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

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

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

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

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

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

Isa is 6!!!!

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

Work In Progress - Heart Quilt

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

Summer - Westerhaus

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

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



Omi´s first Cache :-)

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

yes, we are alive!!! :-)

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

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

Corn Maze by Night

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

MAGC Heidelberg

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


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











Awesome view!!

Sibling torture.. lol.. they love it!

please do my face, too!!!


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







we were under adult supervision :-)

Niersteiner Hölle

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

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

My cache, my sours....

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

can i fit the whole thing in my mouth?

running downhill is ggrrrreeeeaaaatttt

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

Caching in K-Town

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

meeting fellow cachers in the woods :-)

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


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



TWISTED!!!

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