Catching up (May)

So obviously I'm really bad at keeping up with our blog.  In the next few days I'm going to try to catch everybody up to what's been happening in our lives.

In the spring, Marcus participated in Start Smart Baseball through the military.  There are no games, but instead they spend the season teaching the younger kids basic skills like throwing, catching, and hitting the ball.

Daddy even made it back to help out for a few practices at the end of the season.

 Dominic even got in on the action.  I think he might have enjoyed it (and learned) more than Marcus.

Mother's Day was pretty low key here.  Eric was in the states for a class, so it was just me and the kids.  (Eric always seems to be out of town for holidays like Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and my birthday.  Not sure how he manages it, but I'm pretty sure it's not all luck.)  The boys each made a card for me at church and Dominic decorated this jar of flowers.  

We have this cool shop here on post called Freecycle.  Instead of having a thrift shop, we can donate to Freecycle and then whenever we have time, we go in and take whatever we're interested in for free.  In May we scored a Sit 'n Spin for free!!  The kids all love it and play with it all of the time.

Lauren is finally old enough to play down in the playroom with Marcus and Dominic, which I love.  It makes it much easier to keep everybody happy and playing throughout the day.

While we don't have a zoo in town here, we do have a Wildpark.  It contains animals you would likely see in a petting zoo and a few animals you would be surprised to see.  Everything from moose to owls, as well as goats, bunnies, chickens, and even a lynx.  The boys love it because they can feed the bunnies and goats.

With the weather being pretty miserable 9 months out of the year here, they have a lot of indoor play areas.  There is one owned by a hotel nearby that we had been wanting to check out and we had a rainy Memorial Day that ended up being a great opportunity for it.  It's not as large or involved as the one that we went to in Switzerland, but that was okay with us.  It was definitely a hit and we will be going back as the weather starts getting worse again.

They have all different kinds of ride-on toys around the play area and the boys had fun figuring them all out.

We've discovered that they don't do anything easy here.  You would be hard pressed to find a slide with a regular ladder here in Germany.  There's always some challenging way to get up to the top.  This bridge was 4 x 4's on chains that would swing when you stepped on them. 

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!!