Saturday, July 28, 2007

Craft day special...

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!!!!

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Geocaching - Nibelungenschatz

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!

Thursday, July 05, 2007

KAT is HERE!!!

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...



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

Monday, July 02, 2007

A Boy and His Bear


Actually, his Omi´s bear.. :-D


Kindergartenfest







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....