Happy New Year

New Year's Eve. We had a pretty light day with family. We took the kids to a local soccer field to go ice skating. (Not sure whether it's accurate that the soccer fields double as hockey rinks or vice versa. I suspect the latter).

We were accompanied by Uncle Charles and quasi-cousin Emma who hasn't left Tess's side despite the fact that they don't have a common language between them.

After trying skating and sledding, we settled into dinner where your narrator was firmly corrected when he referred to the entree as "Swedish" meatballs. They were, in fact, Finnish meatballs. Possibly someone can explain the distinction to me later.

After dark, which came quite early, we set out to divest ourselves of the days fireworks acquisitions. Much joy was had.

We finished with a Finnish New Year's tradition of melting tin. Everyone in the family melted 2 small tin horseshoes that we'd purchased for this occasion. We then poured the melted mixture into water. The resulting shape signifies your fate in the coming year.

I truly thought that mine looked like a motorcycle but every woman in the room promptly and assertively corrected me.

Tess says that hers looked like a piece of melted tin with lots of holes. I sense that she will have a very literal year in 2010.

We are having more fun than you, Alison

Ice skates... check

Dinner supplies... check

Fireworks... check

Baby Niilo... check

Snow... check, check and double-check

Wishing all of our families a Happy New Year.

More Finland

We had a confirmed sighting of the sun yesterday. At 12:10, it was definitively spotted about 10 degrees above the horizon. Hard to see through the haze but it was definitely the sun.

Night vision goggles would have been useful (credit to Beth).

Not sure what's on tap for today. It's scheduled to get freaky cold (it was merely very cold yesterday). Also, we have New Years Eve to celebrate. Fireworks appear to be for sale in all the stores so it may be time to teach my children how to handle explosives.

Yay Finland

An update for those family members who worry about us (you know who you are).

We arrived safely in Finland yesterday. First impressions. Helsinki is Buffalo with funny letters -- assuming Buffalo was more hard-care about the weather, didn't salt the roads and had no sunlight. And if there was a sauna in every bathroom (this is a hearty land populated by hearty folk but they're pretty clever...)

An update. Local experts have informed me that the sun does rise above the horizon here but I've seen no evidence so far.

The kids are atwitter because we're headed to a local (indoor) water-park this morning.

Finland packing list

Packing list:

** hiking boots (10 of them, hopefully that go in five pairs)

** snow boots

** ice skates

** snow pants and all other snow-type clothing

** swimsuits? (indoor water park, not! the Finnish sauna rounded out with a dive in an icy lake)

** not sun glasses

5fordhams can usually pack for weeks in a small carry-on. Not this trip. Two big duffles.

Junkyard Wars Update

The kids just built a working mangonel out of tinkertoys. Photos to follow.

Christmas After Action Report

Christmas festivities concluded Friday evening on schedule. Thank goodness. As a kid, I don't remember anybody warning me that Christmas was so much work.

We ended the day watching yet another episode of Junkyard Wars. This has inexplicably become my families latest addiction. As a result, we are learning all kinds of post apocalyptic survival skills (assuming your apocalypse left a little trash behind). Season 1 starts with a practicum on siege engine technology and works its way up to even scarier stuff (last night's episode was marine salvage). At least one of my kids is now desperate to learn to weld.

My film critic friend Becky would say this is a total red state show. I assume that's a complement.

Maddie was a bit under the weather this morning so she skipped church with her dad. As soon as our van drove away, she immediately felt better and asked to do a project. Fortunately, Micah gave me a roll of duct tape for Christmas so we decided to make a kite.

Alas, there was no wind to be found.

Tess has been busy with her new yoyo book learning tricks. With luck, she'll be ready to go on the Smothers Brothers in a few years.

Click on our tree for photos...

Christmas SITREP 2

15:40 Central European Time. The morning went well. I have the world's best family.

Around noon, I went for a 10 mile run to burn the sugar of the past few days out of my system. I've been getting progressively twitchier with all the garbage I've fed myself in the past 2 days. Also, I got a new jacket that I had to try out.

I was - briefly - all better. Ever so briefly. While I was getting fluids back into my system, Micah handed me a German candy bar from his stocking that must have weighed half a kilo. Note the use of the past tense. It weighs nothing now.

I'm now back to where I started.

Dinner is done. We're going to lie on the bed, hold our stomachs and watch another episode of Junkyard Wars.

Gnadebringer

Germans have this wonderful way of mashing words together for what they want to say. Today's language lesson is Gnadebringer, literally "Grace Bringer."

Wishing you joy that the Grace-bringer has come.

Christmas SITREP 1

10 AM Central European Time. The presents are opened, the coffee cake is consumed and we are all feeling the after-effects of a pleasant sugar rush as the morning Christmas adrenalin fades from our systems.

My children are playing quietly and pleasantly together in the other room. I am taking a break from sweeping and herding trash for a quick internet fix. Piper is in the kitchen contemplating how to cook a large American bird in a small European oven.

No casualties or injuries thus far.

The day is young, however.

Contrition

I have been informed by one who claims to know that "Lowells stink at contrition."

Happy Birthday Piper

How Hard Can It Be

In the course of my married life, I have always purchased birthday cakes for my spouse. If we had them at all... Piper is not exactly a "let them eat cake" kind of wife.

This year, she requested a carrot cake for her birthday. During a scouting expedition yesterday, the kids vetoed that idea. The word carrot has a healthy sound to it that evoked negative images of peas, asparagus and tofu. They wanted chocolate fudge. We compromised with a healthy sounding lemon recipe coupled with cream cheese frosting.

Yes, I know that "healthy sounding" does not equate to healthy but I try not to question these small balms to my conscience when I find them.

Today, we cooked it, baked it and frosted it. The result is less than picturesque. It is, in fact, quite a mess.

Tonight, I will beg my children to destroy completely all evidence of this embarrassment. There will be no photographic record of this event in the annals of our family history.

Come the morning, we will never speak of this again.

What We're Doing

I was up til 1:00 am reading The City and the City by China Mieville. After finally reading to the end and discovering who killed her, I was able to sleep.

No such closure for Tess. In the past week, she has read perhaps every book ever written by Cornelia Funke. She now has all of the Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan to plow through as well as an entire new American Girl series that she just got for her birthday. There is no rest when you've just turned 10.

Speaking of Birthdays, Piper has one later this week. The kids cooked her breakfast and we gave her presents today. She wasn't too enthused by getting this book as one of her gifts. Can't figure why she didn't like this when she was such a big fan of the original book and the BBC adaptation. Women are truly a mystery to me.

Here is what Maddie is wearing all day today.

Quote of the Day

My children are in the other room eating dinner. Current topic is debating the merits of the 3-second rule vs. the 7-second rule for dropping food on the floor.

Current conclusion is that the 3-second rule has less risk of germs but it's not enough time to actually bend over and pick up the dropped food.

Happy Birthday Tess

Wish us luck...

MAA (standing at a display of calendars) "Look Mommy. Look at this" lifting up a calendar of body builders and staring at the sculpted, greased muscle.

Mommy: "Those are body builders. I think they look a little silly though."

MAA: "I think they look silly too."

Goes one calendar up and points to the bikini calendar with sculpted, greased silicon. "Look at this one, Mommy."

Mommy "I think that one may be a bit silly too."

MAA "Oh no, Mommy! That one is not silly. Not silly at all!"

Calendar salesman, who must understand some English: howls of laughter and "Viel Gluck" (German for "good luck")

Quote of the Day

I overheard Maddie talking to herself while looking at a book:

"Bleck. Kissing. I don't like kissing..."

Runner up quote (added 3 hours later) from Tess:

"Daddy, you misspelled Blech."

Hmmm. That Wasn't So Bad

Today, 5fordhams experienced another milestone of German living. Our first speeding ticket.

As an engineer, I'm in awe of the process. It's probably how my father felt the first time he went to a dentist that offered novacaine.

Speed limits here are reasonable. They post the speed that they want you to drive. Go faster and there is a 3 kilometer/hour grace limit. This is the thickness of the hand on my speedometer. In other words, if I'm going fast enough to see by my speedometer that I am speeding, I will get a ticket.

Enforcement is fully automated. This has the surprising benefit of eliminating all anxiety when you see a police car behind you. Police on patrol don't issue tickets because they have better things to do like help people, or give safe cycling classes to schoolchildren.

Cameras, some visible, most hidden (the camoflage netting is particularly hard to spot), are posted all over. Your first indication that you're speeding is a bright red flash. If you see the flash, you've got a ticket coming in the mail. You can choose to contest it but you will never, ever win because the cameras are calibrated and the judges here hate whiners.

My ticket was accompanied by a bank draft form. I took it to my bank, handed it to the teller and she paid it. Elapsed time, 3 minutes. She didn't even smile. She's obviously seen them before.

The cost is also reasonable. First offense was 15 Eu (about $21).

The best part of all. Piper fessed up as soon as I asked her.

Hmmm...

This post could explain alot if it weren't parody.

Reunited, and it feels so good

This will sound out of character for a woman who has one domestic-arts bone in her body, and it's maybe above my left ankle, but I have been pining for my mixer. A thing if beauty it was. A Braun hand-held multi mixer. It could do everything a Kitchen Aid could do and it fit nicely in my cupboard. I blew it up last December trying to make Christmas dinner.

So when my friend Jess offered me her mixer--she can't use a 220v back in the States-- I said yes. I was coming up on a year. I needed to move on. Plus Christmas was coming again and I wanted something other than a fork.

It was a 220v Braun multi mixer! Like Doctor Who, regenerated with a new volt system, but otherwise, exactly the same. Jess had trouble letting go. When I said I had owned this one before, I think it made it easier for her knowing that the mixer was known and loved.

I'd rather have Jess here than the mixer here. The only good news is that they are moving to a city where we have family members so we'll see them again.

Andy is in Houston this week. Andy gone+mixer here= non-Bisquick waffles, with egg whites beaten to peak and folded in at the end. Yum

Who is she fooling

Tess went to sleep last night with 3 hardcover books under her pillow and a flashlight in her bed.

...and she wonders why she was tired this morning.

(Piper just checked. Maddie has a picture of her dragon under her pillow).

Good morning, Alison

Oh Tannenbaum

The Christmas season begins.

The kids had school on Thursday so we ate tacos that night. Last night, we finally sat down to an authentic Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be be beat with some friends of ours. The food was great and nobody was arrested for littering.

After church this morning, we went to a local, medieval themed Christmas market. They had blacksmiths, bards, and venison stew. I couldn't verify whether the venison was poached from the king's deer but I'll concede that the stuff they included (e.g. mice races) was more fun than the bits they left out (e.g. the plague rats and the stockades).

After getting home, we decorated our tree and watched The Grinch. Everybody sang along.

The advantage of celebrating Thanksgiving on Saturday is that we got to skip the whole Black Friday nonsense. Pretty clever, these Germans. Click below for photos.

Thanksgiving

We have a 48-hour delay on Thanksgiving here. The kids are in school and any German friends we might want to invite don't have the day off. So many of us have our turkey fest on the weekend. Case in point: we leave in an hour for a neighborhood get together with two other families.

This year on Thanksgiving proper I got to go to the woodshop with Andy while the kids were at school. We didn't work on work, or the house, or travel plans, or administrative stuff. Instead, Andy bought some mahogany and ash planks and spent hours shaping and planing them into the boards he needed.

It was fun to watch. Mike, who runs the woodshop, is an industrial arts teacher who worked in London for years before coming here. He now gets to manage a craft center with rooms of saws, drills, lathes, everything for shaping wood or taking off fingers (Mike is very safety focused).

I watched as, millimeter by millimeter, rough planks became smooth, even boards. Wood grains and pattern popped out. It took hours. So many spiritual implications of watching what it takes to shape something that will be beautiful and strong.

Thursday, I was thankful for wood, the smell of sawdust, and the potential of what things become.

Today, good smells are starting to float from the kitchen. Two ice cream pies are in the freezer and waiting for the chocolate/caramel lattice topping. The turkey is browning, surrounded in the pan by tiny red potatoes brushed with butter.

Why is that nothing makes me miss family and friends faster than cooking more food than we can eat in a week. I miss you all.

This week's Questions

Would my daughter scream louder under torture than she did tonight when I tried to make her eat split pea soup?

Given that I only worked 30 hours this week, while does it feel like I worked 60?

How much was the piece of mahogany worth that I butchered with the band saw last week?

IJM-Deutschland

I got to spend the weekend in Heidelburg with six earnest but really fun uni students as International Justice Mission Germany came into existence by the notary action of a judge somewhat grumpy for having to work on Saturday.

Some of you may have heard of this group. I've tried to contact them off and on for years in the States. I guess sometimes it means moving to Germany to work with an American NGO.

So excited.

A Personality Test

Day 2 of Piper's trip. She called home tonight to see how we were doing. She asked each of the kids to tell her what they did today.

Tess told her what book she read.

Maddie told her what movie she watched.

Micah told her what he ate.

If the irony is lost, their answers reflect what is truly important to each of them.

Random Bits

Random musings, partially incoherent.

Things at 5fordhams are slow today. I am sitting at home feeding my addiction to noir dystopian drama by watching the AMC remake of The Prisoner... good fun but you needn't watch it if you haven't heard of it since it's appeal is limited to a nerdy fringe few.

(Ditto this weeks installment of Dr. Who, wherein we slowly sip the last few moments of David Tenant's awesomeness.)

More mainstream reflections.

Maddie was out sick today. By the time I got home, she was tearing around. Fever gone. All better. I wish I could bounce back like that. I also wish I could stay home when I was sick.

Piper is gone all weekend leaving me to watch the kids. I'm laying down provisions to weather the coming siege. Various oddments of "food-n-a-box" that they beg for when their mother is gone. Mostly involving combinations of processed carbohydrates and cheese food. Also, cookie mix. And pancake batter. There will be bloody mutiny without pancakes. There's no comfort food like Daddy food.

Christmas shopping continues, mainly by mail. Maddie briefly wanted a dragon having convinced herself that they were real based on a picture book at the library. She's moved on to even less realistic preferences.

Travel plans are firming up for a Finland visit.

Swine Flu

Half the school is sick.(This is Tess by the way.)Swine flu is going around. Don't worry we're all healthy well that is Micah has got sick(not swine flu)he got better.They had to cancel one of the classes because the teachers got sick,and 9 out of 19 kids were there.

Quote of the Day

Micah: "If a giant robot was chasing me, I'd run to mommy."

Me: "What about daddy, would you run to me?"

Micah: [thinks]... "No. I'd run to mommy."

--exchange between Micah and I while watching "Monsters vs. Aliens"

Quiet Monday

The snow is falling slowly, periodically switching to rain.

MAA is curled up in my bed, listening to They Might be Giants ABC's and nursing a fever.

The calm will be broken when my two girls come home and groan because they can't go to ice skating today. I'll enjoy the still until 3:30.

Vienna

We took a few days out of the fall school break last week to drive to Vienna. At a mere 678 km, this was a pretty ambitious drive for such a short visit. Fortunately, we were blessed with good travel kharma and not too many construction delays. (German road crews are hired year-round so they're always digging up something.)

We were also blessed with a great audio book to break up the drive. It turns out that Brendan Fraser is even better reading than he is running around killing mummies (who knew?).

Warning: Side effects in children under 10 include fascination with brownie spit and dragon fire and a propensity for speaking in bad Scottish accents.

First stop in Vienna was the Schloss. This is Andy's favorite palace in Europe, thus far. The landscaping was uniform and precise. Everything was clearly designed by people who understand that all furniture should be placed directly adjacent and perpendicular to the nearest wall. I felt soothed and at peace amidst it's perpendicularness.

Also on this tour was a visit to the zoo and our very cool friends the Hunters.

We drove back on Saturday just in time to go trick-or-treating in Little America on the base. Costumes were whatever we could find. All credit goes to Piper for putting together 3 decent costumes in less than 30 minutes.

Click on the picture below for photos.


Piper and I have been napping this afternoon. I have been trying to ignore the sounds of children sneaking candy out of their bags in the living room.

Legoland Slideshow.

We took our first amusement park trip this week. It was to Legoland which is, admittedly, a starter amusement park. We had a good time riding roller coasters and we learned that Maddie is quite the adrenalin junkie. She rode The Dragon 8 times. We had to pry her white knuckled fingers from the rail at the end of the day to take her home.

Click here for photos.

Andy's Trip to Vienna So Far

Micah, don't swing that. Micah, don't poke your sister with that. Micah, stop saying that. Micah, don't stand there. Micah, don't jump in that puddle again. Micah, don't put that in your mouth, you don't know where it's been. Micah, put that down, it's not yours.

Note for posterity. Other things happened during Piper's trip to Vienna. Her trip existed in a parallel reality where we skipped joyously from scenic mountaintop to scenic mountaintop.

Seriously... All is well. Photos to follow on our return.

Let our loyalties be clear

Question of the Day

Should I be concerned that my wife can order a Cappuccino in 5 languages?

Happy Birthday Maddie

Maddie is 7 today.

I knew the relationship wouldn't last

Maddie has started seeing another vegetable.

Her new love is Pumpkin. She bought a small Pumpkin at the Sindelfingen market yesterday and drew a smiley face on it. It hasn't left her side all weekend.

With luck, we'll convince her to leave it at home when we go to Legoland tomorrow.

No word on how Pineapple is coping since the breakup.

Runner Up Quote of the Day

"Daddy, here's a Phillip!"

--Spoken by Micah as he handled me a Phillips head screwdriver

Quote of the Day

"I dropped it down that hole."

--Micah

(In response to the question: "Micah, where did you put my drill bit")

This just in...

Maddie has a new love. Her pineapple. She went shopping with Piper at the store today and Piper allowed her to pick out a fruit.

She loves her pineapple. She has found a little bag to carry it in. She wants to bring it out to dinner tonight where we're meeting friends.

She calls it by the German name (Ananas). She remembers that it also has an English name (that would be "Pineapple") but she keeps forgetting it. Possibly we've been here longer than we thought.

Thought that some of you would like to know (you know who you are).

PS. We planted Kartoffel.

Why I'm on Facebook

So I joined facebook a few months back. The jury is still out on that experiment. I am continually barraged with random bits of internet detritus from folks who have way more time online that I do.

I may quit at any time. So what keeps me from doing that? Well, for starters, people send me fascinating stuff that I'd never see anywhere else. Stuff like this video.

Lawrence, are you free this weekend? Do you know where we can find 2 anvils?

I figure that Micah is 5 now. It's high time he learned to play with explosives.

Can a child be too content

Maddie is home sick today with the stomach flu.

To ensure our child's happiness, Piper set her up with 6 ounces of her favorite drink (Fresca...) and a DVD of her favorite movie. She then perched Maddie on our bed to watch the movie.

Maddie was sooooo happy to be surrounded by such goodness that she didn't tell Piper that she'd thrown up again until the movie was over.

Piper is now off to the laundromat to ensure that we have clean sheets tonight.

Tchibo Aktuell

An update in the Tchibo series. A sampling of this week's offerings:
-- Coffee
--Mens' fleece jackets (orange)
--Gel heel pads for running shoes
--Apple-shaped kitchen timers
-- Jewelry

Rubber Duckie, You're the One

We went to the Teubingen Rubber Duck races today. This is an annual event that's been quite played up by some of our German friends. Attendance was crowded, especially considering that it was pouring buckets.

Piper likened it to the Tour de France. There was a peleton, a breakaway group and... eventually, a clear front runner. Andy differs. The minimal river current provided a glacial level of excitement on par with watching the America's cup. The 500m course took the better part of an hour to complete.

This boredom was not a factor for 5fordhams, however, since we had not one but three ducks in this race. We clutched our tickets and waited for our numbers to be called.

They weren't. I suspect doping.

Nobel Prize

Lots of discussion today on the Nobel Prize. My opinions are unclear. I'm still waiting to see how they spin this one.

I will say that this guy is, by far, my favorite winner of the Nobel Peace Prize ever (with apologies to Mother Theresa).

Not sure if he's my favorite Nobel winner ever. For the sheer "cool factor," it's hard to top the 1964 physics prize (for inventing the laser/maser).

How can curing world hunger top inventing the ray gun, anyway?

Back to our regularly scheduled programming (tomorrow we're off to the Teubingen rubber duck races).

Arrived!

It is 6:45 a.m. and my children are awake, excited and making their beds. Why this wonderful, odd behavior?

The Matcy has landed. She flew from Singapore yesterday, arrived at Frankfurt at 5:30 local time and will be at the Hbf in an hour. Yipee!!!!

Brag Alert!

Two of my nephews play in the University High Marching Band in Tucson, AZ. This year the band won one of only two Superior Awards and won the whole shooting match at the state-wide UofA Band Day Marching Band Competition.

Aunti P is enormously proud!

And even more pumpkins...

You asked for it, sports fans, and we at David's Dresser Drawer aim to please. More photos from Ludwigsburg plus some photos from my camera of volksmarching in Heidelburg.

Just to show how serious Ludwigsburg is about their pumpkin fest, we listened to a band play traditional German folk music on kazoo/gourd instruments. Video on my FB (it's too much of a memory hog to put it here.

Click on the photo for the slide show

Pop Quiz

We just returned from another mommy organized adventure. We went to Ludwigsburg palace for a local festival.

Can you guess the theme?

Click on the photo of the palace below for photos that may provide a hint.

More Pictures for Grandparents

We went to Heidelberg 2 weeks ago. Like all 5fordhams excursions, this one came complete with photos. Click on this link to see them.

Micah and I are alone for the afternoon. The girls have gone to see a German children's play about a little boy in the war.

Micah and I will probably watch Monsters vs. Aliens. Culture here at 5fordhams is not evenly distributed between the sexes.

Question of the Day

Today I'm wondering just how old my kids need to be before I let them watch Star Wars.

Maddie looks at me with a funny expression every time I say "let the Wookie win." (Usually in reference to letting Micah have something he wants).

My little potato

Maddie & Micah took a school field trip to a farm yesterday. It was quite a significant emotional event for Maddie. She brought back a tiny potato (perhaps 1 inch in diameter) and the smallest carrot that I have ever seen. She was over the moon with her new acquisitions.

She named her potato Kartoffel and drew a face on it. She slept with Kartoffel last night after crying herself to sleep because she realized that her time with Kartoffel is limited. Today, she carried it to school in her pocket.

Footnotes:

(1) I should mention that the field trip to a farm is a quintessentially German school thing to do. The kids have also been to bakeries, the local chocolate factory, etc.

(2) Kartoffel is German for... you guessed it.

Tschibo Aktuell

Some of you have heard me talk about Tschibo, a kiosk found in many grocery stores and a few stand-alone locations. As a business reporter, this place fascinates me. It's like shopping in Managua during and just after communism. In Managua, whatever came off the container ship is what you found in the store. So you might find a store filled with pickles, catsup and (this was my favorite) rainbow-colored cassette holder cubes. Sometimes items seemed coordinated. Sometimes it was random.

So it is with Tschibo. The one thing they always have is their brand of coffee. Everything else is random and up for grabs. And buy it now because it's not going to be there next week.

This week at Tschibo:
-Coffee
-Many items of clothing, mostly purple
- a cordless mouse
-shower heads
-vacuum cleaner

Check back for more Aktuell (update).

Plum update

For those who e-mailed us that we could try giving our plums away... There are large baskets of plums at the information table at church, on the tables at the school cafeteria, in front of shops. And they are too small to fit in a skeet shoot. Other suggestions?

Fall

Fall is a great season for festivals here. They celebrate everything. They celebrate the cows coming from high mountain pastures down to the valleys. They celebrate sheering sheep. The celebrate all locally grown agricultural products.

And it fits in a gloriously reliable format. The (your town here) festival of (your product here) and Beer. Even the wine festivals have beer tents!

We recently got to go with our volksmarching friends to Markgroningen for a Shepherds Run, one of the most charming things I've seen. A huge celebration of everything sheep. At the parade floats passed out sheep-shaped cookies, sheep-shaped chocolates and bits of wool. It's the first time I've ever seen a euphonium player drink beer while marching in the parade.

After the parade, hundreds of people go to the field to watch re-enactments of great shepherding moments in history (don't ask me to explain, there were lots of men in knights' costumes charging through on horseback and shepherds defending their flocks... maybe. Definitely the charging horses though).

They had different shepherd dances--one was a waltz where partners danced around a pole that looked like a gallows except instead of a noose it had a plate with a cup of water on it. As the couples waltzed, one would waltz under the thin plate, lift his partner high in the air to knock off a cup of water. If you hit it, you douse either yourself or your partner. With the right flick of the head, you can send the cup sailing to land on another couple. Cup refilled after every successful hit for the next couple to dance under. And it wasn't just the men lifting the women. Some of those girls hefted their partners pretty high.

The actual shepherd's race is a barefoot race across the mown field. The fastest boy and girl are crowned king and queen for the year.

The only no-show was herding dogs. sigh. Otherwise, another wonderful day for
TeamFordham.

One Year

Feeling sentimental this weekend. It's our one-year mark in Germany.

Some of our accomplishments and lessons so far:
-- Lots of German vocabulary
-- Little German grammar.
-- That it is fun, fun, fun auf der Autobahn (except in Stau because Germans do traffic jams as well as they make cars).
-- You can overdose on castles
-- You can overdose on Schnitzel, but it's harder
--There is no statute of limitations on homesickness
-- The French are nice but they won't speak German, even if you could throw a rock across the border
-- German bread is great, and if you trip, you land on a bakery
-- Making friends is good but hard
-- The parks and the chocolate here are excellent
-- Our mechanic here speaks better English than our mechanic back home, even though it is his third language
-- Roses and lavender are just as beautiful here as they are in Chestnut Hill
-- Care packages have the Midas Touch. They can turn everything, even Cream of Butternut Squash Soup, into gold
-- Kids hike better with a small but steady supply of Gummi Baren
-- If there were a kiosk selling key chains in the darkest center of the Black Forest or the highest alpine peak, my kids would find it

We still wake up and pinch ourselves that we can be here. It was hard for me to leave this summer. I have two new nephews I haven't cuddled yet and family/friends I never want to be this far away from. All the same, it still feels like a roller coaster that we're having a great time riding.

I'm trapped under a pile of plums!!

Help! It's plum season here and trees in the neighborhood are loosing limbs under the weight of the glorious dark purple fruit. We have, so far, been give about 15 pounds of plums. We will soon be eating them sauced, sauteed, baked, and boiled. Send recipes! Quickly!

Recent Pictures

We just finished a lovely (but looong) weekend in Switzerland.

I posted a few action shots of the family. Click here to see them.

Piper will publish a definitive post of recent happenings soon. She's been waiting for pictures from my camera to do that.

I'm back in Frankfurt this week. Next weekend, I plan to sit around the apartment and recover since my travel schedule is pretty out of control this month. No end in sight for a few weeks.

Cleebronn nature park

Another quick Mommy Adventure before school starts (and thank you Andy for financing the fun). This one quick photo shoot at a nearby nature park. This had all the cute stuff, such as deer that come and eat from your hand, and some not as cute stuff (a Mongolian yak), but some vicious stuff as well. Bears and some of the few remaining European wolves. These are more aggressive than their larger but calmer relatives, the timber wolf.

And note, you never, but never want to be a former Alpha. I've never seen wolves at feeding time before. A large bucket of raw meet in the middle. You can see the dominant ones, tails up and patrolling to make sure they eat what they want. Lower status, tails between legs and circling around for a chance to dart in and grab something.

A former alpha wolf is the one wolf that no one allows to eat. His son has taken over the pack now. When he would dart in for a hunk of meet, another wolf would promptly steal it. He survives only because the staff overfeed the pack periodically so there is enough that they won't care if he gets some. Beautiful hawks and falcons as well. Not many photos of these as they are considerably further away than my lens can get a good shot.

We can with my friend Andrea and her children, including TG's German twin, Rebekka.

Black Forest Open Air Museum

As mentioned, we hit a few places before the start of school. One was the Black Forest Open Air Museum. It is a large ground in the northern tip of the forest with gardens, houses, barns and mills from about 1600-1800, plus modern bathrooms and a biergarten.

Mommy time

The children are off, scootering to school with fresh faces, new backpacks and curly hair. But what of Mommy?

Andy suggested locking myself in the apartment with a case of wine. A fine suggestion and one worthy of his wife. However, gentle reader, I have chosen a different path. I cleaned the apartment to a sheen worthy of a German housefrau, and having massaged my environs to my favorite condition, have adjourned to the sofa with Jane Eyre, Graham Greene's Travels with My Aunt, and As you Like it. This is folly, I know, and folly of an unproductive nature. Teaching starts next month. Indeed, I have my first meeting with faculty this very Thursday.
But, as with Rochester I say, "... man meddle not with me."

First day of school

Below are photos of the first day of school. By popular demand, I also enclose an "after" photo of Maddie's new hairstyle.

Click on the photo to view the rest of the pictures.

New Hairstyles

(Another) Quote of the Day

"Mmmmm..... Grease is dripping off of mine."

(said my son as he lifted his taco to his mouth)

Quote of the Day

The kids had a meet the teachers day at school today. Tess's classmate Max is thrilled with their new teacher. Quote from Max's mother below:

"Max was thrilled with the new teacher - evidently she passed the cool test when she told them that she mountain bikes, rock climbs.....and finally let them leave via the emergency exit. She then went beyond cool when she said that perhaps one day they could climb out the window to go to recess if they did an especially good job on a project. Max now wants school to start tomorrow!"

36 hours

36 hours until school begins anew.

Tess is excited at the social prospects. I'm not entirely sure why since she's winding down a whole week of non-stop play, parties and sleepovers. She's looking a little glassy eyed from all the activity. Kind of like a college student at the end of final exams. (A very rational, articulate, emotionally centered, 9-year-old college student).

Maddie is nervous. She's worried because she doesn't know how to count to 20 by 2's and is sure that all the other first graders do. I've actually seen the competition and it's not that scary. (Not as cute either but my biases are well known).

Micah's thoughts are harder to discern because he can't sit still long enough to explain them. He appears to believe that 36 hours is nigh unto forever and that the heat death of the universe will arrive before school resumes. Personally, I think that his presence in this corner of the universe generates more than enough random energy to keep the universe expanding until well after the doors open Thursday morning..

All of them are in agreement that their new school backpacks are awesome.

Piper is easy. After I drop the kids off Thursday, I predict that she's going to lock herself into the apartment and plow through a whole case of wine.

Dumbest thing I've done in weeks...

I just finished using a cordless circular saw to cut a coconut in half. My kids watched from outside the minimum safe distance. They think it was the coolest thing ever.

Definitely not a bright thing to do.

I do marvel at how hard the thing was. The saw was smoking and grinding until it bit through the husk. Almost like cutting metal.

Not sure how they managed to eat so many of them on Gilligans Island without power tools.

Grant James

Waaahoooooo!!!

Grant James finally arrived. Do we need to point out that he is a boy? By all accounts, Leah did great; John did not pass out. We thank the Lord that our second summer baby arrived healthy and strong.

Guilty Pleasures

5fordhams are still alive, still well and still in Germany. We spent last night at a Biergarten, quite possibly the pinnacle of human culinary innovation. Soon, I shall post a definitive post on the total awesomeness of German Biergartens. But that's not what I came to talk about. I came to talk about mindless summer time wasters.

This week, the Kinder of 5fordhams are particularly fascinated with 2 such activities. The first is this game, discovered by accident. It's a typical internet flash game in which you, the leader of a minor world power, compete to launch your national mascot into space. Earning points lets you upgrade rubber bands, rockets, and goggles. until your hedgehog is in low elliptical orbit. The kids love it.

Their second addiction is Wipeout. This is their first (and hopefully only) excursion into reality TV. It's quite good fun though it's but a thin hair away from watching the lions eat people in the Coliseum. I rationalize that it's OK because the obstacles are padded and the contestants have signed medical release forms. Video below. I'll let you judge.

Jet Lag Update

I put the kids to bed at 8:00 as usual. Much whining that they weren't tired but they (eventually) complied.

When I went to bed at 10:00, they were more or less in bed but not asleep.

At 3:00am when Piper got up to go to the bathroom, Maddie and Micah were playing in the living room making paper airplanes together.

I got up early this morning and ran. As of 10:00, they're all still asleep. Even Micah. This is surreal because Micah is usually out of bed well before 6:00.

Why did they go and do that...

Piper and the kids returned to Germany this morning. They landed happy and chipper after 16 hours of flying (plus another 6 hours in airports before and in-between flights).

I returned to work after picking them up. Called a few times this afternoon and they weren't home. I was relieved and impressed that they were all up, out and getting acclimated to the local time.

Turns out, I spoke to soon. The whole crew took a five hour nap and turned off the phone. They're waking up just in time for me to come home.

Life will be interesting for me tonight.

Question of the Day

Went to the woodshop after work to do finish work on a project I'm doing for the kids.

I hate finish work. Table saws are much more fulfilling than 220 grit sandpaper. Hence the question of the day: "Which is worse, sanding or powerpoint?"

Baby Lowell!

Baby Boy Lowell arrived just before noon on Saturday, July 25. Mommy and Baby are doing well. Silva had him at the birthing center where about 15 people gathered to wait. We had to leave for a flight to Tucson at 12:40 so I was beginning to be resigned to hearing about it afterward when we heard a cry from tiny lungs from the birthing room. He is beautiful.

Dad brought in champagne and glasses for all. We all cried when Charles raised his glass to toast "Silva and our son."

Name to come when they get to know him a little better.

Ode to the iPhone

"Remind me to not let it fall (out of my shirt pocket),"
Uncle George exhorted us all
O'er the jet ski he bent.
To the water it went
And now he cannot make a call...

Other than the cell phone going to Davy Jones, it was a great day on Lake Travis. I got to ski and the kids had a blast being pulled in the inner tube. MAA yelled "YeeHaw!" as he helped Uncle George drive. All caught fish with Gramp. MM wanted to pet her fish for a few minutes before she put "Mr. Mustache" the catfish back in the lake.

The week in Austin was a dream. Lots of family, friends, books, TexMex, ice cream, swimming and more TexMex. Photos later.

Day Three of Tax Avoidance

I am beginning my 3rd consecutive day of income tax avoidance. My avoidance strategies have varied. Today, for instance, I worked, exercised, and then downloaded and installed completely unnecessary patches for my computer. Now, I'm processing and posting summer vacation photos.

The random photos include (1) school musical; (2) friends visit (Dom and Kat); and (3) vacation.

Apologies to those who's photos I missed. If it's any consolation, I'm not in any of them either. Then again, it's my camera so I'm hardly ever in anything... :-)

Click on the photo below to view the slideshow.

Home again home again jiggity jig

Returned to Germany yesterday. All went well and my assessment of Delta is slowly climbing out of the gutter. They were fine, really. My only complaint was I had to endure the worst in-flight movie ever (Race to Witch Mountain) after my laptop batteries died. While that sounds like a minor complaint, it truly was awful. Wish I'd had an Ambien.

11 more days of bachelorhood before the rest of the family returns. I am building my "to-do" list of projects to finish before then. First up tax-preparation (ah the merry life of an expat). If I'll goes well, I'll finally visit the wood-shop next week. Lots to do before that, though.

Planes and Trains

Sounds of joy from the other room. Micah is happily playing with the radio controlled truck that his grandparents gave him for his birthday. He loves it but it's quite loud on adult ears. I'm willing to accept bids on how long it will be til the truck has an "accident."

Today I board a plane for a 20 hour trip back to Germany. The rest of 5fordhams will stay in the US for 12 more days. They go back to Gramps house today and to Autie's house next weekend.

The flight into Germany should be uneventful. The trip after that will require 2 trains and a bus so that'll be more interesting.

Gotta run back to the family. The Tour de France is playing on the TV and I'm mindlessly addicted. Also, rumor has it that Grandma is making waffles.

And the winner is...

...Amy.

Tess finished Harry Potter on Tuesday. We drove over to the bookstore this morning in search of a suitable replacement and picked up this book. Actually, I picked it up and promptly started reading it in the store. I got so distracted that I never got around to researching the other suggestions that friends posted here. We'll be checking those out soon (since Piper and the kids still have 2.5 more weeks of vacation).

Tess did get a little testy with me after we got home and I didn't promptly hand it over (hey, I'm on vacation too).

This lapse of adult maturity was only temporary. Tess parked herself at the foot of the bed and gave me The Look. This expression, trademarked by firstborn daughters, is a sure-fire way to instill paternal guilt. In 7 more years, she'll be using it to get the keys to the car. Today, it got her the book even though I'd only read 2 chapters.

The first 2 chapters are great, though. She'll love it.

Thanks for all your suggestions.

Vacation Teil zwei

Our U.S. vacation continues. We took 2 more airplanes from California to Texas to see family (on that, I will only say that Southwest is superior in every way to Delta).

First impressions. Ohmygosh it's hot here. It's unbearably hot. Africa hot. My alveoli scream in terror every time I step outside and inhale the air, it's so hot.

On the plus side, we get to see family. A photo of the Lowell side of the clan is shown below. It should not escape your attention that this photo was taken inside (Re. the heat, above).

Vacation Update

We're currently on day 5 of our communal beach vacation.

The women have decided to take the day off leaving us menfolk in charge of the kids. We just finished feeding them a healthy lunch of mac-and-cheese (made with real powdered cheese-food) and leftover barbeque. In a few minutes, we'll be taking them out for ice cream and to a movie.

...In the unlikely event that our plan succeeds, we'll never be left in charge of childcare again.

It's more likely that our plan will fail. In that case, we'll still have had a great time.

Vacation Happenings

We're on vacation in Southern California today.

We had planned to see some good friends of ours in LA today. Just got word that they can't make it down because the roads are a mess for Michael Jackson's funeral. Apparently it's a madhouse up there. Reference my previous post. I still don't get it.

In lieu of that, our first weighty vacation dilemma of the day is this: Beach or pool?

Headlines that make Andy go huh...

I'm on vacation back in the U.S. so I'll take a short break from blogging about the kids. Right now, I'm catching up on U.S. news. Lots that I don't understand. To wit.

Iran. I once listened to a government official describe negotiating oil prices with the Iranians. They wanted to charge more than market rates and buyers protested. The Iranians countered: "consider the fox, it's tail is longer than he is." 20 years later, Iran still makes no sense to me.

Michael Jackson. I never listened to Michael Jackson. I was ahead of my time and found him odd even then. More fundamentally, I assumed that those who did listen to him had moved on. Obviously I missed something.

Sarah Palin. Please be gentle with me but I'm totally not comprehending her newsworthiness. Not at all. Be merciful.

Farrah Fawcett. This one, even I understand.

29B

5fordhams left the Republic of Duetschland yesterday for their first visit back to the US in 9 months. Our 22 hour trip home was remarkably tame despite the presence of 3 sleep deprived children. I was incredibly proud of them. We're now in California adjusting to a 9 hour time difference.

For those of you who expressed horror at my earlier post, have no fear. No Benadryl tablets were harmed during our trip. I did get a little cocky near the end of the first flight and let Maddie have a glass of Sprite. This error in judgment was immediately apparent when her sugar rush plastered her to the ceiling of the plane (in a cheerful, let's sing another song, kind of way).

A note to the lady in seat 29B: I'm sorry that you were unhappy that Micah bumped your seat while he played with his trucks. I'm not sure, however, that you realize the truly manxome nature of your 4 year old foe. If I see you on the return trip, I shall let loose the dogs of war.

Reader Survey: Voldemort is Dying

We weren't going to let Tess read Harry Potter until she was a bit older. Too dark for a 9 year old. Too scary. We're too protective. You get the idea.

Last winter, we caved and let her read the first one because all of her friends were doing it. Also, if we'd waited any longer, one of her friends would have told her that Voldemort was Harry's father and that would have spoiled the whole thing.

Tess is now starting the last book. Soon and very soon, Voldemort will be dead and it will be time for her to move on to something different.

Hence my survey. What should she read next. She's read the Narnia books a zillion times. Most of the Little House books. Everything ever written with the words "American Girl" in the title and more than enough Nancy Drew's to be bored with that formula.

So please weigh in, dear readers, with your recommendations. Her literary hunger cannot be sated.

Raising the Next Generation of Obsessive Compulsives

On Thursday, 5fordhams will spend nearly 20 hours (door to door) travelling from Germany to California. In preparation today, I added all the Harry Potter audio books to Tess's iPod. She proclaimed me the best Dad ever. She can't wait to leave.

Not sure what to do with Micah. I hear good things about Benadryl.

Facebook

Over the course of the last week, I grew increasingly frustrated with watching Piper's ever growing friend count on Facebook. By Thursday, I was covertly logging into her account to see whether my old college friends were online.

On Friday, my condition took a turn for the worse and I began to consider asking Piper to "friend" people so I could check up on them. Lame, I know. Early Saturday morning, I caved.

First impressions. Facebook is almost as big a time waster as google or slate.com. It's a train wreck that I can't look away from.

Endless Light

In my minds eye, Germany always looked like Pennsylvania. Only quainter with cottages, clocks and lederhosen. I've shifted my mental comparison to Maine. Without the lederhosen. Sadly, German fashion has moved on.

This comparison is particularly true with the latitude. The sun is a constant reminder of how far north we are. This month, it rises around 5am. It's not dark again til 10:30. This has advantages. I can go jogging in the evening, my vitamin D count is up and informed sources tell me that the first offensive of the vampire apocalypse has been delayed until the fall. Unfortunately, it's wrecking havoc with my kids' bedtime.

Time was when I could have the kids to bed by 8:30 (as all good and right thinking parents do) and maybe read a book, watch TV or stare at the wall. This month, the sun is still high in the sky at that point and the troops refuse to budge. Last winter, Tess would be under the covers with her flashlight reading Harry Potter by 8:45. Now, flashlights aren't even required til well after 10:00.

I'm looking forward to the fall. Vitamin D supplements aren't that expensive and there will be plenty of time to sharpen the wooden stakes after the kids are in bed.

Stuttgart 1/2 Marathon

I celebrated my birthday today by skipping church to run a half marathon. It was my first 1/2 marathon and my first race in Germany. I learned lots of cool things.

1. Everybody here is named Wolfgang. This fact gleaned by reading people's names off their race #'s. I also saw several Jan's (not women).

2. Being European means being able to drop your pants in public. I showed up already dressed to race. A newbie mistake. It turns out, you can strip in public and change right in the stadium. Ditto for using the bathroom along the racecourse.

3. Long races are all about managing your blood sugar. I had a (very) light dinner and no breakfast so that I could avoid the need for bathroom breaks along the course (see point #2). As a result, my body crashed at the end.

4. Other than the blood sugar, a half marathon is no big deal. All you have to do is read the training guides and mindlessly follow instructions. The ability to repeat boring repetitive tasks is one of my gifts so this isn't a problem.

The race was disappointing. Since this was my first long race, I'd been advised to run slow and have a good time. I ran at the slow pace I used on my training runs. At the 10 mile mark, I wasn't breathing hard and was on track to finish in 2:00. Then my leg seized up and my blood sugar evaporated. I wound up walking a good bit of the last 2 miles. Final time was roughly 2:11 (adjusting for the crowd at the start).

I need to do another one to get it right.

And then I got to come home, eat lots of sugar and sleep.

Salzburg

Four days, four adults, six kids, four scheduled events. Great weekend. We went with our Volksmarch buddies, Scott, Bonnie and their kids to the German/Austrian border for the long weekend. The motto for our Salzburg section of the trip might as well have been: Here Come the Americans!. Thursday afternoon we descended into one of the region's salt mines, which provided the area with its wealth hundreds of years ago. Train ride in; long slide deeper into the mine; leisurely stroll several hundred feet under ground as we learned about how they pump fresh water into a section, dissolve the salt and pump out the saline slurry from the bottom. Takes 30 years to get all the salt, leaving a lake the size of a football field. Electric boat ride across an underground salt lake. More slides and trains and a glimpse at a giant bronze antique pump.

Then Fraulein Maria's Sound of Music bicycle tour. We took a grueling seven-mile ride through the city around some of the famous parts of the movie past statues, gardens, convents, castles and mansions. The kids and moms sang and sang. For some reason, I think the two dads were quiet.

Saturday night was dinner in the Hohensalzburg Fortress. One of the restaurants has a program with medieval games (no wild boar hunting though) and waiters in costume.

We spent Saturday on the Konigssee, which is so beautiful it made my heart sore and soar to look at it. It is rare that a spot on earth is everything you could want it to be. This is. No motorized vehicles on the lake so it is quiet, clean and mirror smooth (only one set of electric boats). One of the boat attendants pulled out a flugelhorn and played it (badly) facing a granite cliff. The sound came back to us in fuller, rounder tones.

Highlights:
Coming off the boat at the Konigssee shore to find a group of traditional German dancers performing on the peer.
Listening to the kids sing "Do a Deer" well, shout "Do a Deer" as we biked along the river. We sounded *just* like Julie Andrews
Listening to the clang of cow bells echo off the mountainside as we walked through Bertchesgaden,
Hearing Micah brag that he shot his first crossbow.
Riding a wooden slide deep into a salt mine
Trying to convince the three older girls to get out of the car to see one of the most famous cities in Europe (they were listening to The Westing Game on tape in the car, and that book is always at an exciting part).
Nutella for breakfast.

Facebook Update

We are nearly 48 hours into Facebook. Piper's friend count has crested 50.

It's mildly disconcerting how quickly they're piling in.

I've gotta run. The Bower's mailed a package of junk food. Based on the sounds coming from the other room, I need to get there quickly while there's something left for me.

Too late (these last 2 words typed by Tess)

Friends

As Andy noted, I joined Facebook.
I looked at my first Facebook transaction.
It told me, "Beth wrote on Piper's wall. Piper wrote on Beth's wall. Piper and Beth are friends."
It gives something of a preschool clarity to our relationship (Billy shared his graham crackers with me. I shared my goldfish with Billy). Actually, Beth and I have been friends since we used to climb into her tree house and pretend that we, along with James Harriot, were country vets. But it's nice to have Facebook codify things.

Oh, and I am recently married, according to Facebook. I guess checking the relationship status box made it official.

Piper is on Facebook

Piper has signed up for a facebook account.

I confess that I've been secretly wanting her to break. While the exclusivity of facebook (you can't view anything until you join yourself) has held me at bay, it's also made me curious. The innards of facebook hold the same mysterious fascination that the inside of the girl's bathroom held when I was 12.

Now I get to see what all the fuss is about.

Adventures in Tire Repair

Our friends the Brown's flew through Frankfurt last night on their way from Morocco to the US. We took a detour up that way to visit with them on their layover. Because of time zone impacts, overnight layovers are a standard feature on multi-leg trips from Europe to the US. (Trips going to other way can be done in 1 day).

Anyway, we met our friends for some quality overnight bonding in a nearby hotel. During the pick-up, I discovered a flat tire in our van. I suspect their 3-year old of causing the flat while we were loading their suitcases. His father is an engineer so he has a genetic affinity for small, sharp metal objects. His mother proclaims his innocence and has threatened me with bodily harm if I print anything in the blog. Here's to you Miska. I dedicate this entry to you.

In the end, we had a great visit. The kids got to reconnect with friends. Piper and Miska got to chapperone that (very loud) connection. Luke and I got to visit a German auto-mechanic. There was truly something for everyone.

As they drove away, Maddie sat on the curb and cried. She asked me if she'd ever see her friend again. Of our 3 kids, she is the first to realize that each goodbye is potentially final.

In the end, we successfully limped home on our spare tire and we're all well. We're still looking at our repair options. Thus far, we're looking at a 1-2 week wait to order 2 new tires. Price quotes for that repair are more than what we paid in the US last year for 4 tires.

We need to find something before we go to Austria next weekend for the "Sound of Music" tour. The hills are alive.

Grandmother

My grandmother, Joyce Evelyn Gordy, died yesterday. She had chugged along, seemingly changeless, through her mid-90s. Then last December she started to decline. My aunt Joyce Lynn and her family took beautiful care of her. She was the last link to that generation in both of our families.

Maddie Merrick Diving

I mentioned in an earlier post that Maddie won't do a forward dive but will do a back dive. I also promised video. Silly me.

It turns out that acquiring video of Maddie's back dive is equivalent in difficulty to capturing Mr. Snuffleupagus on film. If you're not familiar, I offer a piece of personal history. Snuffy debuted as Big Bird's invisible friend and wasn't actually seen until the halcyon days of Sesame Street had passed me by and I was firmly entrenched in gradeschool sweatshops (or maybe it was later). I didn't actually learn that he had a physical existence until I was an adult and had moved onto the Muppets and Fraggle Rock. Once again, I digress.

Back to Maddie. It turns out that she'd much prefer to swim around (preferably underwater) and torment her brother than practice her dive for posterity. This may jeopardize her Olympic career but we'll get over it.

The clip below is the only video I have. Her technique was better during some unfilmed sightings.

Photo Update

I just uploaded a random collection of photos from the last 6 weeks. Click here to view.

Spring highlights include:

1. Visit to Mad King Ludwig's castle (Neuschwanstein)
2. Canal boat tour of Strasbourg France in Alsace.
3. Bus tour in Munich.
4. Also, walking around in Munich. An aside: Munich has the most talented street performers I have ever seen in this life.
5. Playground shots of the kids.

Once again, most of the pictures are of the kids. (If you're not here to admire our children, you've come to the wrong website...)

Life trickles on. 2 more visits from friends this month. Only 3 more weeks until the Stuttgart Halfmarathon. Then school ends and we come back to the States to see family in July.

Easter/early spring

Sorry to be slow on photos. A few shots, mainly from Easter. We celebrated at church and then joined friends in the village of Kirchburg. We had a BBQ picnic and then went for a long walk--to the next village!, hunting for Easter eggs as we went (Andrea went in front of the group to hide them along the road. A few times other kids would pick them up excitedly and we had the sad task of asking them to put them back for our kids.)
We haven't downloaded our Matcy/Granddad photos yet.
Plus here are a few from recent class field trips: one to a mill and one to a bakery, both operating similarly to how they did 200 years ago, just with Internet advertising. The teacher is from India and grew up in a semi-rural area. She said the mills work just like that when she was growing up 20 years ago.

Warning: Not a cheerful post

The kids and I took a walking tour of Stuttgart last Saturday set up by the German-American Club: Stuttgart 1933-1945.

Surprise! It was grim. 44 days of bombing. 70 percent of the city gone. It was awful to stand at the steps of the former department of interior building where Christian Wirth helped supervise the Action T4 (Do not click on this link if it is close to dinner time or you need to be cheerful company in a short time). The kids had stopped listening by this time and were, thankfully, picking dandelions.

This program was shut down in our region because of public outcry.

Our tour leader said that people didn't talk about the war much during the 1950s, but during the 1960s, young people started to ask the older people in the community, "Didn't you see that buses of people came in to the treatment center but no one came out? 

The Nazis didn't grab an exclusive on cruelty. I wonder what our generation will face. For me, I don't want to have to look into the face of one of the more than 2 million people caught in the nightmare of human trafficking and have them say, "Didn't you notice the buses of young women going by and you didn't even ask why?" Humantrafficking.org, Love146.org, antislavery.org Please take a look if you have a moment.

MM

Mommy: (while jogging along) "Say it loud. Say it proud!"

MM: (while pedaling) "I Am Riding A Bike!"

She veered into a ditch shortly thereafter and we regressed to my jogging while holding on to her jacket, but she did two or three long stretches on her own yesterday. I was so proud that she picked up her bike after every tumble, even some bloody knees, and got right back on and kept going. 

Now if we could only convince her that sounding out letters and putting them together is really reading...

Paris

Does one need to say out loud that a weekend is Paris is wonderful? I got to cap off Mom and Tracy's visit with a weekend in Paris while Andy kept the kids. Win/Win. He was exhausted from working in Wiesbaden during the week and then touring during the weekends. The kids got a weekend with the Dancing Cupcake (daddy time = more junk food and movies than mommy allows). I got to return to a city that I hadn't been to for 22 years... since the last time Mom and I were in Paris together.

After a weekend strolling around, I could kind of see why France surrenders to save Paris. The towering chestnut trees were in bloom. The buildings are wonderful. Even the oldest architecture is sophisticated. I puzzled as to why. I think it is because for so long we have defined sophisticated by Paris, just as we define neutral pH by water.

Highlights:

--We hosted an exchange student, Nathalie, for two summers while I was in high school. Our families have stayed in touch through the years. She joined us Saturday. We got on one of those double-decker tour buses that you can jump on an off of, sat together and caught up on 20 years of two careers, six kids, two marriages and one divorce, families, hobbies. As we would pass some important building, she would switch into tour guide mode and switch into French to explain the building and it's history. It was beautiful to hear her voice and see her laugh as Paris went by.

--A last few days with Mom and Tracy without the kids. It's wonderful to get to see your family. It's even more wonderful to see your family and the Eiffel Tower.

--Another Hans Schaeffer compliment (this is a long digression so skip it if you want). As I mentioned, Nathalie was an exchange student with us. Her family came to pick her up and meet us at the end of her first summer. At a restaurant for breakfast, Mr. Schaeffer had his standard French bread and coffee for breakfast. I, an emaciated, teenage lifeguard, ordered one of everything on the menu. He took my wrist in his fingers and proudly announced to the table, "C'est magnifique. She eats like a man yet remains like a dog!" Nathalie was appalled and a torrent of French followed. He sheepishly explained that he had seen a dog on the side of a bus, but didn't know the word for racing dog or greyhound. I still count is as one of the finest compliments ever to come my way. This time, he told me I was doing a wonderful job at "resisting the inevitable" (aging process) and" Vive la resistance!"

--The ride home. Great trains, good food, rocketing, albeit backwards, through the French countryside. Listening to Ten Shekel Shirt on a Sunday morning. Brie for the soul.

Quote of the Day

Took MAA in to the local beauty shop for a trim. He is used to the barber at the base. Instead, he was greeted by a young woman with hot pink hair, yellow, glittery fingernails and green lips. She smiled sweetly through the face piercings and told him to take a seat. He looked thoughtful for a moment and said, "I don't think I want that haircut."

May

She who is delinquent with her blogging is here to catch up.

Mom and Tracy bravely spent two weeks with their youngest grandchildren and did not once try to skive out of the visit by saying that they forgot to turn the coffee pot off and needed to fly home immediately. We had a wonderful weekend in Munich and got to see what German's call the fairy-tale castle, Neuschwanstein. It is indeed something to revel to see. We did the full bit: carriage ride up the mountain to the ridge and a short walk to the castle. We were there on May Day weekend (FYI: May Day is a national holiday in Germany but I think the reason is that they hadn't had a national holiday since the previous weekend and they go a bit off if they have to work 20 full days in a month.)

The castle has an efficient system for moving the 1.3 million annual visitors a year through the relatively few furnished rooms. I have greater empathy with a beer going through a bottling factory. It would have been a little easier if they had dropped us into six-packs and zoomed us through on rails, but that would have damaged the authenticity of the building. So this was the next best thing. 

We bought our tickets in advance, got our number, passed through two turnstiles which divided us into groups and then were lined up in shoots, about 40 at a time, that were sorted by tour language and off we went. Worth it. The place is amazing.

It took years just to do the wood carving on the inside of Ludwig's bedroom. The top of his bed is covered with small carved models of gothic church spires of Europe.

On the way back to Munich we stopped at Tegelburg. It has a gondola that takes you about 5,000 feet up the Alps. On beautiful days, which this was, hang gliders and para sailers take off every few minutes and land at the bottom of the park. For us, there was a luge on a track that we went down. Micah took a pass, but the rest of us,  Matcy and Granddad included, took a ride. MM begged for more speed.

Sunday was downtown Munich, a stunning city with parks and ancient buildings. Lunch at the Hofbrauhaus. It was the first time the kids had seen a German oompa band. Most of the people were tourists like us. But it was fun to see Real Germans there. Older people still put on traditional German dress and stroll the Platz on Sundays. At the Hofbrauhaus there are a few walls of stein holders for the personal beer glasses of the regulars. Special to see a man in a Bavarian suit and hat take his stein to the massive copper sink, wash his glass and lock it back in the massive metal rack. 

Maddie's New Trick

So Maddie (age 6) can do a nearly perfect back dive off the side of the pool. It's quite impressive for a little kid. She was practicing it at the pool and the Germans were all watching her.

Honesty compels me to add that she won't do a front dive. We've considered trying to motivate her by telling her that front dives are much easier. We're all afraid to do that. In the right hands, such knowledge might be inspirational. However, this is Maddie were talking about--sensible and reasonable plans flee when placed before her.

My homework assignment is to post video. That'll have to wait until I return from my business trip next week.

Tess's German is coming along nicely... she's starting to correct me. How did that happen.

Quotes of the Day

"Daddy, you're a superhero."

-- Micah

"Daddy, I think the tooth-fairy is actually mommy."

-- Maddie

I'm back from a month of working away and will be catching up on my e-mail (this means you Brad.)

Updates, various

Visitor Update: Matcy and Granddad are here! We drove to Strasbourg to pick them up. They had flown into Paris, visited with family friends and then taken the train south. We are having a great visit. I got to show off Sindelfingen in bloom. Matcy has taken up knitting so we've been to the knit shop a few times picking out wool and trying to learn new techniques. The woman at the knit shop is eager to help. She is probably in her late 80s and has forgotten more than I could ever learn of the art. She patiently explains in rapid German with vocabulary I've never heard (anybody know the German for "cast off a thread then pearl one").  She then looks to me to translate. I tell Mom, "she said the word 'left,' and 'once' and something about 'needle'. Mom smiles broadly and "Yes, I see. Thank you!" She'll return with her knitting supplies and watch where she can copy. TG has taken up learning (a friend in Pennsylvania had started to teach her last fall) and the two of them sat on the sofa last night working on scarves.

Tracy toured the Mercedes plant yesterday. We'll go to Rothenburg for a daytrip, then Munich and Schlossneuschwanstein this weekend.

Spring update: We are on to tulips, pansies, flowering trees, quince, grape hyacinth. But the landscape is mainly blooming lambs. White, puffy, bleating lambs skipping after ewes have cropped up throughout the fields.

MAA update: he has discovered the hilarity of voluntary burping. 

MM Update: still climbing her twin peaks of learning to read and ride a bike (but not at the same time). She was promoted up a lane in the swim club!

TG Update: daily scootering and rollerblading with a neighbor friend. They are discovering all kinds of new paths and trails through the neighborhood.

Quote of the Day

Piper: "Maddie, exactly how much candy were you hoping to get for Easter?"

Maddie: "um... infinity?"

Sigh. It was only 3 short years ago that Maddie thought 7 was the biggest number ever.

My blogging is going to be light this month. I'm working all month in Wiesbaden (no access to e-mail) with only weekends at home.

Spring!

Spring arrived at 11 a.m. last Thursday. I happened to be outside at that moment. The flat gray cloud ceiling that covered us since February rolled back, as if a celestial push-broom had moved across the sky.

Warmth and light flooded the air.

Neighbors were ready for the change. By 6 that evening, gardens were bustling as if they had bloomed gardeners during the afternoon. Everyone was out with mulch, shovels and flats of plants to go in the ground.

During the next few days, crocus jumped out of the ground and forsythia, which had looked a little scraggly on Wednesday, were in full bloom by Saturday.
For those who remember the view out our window in the snow, here is the same tree prepping for green.

Now instead of stopping at the park for a few frozen moments before the sun set at 4:30, we are out at the park in the 65- to 70-degree afernoons until well after our usual bedtimes. M and MM have returned to previous loves of digging and swinging, their fiercest summer devotions.

We spent the first day of Easter holidays at one of the biggest city parks I've ever seen. It's Stuttgart's version of Central Park: on a ridge overlooking the city (historical tangent: Stuttgart is in a valley, a hard-to-defend position. I have asked several people from random residents to castle guides why a fortress was built in a valley. Most of the responses have been blank looks. My favorite so far is that there were other defensive castle to protect the city, but the castles named were over 30 kilometers away. If anyone knows please share. If I find out, I'll tell you)

Back to the park.

It has terraced gardens, huge soccer fields, ponds, fountains, giant playscapes, a small-scale coal train that takes you in a big circle around the park, a miniscule fair with two rides and a popcorn stand, a tower-ish thing in the shape of a christmas tree with spiral stairs going up. The reward for going up five long flights is a view of the city that is amazing.

The flowers there are just starting to bloom bringing waves of color into the sculpted flower beds.

Last weekend, it was to the Junges Ensemble Stuttgart for a kinder jazz concert. Four musicians (one plays with the Berlin philharmonic, one is a teacher at the local conservatory) get together once a month for a kids jazz concert. They write many of their songs and get everyone involved clapping and singing. It was our first time there, so it felt like being newbies at a Great Big Sea concert.

Now it's an easy Saturday of Easter egg dying and roller blading/bike riding.

Then next week, it is to Strasbourg to get Matcy and Granddad. Hooray!

All Hail the Bowers

All hail our cool friends the Bowers. They arrived in Frankfurt at 0500 last weekend and much joy as had by all. Here's to a week of milestones.

--Most cheeseballs consumed in a day (don't ask).
--Most castle's visited in a week (OK some, technically, were really just palaces).
--Many laughs. A few tears. Copious fun. I can't wait to do it again.

In a final bit of organizational judo that still astounds me 12 hours later, they managed to get 4 people and 150 pounds of luggage out the door to leave exactly on time at 6:00 am this morning.

Click photo for slideshow...

Quote of the Day

"We buy your debt, we own you..."

--a 10 year old Chinese classmate of my daughter speaking about China-US relations

Piper's early March update

Some fun things:

Great visit with Aunt and Uncle. We went to Sigmaringen, a jaunt to the castle there for a Saturday afternoon. Lovely, but cold inside. It has an amazing collection of medieval armor. Between that and the hunting room with more than 800 heads/antlers on the wall, Micah was beside himself wanting to play with the irreplaceable relics.
BTW, we saw our first just-go-and-get-yourself-a-glass-of-water fountain at a bakery there. Giddy! I had to take a picture.

MM opened an art gallery with the pieces she had worked on in the car ride. They were reasonably priced at "either a German or an American euro, which ever is easier."

We also went to an Easter market with friends. It was out in a farming village. Heavy on spring planting. Light on Easter. As I am garden-less this year, it threw me into a fit of depression and longing for mulch. Susan must have seen the look on my face. She and George bought me a basket of grape hyacinth.
Andy took them to the train at 5:30 this morning for their train to Paris... We miss them already.

Culture update

So I (Piper) just finished my second, much shorter language class as I struggle to speak the language. This one was less culturally fulfilling--all Americans-- but we actually worked on grammar instead of vocabulary. This way I can understand how sentences fit together, right?
Sure.
Did you know that prepositions determine the case of the noun? A car, for instance, is neither male nor female. It is neuter: das Auto. If you want something for the car, you say fur das Auto. But if you need something with the car, it changes to dem Auto. If you use one of the many prepositions that take either case, then you determine if it is accusative or dative if there is (are you ready for this one...) implied movement in the verb.
My brain jammed on this one. Implied movement? Are you kidding?
I am saved, however, by location. Apparently Southerners are mocked in Germany for their funny accent and bad grammar. We have a local dialect called Schwabisch that I love to listen to, though proper German speakers cringe. I did my homework at the swimming center while T and MM had swim practice. I would ask the people around me. It always came down to a majority vote because no one really knew which one or why.
One the positive side, I'm starting to pick up more and more vocabulary. I can now use, somewhat correctly, words like "die Tasche" "die Tuete" and "der Beutel" (translation: a bag, a bag, and a bag, but they hold different things).