Playmobil FunPark

While at our playgroup a few weeks ago, I overheard some moms talking about this cool park they went to. They said it was only an hour and a half away and only 8 Euros to get in.  I thought it sounded perfect.  It was.  We packed up the kids last weekend and headed out for the day.

Getting ready to go in.
They were upset that we made them stop to take a picture.

Serious construction work.

These boys love trucks and digging.

 

This boy loves slides!!

Maybe the wagon will make it all of the way to Oregon.

Daddy took the boys for a ride on a wooden raft.

Driving the pirate ship.

They loved playing with all of the life-size Playmobil toys.  Our favorite part was making it inside to take a break.  They have areas set up where the kids can play with any Playmobil toy they want and the parents can get coffee and relax.  The whole park is pretty relaxing in reality.  The kids can do all of the stuff themselves and there are benches and shade everywhere for the parents.  The only part the kids didn't like was the dinosaurs that were life-size and "roared" at them.  They had been waiting all day to get to them because they love dinosaurs, but as soon as they started roaring Marcus ran away and Dominic started crying.

It's really a big marketing tool for Playmobil to get kids playing with their toys in the hope that the parents will buy them.  Fortunately, our kids didn't realize that you could buy the stuff and so we didn't have any meltdowns leaving the park.  Next time we'll get them something as a souvenir.

Switzerland

Eric had a long weekend recently, so we decided to make the trek to Switzerland.  For those of you that don't know, Eric has some family just outside of Zurich so we took advantage of their hospitality and had a great weekend.  We didn't do much, it was really a chance for us to get to know them better and for them to meet the kids.  We last saw Martin (our host for the weekend) when Eric and I dropped him off on the North end of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and wished him luck on his trek back to his hostel downtown.

Martin's parents own a dairy farm in the village of Tolhusen and that is where our weekend started.  The boys loved harassing the cows and goats and they even got to play in the goat pen outside.  They pretended to be goats and walked along their balance beam.  Dominic even climbed on top of their hutch, fun for him but not so much for us.

Saturday we hung around Martin and Martina's flat until leaving for lunch at Stefan's (Martin's brother).  They have a one year old, who spent much of the afternoon trying to protect his toys from our kids.  We had a wonderful lunch getting to know their family and then headed off to the zoo.

The kids had fun even with the cold.  They even fed some of the animals after quite a bit of prodding.

A pair of wallabies

Feeding the camels
(they could tell pretty quickly who had popcorn and who didn't)

Feeding the donkey

And the goats

My favorite part of the zoo was the mini do-it-yourself amusement park at the exit.  

Martin showing Marcus how to use the big digger

Our speed racer

This merry-go-round was operated by manpower, so it was free.

I think the zoo wore him out

The next day we headed to an indoor amusement park called Trampolino.  It was awesome.  So awesome in fact that I didn't have time to take any pictures.  The boys had a blast running from activity to activity, so it was definitely worth it.  The adults got a workout chasing them around all day trying not to lose them!  This place was huge with hundreds of kids running around.

Marcus' favorite attraction,
the goal is to get to the top of the tent to get to the slide off to the right

Dominic's favorite

We had so much fun with Martin and Martina.  Thank you for letting us stay with you!!