The 'EGG'stravaganza...

The Kindergarten class had a fun activity where we made dishes made with eggs and then each kiddo had to design a contraption to encase an egg and hopefully keep it from breaking as they dropped it off the roof...

Emma was very supportive and helped make Leo's container!
we were going for a 'lunar module' design made out of straws and a plastic bag for the parachuteREADY TO GO!  ALL SET FOR LAUNCH!
Russ was the launcher...
Going in for the pick-up...
Bringing it over to the 'opener' for her to inspect the egg...
SUCCESS!!!!!!  Leo's victory dance is always amusing...

Not Something you see everyday!

As you turn into our neighborhood there is a beautiful field of Tulips blooming... in Europe, there are places like this where you can pull over and pick what you want then leave payment (on the honor system!).  It is just so refreshing!  Today after getting the kids off the bus, we walked down to the tulip field to get some flowers!

The sign telling you how much the tulips cost.  You put the money in the little hole marked "kasse" which is the word for "cashier".
We also brought 'flat Stanley' with us.  The kids cousin Antares sent him to us to take some pictures with him while in Germany.  We actually brought him to Prague... but OOOOOPS!  He remained hidden in my purse the whole time!  ugh!

This is the sign as you enter our village of Mackenbach!  There was also a field of Narcissa (daffodils) but they were not blooming quite yet so we will have to go back!  By the way... the Tulips were 40 Euro Cents a stem  which works out to about 60 cents a stem...  tell that to the local florist!!!!!  And we got to choose exactly which ones we wanted!  :-)

Emma's Birthday and our visit with Deanna in Nuremburg

Following our trip to Prague, we detoured down to Nuremburg Germany for an overnight visit with Deanna.  (Russ' sister lives there so we have family only 3 hours away!)  We met up at a theme park called Playmobile FunPark.  Playmobile is a toy brand here in Germany similar to Little People or Legos.  Basically themed playsets.  The FunPark is basically huge replicas of the playsets that the kids can play on.  It was such a great day!  

Here... of course... Leo is trying to take the sword from the Viking...

Emma, of course, gravitated to the Princess...

This Castle had rope climbs and rock-climbing walls all around it, my monkey children (and my monkey husband) made it up in no time...

Deanna, Myself and Emma in the stocks...

...and attempting to get across the 'ocean' from the dock to the Pirate ship...   it was actually a workout!  And yes I am very surprised that noone actually fell into the water!

This climbing tower actually went pretty far up!  I have my camera on the highest zoom it would go!  I say no thanks!  When did I start disliking heights?

And for the best part of our detour!  The next morning, Deanna brought us to a friend of her's home for breakfast.  We walk up and they had set up their backyard in a big breakfast picnic!  Lots of fruit and breads and meats and cheeses...  They had even hung up a few balloons since it was Miss Emma's 8th Birthday!  We walked in and these wonderful people we had never met gave us big hugs and then sang Emma Happy Birthday!  It was incredible and surreal!  We loved every minute!

... and it just goes to show that regardless of what language you speak...  EVERYONE speaks KID!  Language served no barrier at all as the kids ate breakfast, then went off to play and then to get ice cream at a parlor across the street...

fast friends already...  Emma is going to write Sarah (with a little translation help from her Nanny Danna) and is determined to keep up with her new German pen pal!  It was a beautiful day!  Thanks Deanna!  We can't wait to see you again!

Whew!  Our trip was over and we headed home to unpack and have our own little family celebration.  It was the same day as my family's annual Crawfish Boil for Easter so we Skyped with our whole Cajun brood!  It made us feel a part of it even though we couldn't be there physically!  Then we had cake with Emma (following an oh-so-healthy dinner of PB&J's) and she opened her presents...


The present is actually for both her and Leo's birthday which is next month... we are taking them to DisneyLand Paris for a weekend in May.  So it is back to more PB&J's here at home to offset the cost!  

Tomorrow the real world sets back in as we get back into our routine.  Leo Michael just started T-Ball and Emma is continuing with gymnastics and piano!  I will post more pictures soon!!!  

Have a blessed Easter Season!  We love you so much and we miss you!

We went to a post Cold War country over spring break... it was beautiful as well as eye-opening in hearing about the country.  Prague is in the Czech Republic which was part of Czechoslovakia until the fall of the Soviet Union about 20 years ago.  It was the only major city in Europe not to be bombed during WWII and therefore still maintained it's beautiful old buildings... albeit many had quite a few bullet holes in them thanks to the Soviets...

Our first stop before Prague was in Plzen which is a city close to the German/Czech border.  This is an old Cathedral...

We visited the Pilzner-Urquells brewery (which we all got a taste of the beer straight from the non-filtered-non-pasteurized barrels at the end of the tour)... Leo and Emma even got a taste... and promptly thought it disgusting.  I guess we should be glad???

This is in front of Prague Castle.  This is the largest Castle in the world and takes 2-3 miles just to walk the grounds.  I must say, our children are Rock Stars!!!!  They walked so much over the 3 days we were in Prague and there were very few complaints... In fact, we got compliments from the family we went with at how well behaved and 'non-whiny' they were!
This is the Saint Vitro Cathedral located inside the Castle walls... it was huge and beautiful and filled with history (and tombs) of martyrs and historical figures of the Czech Republic.  The sad thing is that Prague is filled with Cathedrals and churches... mostly unused because when the Communists overtook the country, they banned Christianity and actually turned most people (at times with violence) against God.  What used to be a very rich and vibrant country of very spiritual people, is now poor and agnostic...
Inside the castle walls was a museum of medieval artifacts...  Emma liked the dresses... and Leo Michael?
liked the weapons!  Uh....  I guess that is okay?

Back in the hotel lounge for a relaxing cocktail.  Our friends Grant and Tina Morris and their daughter Molly were with us on our trip.  They are Army friends who are also stationed in Germany, they were our next door neighbors when we were in Kansas at Fort Leavenworth... proves that the military is a very small world!!!

One of the walking tours of the city included a boat ride down the river that cuts through Prague.

This is a view from the river of Prague Castle.  And one from the Charles Bridge.

This is a statue of an inverted horse...  The symbolism is huge.  Basically Prague was an incredibly rich country before Communism took over the country.  Following WWII, the country was decimated and stripped of its industry and beauty.  I never realized how much the people hated it... I just assumed (very wrongly) that the people were just a part of the Soviet Union and ignorantly never considered that they were actually oppressed.  After the fall of the 'iron curtain', the government was still very much corrupt and at the 10 year anniversary of the 'fall of Communism' not much had changed and  the people were upset that they had not yet regained true freedom... so the statue meant as a 'celebration of freedom' was changed as a protest and this is the result.  Makes you think...  Freedom is so incredibly important and a thing we take for granted...
This is a very ancient clock that animates on the hour.  It is situated on the main square of Old Town in Prague.  The square is the cultural center where they hold fests and markets.

This picture is a tribute to how important it is to pay attention to currency exchange rates!  What Grant and Tina thought was an inexpensive bottle of wine was actually a $50 bottle!  So we had a few laughs at their expense... they were good sports though... and drank every drop of that bottle!!!  Wouldn't you?  :-)

Eating crepes in the city square!  They made them in front of you and filled them with very hot yummy fillings!  This one was chocolate!  yum.

On our trip out of Prague, we ventured off of the Autobahn into a small Czech village to find a post office... of course the post office was only open for 4 hours a day and we missed it... but hey, it got us out of the city!

Self explanatory... we wore the kids OUT!  But they were awesome!  They can never use an excuse that they can't run/walk a 5K with us!  We walked so much every day and they were so great!  They did ask for us to buy them things once a minute... which we declined...  but they didn't whine and really enjoyed the trip!!!!  

We love you and wish you were able to come along!

Our house before furniture... and an incident...

Well, here is some inside pictures of our house before we got the furniture in... I will post more once we get it more settled...

This is our foyer right as you walk in the front door.  The door to the right is our office/craft/kids TV room...  the door to the left is the living room.
Here is our kitchen which is connected to the living room.
and the living room.  We have two huge windows (you can see one of them on the left) and the double doors leading out to the back yard!  As you can see, the living room is a lovely (sort of) shade of peach which we are powerless to change, but we will work around it!
And now for the 'incident'.  As you can see, Leo Michael is missing a tooth!  I would like to be able to say that it happened naturally, but as we were walking out the door to go to church, a 'friendly' game of tag (or something like that) got out of hand and ended up with Leo's face hitting the mail box... I was upstairs when I heard a volley of "I am sorry Leo!!!!!" and "uh oh, there's blood... MOMMY!!!!!!!"  I ran down the stairs and saw little blood so I wasn't too concerned until I saw that a tooth was missing.  Panic set in and only when the kids saw me a little stressed out did the tears come.  I was freaked out because I thought it was a permanent tooth.  OF COURSE this happened on a Sunday afternoon during Spring Break.  OF COURSE!  So, after fishing the tooth out of the mailbox and dunking it in a glass of milk, we had to make an emergency call to the on-call Dentist to get it checked out.  

The tooth was thankfully a baby one (Leo has two permanent lower teeth but in my sort-of-panic I couldn't remember which teeth he had already lost and which he had not... not to mention the tooth lost was HUGE and looked nothing like  any of the teeth Emma had ever lost... which added a bit to the sort-of-panic).  The surrounding teeth were also knocked a bit loose so we are waiting to see if they were damaged as well.  The x-ray showed what appeared to be no damage to the permanent teeth, but again, we are going to have to watch it and hope for the best.  

Leo Michael of course is having to live on soup and scrambled eggs for the next few weeks but other than that, shows absolutely zero signs that the trauma has bothered him in the least bit.  Like I said, he didn't even cry until I sort-of-panicked!  Well, we still made it to church, albeit 15 minutes late... thank God for the VERY LONG Palm Sunday Service!  :-)

The dentist requested that we keep Leo from any major activity for the next week or so... yeah right!  They should have issued us a strait jacket or put him in a body cast if they wanted that!!!

What am I going to do with this kid!!!  Love him!

Tomorrow we are off to the Czech Republic for Spring Break!  It is a 5 hour drive away... can you believe that?  We are going with some friends for 4 days.  I will post pictures soon!

Love us!