Germany Trip Installment 3: The 3D Museum

We're a little heavy on the testosterone around here

We are fortunate to live in a neighborhood that is full of kids. Unfortunately for Elena, almost all of them are boys. Yesterday I looked out the window and counted 11 boys in our yard, but we couldn't find even one girl for Elena to play with.


She does her best to join in, but there's only so much kickball, baseball, tennis, badminton and football a girl who pretty much hates playing sports can take.


On the plus side, she got frustrated to the point where she was content to escape for about 2 hours and clean her room without being severely threatened within an inch of her life forced to do so, which only happens about twice a year. So I, personally, am looking forward to seeing her room clean for the next 12 hours or so, which is how long it usually lasts.

Germany Trip Installment 2: The Food

Oh the Food! How we loved the food.

Lunch our first day at a little butcher shop in Grimma.

Breakfast!

Sam's favorite: schnitzel

Dumplings! (Too bad she ended up not liking them)

Berliner Kindle Weiss (I'm not really sure what it was, but it was good) 

Ice cream and coffee on a patio overlooking the beautiful city of Meissen 

Charlie's favorite: Nutella

Fresh blackberries!

Our last dinner in Germany and a wonderful evening spent with Natalie's family and Charlotte.

That's not salsa!

Today I gave Charlie a little bowl of chips to keep him occupied while I did the dishes. I turned around to start the water in the sink and then looked back to check on Charlie. Seeing he had wandered into the bathroom, I went over to make sure the toilet seat was down (it wasn't) and to make sure he wasn't messing with the toilet water (he was).


Unfortunately, I didn't make it there in time to stop him from dipping his chip into the toilet water, but I did make it there in time to stop him from eating it.


He seemed to think I was being totally unreasonable to take away his chip and make him wash his hands. It's moments like those that make me wonder how often I do something that makes God think, "What are you doing???? Don't do that!!" and, like a 1-year-old, I come back with "What's the big deal?"

Germany Trip Installment 1: The Jet Lag

I was really nervous about dealing with the 7 hour time change going to Germany and back, but the kids adjusted surprisingly well.  Our initial flight to Chicago was delayed 7 hours (or rather, it was delayed "a bit longer" about eight times). Fortunately we just made the best of it and had fun in the Sioux Falls airport. By the the time we left, it was late and we were exhausted. Charlie slept through all three flights (we were detoured through London due to our missed connection). By the time we got to Charlotte's it was 10:00 and we all just crashed for the night and woke up ready to go the next day. 

Coming back was more tiring for me even though it was a shorter trip. Charlie took a little longer to adjust, waking up at 2:30 the first morning (then going back to sleep at 3:00) and 5:30 the next.  But between the jet lag and days filled to the brim with sightseeing, walking and visiting, we were all pretty tired by the end of the day throughout the trip...in a good way, though. Here are a few shots of the kids in various stages of passed out (and one of Charlie wide awake long past his bedtime).

Hallo!

We are back from our two week trip to Germany. We had a wonderful time visiting Natalie and Charlotte's families. They were all so welcoming, and we loved being able to see the girls again. Although, now in addition to missing the girls, we are missing their families as well. The kids even had German grandparents (Oma and Opa) to spoil them while they were there.

We also started back to school this week so I haven't found the time to sort through the 1000 or so photos we took. I'll just share a few for now and hopefully before too long I'll be able to share some more detailed stories of the trip.

Checkpoint Charlie! 

Bottle cap eyes! (with Natalia)

Overlooking Leipzig

In Grimma with Charlotte

Having fun at the playground with Tobi

Getting ready for their first train ride with Steffen and Bianca

Meeting Natalie's Oma and Opa (Natalie was unfortunately sick and missed out on a few days)

Our last night in Germany with all of Natalie's family and Charlotte

Natalie's family very generously offered to let Charlotte come and stay with us at their place for our last day so we were able to get a family photo with all of our kids :) The only drawback was we waited until the last minute and the kids were not entirely cooperative that late at night.

This was our first attempt. Charlie is actually crying - Sam is just intentionally screwing up the picture, which seems to be his trademark lately:

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Summer Highlights

I've clearly been falling behind on keeping this thing updated, and I don't see myself catching up anytime soon. So for now, I'll just share some pictures to show a few things I've missed over the past 5 months.

St. Patrick's Day!

Walking in the St. Patrick's Day parade. We covered almost all our nationalities that have been mixed in with our Irish blood.

After playing hard all morning one day, I came into the living room to find Ian and Sam both out cold.

We had Dominic, an exchange student from Austria, stay with us for a couple of weeks in May while his host dad was on vacation. He fit right into our family. This is not the best picture, but I love how Sam is giving himself bunny ears in this one.

Here's a better picture of him with the kids.



Watching the fireworks on the 4th of July

Enjoy the Concerts in the Park - Charlie absolutely loves listening to the band. If we get there early, he plays on the playground until the music starts. Once he hears the band play, he runs over as fast as he can to listen and dance.

Sammy lost his first tooth!

In July we had, Clem, a girl from France stay with us for a week. She was a big help with the kids and we were sad to have her go so soon.

I think Clem regretted starting this game where she pulled the kids around the trampoline on a sheet. They (along with the neighborhood kids who inevitably came over and wanted turns) sure loved it, though.

Barn Dance on the Callens Farm

Sam caught a fish all by himself - something I have never even done. (It would probably help if I tried)

Charlie may be our first child who has a tendency towards cleanliness.

I put a very heavy emphasis on "may" because as soon as I wrote on here about how great of an eater he was, he quit eating 3/4 of the food he previously seemed to love. He has discovered his favorites (mostly kiefer, raisins, Mexican food, meat and chocolate to name a few) and it apparently dawned on him that he doesn't have to eat everything we stick in his mouth.

Anyway, he does seem to enjoy putting things in their rightful place, which is a completely new phenomenon in our house. He will find Sam's clothes on the floor, carry them up the steps and put them in a laundry basket. He puts scattered shoes into the shoe basket - not a lot, but once in awhile. If he spills a bowl of food, he picks up the pieces and puts them back into the bowl. And when he finishes a drink, he won't set the cup wherever he happens to be; he walks over to the kitchen and tries to put in on the counter. He grabs a cloth and wipes up spills and wipes his face when he's done eating. One day, he climbed up a chair and got a knife we had put in the center of the table thinking he wouldn't reach it. When I saw him come into the kitchen with it, I headed towards him to take it, but before I got there he had opened the silverware drawer and put it away. And the last time he pulled out all the pots and pans to bang on them, he actually put them all back into the cupboard when he was done.
Here he is helping Sam put away the dishes. (And yes, that is Christmas music in the background. Elena seemed to think July was a good time to pull out the Christmas CDs)

On the flip side, he is still equally good at making messes. You may have noticed as soon as the dishes were put away, he started to pull them back out. This evening he drug the garbage can into the living room without our noticing (we had it out to throw out all our cucumber peelings and hadn't put it away yet) and dumped the contents onto the carpet. The other day I left the breakfast table to grab something and came back to see he had dumped a box of cereal all over the newspaper and was topping it off with my coffee (don't worry, it was lukewarm, which seems to be the only way I drink my coffee since having kids). Of course, he did follow it up by running over to the laundry, finding a cloth and attempting to wipe it all up. Here he is all proud of himself after using the stool to reach the cinnamon and dump it all over  the kitchen.

Hablas español?

I hope I still do! After 7 years of staying home, I've decided to take a job teaching Spanish at the high school in Minneota.

I don't know if I'll teach more than a year, but it should be just right for this year anyway. It's really the ideal job for me as a mom. I get all the same vacation days as the kids (including snow days). Elena and Sam will be in school, and I should be done by noon most days so Charlie will only need to go to daycare about 4 hours a day. (Please pray for him - so far he does great at daycare for about 2 hours, but anything past that is pushing it). To top it off, my wonderful, amazing, generous, loving husband has agreed to take charge of getting all the kids ready and off to where they need to be in the mornings.

I've been going back and forth between feeling excited and wondering if I've completely lost my mind. But mostly I'm looking forward to it. I guess we'll find out at the end of the school year whether taking this job falls into the "good idea" or "bad idea" category. Remember these? I'm not sure how they managed to get less funny since I was 10, but it's still fun to reminisce:

I'm pretty good at overwhelming myself with "to do" lists.  Sam actually noticed me crossing something off one of my lists the other day, and he said, "Whoa! Mom. Is that your chore list????"  The kids each have 5 things on their chore list every day (and on of those things is brushing their teeth so that doesn't even really count). Shocked by how long mine was, he started to go down the list counting how many chores I had. I didn't correct him when he started counting every individual word on the list rather than each task because I figured that would give him a better picture of how many things I really do need to get done in a day. "Wow! Elena! Guess how many chores Mom has on her list...47!!!!"

But as much as I sometimes can't stand how busy I make myself, I've come to accept that it's a part of my personality from which I will probably never get away.  Even with a million things running through my mind at any given second, I'm happy with my life and all the things I do. And I know that if I ever start to get to a point where I feel caught up, I will inevitably find something else to fill up my time. Apparently just to make sure that I never quite make it to checking off the entirety of my never-ending to-do list.

Maybe this year of teaching will be what I need to finally realize that I have to start cutting back. But I doubt it.

(Note to any future students, co-workers or employers who may be reading this: Don't worry. If I start to go nuts half-way through the year, I'm quite sure all the craziness will be in my home and not in the classroom.
Note to Seth: I apologize in advance for losing it at home occasionally in the coming year.  If and when that happens, my advice to you is to remove yourself and the kids from my presence for a bit. Ten minutes should do it. That's like an eternity to a mom with small children. Or if it's easier, just stick me outside and let me know when I can come back in.)

At the playground, Elena says to me while swinging on the monkey bars, "Look, Mom! I'm breaky-eighting."




At least, that's what I thought she said at first.


After having her repeat herself 3 times, I finally figured out that she was saying "brachiating." (For those who don't know, to brachiate is "to progress by swinging from hold to hold by the arms")




That's not exactly a word I would have expected her to have in her vocabulary. Way to show up your mom, kid.


She always has had a big vocabulary for her age.  It's looking like she might pass me up before she's out of elementary.