out loud everytime I look at it! I´m only posting the link since it is public but I don´t want to put the picture of other people's children on our blog without permission. Here is the link though, if you need a classic Santa moment, this is it!:
www.armygermany.com/santa

AAAH! Forgot the Thanksgiving pictures, too! lol

2007-12-15T18:05:00.000+01:00

OK, how bad is this? I forgot to post the Thanksgiving pictures.. lol...
Well, long story short, we went to the Messhall in Dexheim with a friend of ours, Georgina.

I won´t comment on the amount of food my boys stuffed themselves with - see for yourself! lol

Every year they have a contest between all the cooks for different cakes and displays - quite gorgeous. They also had a table for the soldier that can´t be there with them because he was killed in Iraq a few years ago. It´s nice they never forget.

Hearts Quilt.. Progress - finally!

2007-12-15T17:58:00.000+01:00

Yup, it´s starting to come together.. and I think it´s the biggest project I ever tackled! Sometimes I wonder why I thought I´d have enough time to make this Quilt... Life is really hectic (isn´t it always?) and while I´m working endless overtime and we´re trying to get everything ready for Christmas there seems to be very little time to sit down and sew for more than 10 minutes at a time - that just does not cut it..
But, the top is almost done, the basting is next and then I can start quilting. Maybe I´ll take it on vacation with me? Yeah right, like I´ll have much time there! But I´ll try...
This is what it looks like right now, after this post I´ll go back downstairs to sew some more and hopefully finish it this weekend.

Have you ever wondered.....

2007-12-15T17:49:00.001+01:00

how a broken ceran stove top looks like?
here you go:
and yes, it costs alot of money to replace it.. perfect timing 2 weeks before christmas, huh? lol

....where the 3 year old hides when he does not want you to know he took the Nintendo DS?
right here, wedged between the couch and the wall:
.....what a 19 year old looks like when he has to pick up all the easter candy that he accidentally spilled all over the kitchen floor?
so wonder no more.. ha ha

Christmas Tree Lighting

2007-12-15T17:34:00.001+01:00

yeah yeah, I´m a couple of days late.. or maybe 2 weeks? Well, simple explanation: we have an Alex.. lol
Those rare creatures usually hog the computer all evening when I would have time to download pictures and do my computer stuff. Even now that he works from 9:00 - 18:00 during the week I haven´t had the time. So here are the missing pictures from this year's Tree Lighting Ceremony at the WAAF. The 1st Graders were the ones that were allowed to pull the rope with Santa to turn on the lights and Isa was the first one in line.. lol.. duh?

So proud - Isa's first letter to Santa - I love how well my 1st Grader writes already :-)

Isa's letter to Santa
Lilly and Isa - great friends since german Kindergarten

Santa's Post Office
munching on popcorn and cookies.. :-)
Making canes out of beeds - can he see through those bangs? lol
several attempts to take a family picture failed - partially because Juju wanted to rearrange the presents under the tree and hand them out to people he thought needed them.. lol

another failed attempt.. ha ha.. but we had fun - so who really cares?

THIS is the only way to roast marshmellows Army style.. lol

MAGC Wiesbaden

2007-11-16T17:14:00.000+01:00

Did we have fun? Yes, we did!!!!! lol..
It was great to see everyone up in the Golfcourse Clubhouse on Sunday, Nov 4 and after eating and talking we - of course - went caching :-)

The Audimaniac Tribe, the Hzoi Tribe and us - later joined by the Nasenbär55 Tribe..
Christian and Kelly (hzoi) had really done great work in the weekends before the meet and placed some nice and original caches. He actually did some more work while we were caching - he first gave Juju a ride and later on Isa.. lazy kids.. ha ha
The whole gang had fun and since there were so many of us, we were able to make the trail stroller-friendly.. well, not friendly but doable.. lol..
Kim, our part time dog, had a great time as well, especially when all the kids figured out how nice she is and kept petting her.
Now, if you think that because there were so many of us, we had no problems finding the caches - you´re dead wrong.. ha ha.. but eventually - under the eyes of the cache owners - we found them and made it back to the Golfclub about 15 minutes after darkness fell upon us like bad family.. brr.. darkness brought coldness with him so it was good we were headed home. I don´t think Juju was awake by the time we hit the street - he just collapsed in his car seat :-D

Halloween - I forgot to post the pics :-)

2007-11-03T18:02:00.000+01:00

On Halloween we just dashed home from our dayjobs, got the kids changed and rushed up to Dexheim to trick or treat a bit.. the last years we had either done this around here or had huge parties.. grin grin. not this year - but it was fun! Alex scared the living daylights out of some little and some big people and one of his treats was a beer.. lol.. we ended up at the gym there where the local chapel had a small "hallelujah" alternative event to halloween and that was fun as well :-)

Creativ Welt Wiesbaden 07

2007-11-03T16:58:00.001+01:00

Good thing Thursday was a holiday in our Bundesland :-) It´s not in Hessen, the next one over the river.. he he.. so the first day of the Creativ Welt in Wiesbaden was not as crowded as it would have been it they had a holiday, too!!!
Alex was home so he had Juju and I took off with Isa really early to do a long list of things.. first off, buying snow tires.. we´ll need them for our winter vacation!
Next, have breakfast together :-)
Then go to Creativ Welt.
Afterwards go to cemeteries to visit my grandparents and other relatives to light candles since it was all saints.
And last, we had to drive to Alzey (if you ever read about Siegried the Dragon Slayer you probably heard of Alzey, a quaint little town about 20 miles from Oppenheim) to visit my colleague Gabi to see if the bunnies liked Isa...
At Creativ Welt, first I dropped Isa off at the free child care (yippeh!) for about 2 hours and ventured on my own - awesome! Didn´t get the book I wanted but didn´t buy fabric, either! Kudooos to me! lool..
Didn´t get the walking foot I wanted either.. but at least I know where to get it now :-)
I did buy a circle cutter, a new cutting board, really beautiful oriental glass beads for Isa and a Marble track called Cugolino pop for Juju though - I had so much fun playing with all the different blocks that I had to get a small starter set for him - well, christmas is around the corner so I went to the basement in the christmas gift box :-)

When I picked up Isa, she tried herself at wood cutting - with my help she cut out a 2-piece star that she painted later and that turned out really nicely - now she wants to do more sawing.. he he.. watch out Opi, here comes work for ya!

Then after enjoying the quilt expo they had, I got Isa and went to play with some games some more, bought a really nice dice game for her, bought some awesome markers and some blopens (finally caved in.. lol) which are for christmas as well! She also found some paper punches and
christmas card decoration stuff that she wanted so pretty much all the shopping went to the kids but I had such a great time looking around - priceless! Here are the pictures of the quilts - the theme was "suitcases from around the world" and had some really awesome quilts with Geysers, Volcanoes, hot-and-cold themes and tons of other things.. I didn´t take pictures of all, just of a couple..
Then there were quilts that incorporated a patch made by children in a village in Afghanistan - those quilts were made by children here... wow!! They were all so gorgeous!!!

And then I saw some that at first glance reminded me of Kristin´s work but.. yeah, her´s are more beautiful :-) I really liked them though!

New Family Members :-)

2007-11-03T16:47:00.000+01:00

We have arrivals! Our 2 new family members are Munches and Crunches, two "Zwergwidder" bunnies who needed a new home. One of my colleagues gave them up due to her significant other´s sons asthma so Isa´s begging for months finally worked :-)
So after name searching that went from "Siegfried and Roy" over " Peanutbutter and Jelly" to "Sid and Nancy" we ended up tossing "Dancer and Prancer" and naming them Munches and Crunches.. lol..
Kim has been quite interested in them but I told her that having them with Bacon and Green Beans was out of the question :-)
For now they are outside, I´m sure we´ll build some nice outside and inside area for them so they can roam and have fun!
They are very cute, very gentle and quite friendly - wohoo!

Our first FTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-10-26T18:05:00.000+02:00

FTF = First to find
Usually, someone beats us to a newly hidden cache.. not so on Oct 22nd..
I logged on to my email and saw - oh, a new cache hidden in Nackenheim, which is about 4.5 miles north of here..
Thought about it for a minute and asked Alex "wanna get off the phone and come with me? There´s caching involved.. "
Amazingly he got off the phone with ????? (one of his friends) :-) and ran downstairs..
Dinner was done so I asked Rafael to feed the kids and we´d be back in about half an hour - grabbed the GPS and the flashlight and off we went.
Of course, the batteries were low and went off RIGHT BEFORE WE PASSED THE CACHE... AAAAAAAHH!!! But we found some more in our old caching bag in the trunk (seeeee - that´s why I don´t clean up back there.. grin) and found the fountain in which is was located. Not in the water, in the back of an old pump.
After we discovered the hidden container we noticed that nobody had logged it before! Yippeh! We finally got an FTF!!! Too bad there were people everywhere and we had to be stealthy so we could not jump around crazily! ha ha ha..
but we did later :-) And took stupid pictures!!
Hooray to us!
Oh, and by the way, Isa had wanted me to put my hair up in pigtails and I figured nobody would see me that evening.. ha ha.. duuuuuuuh.. so go ahead, get a good laugh! :-D

geocaching in Armsheim (where the heck is that??)

2007-10-26T17:53:00.002+02:00

Armsheim is a tiny little village close to Alzey in the rhinehessian rolling country..
The main attraction for the kids was this fountain where we had to count the lights embedded in the water flow..

It as a beautiful crisp October day and the sun made playing in the water tolerable - what a nice day!

The pomace looks like giant mole hills :-) Millions of fruit flies (drosophila melanogaster, well known by some of us who took genetics and got to breed them in a glass in their Mom´s kitchen.. hmm.. who took the lid off???) had a feast! Since the new wine had just been harvested, the leftovers (pomace) were dumped onto the fields as a fertilizer.. when the kids got closer a cloud of them rose up and scared them away.. haha.. they are cute little things though!

Isa is 6!!!!

2007-10-26T17:49:00.000+02:00

OMG.. how did this happen? lol
She´s is ecstatic because she´s not the only 5 year old in school anymore!!! :-)
We only had a small BBQ, most of her friends from school live 30 minutes from here so we didn´t invite them - next year..

Work In Progress - Heart Quilt

2007-10-26T17:28:00.000+02:00

Wow - I think most of the hearts are done, now I need time to sew the top together!!!
My friends helped me at the last craft day and many many many of the Quiltsterne sewed a heart block for me once I asked for them!
The story:
An long time friend of mine whom I´m in touch with only about twice a year, recently kept popping into my mind so when I took a detour due to a large construction on my way home, I just gave her a call.. She was delighted and asked it I wanted to drop by with Juju which we happily said yes to. Then she gave me a quick warning and said - Sid, I have no hair.. I hope you´ll be alright with that, I am going through Chemotherapy....
huh?
She managed to develop a very rare cancer that does not invade any organs but instead covers the peritoneum (which covers your intestines, bladder etc.) with a layer of cancer cells...
Wow.. what bad news! She has always been one of the kindest, happiest and most active people around! Needed help? She´d be there. Had something on your mind? She´d have an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on..
We stayed for a couple of hours (Isa was at Omis) and I could not believe how much my friend had been through in the previous 10 weeks! Since the cancer is inoperable as of now, she went through a strict chemo regimen until she could not endure the sickness anymore.. she was nauseous, dizzy etc..
On my way home I kept thinking what it was I could do that might help her through these tough times other than just being there for her?! And then the idea of a Quilt was born.
The next day I posted a note on the website of my quilting group and asked for "healing heart blocks" from anyone who would like to help me on this project.. and here came the flood! Block after block poured in from all of these wonderful women who don´t know my friend, 99 % of them don´t know me in real life, only from the internet!!! The most wonderful blocks, one prettier than the next..
On the following weekend I had my monthly craft day with my friends and they sewed their hearts out as well!
Just in case you wonder, I have sewn many as well.. lol.. the heart count is 60 blocks right now!!! I´ve laid them all out and wondered how to sew them up so here is a picture.. more will follow as work progresses!

Summer - Westerhaus

2007-10-26T17:07:00.000+02:00

just a few pics from a nice weekend with Omi, Opi, Kim and the kids - Gestüt Westerhaus which belongs to the Opel family (Opel as in the cars, also known as Vauxhall in the UK). Everyone had fun with the young horses!!

get naked baby, you don´t need the halter, huh? :-)

Omi´s first Cache :-)

Feeding the one year old horses
Hey, I´m Isa, who are you?

yes, we are alive!!! :-)

2007-10-26T14:52:00.000+02:00

I´ve been meaning to post some pictures for about 4 weeks now but as the Germans put it "der ganz normale Wahnsinn" has settled firmly in our lives at the moment (roughly translates as the simple everyday insanity).. lol
Isa is doing good in school although she´s - of course - still the youngest in the entire school. That finally changed last week when she finally turned 6 - wohoo!!!
Juju settled into Kindergarten (preschool) quite nicely and most of the time even stays dry, sometimes he even keeps some clothes on when he has to go.. lol.. but generally he takes off his shoes, pants, undies and socks, sometimes even his sweater, and goes to the potty then.. ha ha..
Alex is still in the process of a background check for his job with Child and Youth Services which means he´s home most of the day, plays online and surfs the web. A nice side effect is that he keeps Kim (my parents dog) company, since they are in South Africa for a couple of weeks. That is great for me because that way I don´t have to walk her at o-dark-thirty before I drive the kids to school and go to work - wohoo!!!! The two of them walk through the vineyards every morning and then she just hangs around him until the little ones are back.
That´s just the normal side of life at the moment, the rest is completely chaotic and insane but I hope normality will find us some day soon! My colleague whom I share an office with is home sick but we have patients scheduled for both of us... hmm.. somehow it still worked out this week, lets see how next week is!
Tomorrow will be a day of fun - Rafael is taking the kids swimming while I have my Quilt Ladies over - wohoooooooooooo again!!! Yes, they talked me into hosting our monthly craft day at last month's get together, and it was quite due... I´ve been dodging it for a long time since cleaning this house seems like an impossible task to me most of the time. But, I had a month's notice and actually managed to get most of it cleaned with the help of Rafael, a rug doctor and Agnes, who even tackled my windows!!!
Now to keep the monsters from totally messing it up again.. hmm.. Mission Impossible 5?

So this is what´s happening here, a bit geocaching in between of course, a little Birthday BBQ for Isa and the usual weekend outings. Settling into this autumn was hard until last week because it was beautiful here but now it´s grey and dreary and cold, I guess it finally got here. Hopefully Halloween will be dry next week!

Corn Maze by Night

2007-09-16T20:33:00.000+02:00

not a night cache but a night trip to the corn maze.. too cool!
Just us girls decided to go and explore the corn maze with our flashlights.. maybe we should have taken the GPS to backtrack.. ha ha.. it was really great and we came back around 23:00 after hours of fun in the corn, by the campfire, on the playground in the dark :-) A definite must for next year, too!

MAGC Heidelberg

2007-09-16T19:20:00.000+02:00

Of course there´s a little "subdivision" in the geocaching world that is military... :-)
They are called the "Military Association of Geocachers" - MAGC. They are a great bunch of folks and we had the first Charter Meeting for Germany on Saturday, way up in the hills of Heidelberg. Of course there was caching involved but I didn´t get to do any :-( On the way there we got lost (co-pilot was asleep and it was hard to read the WRONG directions from Map24 and avoid the tourists all over town) so no caching beforehand, on the way back I wanted to do just a short cache but then DH decided he didn´t want to do any caching.. so boohoo to me 8) and oh well, but at least we all went and that was great!

We met a bunch of really great folks although I wish we could have stayed longer.. next time!
One of the bonuses was that we got to see some paragliders gear up and start - one of them was carrying his child who was about the age of Isa or maybe a year younger.. wow..

Awesome view!!

Sibling torture.. lol.. they love it!

please do my face, too!!!

On the way back we stopped in PHV for some serious playground time - yippeh!!

we were under adult supervision :-)

Niersteiner Hölle

2007-09-16T17:27:00.000+02:00

well well.. the other day, Isa decided to stay with Omi.. another Omi overnight - great for me, great for Isa - let me leave it at that. he he he.. nah, really, Omi rather enjoys having her there! At least most of the time :-)
I had seen that there was a new cache up on the way home, up in the vineyards, and only one person had found it so far - sunny weather, nobody at home waiting - where is the catch? NOWHERE! lol.. Juju and I parked in Nierstein right outside a winegrower's place where there were bottles for sale on a table. Yup, bottles, grapes, jams and a small box where you put your money. This is Germany, remember? :-) And what was in the bottles? Old wine (last year´s) and young wine from last week.. hmmmm... red Federweißer (young wine which is still fermenting)... So that was a perfect reward for when we would come back to the car!

Up into the vineyards we climbed and ate some really yummy grapes along the way, just the ones they left behind though... After a quick find and an awesome view we just hung out in the sun, sat in the tower up there, played with bugs and things before climbing back down to Nierstein.

My cache, my sours....

Fresh off the vine - have you ever eaten fresher grapes???

can i fit the whole thing in my mouth?

running downhill is ggrrrreeeeaaaatttt

BTW, the nice thing about potty training and caching is that you´re generally somewhere in nature and Juju can squat virtually anywhere.. he he he.. fertilizer! sorry, had to mention that. grin
This was a great little afternoon cache, we had a great time and yes, I rewarded myself with a bottle of fresh bubbly red Federweißer.. which I opened that evening, too!

Caching in K-Town

2007-09-16T17:01:00.000+02:00

Saturdays are great for caching :-D So last Saturday I packed the kids (all 3 present) and drove down to K-Town with them for some caching.. there was a series calles "when nature calls" which had finals with a plunger, a brush etc.. :-) fun!!

meeting fellow cachers in the woods :-)

In between we went to Vogelweh for some food, gas and a quick commissary trip just to return to a forest area behind the Technical University for some more caching :-)))

Afterwards we stayed at a "Waldspielplatz" until it got dark.. boooooooh!

TWISTED!!!

The walk back through the dark forest was fun - more fun for some of us.. he he.. less for others!

Ballett - 40 Years Lerchenberg

2007-09-16T16:09:00.000+02:00

The little suburb I grew up in turned 40.... and they had a "dance of the generations" show where Isa danced.. of course.. when doesn´t she ever? lol..
So here just some pics of her and her friends :-D

Cheeeeeeeeeeeese!

Cache'n Climb Wiesbaden

2007-09-16T15:18:00.000+02:00

AWWWEEESOOOMEEE! What a cool time we had on the Neroberg in Wiesbaden. There´s a really cool ropes course with different difficulty levels and even a small little kid climbing playground in the woods that had been on our "to-do" list for a while...

hmm.. wonder if Alex will be alright
Since 2 Cachers planned an event up there, we had to attend... It´s really hard to describe but I guess the most important thing to say is: We had unbelievable fun!

three of the kids on this picture.. find them! :-D
While I stayed on semi-solid ground with the litte ones and let them climb around on the kiddo course, Alex went up to the red course... I caught him falling once, too! It was great.. he he he.. unfortunately, the camera wasn´t ready.. so I had to take a picture of his recovery :-D

After the red course he ventured on to the black one.. tough!!! A couple of climbers had to call it quits on that one, especially if they had done another course previously. I have no idea how I would have done because I couldn´t leave the little ones alone down there, could I? lol
After Alex was done we went into the forest to do some caching :-D

As we left the trail, a group of 3 followed us.. then a couple more and we ended up caching in a pack - it was fun! It was sort of inevitable since there were over 200 Cachers present - more than I had ever seen!!! One cache in particular was quite memorable - it was uuuuup in a tree which called for some serious team work...

Good thing there were plenty of people around to talk smack, huh? But we did it!!!!! And we met some really great people there - some whose names I had read, one whom I´d been emailing with before from North Carolina and a couple more from various places throughout the world. The wife of the owner of geocaching.com was there with their son and after we bumped into them in the middle of the woods she was sweet enough to give us one of their coins :-D Alex loves to show it off.. he has definitely been bitten by the caching bug and wants his own GPS now.. we´ll see :-)

After a loooong day in and around the forest we drove back home in a very quite car... everyone was comatose but me - duuuh.. one of the best days in a long time!

Happy 3rd Juju!

2007-09-16T14:59:00.000+02:00

wow... I´m a horrible Mom, huh? Too much has been happening around here and I hardly find the time to be online - besides the fact that Alex is usually online when I would have 5 minutes.. lol

Well, another year into Juju time and sooo much has been going on in his life as well - getting used to Kindergarten, getting used to the potty a bit more (almost completely potty trained - but his progress is sort of stagnant right now), more geocaching, more playgound time, less clothes that fit him.. :-)

Anyways, we had a small BBQ for him on the 6th of Sept, some of his friends came over (the Kindergarten friends live too far away) and they ran wild for about 3 hours..

Tree House Day

2007-08-26T19:36:00.000+02:00

Since last evening we got chased off by mosquitos, we had promised to come back to their favorite playground today.. it´s a playground without swings, slides, anything like that - it´s called a "close to nature" playground and located just about a mile from here :-D

The plan was to picknick and build a tree house - and that they did.
Accompanied by our neighbor's daughter we grabbed some fruits, drinks and blanket and headed for the area. It is really big but we have a favorite place pretty much smack dab in the middle.
The girls and Juju managed to build a nice little tree platform and even used one of the ropes to make a swing - no help from me at all!
It actually worked and they had an awesome time!!!!!
Yippeh!

Isa was NOT in the mood to leave this place after hours of playtime.. lol

Nutty Ice Cream

2007-08-26T19:29:00.000+02:00

what do you get when you mix a late evening bicycle trip to a playground that turns into a feast for mosquitos and forces us to go elsewhere? A ride down the river to our favorite ice cream parlor.. they were a bit amazed to see us riding up - we were about the last customers - but nevertheless happy to see us and give us extra large ice cream portions with nuts and stuff.. hmm.. krokant becher.. sluuurp.. GELATO is the best stuff! Especially on a hot late summers evening after a ride down the riverside
The nut in the titel has go to be Alex though, who figured we´d just play on the little playground behind the parlor instead of the mosquito infested one:

Yeah.. he keeps reminding us that he´s a MAN now and will turn 19 soon..
no further comment
he he he

Preparations

2007-08-23T09:49:00.000+02:00

This should have been my first post today - the preparations to the big day!
After an exciting day for Juju at Kindergarten, we had to put the finishing touches on Isa´s Schultüte..
Only minor casualties are to be reported... :-D

but then - what is happening? After a loooong bath, the 2 of them fell into a deep coma - before 21:00! It is unheard of !!! lol
Love that sight...grin

Juju´s first day in preschool (german Kindergarten) - 20 August

2007-08-23T09:41:00.000+02:00

on his way to the first day in Kindergarten... must have been adventurous through all the construction going on in this area to renew the water lines.. lol

Incidentally, this week all new things are happening.. Juju´s first day in german Kindergarten - big sister came along to show him around.. lol. yeah, like he needed that! He´s been accompanying Isa to KG for a long time and feels right at home there alreadys. He´ll be in the same group which I am very pleased with because the teachers are really great and that way the quilting project that´s been in my head for too long (a Kuscheldecke for the group with their mascot - cats) still has to be done.. grin.. no excuses!
The parents were supposed to stay there but stay in the background so I just took some pics and enjoyed..

Isa´s first day of school - 21 August

2007-08-23T09:17:00.000+02:00

I know this question is redundant.. why do they grow up????
Isa had her school start ceremony on Tuesday - big deal over here with their "Schultüte" (the big pink thing, preferrably home made) and their "Schulranzen" the special school bag on their back and a mass (non-denominational),
a show by the older kids and whatsnot..
the boy in the green t-shirt was her 3rd grade "buddy".. all the kids got assigned one to take them to their room and help them the first days - great idea!
The taller ones are all 3rd graders, most of them her height.. lol.
It´s really strange - she´s the youngest kid in school and among the tallest 1st Graders! Weird combination.. lol.. but she would not be our child if weird wasn´t involved, right?

FYI, I DIDN'T cry the whole time.. grin.. good thing I was too busy chasing Juju - although Rafael was chasing him most of the time..

So far, I really like her teacher, she seems extra nice, plays guitar and seems quite motivated - wohoo! She really needs that in a school with over 30 nations present and 80 % non-germans.. what a mix!

Hmm.. someone was being a butt.. lol..
Juju raiding his own little Schultüte - a "Geschwistertüte", a smaller version for the younger siblings.. hmm. caaaandy!
While Isa had her first hour of school, Juju was mingling with the big kids, trying to make it down the big rope without busting his behind :-D

Kyll River - Geocaching

2007-08-17T16:07:00.000+02:00

About 2 weeks ago, the monsters and I got a really nice coin out of a cache in the middle of nowhere (well, on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere to be exact.. lol.. I´m afraid I had forgotten to post pictures, so here is one (- eh, are two?):

Anyways, this F14 Tomcat Coin had a mission, it wanted to go to US bases and fly on some missions. As the only place left here with fighter jets is Spangdahlem and we were in the Eifel anyways, we had made it our mission to place the coin close to there.

So off we went close to Bitburg on a 2.5 hour hike (because we got lost twice and I had to carry Juju part of the way.. lol) along and over the beautiful Kyll river to a cool cache that even had a travel bug inside.
We had to take Lt. Uhura with us but have not found a new cache for her to travel on yet :-D
Our next mission.

Bodenbacher Drees - Geocaching

2007-08-17T15:53:00.000+02:00

A nice little walk to a natural spring that is embedded in volcanic rock and tastes quite salty due to it´s mineral content. There are CO2 bubbles coming up constantly which of course is fascinating for the monsters.. lol..

In this part of the country, alot of natural springs are being used commercialy - all of different mineral content and taste. One of my favorites is the Nürburg Quelle which is especially high in Magnesium.
A quick and easy to find cache brought us here while it was pouring rain - the first real chance to find out if our new rain jackets were worth the money that the outdoor store wanted.. lol. yup, they were all worth it!

Some wonderful puddles along the way and a herd of cows that seemed amused by these crazy 2-legged creatures jumping around in the rain made this a perfect caching hike!

Mom, are you coming, this is fun!!! :-D

Höllenschlund - Geocaching

2007-08-17T15:26:00.000+02:00

What an awesome place!!!! Roughly translated it is called "hell´s gorge"..
Millions (about 21 I think) of years ago, a volcano was formed here... a couple of hundred years ago they started getting the basalt for building purposes.. and this crater was left. You have to walk through a short tunnel and the entrance has a warning sign that you need to wear a helmet (oops, forgot those) to enter. The kids called walking through there "spookable" - a new word creation. It is indeed quite gloomy! But the reward is just on the other side (and you DO see the light at the end of the tunnel at all times :-D) - an awesome view of this impressive place!

Of course, we were here to find a geocache and it took us forever - all those rocks just look the same! lol

Juju and Isa got some bruises because they insisted on climbing around in the rocks but they had such a great time discovering flowers growing out of rocks, small lizards in cracks, a little mouse that we disturbed when we lifted a rock in search of the cache. We almost gave up on our hunt but then enlightenment struck and we found it at last!
Unfortunately after logging and getting out a travel bug, we just had enough time to put it back in it´s hide out before Muggles came around - good thing these crater walls have great acoustics so we heard them a minute before they saw us!

On this wall pretty much in the middle of the crater you can still see the volcanic structure.. I would have loved to climb up here but then I bet I would have had some monkey trying the same.. lol

The little chapel was once on top of the extinct volcano but had to be moved for the strip mining. Until just a few years back the local farmers had a yearly procession to St. Arnulphus, the saint to which this chapel is dedicated, so that he´d protect the pets and farmanimals.
Although I thought the little ones would be exhausted after all the climbing - the playground at the end of the hike was really cool and a we played for about an hour (until it started to rain heavier again). Oh yeah, we had breaks in the rain on this day - wohoo! Still, the basalt is quite slippery when wet and Juju still has some bruises from that day.

Eifel Vacation

2007-08-17T14:51:00.000+02:00

aaah.. the feeling of having a whole 3 weeks leave is a good one :-D
The only question was, did I really want to go camping to the Eifel while it was pouring rain the whole time? Easy answer.. NO!
So I searched and found the Dorint Eifel Resort in Daun, which luckily messed up my reservation a bit and upgraded me to their biggest cottage with 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, a huge living room, kitchen, dining area, 2 tvs, a stereo, patio and all that just for the 2 little ones and me.. awesome! Especially since the kids were free...
The cottages are totally 70´s and slightly on the rustic side but really nice!

On the way up to this volcanic area we refrained from geocaching along the way because we would have gotten soaked and I didn´t want to kids to sit in the car like that. Same thing when we got there we - we just explored this really big resort and settled in, went to the pool for a couple of hours and testdrove the restaurant. I had booked half-board since I didn´t really want to cook and the kids were free here, too. After that they pretty much fell into a deep coma until the next morning, hugging their new bears that all kids seem to get when checking in.
The next few days were pretty much all on the same schedule: sleep in a bit, have a great breakfast buffet with EVERYTHING you would ever want for breakfast, go geocaching in the rain (yeah - go new rainjackets from the outdoor store!! lol.. and thank you Marmot for being waterproof :-)), come back to go swimming for 2 hours, eat another awesome buffet (each day has a different theme, Schnitzelbuffet, Pizzabuffet, Italian Buffet, Salad Buffet.. wow), play in the living room for a bit and fall back into that coma. We met some really nice people, and Isa sort of has a boyfriend now.. lol.. they swapped addresses so I expect some letter writing here soon - after all, he´s starting 2nd grade and she´s going to 1st next week. he he..
Oh, and another thing happened.. Isa cleaned up the play area in the restaurant.. lol..

Embracing Trees and Gnomes

2007-08-05T14:13:00.001+02:00

Mannheim - only half an hour away but somehow neglected by us, no idea why!

We went geocaching at a really nice area with different enclosures with indigenous animals such as wild boar (they had babies, too!!) and deer. A bit drizzle here and there but overall a great walk. We started out calculating the first set of coordinates and guess what? I made a mistake that sent us about a whole kilometer out towards the opposite direction.. lol.. BUT another cache was along that route and the kids got to see the young boars and deer before we found the first cache. And who found it? Naaah.. not Alex our usual sniffer outer - meeeeee.. he he he.. he was a bit disappointed I´m afraid.. lol
So we continued to walk through the woods and corrected our miscalculation - oops, MY miscalculation and met some of the nicest dogs and people along the way. And then we started pine cone wars.. oh boy.. lol
And Isa had the "fallsies" - she NEVER falls but today she did.. 4 times! (counting walking into a tree.. lol).. here a picture taken by her bad mother the second after she hit the ground.. ha ha

After a nice long walk around a big pond and more calculating coordinates we finally found embracing trees... oops, again, I found it.. he he.. sorry Alex!

There were countless opportunities for climbing and playing along the whole route so we all had plenty of fun.
Gnome Pictures:

Right before we came back to our starting point it started drizzling harder and Alex said lightly "too bad it´s not a torrential downpour".. Thanks Alex! Guess what? Yup. loool...

So we got soaked and still had fun! While everyone dashed for shelter my kids were jumping around in the deepest puddles while getting drenched from all sides.. excellent.. lol
Small plus of that: Juju fell asleep on the way home and didn´t wake up until 7 the next morning.. lol

Craft day special...

2007-07-28T20:11:00.000+02:00

I thought the special thing about craft day was, that I can get together with my girlfriends, eat good, talk good and craft good..
These are all the things why we do it.. the reason why we should do it all weekend are numerous as well, mainly this one:
Our almost 3 year old trashed his room and fell asleep in it..

On the bright side, the oldest still-at-home kiddo (he he he) continued to clean his room and found - a floor! Wohoo Alex goooooooo

The real reason I came home despite the immanent shock to my system was that I made Isa´s very first skirt today - THANKS Kristin for all the help!!!!

Geocaching - Nibelungenschatz

2007-07-07T20:20:00.000+02:00

Caching with my Fab4 in the Rheingau... what a day :-D

Would you believe it - we ALMOST made a FTF - First to Find on the cache Nibelungenschatz ...
BUT the younguns decided to go out the previous night until 0Dark30 and couldn´t get their butts out of bed earlier than noon.. lol... I was going to leave at 10 to try and be the first one to find this cache near the Niederwalddenkmal on the other side of the river, about 40 miles from here and right above Rüdesheim.

you learn something new every day....

Almost everyone in a good mood.. he he.. Isa was mad because Kat didn´t let her climb around..

Nearby Niederwalddenkmal

So off we went and parked at the Jagdschloß and started getting busy with solving problems to obtain the correct coordinates. Alex went to count all the parking spots there were (a number we needed) and we were looking for various other clues while exploring the vicinity. Very nice hotel in a very nice setting - I bet staying here is awesome!!!
First we needed to correct ourselves on the coordinates because it just wasn´t adding up and we found our mistake by way of a sign close by.. argh.. :-D
And then we set off deeper into the woods towards the rhine river. About 15 minutes into the walk we saw a guy in full geocaching gear approaching us, garmin strapped to the backpack.. AAAAHH!!!!! I KNOW HE FOUND IT BEFORE US!!!!! Oh well, after an annoyed look at my crew I shook it all off and we commenced our nice afternoon tour.

And nice it was - absolutely stunning views from all sorts of spots, an enchanted cave (coincidentally stage 2) which the kids loved and actually walked through (60 meters through the dark - what a cool thing for a 2 and a 5 year old, huh? Oh, not to forget the excited 18 year old.. ha ha ha).

at the entrance of the enchanted cave

spiderman says "cache is not here"...

Are we there yet?

At the next stage Alex and Kat did some climbing and seeking for the next coordinates, Alex was already starting to regret we didn´t have climbing gear with us but the small container was finally found and the final coordinates revealed - again with the help of a sign nearby.

We´ll find the micro...

yup, climbeable..

opening the micro

Did I mention it was windy???? VERY windy?

my girls

No, I´m not climbing!

I won´t tell..

Alex, very tempted to do more climbing...

After more walking, more climbing
and some more exploring Alex and Isa went ahead of us and before I even got the chance to announce that we should be getting close, Alex´s victory cry was heard.. wohoo! He has that caching instinct I tell ya :-D

off towards the cache

Alex found it!!!!! (oh maaaaan..:-D )

This little guy was guarding the cache :-)

Once we looked into the logbook our initial fear was validated.. sniff... that guy was there at 14:00 and we made it at 14:47..
But second isn´t all that bad either and it was Kat´s first cache - so wohoooo for the Navy :-D

We decided to keep on hiking to the Niederwalddenkmal, hung out there, didn´t initially find a place to eat but a souvenir shop.. as we walked towards it to check if they had food we saw the Café and decided to get our "souvenirs" there.. grin grin..

Yet another thing Alex wanted to climb...

are you sure you can see it from here???

My Fab4

Closer...duuh..

We got some "souvenir cordon bleu" and "souvenir bratwurst" and fries and recovered from the hike here with another amazing view :-D
On our way back we were lucky enough to find wild raspberries that were calling our names quite loudly so we had to go and eat them before they felt they had no purpose on this planet - delicious!!! And yes, we only picked the ones high above the ground ;-D

Overall a perfect afternoon to spend with my 4 kids - wouldn´t trade it for the world, even if we were the "last to find".. ha ha..

Juju at his best...

mine is bigger than yours!

KAT is HERE!!!

2007-07-05T18:25:00.000+02:00

YEAHHHH!!!! Tuesday morning I went to drop the kids off to their usual morning routines of Kindergarten and Omi´s House and then took a little loop away from work to the Frankfurt Airport.. grin.. the only people to know why I was going over there instead of driving in to work as usual were Kat and I...
Her plane was a bit late and I got to exercise my calves for quite a while but when she finally arrived I was bouncing around happily!!!!! Her original leave plans got shot down by means of a thing called passport which you seem to need for international travel.hmm....
The next set of plans didn´t work out either so we were able to convince the rest of the family that the July 4th plans would not be working out because who actually gets to take leave over July 4th to go overseas???? Well, THANKS, whoever you may be that signed those leave papers.. he he
So here she is, back in good old Germany.
First stop was her Dad´s work.. she walked in behind me and I asked if we could get something to eat - the questionmarks on his face were quickly replaced by saucer size eyes (oh yeah - the babe magnet glasses helped!) and big old sobby tears when I stepped aside.. he he he..

So plan A worked great!

Plan B was to pick up Isa from Kindergarten which worked out beautifully as well - she was sooo excited, she jumped up around her neck and didn´t let go for a long time :-D I love seeing those 2 together

Plan C was to see my parents and Juju of course and after Juju realized that the sister from the pictures was real he became her shadow.. lol.. last time they saw each other was when he was born and Kat was in the delivery room with us!!
Off to the last evil part of our devlish plan - go get Alex..
Kat stayed inside the car and I asked Alex to help me unload the stuff from the trunk...
He was kind of irritated by the big red bag and asked what was in it and I told him "her clothes, ding dong" - he saw her get out of the car, dropped everything, ran over Juju and broke his Playmo Castle in many many pieces (meanwhile put back together again:-D) and attacked her.. another case of poooooooooouring tears down her back.. he he..

I love it when plans work out!
Oh yeah, good thing I´m always the one with the camera - that way nobody took a picture of us crying at the airport.. ha ha
My two morning zombies :-D

short note on the 4th...

2007-07-05T18:12:00.000+02:00

Our 4th celebration started on Sunday since Dexheim had their fireworks then :-D
Hey, military clocks tick different at times.. he he
Wednesday we had a BBQ and enjoyed the sun that decided to show up for quite a while - the best was having KAT here though!!! See next post.. lol
Oh yeah - how the heck does she manage to sleep through fireworks??? Not the first time she fell asleep in the middle.. lol

A Boy and His Bear

2007-07-02T21:34:00.000+02:00

Actually, his Omi´s bear.. :-D

Kindergartenfest

2007-07-02T20:41:00.000+02:00

Subtitles should read "another baby graduating".. sniff

The kids had prepared a few skits and songs for us after the mass that was held for all of the kids. Why do I mention this? Because a whooping 80 % of the kids in my daughters kindergarten are immigrants from many, many nations.. the majority of them are not christian so the preacher is always trying to explain stuff like "Abraham is the same guy you know as Ibrahim" and so on and so forth.

Isa and one of her best friends :-D

It´s really hard to make everyone happy there so he has his work cut out for him. Anyways, it works out fine and due to the high immigrant population there they get extra speech classes to prepare them for school and that shows in most of the german kids as well :-D
Well, the fests there are generally quite colorful with an abundance of unusual foods - yippeh!
Juju had such a great time there - he´s starting to go Sept 1st!! I can´t wait!! (and neither can he, trust me.. lol)

The little guy next to Juju is actually a couple of months older than him and will start the same day as he will....

Johannisfest

2007-06-25T21:17:00.001+02:00

here we are logging the Gutenberg-Cache with 2 other cachers we ran into by coincidence - we had so much fun getting this very boldly hidden cache.. lol.. in the middle of the FEST!!! There were Muggles everywhere but quick action from the guys put the cache in our hands and it was really fun :-D

Johannisfest.... one of the greatest fests Mainz has to offer!! Every year there are 4 days dedicated to party, rides, eating, drinking and Johannes Gutenberg - the Millenium Man. Coincidentally he was born in Mainz so we have all the right to party, right? :-DD
This last weekend in June is always fun and this year was no different. We even did some Geocaching in between.. lol..

I´m an old fart :-D but sweet!

yippeh!

yay yeah!

what better place to sit, play and listen to live music than in the shade of the Dom?

1000 years old and still there... the Dom - we didn´t go inside the museum this time but it´s definitely worth it!
Isa ALWAYS has to go inside and light a candle "for the poor children in the world".. can you tell she´s going to a christian Kindergarten? lol

some small fries...

we´re flyyyying!!!

bye then, I´m off to fly around - he wasn´t scared like Isa and had a blast! Isa lost her fear after a couple of minutes in the air though.. but I got diiiizzzyyy and a bit nauseous.. lol

nauseous? yup, this guy, too.. he he

FINALLY - no training wheels

2007-06-18T20:05:00.001+02:00

YEAH! Finally we could convince Isa to take the training wheels off.. yup, the child that every circus would be proud of that climbs on every tree, jumps from high places and fits monkey description at times had refused to take off the training wheels forever and ever and ever... you get the pictures..
Her friend Leoni just gave her her own bike again today and she simply took off... Yippeh!!
And afterwards I actually caught Alex working (doing the lawn.. lol) worth a picture any day :-D

Lost Place - Safariland

2007-06-17T20:53:00.000+02:00

Oh yeah - what a day! Yup, it´s father´s day and after torturing Daddy with a window painting and new Salsa CD´s we took a geocaching trip across the river to a lost place...
I remember going to Safariland when I was quite young - they used to have an area where you could drive through with your own car and the monkeys would play on your hood, the lions would walk across your path and all that good safari stuff. An ostrich poked me right between the eyes when I was there one time which I still remember.. lol.. the first and only animal that didn´t take to me right away - wonder why!
So today was the day to drop by and pay a visit to the "contemporary witnesses" that were forgotten in the middle of the woods when they disassembled the place 15 years ago or so. The places you get to visit through geocaching are wonderous sometimes.. lol.. I really enjoyed this and so did the rest of the Clan, even our chief!

Good thing we had Army backup.. lol

Isa had her first find and was waaaay excited.

After checking for ticks we stopped at a nice area with a water pump that delivered crisp and cold water - quite refreshing!!

Nearby there was a flock of sheep with their shepherd and dog that were really nice and let the kids close and we had a nice sunday walk on top of it.

On the way back over the Rhine there was a really really nice old cool Harley Davidson next to us and I had to take a picture, what a bonus!!
After a quick stop at the ice cream parlor we fired up the grill and rewarded ourselves with ribs and bratwurst.. what a perfect sunday!!!

Beach day in Oppenheim :-D

2007-06-10T14:45:00.000+02:00

Yeah yeah yeah... german children must turn out horrible because they grow up in such freedom.. just strip your clothes and hop in the water without people giving it a second thought..
I see nothing wrong with it, if you do don´t read on please.
Well, there´s actually not that much to read about, just wanted to share the fun time they had at a bikeride to the local fleamarket by the river that turned into a beach outing..

poor Juju being chased..

today´s children.. I love this picture :-D

the overseer... guess the bikes are alright

makeshift blanket made from mom´s shirt so they can sit.. lol..

the overseer is still doing a good job

this is great!!

I´m a water rabbit..
or frog

or something

friends Kyra and Leo

Senckenberg Museum

2007-06-10T14:04:00.000+02:00

Absolutely awesome Museum of Natural History - the Senckenberg Museum conveniently located right next to parts of the University of Frankfurt.

T-Rex outside sporting a Galaxy Jersey - the World Bowl is coming up on June 23!!!
P.S. -he has a micro geocache hidden as well :-D my little reward for dragging the monsters through FFM.. he he

oops, what did I do this time? The vulcano is smoking.....

Hi Baby Triceratops, I´m Baby Jujusaurus!!! :-D

Juju on his busride through Frankfurt

Can I throw him into the Dino pit now?

aaaah! He´s gonna get me!!!!

well deserved break upstairs..

and a cooooooool off at home afterwards!

Graduation... Class of 007

2007-06-10T13:46:00.000+02:00

subtitles should read SOB SOB, SNIFFLES - WAAAAH!!!! Our baby has graduated!!!!
We only have a handful of pics available right now because of battery issues (ehem..) but the graduation ceremony was great, yet looooongggggg
OK OK, I admit publically that I cried when they walked in.. sniff.. good thing I had Juju on my lap and all eyes were on the Seniors - oh yeah and Juju had a shirt to wipe my eyes on.. grin..
Enough of that though - it was great. They had prepared some James Bond music and the band did really good, the partial drumline was great and they had even prepared a rap/song piece while a short movie about the year was shown.
One of the good things was that this time I had no nursing toddler with me that cried "mommy I want boobie" during the turning of the rings and tassles.. ha ha ha..
Supposedly the whole ceremony should have been online since last night but I haven´t found it yet. I will post the link as soon as I can!
And of course, I will add pictures, too!!!!!

ok, let me pose as if I´m actually cool.. he he

yeah man, I can´t believe it either.. they actually let us graduate!
lol

Medieval Festival (13 May 07)

2007-06-02T22:31:00.000+02:00

Do they bite???????

Up here at the Landskrone they have the perfect background for a medieval festival - miracle this has only been the 2nd year!
Last year was fun, this year was more fun since we didn´t have to drag Juju all of the time, just part of it.. lol
There were swordfights, a hanging, lots of beer, food and wine, fun for the kids and so on.. This year we didn´t have to invest 40 € in a new medieval shirt for Alex though - wohoo!
wonder if they had forgotten him last year.. lol

our favorite - he was soooo much fun!

hmm... he looks in pain..

the FRO and the hemp... lol

snowwhite and her prince :-D

The first......

2007-06-02T10:46:00.000+02:00

Our very first geocache was called "by the gate to eternal peace".. lol.. ok, hopefully geocaching will bless me with eternal peace, right now it is giving all of us tons of fun - that´s already good enough for me.. ha ha
During a doggy sitting weekend we went for an evening stroll along the outskirts of Oppenheim when it started poooooooouring rain! I had expected maybe a couple of drops but not this.. lol.. but we still had fun and the nice thing about rain is that generally nobody else is out.
We actually didn´t find the cache that day because my Neandertal-GPS was pointing us directly into the cemetary and I was pretty sure that could not be right.. then it pointed to the inside of a building and that sounded wrong as well.. so we looked around a while, found some interesting things and went home for the night.
The next morning we checked it out again and it all the sudden made so much sense to look where it was actually hidden - wohoo!!!!!
First find, first log, wohoo!!!!

Caching with the little ones...

2007-06-02T10:34:00.000+02:00

If you´ve ever been geocaching with small children (in this case 5, 5, and 2.5) you´ll know what I´m talking about..well, actually it applies to most travels.. ha ha..
Are we there yet? How much higher do we have to climb? Can you carry me? Can you pull me? Can I ride on the dog? :-D
Once we made it to the top (yes, it WAS a steep climb straight up through the vineyards with 2 breaks) they loved it! They couldn´t get enough of the view and kept discovering new things on the horizon every second - begging me they could stay there all night.. ha ha..
As this was only a micro cache I thought it would take about 2 minutes to get it but.... we were totally misled by the many footprints up and down the slope until I was about to give up.. and remembered the hint in the listing of "Happy Birthday".. tadaaaaaa. The kids were all excited (yeah, me too.. lol) and we logged happily and deservedly.. grin..
The descend all the way down to Oppenheim was fun as well and the kids dropped into a deep coma once they hit their beds - mission successful on all levels! Wohoo.. grin

Geocaching with monsters :-D

2007-06-02T10:01:00.000+02:00

On a beautiful sunday morning, a small group of Germaricans ventured out towards the unchartered country of Rheinhessen... a small settlement called Dalheim was the destination. Armed with a treasure seeking dog, bottled water, fruits, diapers, wipes, a cell phone and most of all - a BRAND SPANKING NEW GPS (!!!! - can you tell I´m ecstatic? lol), the small brother- and sisterhood made their way despite of the scorching sun. The goal was: Fuchsloch - our first family cache. Cache? Yup, after I´ve been reading and learning about geocaching for a couple of months now I finally hooked up our ancient PDA with the GPS unit that we bought in.. 2001?? OMG - in GPS terms that is more than ancient.. lol.. Neandertal..it´s generally off course about 50 feet which is alot..
Nevertheless, that combination got us up to Stage 3 of this cache last time but then ran out of batteries.. goshdarn.. lol.. so this time we were armed not just with a new GPS but also with spare batteries and Alex who was in school during the last attempt. He proved himself worthy because I made him find the first stages on his own using the GPS. Then we had a really hard time looking for the stage 3 micro cache where the final coordinates were hidden. So while Alex and I looked for it, Isa and Juju climbed around, picknicked and explored the vineyards in the area.. no grapes yet though.. ha ha
Once we finally found it we packed up and made our descend back to the valley. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that after the initial hike up to the ridge (5 minutes) we were able to just walk comfortably with a great view and hardly and elevation changes.

Half way down we had a muggle alert since one of the local farmers was picking off potato bugs from the plants... so we hung out for a while and played with the dog and talked to her - meanwhile Alex was searching the area for the location... (small user error.. lol) but we had a small climb ahead of us. After shaking the muggle eyes off us we went for the last stretch and while I thought it was somewhere else, Alex made a straight shot for the cache and found it within a minute!

The cache was in great shape and we retrieved a travelbug from it called "Oscar the great" - his destination is California but right now he´s hanging with us, enjoying a well earned small vacation with German Hefeweizen, BBQ and some good old Puerto Rican salsa! :-D

Right now Oscar and the rest of the Clan are gearing up to go find a new home for him... I´ll be sure to write about it!

Blogs it?

2007-05-25T09:54:00.000+02:00

Yes, we are back :-D
New digital, tons of things that are going on and pictures to document it - yippeh!
Mothers Day brought a new digi and the following weekend we went shopping for a brand spanking new GPS - not the ancient neandertal one I had before. No, we didn´t get rich overnight, I used my christmas gift card finally.. lol
So watch out Internet....
On the quicky - Kat and BF just moved into a new place, Alex is about to graduate, Isa is enjoying her last weeks and months in Kindergarten because she´s hitting 1st grade this August and Juju is being Juju.. sweet trouble..
When sweet trouble is sleeping I´ll post some pic because right now he´s outside watering everything but the mailbox :-D

I knew it. lol..actually, I was thinking Silver Surfer..

2007-02-21T13:17:00.000+01:00

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman		95%
Wonder Woman		72%
Robin		72%
Spider-Man		70%
The Flash		70%
Green Lantern		70%
Iron Man		55%
Supergirl		47%
Batman		45%
Catwoman		40%
Hulk		35%

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

Christmas in the Bayerische Wald

2007-02-05T18:22:00.000+01:00

What a beautiful Christmas Day in the Bavarian Forest, close to the Czech border...
Yeah Yeah Yeah.. Christmas was more like a couple of days ago but while I was still hanging on almost holding my breath for the chance to go and shop for a new digital I was reluctant to post the pictures I stole from MOM.. he he.. or was I just too busy?
So here they are, finally :-D
Our hotel and the village of Neunußberg from the nearby castle ruin:

hmm..older brothers don´t usually share, huh? :-D

the gang (Jill, Vivian, Isa and Julius) at the waaaay cool Weinfurtner Glasdorf

hey, I like this old castle stuff.. you can get into all kinds of trouble! :-D

We´re online buddies

Vivian helping the glass blower make a beautiful sphere (which Omi bought 2 days later after it went through the whole cooling down process) - it turned out quite gorgeous!

Jill and Isa hanging out

the rest will follow.... the SNOW pictures, proof that there was actually a thing called WINTER around :-D

Poinsettia Christmas Tree

2006-12-26T20:57:00.000+01:00

This is a poinsettia made of around 2500 single plants, watered 3 times a day :-D It stands at the Wiesbaden Kurhaus - this picture does not pay it enough tribute though.

The German Christmas Pickle is back... die deutsche Weihnachtsgurke ist zurück!

2006-12-10T17:19:00.000+01:00

It never fails, every year I stumble across "one of the oldest german christmas traditions", the Christkind secretly places the presents under the tree, lights the candles (usually real candles on a real tree) and rings a very high pitched tiny bell to let the children know it was there.

after research it seems that it was only dubbed a german tradition over time.

So there you have it, the Pickle.

Which can be found in my fridge. Sour and in a glass jar. :-D

p.s., since my digital is still dead I will have to wait until my Mom emails me the pictures of the GORGEOUS pointsettia tree in the Wiesbaden Kurhaus made of 2400 (or so) pointsettias - maybe tomorrow? I´ll be sure to post it!!

A thought for the afterlife. :-D

2006-11-25T20:47:00.000+01:00

This is for all my quilting friends who are not sure how they want to be getting cozy for that last long trip.. :-D

http://elbowoodsworks.com/casket_specialties.htm

Another quilter found this link and I had to share.. lol.. think they could do a log cabin or crazy quilt? Or maybe we should bring our own - what do you think?

My digital died..

2006-11-19T20:43:00.000+01:00

it seems official, I can´t fix my trusted digital.. sniffers..
I´ve had it for at least 8 years, it´s a really nice yet totally outdated fuji MX-2900zoom that has travelled across continents with us, a small transformer in our luggage because it is 110 v.
Guess I´ll have to make myself a christmas present this year and find a nice digital again - or maybe just get a cheapo for now and look for a nice one next year.
Any suggestions?
I am SO LOST without my digital.. lol.. And I can´t post pictures of my new project either. Maybe I´ll just have to sneak my parents´ digital? he he he.. we´ll see.
Until I find a solution there probably won´t be many posts but that dilemma will hopefully be resolved within a couple of weeks!

Swan in love :-D

2006-11-06T18:04:00.000+01:00

Only in Germany (?!) - this is the story of a swan that fell in love with a velo-swan this year and won´t leave his side.. lol.. it´s too cute.. now that the velo has to go to be stored for the winter they found it in their heart to put it in a location that is convenient for the ignored real swan so it can stay with it during the cold season.
I love this story - isn´t it great that the city of Münster is going out of it´s way and investing money into letting this swan be with his admired one? Over the course of the year the citizens of Münster have paid more and more attention to "black peter" and his girlfriend so that all efforts were made to give them both a way to make it through the winter together.. lol.. not so sure if the big white one cares but the small black one followed it the whole time into the winter accomodation.

Amazing Paper Cuts (not on my finger though :-D)

2006-11-02T08:19:00.000+01:00

Wow - actually, at least triple-wow.. lol..
I´m off today..
I get to check my mail AND stroll through my favorite blog-neighborhood to see how everyone has been...
and I found this amazing paper art - click on A4 Papercut - I SO enjoy other people´s creativity!!!! He doesn´t just do those small paper cuts but tons of other things - the A4 cuts just happen to be my favorite this morning! Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!!
Back to my very own creativity challenge this morning - how to put a diaper on a 2 year old while crocodile wrestling with him at the same time.. lol..

Halloween 2006

2006-11-01T11:17:00.000+01:00

Whew - who´d have thunked we´d get this lucky with the weather on all hallows eve? It´s been pretty warm all October and we decorated all around the house and between our neighbors and our house, set up outside and in the garages just in case it would rain. We´ve had many drenched trick or treatings in the past years but this one turned out to be perfect! For german standards we had alot of kids come to get candy and they were all dressed up really great - our first all german halloween was really fun! We´ve been so used to being in an american area where you know there´s candy in almost every doorway that it seemed odd to stay in our all german area this year - since we wanted to have a party here our choice was already made. The kids had tons of fun zipping around like a horde of energizer bunnies, the grownups were dancing all night - first salsa, then a bit heavy metal, back to salsa, merengue and then sort of 70/80s funky stuff - remember kung fu fighting? lol.. everyone had a great time and is already trying to get us to throw another one of these next halloween.. haha.. it really was great! Good food (salads & BBQ & german pretzels & greek tzaziki &&&..yumm) good company and good fun - what more can you ask for? When it finally started raining at around 1 am we were just greatful that it didn´t rain earlier. Unfortunately our digital is acting up so I didn´t get all of the pictures I wanted and didn´t even get all the decorations on either - darn! Here are some selected few though:

Nicole the dead school girl

and of course, Alex and Amber

clumsy surgeon and witch
we´re so dead :-D
the scary boriqua viking and death unveiled

Isa the mermaid breakdancing

What season are you?

2006-10-24T20:59:00.000+02:00

OK, one for passing time. .lol..

You Belong in Spring

Optimistic, lively, and almost always happy with the world...
You can truly appreciate the blooming nature of spring.
Whether you're planting flowers or dyeing Easter eggs, spring is definitely your season!

What Season Are You?

I can sew this.. but can I read this??

2006-10-22T19:49:00.000+02:00

Gosh darn it - I love the internet.. :-D
And I LOVE stumbling across free patterns, especially when my japanese reading skill really suck.. lol. but I think this is simple enough for me to figure out without actually having to read it, huh?
Domo aregato internet!!

London - finally some pics

2006-10-22T13:26:00.000+02:00

Oh yeah - we finally got the pictures back from London - yippeh! Yes, it was my fault we didn´t have the digital with us to begin with but since it´s 110 V I figured noone in England would have a 110 outlet.. lol.. WRONG - out hotel sure did in every room! sheesh.. haha So I took the good old trusted 35 mm and here are some of the pictures. I can´t even put all of my London impressions in less than a 10 page essay so I´ll spare you the pain :-D But if you ever have the chance, go visit! I flew in on Thursday around noon with my colleague and got picked up by a limo service - veery nice, thank you Amgen.. lol.. then on to discover some of the surroundings of Hyde Park and Oxford Street until we got a hold of our boss and met up for a beer in a nice little pub around the corner from our hotel. Later on we had a business dinner with all the attendees of the meeting which was kinda fun since they were from all over Europe including the newer States of Lativa, Lithuania, Slovenia and other more eastern countries. Of course there were all the other European Nations as well but I was more curious to meet the ones from the areas I am not so familiar with. The next day was filled with one meeting chasing the other and worked our brains quite thoroughly but everything was well organized and the work part of this trip was fun as well (yippeh again! lol). Then DH flew in late afternoon and we began our venture through this 8 Million people city. I can´t believe how clean and green London is and felt so much more safe than in New York which has 8 Million citizens as well... So Saturday we went out bright and early to walk ALL OVER the city with hopping on and off buses and walking walking walking.. the weather was wonderful and we had a great time. At night we then went on to dance salsa at Salsa! on Charing Chross which was great but really crowded and hot. So we ate good, danced for a bit and left again to bathe in the huzzle and buzzle of a busy city like London at midnight. So here are the pictures mostly without comments as you can probably tell where they are taken at.. smile.. Oh yeah, no fabric shopping for me as I was more interested in oysters and toys at Harrods and forgot to visit the fabric department.. lol.. oh well, it was probably overprized anyways!

Disney Store on Oxford Street.. gotta love it!

Food Halls at Harrods. .hmm.. oysters..

Harrods at night (after our oyster feast)

at the London Tower

London Bridge from the Tower

London Bridge from the Bridge :-D

just another nice pub.. they´re everywhere I tell ya!

By Hyde Park - only in London :-D

Westerminster Abbey

What would HM do without bagpipes?? :-D

World Quilt Championship 2006 pictures

2006-10-20T21:41:00.000+02:00

For all of you that have been waiting for the pictures to come online, here is the link for the german entries:
http://www.catherine-pascal.net/mancuso06/mancuso06.htm
Some of them just take my breath away and I know that I could NEVER EVER make anything even remotely as gorgeous - but I happily remain one of the people who totally appreciate the beauty of them so I guess that makes me part of the reason they´re made? lol.. or something like that.. ha ha..
Thanks Catherine (she´s the coordinator for Germany) - marvellous job putting it all together!!

And tomorrow I´ll finally post the pictures from London.. promise! :-D

why do babies grow up?

2006-09-30T23:50:00.000+02:00

all I can say is SNIFF... why do our babies grow up??? Alex, our 2nd oldest is turning 18 tomorrow and is out partying as I speak (a little reminder, legal drinking age is 16 over here, staying out past midnight you have to be 18 though). Meanwhile back at the house of chaos, I´m making a cake for him that turned out to have 2 layers of devil´s food cake, some vanilla frosting in between and chocolate frosting on top... since I didn´t really have decorations and I had no idea what to do (just like Alex who has no clue about what to do now that he´s 18 and a MAN.. lol) I am calling it "I´m so confused".. lol..

Oh, in case you wonder about the Sky Diver dude toy next to the cake, that is the clue to his birthday present.. grin grin.. I wonder how long it will take him to figure out what it is..

Before I got around to making the cake we were all hanging out

outside with whomever walked by - including his cute little turkish friend from the neighborhood.. and of course the icecream eating monsters he usually hangs with...

nices, sunny day - what more can you ask for?

Craft Day September

2006-09-24T11:25:00.000+02:00

To make things short, this is how we spent our day yesterday - September Craft Day - why write more when Kristin already did such a good job? grin grin.. and if you go to her site you can check out the gorgeous Raps quilt she finished yesterday!!!!
The pumpkin swirl cheesecake tasted really good, too, btw :-D

Metric baking...

2006-09-22T21:05:00.000+02:00

Ok, here is my dilemma - I had the kraftfoods magazine in my mail last week or so and as my daughter was going through it to look for "yummy cupcakes for my birthday" she showed me this pumpkin swirl cheesecake..
As tomorrow is our monthly craftday and Silke wanted to make pumpkin soup I figured this would be a good thing to make for desert (yes, we do actually work on our projects and don´t just eat all day in case you´re wondering.. he he). Here is proof if you can manage to scroll down past these gorgeous ATCs ;-) because you´ll find a picture of some of us working and NOT eating.. grin
Anyways, I went shopping for all the ingredients for the cake today, had to go back for what I forgot the first time around and started crushing the ginger snaps and chopping the pecans. Actually, dh did the crushing. After mixing both with melted butter I put them in the spring form and guess what.....
I had not been thinking! It called for a spring form, a 9 inch spring for to be exact. I looked in my cupboard this morning and was really happy to find a spring form that looked like the standard thing. The one thing I left out of my consideration was that I was converting from inches to metric and the US system to the European system.. so no, the form was NOT 9 inches but more like 12.. lol..
So not enough stuff for the bottom layer of crust. Hubby had to crush some more ginger snaps and I expanded the rest of the recipe to try and accomodate for the changed measurements.
Somehow I must have gotten the Fahrenheit to Celcius conversion wrong because it turned out a bit darker than on the picture in the magazine.. :-D
But who cares, maybe I left it in the oven for 5 min. too long because I tried to compensate for the added ingredients or I was distracted by Juju and his friend sitting around the computer after destroying my work area..lol..
As it has to cool down over night and I want to take it to craft day in one piece I can´t even tell you if it turned out good yet.. except for that tiny little piece that got stuck on the pan when I removed the ring.. yumm.. ha ha ha - I hope the ladies can forgive me for letting it get too dark!
Monthly craft day - what a wonderful thing that is - we´re usually meeting up around noon and eat first, talk some and then work on our projects and talk some more and look at magazines - a whole Saturday afternoon just for us, women that can appreciate the sentence "and then I sat up all night taking all of the seams out again wanting to bite myself in the ass" .. ha ha ha..

Dino-Day

2006-09-20T19:01:00.000+02:00

What a gorgeous day to spend at the Dino-Park in K-Town! Yes, there is more than World Cup Soccer there. The grounds are actually a permanent horticultural show that has beautiful new displays every year and some that are there for good - the Dinosaurs. Friend Tanya recommended it for a fun time with the kids so we threw the kids in the respective cars and met up. It was great - from a foggy early morning it turned into a very warm and gorgeous "almost autumn" day (tomorrow is the beginning of autumn according to the calendar). Isa and Megan are about to become a Dino Snack.. he he
Juju made the transformation from rainjacket to barefoot and rolled up jeans first and got adequately wet and dirty. It´s quite a walk that leads you through a cavern in the beginning, over a bridge to a neat tower (that we unfortunately didn´t climb - there´s always next time!) and down to the garden grounds with the dinosaurs.
Right at the beginning you can rent these cool dino carts for 2.50 €.
This is where they ask for donations - you can place them on the elefants trunk and it the coins will spiral down towards the funnel - coooool.. you can actually spot a 50 Eurocent piece almost all the way down the funnel. The kids could have emptied out both of our bank accounts here.. he he.. and still watch for hours after that!

It´s quite a walk that leads you through a cavern in the beginning, over a bridge to a neat tower (that we unfortunately didn´t climb - there´s always next time!) and down to the garden grounds with the dinosaurs where you can also find a huge playground with climbing, hiding, water and sand play areas for all ages.
These "onions" have entrance holes on the bottom and you can sit comfortably inside. If you´re lucky (like our kids) you´ll find an adult to spin and swing you around (Tanya) for a looong time and just giggle around the whole time.. lol

You simply have to love the sight of your kid locking himself in.. :-D
The steep climb behind the water area had me a bit worried but as there were a couple of bully kindergarten girls that Juju was standing his ground to I wasn´t about to embarrass him by helping.. lol..
The spiral thing on this water play area actually transports water up the hill by turning it - this is definitely one of my favorites here!
In between we stopped at a nice pond, looked at various dinosaurs, picked flowers and finally came to a stop at these sandboxes where the kids could sift the sand for fossil shark teeth and gems.. uuuuh...
Megan and Isa mostly found little pebble size rocks that they called gems.. ha ha..
Brandon and Juju are doing some nice exploring though.. but no fossils..
Isa ended up having to get the same dinosaurs as Brandon, only the little ones had different ones.. lol.. and the dino gettogether would probably have lasted longer if it wasn´t for these grownups!
What a great day - Juju didn´t make it out of the parking lot awake and Isa fell asleep later on the Autobahn (she missed out on an empty road that let me go 160 kps for a long time) and I actually got to sit down and write this entry while they were still crashed out on the couch.. lol..

Kartoffelbug - think he´s hibernating?!

2006-09-16T21:29:00.000+02:00

Kartoffelbug (remember him? see the previous post) seems to either have dug himself in the soil to hibernate or he has unfortunately ended his life since autumn is coming around and that is his normal circle of life.
It´s still sad because Isa loved him so much and he was sitting in my kitchen all the time getting new potato or tomato leaves including the occasional potato piece as a treat (he loved it.. lol). We have left his habitat up for now just to make sure in case he´s just hibernating (yeah, slim chance I know).
One can only imagine next years pet bug! And yes, you´ll most definitely hear about it and it will be treated great!

Kinderfest

2006-09-16T20:56:00.000+02:00

Wohoo! Today they had the semi-annual Kinderfest at the Middle-School with the usual favorites - Kathy´s horses, free food, free games for the kids, face painting, the italian ice cream truck and the wonderful playgrounds that are usually only open for recess during school hours.
All of our children are part ape so they spend alot of time recklessly climbing the playground equipment. What a great day and a wonderful turnout for the community! Isa even received a free Mickey and Donald "The three Musketeers" DVD and a sing-along-tape that I´m sure I´ll grow to hate during our morning commute.. grin grin..

Oh yeah, and of course there was the daily pet-stalking.. Juju is also known as the CAT-NAPPER now because he brings little Leo home all the time.. lol..

Blue Fabric Swap - ginglish

2006-09-12T14:24:00.000+02:00

Hier die fragwürdigen Stoffe für den blau-Swap - 1 ist ein Halloween-Stoff, eigentlich sehr schön, 2 ein Osterstoff mit blau als Grundton und 3 ein Weihnachtsstoff..
Ich hätte auch noch andere grelle aber die reichen nicht füü 10 x 10 cm Quadrate..
Ach ja, und der hier:

These are questionable fabrics for our blue fabric 10 x 10 cm swap (what was I thinking - will that quilt ever get done???) so this post is for the other swappers to decide whether I can use these fabrics or not :-D

another thingamagic

2006-09-09T21:04:00.000+02:00

and they got it right.. ha ha ha.. or maybe I just enrolled for the right field by accident? Well, all but the math part I think is right, after all I am math dyslexic of some sort.. grin

Your Scholastic Strength Is Developing Ideas

You can take a spark of inspiration and turn it into a full fledged concept.
You are talented at brainstorming, visualizing, organizing, and independent thinking.

You should major in:

Natural sciences
Computer science
Creative writing
Math
Architecture
Journalism

What Should You Major In?

More cat or more dog??

2006-09-09T20:59:00.000+02:00

You Are: 80% Dog, 20% Cat

You and dogs definitely have a lot in common.
You're both goofy, happy, and content with the small things in life.
However, you're definitely not as needy as the average dog. You need your down time occasionally.

Are You More Cat or Dog?

I actually had another half hour to just surf and read other peoples blogs (mainly quilters) and saw this - had to do it.. lol.. you know me!

Juju is 2...

2006-09-08T07:23:00.000+02:00

my baby.. sniff.. :-D
Oh well, with one out of the house and the other almost 18 I should have gotten used to the fact that our kiddos don´t stay small, huh? Well, I haven´t. I can´t believe it´s been 2 years since Kat was here just in time for Juju´s birth and when I look at this HUGE guy today I´m seriously doubting he was ever a baby.. ha ha
Due to the fact that my parents took pictures on his birthday and I think we even forgot to take pictures when his friends came over to destroy the house, here are only the pictures of Juju and his friend Leo who came over to check out cake opportunities that day (2 days ago already).
Unfortunately Juju started running a high fever the same night that just broke some time in the early hours this morning so I didn´t really have time to post them before. As you can also tell, I didn´t have time to clean up the upstairs hallway for the picture, either.. grin grin

Quiltexpo of the Eifel Quilt Ladies (part 2)

2006-09-04T21:48:00.000+02:00

Here´s the rest of the pictures, I just got tired of having to insert them one by one and then moving them to the end of the post.. lol.. Again, some are not photographed very well, partially due to the bad angles I had to take them from. Some didn´t turn out very sharp either so that´s the reason they´re missing - I didn´t leave any out deliberately.
Hope I infringe no copyrights here, there were no signs posted with limitations or no photography rules!

Monastery Maria Laach and Quilts (part 1)

2006-09-04T20:48:00.000+02:00

AAAaaahh.. nothing like a road-trip with a purpose on an extra day off, huh? Today we were able to combine the Museum of Natural History at the Monastery Maria Laach with a small quilt show of the local Eifel Quilt Ladies. There were some nice pieces there but the fotographs (below) won´t pay them tribute since I had to take them from odd angles due to the architechtural structure of this old building (narrow hallways and such). Still, it was great to have a reason to finally visit the Monastery! And it was well worth it. After the small museum tour we walked through a nature trail with vulcanic rock formations and signs with their different uses etc. There were wild mushrooms in abundance but since I´ve already forced my family to eat what I collected last week I refrained from going mushroom crazy :-D We didn´t have an adequate receptacle such as a basket with us anyways.
The Monastery sits on the shore of the largest lake of the region called Laacher See. It´s a maar like many you´ll find in this area. In case you didn´t happen to study geology, a maar is simply a lake formed by a vulcanic eruption that slowly filled with groundwater (mainly) afterwards.

This particular is not only the largest, it´s also the youngest as the last eruption of this vulcano is a mere 11.000 years ago - quite recent if put into our planets history! That last eruption is rated to have been 50 times as powerful as Mt. St. Helens - wow! There is still enough activity to produce vulcanic gases which occasionally rise to the surface of the lake - cool, huh? But no chance for another eruption there.. lol.. so we went veloboating for half an hour (3.50 €) which Isa and Juju loved! No lifejackets which worried me a bit because of Juju but we could keep him in between us and he loved the steering.. smile..
Inside the Monastery we made a lasting impression because Juju didn´t care they had mass and called for his Mommyyyyyyy... aaah! lol.. We went to light some candles for the well-being of family and friends and slowly retreated but the short visit was nevertheless great. It is simply gorgous and worth the trip!
So now for some pictures of the local Quiltshow:

Holiday Park I - The Royal Family

2006-09-03T20:41:00.000+02:00

just wanted to share these pictures while the event of taking them is still causing me to chuckle loudly! ha ha ha
Ok, we are at Holiday Park, Haßloch, Germany.
Try to picture a foto studio where only the fotographer and some costumes are.. we are entering to check out the costumes.. still, there´s noone else around, just us, everyone happy and cheery. Then our friends show up. We try to put the first part of Juju´s costume on him and - he starts screaming, wanting to run away! More people turn their head and look our way. Rafael gets the first part of his King outfit. Alex gets dressed.. more people are coming our way, looking.. Juju is screaming at the top of his lungs, tears are falling, snot is running.. I´m ready to call it quits - not the rest of the clan. Isa insists on her Princess outfit so I decide to go along with it.. Juju is still not dressed all the way - Rafael gets his crown. We finally get Juju´s stuff on and he´s still screaming - my Juju! I can´t believe the nicest, happiest, always cheerful kid is doing this!
We had been at the park for a couple of hours though, been on a bunch of rides and he fell asleep in the high chair during lunch and only awoke 20 minutes before this happens.. maybe that had something to do with it, who knows.. but out of all of our kids - Juju????
The screaming continues, now it´s my turn and I have to get into a changing corner behind a curtain to get my dress on. Gorgeous, I´m loving it - I actually have cleavage! ha ha ha ha..
Juju is still rebelling.. he wants to go and do other stuff (eat ice cream, ride the merry-go-round for the 25th time etc..). Can you imagine how may people had assembled outside the fotostudio by now? Waaaay too many! 30, 40, I have no idea... the show goes on, Juju is screaming, the fotographer is doing her best but is about to throw in the towel.. lol.. we´re all just laughing by now and told her to go ahead, not matter what. My crown is on crooked, you can´t really see my beautiful gown because I have to hold Juju in a deadlock.. etc. etc..
We took the 2 best pictures in the end - when Juju´s belly wasn´t exposed anymore and he had stopped crying for 2 seconds, Isa messed it up.. lol.. at least Alex didn´t have a stupid face on anymore! And in the middle of all the chaos sits the King.. Rafael.. not moving, not faltering, just being King.. hahaha.. We are going to frame these pictures!!

And now, for something completely different.. :-D
Yippeh!!!
And yes, we all had fun, including the little Jujumonster and our friends in the back (one of whom is blocked by Rafael - no, he doesn´t have cute pony tails like that)

Are we there yet?

2006-08-26T09:59:00.000+02:00

Since all I´ve been doing lately seems to be kid-related I decided to take my 6:00 walking talking alarm this morning to work more on quilting my mom´s garden sign and somehow ended up at innergeek.. ha ha.. don´t ask :-D these things just happen.. and no surprise, I have taken the geek test and achieved:

Sooo what am I getting at? I have no clue, just thought it was funny - I know I definitely have a geekish side to myself but linger in the non-geek world the other half of my life and enjoy the diversity :-D
Oh - and before you ask, I consider some of you to be part geek as well.. grin grin. especially you, Joe.. he he.. oh yeah!
Just sharing, I think it´s time to finish the quilting on the garden sign and head for the gym.. aaah.. so un-geekish of me! I´ll post a picture of the finished quilt as soon as I can!

Lavender Wands - german how-to/ Lavendel Zauberstäbe/Spindeln deutsche Anleitung

2006-08-11T10:16:00.000+02:00

Hier eine hoffentlich verständlich Anleitung, um diese wirklich schönen und einfachen Lavendel "Zauberstäbe" (wie meine Kinder sie nennen) anzufertigen. Leider sind die meisten Lavendelblüten jetzt schon verblüht, es funktioniert aber auch prima mit abgeblühtem Lavendel. Der Lavendel auf den Fotos ist auch schon eher über seinen Zenith, duftet aber noch sehr intensiv und läßt sich noch gut verarbeiten.

Ihr benötigt:
Seidenband o.ä. - ca. 2 Meter, nicht zu breit (Geschenkband tut´s auch)
ungerade Anzahl Lavendelstengel (9 ist meine Lieblingsvariante) möglichst lang

Den Lavendel am besten morgens abschneiden, da ist der Gehalt an ätherischen Ölen angeblich am höchsten und er duftet dann länger und intensiver, außerdem sind die Stengel dann am flexibelsten und brechen nicht so leicht.

Die Stiele zu einem Strauß zusammenlegen so daß das untere Ende der Blüten auf gleicher Höhe ist. Diesen Strauß dann mit dem Seidenband zusammenbinden mit einem kurzen Ende, das dann später im Strauß verschwindet, und einem langen Ende welches dann zum Flechten benutzt wird.

Den Strauß kopfüber drehen und die Stiele vorsichtig (z.B. mit dem Fingernagel) unterhalb der Blüte umknicken und über die Blüten legen. Wenn doch mal ein Stengel brechen sollte ist das i.d.R. kein Problem, einfach am Anfang etwas vorsichtiger mit diesem umgehen, es hält trotzdem später gut.

Wenn alle Stiele umgebogen sind und der Lavendel ein wenig aussieht wie im Vogelkäfig, beginn die eigentliche Arbeit.

Das lange Ende des Bandes wird jetzt über den ersten Stiel gelegt, dann unter den 2. und immer so weiter wie beim Flechten abwechselnd drüber und drunter.
Immer gut fest ziehen, der Lavendel trocknet später ja und dann wird das ganze Gebilde wieder etwas lockerer.
Die ersten 3 - 4 Umrundungen sind die schwierigsten, danach muß man eigentlich nur darauf achten, daß sich das Band nicht verdreht und schön straff sitzt. So langsam kristallisiert sich dann auch schon die Form des fertigen Stabes heraus. Dies kann auch je nach Anzahl und Form der Stengel variieren von lang und dünn gestreckt bis bauchig - alle schön!

Jetzt immer so weiter, bis über das Ende der letzten Blüte flechten. Danach mehrmals um die Stengel drumrum und mit einem Knoten gut festzurren. Entweder jetzt mit einer Schleife versehen oder auch mit einer Schlaufe zum Aufhängen, je nach dem. Man kann sie nämlich im fertigen Zustand aufhängen, hingelegt sehen sie auch schön aus oder z.B. irgendwo reinstellen (Vase, Stifthalter etc. :-D). Die Enden schneide ich immer je nach Gusto ab, meistens etwas schräg, und man kann sie gut mit einem kleinen Gummi (z.B. Haargummies :-D) zusammenhalten bis sie trocken sind. Dann kann man sie mit Bastelkleber zusammenhalten. Die Stäbe auf den Fotos sind übrigens ca. 30 - 40 cm lang.

Tadaaaaa- Euer erster Lavendelstab ist fertig! Sieht einfach toll aus und ist nicht nur ein tolles Geschenk sondern macht sich auch zum Eigengebrauch gut.. smile..

Hoffentlich hat Euch diese Anleitung etwas gebracht!

Windows XP committed suizide...

2006-08-05T17:14:00.000+02:00

Well well well... it finally got me, too! My Windows XP committed suizide last week and now EVERYTHING is gone.. and by everything I mean exactly that - due to my wonderful toddler my burner was incapacitated in the last months and I had planned to hook up the external burn drive to the computer this weekend and burn some stuff that I don´t want to loose.. also, I was going to write a tutorial about backing up your stuff on a thumb drive.. ha ha ha.. maybe I should have done that LAST weekend! Too bad my other son was on the computer everytime I had an hour... hmm.. oh well, now that everything is gone it´s time for a fresh start (after crying and whining about all of the pictures being gone.. sniff sniff sniff..)
Oh yeah, and I have a NEW burner in the computer now :-D I will use it soon! lol..

Lavender Wands

2006-07-29T19:47:00.000+02:00

YEY - this morning there was actually time for me to sit down bright and early after cutting some lavender off my huge bush and putting the silk .... to good use that I found about a year ago on markdown for about 20 cents.. smile..
Kathy from pink chalk studio inspired me to do this by posting her own picutes and the how to and I can´t believe they turned out! :-D
I had never heard of them or seen them before so I HAD to make them.. ha ha

Those little black things around the end of the stems are my youngest daughter Isa´s rubber bands for those rare occasions where she´ll let me braid her hair - they came in quite handy in keeping the stems together until they´ve dried. The little baby one on the left is Isa´s by the way, she insisted on me helping her to put the side branches of the lavender to good use and this is the result. Not bad for a 4 year old (alright, going on 5 and she did have help..lol).

I´m still not so sure my lavender is the best suited for this project but for my first try they turned out alright. I wish I had more time - I would make tons of them! My 17 year old thought they were the coolest wands ever! DH thought I should bring some lavender to our monthly FRG Meeting next friday - I´m afraid all they want to do is eat and play bunco.. ha ha.. although it might be fun and I would definitely have enough lavender.
As I came back from my saturday morning gym routine (quick pat on my back) in these scorching temperatures I cut 9 more stems from my lavender and made another wand but realized that not only do they smell more intense in the early morning but also the stems seem more flexible than after being exposed to the sun for a couple of hours. One of the stems broke a bit but I still like the wand. Well, we all love our children even though they might not be perfect, huh? Alright, yes - of course they are perfect.. lol.. what was I thinking!
WOHOO! As I am typing it just started raining outside - what a sight! My flowers and the abundant insect wildlife in my backyard will appreciate this - this has been the hottest summer I remember - and I can remember waaaaay back as some of you know.. he he he..

While surfing I found this today - someone put alot of work into collecting these strange statues from around the world - definitely worth grabbing a fresh cup of coffee and taking 10 minutes to look at! Or 15 min?

Oh and for those who don´t frequent whiplash - heres a cool link with mac fishtanks including a tutorial. Where did I put that old monitor??????

Watergun Wars in London

2006-07-28T21:55:00.000+02:00

OK, I am officially mad about not being in London this week.. lol.. I have to go there in October and was looking forward to it but it just got spoiled by them holding the Watergun Wars there right now! Too bad the official rules state that you MUST live or work there. . sniff sniff sniff..
Me silly? Naaah.. but take a closer look at your thermometer - if it doesn´t read 90s right now (and it´s almost 10 p.m. here) you´re not in Germany! Still scorching hot and those Watergun Wars sound like a great way to see London on foot.. he he he..

What a nice cooloff! Alaska

2006-07-28T18:47:00.000+02:00

Oh yeah, it´s so nice to watch the bears in the cool stream ... cools me off some!
If you like grizzlies and have the RealPlayer installed, you might enjoy this webcam from the National Geographic!
Now all I need is some salmon on my plate and my feet in a cool bucket of water and I´ll feel beary.. haha

Friday Fun and Follies

2006-07-28T11:01:00.000+02:00

In case you run into the person who told me going to Ikea on a friday with a tired almost 2 year old and a cranky almost 5 year old that just found out she´ll be getting a shot this afternoon - make sure to shoot him or her in my name.. lol..
On the upside, I actually made it out of there just under 10 Euros including a Latte Macchiato and playtime in the restaurant´s playcorner. Oh yeah, and the broken part I needed to have replaced was free!

On the downside, I just came across this yesterday... I was looking up something for a patient when Google spit this case of necrotic fasciitis out.. shivver.. no thanks! I really feel for this guy..I actually hit the german news bit about it first and it led me to the original story.

After all the fun at my pediatricians office (oh yeah, they know Isa and I have the feeling that about everyone else within a radius of 2 miles does, too!!) I came across this wonderful link to a different kind of screensaver for us quilters and fabric lovers from Laurel Burch - niiice! Guess I´ll have to change that Soccer World Cup 2006 screensaver now, huh?

summer fun at 100 F

2006-07-25T18:31:00.000+02:00

let your kids grab some fabrics, some quilts and you, go out to the back yard and you get:
The Fortress
who says kids that get computer time can´t be creative? I will admit that a 22 month old turning on the computer, logging on to his user and turning on a dora the explorer dvd after inserting it into the drive is a bit scary but oh well..
Later we got visitors from the neighbors again - the 2 baby kats.. when our front door opens, the male of the 2, Leo, comes inside regardless of the loving and caring treatment he receives from Juju.. lol..

uuuh - the 80s!

2006-07-23T16:48:00.000+02:00

yeah yeah yeah, I´m old as dirt, I know.. ha ha..
when I actually have an hour or so to do nothing but surf I usually get stuck reading other people´s garden or quilt blogs while listening to SWR3 or last.fm
Today it was the latter and I chose to listen to some 80s music - wohoo! The salsa didn´t do it for long than half an hour, maybe I was all salsaed out from listening and dancing to it all morning (see the offspring below) while cleaning (shhh.. don´t tell anyone I was cleaning!). So the first song coming on was from Tesla and wow - I probably haven´t heard from them since the 80s!
Why am I telling you about this? Because if you don´t have last.fm it´s probably a good idea to download it and revisit some music you have not heard for a while!
Actually, I should stop surfing the web and start marking my mom´s gift for quilting but I can´t find the new chalk I just bought for this.. aaah!!!!! I should have gone to craft day because I know Kristin definitely would have had something to mark it with! Oh well, Playmo Land was good, too :-D

Playmobil Park - go do it!

2006-07-23T14:57:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we spent yet another great day at Playmobil Park close to Nürnberg. We had already been there once last October and all of us had a great time - including Alex. This time, however, it was HOT HOT - scorching HOT so we spent most of our time in or near the water :-D

What better place to spend a day at than here? The entrance fee is really cheap - 5 - 7 Euros all depending - the food is very german, good and cheap and the kids get to run, jump, climb and fall around the Playmobil Knights Castle with a secret walkway, a huge jungle gym rope climbing area (totally wears me out every time.. haha), milk Playmo cows and take care of the Playmo horses, dig for gold and and and.. well, just PLAY! I wish it was closer to where we live because we could get a year pass and go there quite often.

Kartoffelbug...

2006-07-23T14:15:00.000+02:00

Well, this morning it was not as hot as usual and since we had a rainstorm last night the soil was not hard baked as it had been the last weeks so we ceased the opportunity and got some dirt and stuff for the latest addition to the family - Kartoffelbug. We dug out some weeds and planted them as well as some sticks that Isa insisted he needs for climbing.
We also gave him a new tomato leaf that we put into one of those orchid water containers so it´ll stay fresh for longer and he seems to enjoy it! Hope his captivity will turn into one big vacation for him!!!
This is how he actually looks since you can´t really tell by the picture above. They´re actually really pretty, about the size of a nickel (a little more than a centimeter in diameter) and for a bug that cause this much devastation throughout history he seems very content eating tomato instead of potato leaves. Maybe I´ll find something else for him to munch on this afternoon when we stroll through the vineyards!

ZELDA...

2006-07-21T21:43:00.000+02:00

YEAH! Sorry, I just happen to be a gamer.. lol.. Isa is sooo getting into Zelda - Ocarina of Time on the N64, I can´t believe it!
Of course it is not a good thing that my 4 year old can fight Dokuplants and Sculltulas, I know.. mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.. but what can I say? SHE´s MY DAUGHTER! ha ha ha..
Well, while I´m happy that she´s getting into an older Zelda game I personally can´t wait for the newest one for the GameCube Zelda - Twilight Princess to be released. Too much information for ya? smile.. well, we can´t all be grown-ups now, can we? :-D
The only reason we were sitting in the basement today and played Zelda together was the heat anyways.. we´ve been having 90s for way too long and the basement where our gameroom is happens to be the coolest place in the house, so there you have it - it was a necessity!
Oh, and is Camp Hyrule only for kids??? I sure hope not.. ha ha.. not that I´ll have time but I am loving this.

We have a new pet...

2006-07-21T21:33:00.000+02:00

Well, despite our efforts to keep kittens and puppies out of the house we had to cave in today...
When we went to the DFAC, Isa found a potato beetle (leptinotarsa juncta) in the fake plants and decided to rescue it. It seemed to enjoy being rescued and stuck around for a very long time. Since it hung out for an hour I finally told her she could keep it.. so he ended up in a bottle for the transport and then was transferred into a see-through critter box with a lid that lets air through but not him.
After getting educated on the internet I asked in YahooAnswers if someone had any pointers for us so that "Kartoffelbug" would have a happy life. I got some great answers but also some strange ones ("you should check with local authorities"... ha ha ha.. that was great!).
So he´s here to stay and we´ll see if he likes it better than certain death at the DFAC. At the moment he seems happy and enjoying his tomato leaves that I sacrificed :-D
Wonder what´s next in the pet sector though.. lol

Harry Potter Movie "Order of the Phoenix"

2006-07-14T21:54:00.000+02:00

Uuuh - I just came across this little thing... yeah go ahead, get a good chuckle out of it - yes, I have read all the books and have been to some of the midnight sales :-D I think last time we passed time with making a wand (which I generously gave to Isa the next morning), competing in word scrambles (I can´t believe I got beaten by an 8th grader.. lol) and drinking weird ghostly drinks along with tons of other people who all got sorted into houses later. Have no clue what I´m talking about? Read the first Harry Potter book, you´ll feel better.. smile..

So while I was looking around for information on the new book and contemplating whether I should download one of the MP3 versions to listen to while I run I found this website: The leaky cauldron
Well, I didn´t download an audiobook but this is good enough for me tonight, makes me want to put the kids to bed so I can read some!

Soccer Sushi and other World Cup Memorabilia...

2006-07-09T18:09:00.000+02:00

Oh yeah.. now you´ve seen it all - from the very very dark closets of the World Cup to the lighter side.. lol.. I´d like to refrain from posting a picture of the "World Cup 2006 soccer Dildo" that I was recently offered in the everyday Spam pile but don´t want to let you off the hook completely unscathed - as snack food for the game last night (GO GERMANY!!!! WOHOO!!! haha) I had bought some Soccer Sushi which looked good but wasn´t all that great - mainly tasted like rice, not really like sushi as I had hoped.
Fortunately the German team didn´t care and made this a great game - along the the Portugese team of course. BF Claudia was getting a bit annoyed because when the score was 2:0 for us I dared to say that I wish the Portugese would at least score one honor goal as long as we still win.. smile.. and 5 minutes later she called me back to curse me out - nothing but love for me! haha..
Anyways, as everywhere else in the country the party lasted all night with people driving around waving flags and honking their horns, shooting off fireworks and having just one big fest. Hey, after all us Germans will make an excuse for a fest for the sole purpose of having it :-D so might as well take this opportunity! There wasn´t a better place to be on the face of this planet last night than here to watch a whole country celebrate!!!

Go Tedescas!!!

2006-07-08T18:55:00.000+02:00

Since the World Cup has had us in his grip from day one we´re prepared for the game tonight.. Go Tedescas!!!!

I am sure hoping we beat Portugal although under other circumstances I would root for them... just not when they´re playing agains us. As you see we are prepared so all the german team has to do now is win - we did our part!!! Our italian friends predicted 3:1 for Italy tomorrow so today I am hoping for 2:1 for Germany - das Runde muß in das Eckige!!!

Child labor is good

2006-07-07T17:04:00.000+02:00

as some of you might remember... germans are ANAL about keeping their walkways, driveways and other things neat... So I decided to do the right thing (after all we live in a closely knit german community) and get the moss out of the driveway cracks and Juju thought it would be fun - fine with me! :-D
Child labor is good...

looks like fun to me so I´ll just keep watching and pay more attention to my coffee lol
and the chickens came out to watch as well...

to blog or not to blog...:-D

2006-07-07T15:18:00.000+02:00

It seems to be harder and harder for us to keep in touch with all of our friends and family since the majority of them have the audacity to live in different time zones... :-D
So here is our attempt to make it easier to share what is going on at the house of the Germaricans.
We might not be blogging on a daily basis but as blogs live from the participation of many I hope it will grow!

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