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.)