Castles, Castles Everywhere

We've kind of stalled on our touring of the countryside, so this weekend we ventured out to find a castle we had heard about, Burg Eltz. Along the way, we saw some other castles in the hillside.


One castle we happened upon was Burg Ehrenburg (from a distance.) This is close to Nurmburg which has a race track around it. We visited it as well, but it deserves a whole post on its own so I will try to post about that in a few days. Let's just say, some people are crazy and you'll understand why later.




Burg Pyrmont is the other castle we saw from the road. We didn't walk around this one either, just enjoyed it from afar.



Onto Burg Eltz. It was only about a 45 minute drive from our house. They are all located near the Mosel River and there are about 6 castles along a 46 mile stretch. One of the other castles I have posted about before, Cochem Castle, is along this route as well.

Burg Eltz was spectacular! We didn't expect there to be as many people as there were there, nor did we expect to hike down quite a 2km steep, let me repeat, STEEP hillway to get there. Once you did the walking though, it was worth it. Well, actually walking down was easy, it was back to the car that I had to bribe Hayden with 1 Euro if he could beat me to the top. Amazing how that lights a fire under a kids hind end and they suddenly have all this bottled up energy.








Of course everything is in full bloom and its right along the river. We didn't pay to do the guided tour, we've experienced that before with the 3 kinders and it didn't turn out so well. We were able to walk in and out a few places though and all along the outside. They had a couple of little restaurants and of course a souvenir shop. Overall, I would say this is one of the prettiest castles we have seen, if not THE prettiest. We plan on taking a picnic and doing some hiking there again sometime in the future. .

Euro 2008 - Go Germany!

Living in Europe, you can't escape Fußball (pronounced fussball)- American Soccer. It's huge over here. HUGE! There are soccer stadiums everywhere, even in the little villages. It's the American equivalent of the NFL.

Right now, they are having the Euro 2008 tournament. Guess who's made it to the finals after defeating Turkey last night? Germany! Read here if you're interested.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SPORT/football/06/25/euros.germany/index.html

The last few weeks there have been German flags flying high with pride. They are on cars and on people's houses. As the game is shown, we are hearing hoops and hollers around the neighborhood and cars honking horns in excitement. Keep in mind, the game didn't end until almost 11:00 last night.

After so many years of turmoil, Germany is finally beginning to feel some pride in their country. A German woman that works for Matt, told him that just 5 - 10 years ago this wasn't the case. This is the most "proud" she's seen them in a long time. It makes me feel thankful for being fortunate enough to be born in America. My eyes are slowly being opened to how great it is to be "free."

Funny

Remember how a while back I requested my last name to be taken off the links? Guess it doesn't matter when you later end up putting it in the title of the blog. I just realized this. ha!

Top 10 List

10. Crying
9. Hitting
8. Pinching
7. Waking up during the night
6. Twirling her hair and pulling out her bows
5. Eating
4. Saying "no"
3. Sucking on her paci
2. Riding her "bike"
1. Repeating "MINE!!!!"

If you haven't guessed, these are Jordyn's top 10 things she loves to do right now. Get ready Nana, Pop, and Uncle Steve!! Toddler-hood has arrived.

Father's Day Fun

Happy Father's Day Dad, Pops and Matt! I love you all.

Last week was a little long and emotional for all of us. School ended, a best friend moved away, and there was an unexpected death of a friend. Not a close friend, but a friend with 3 children and a daddy left behind to pick up the pieces. There are other things that I won't go into, but I think you get the image around here.

That being said, I got a Father's Day present. Huh? Yep. Matt came bopping through the door with my Saturday morning cup of coffee, handed me a bouquet of fresh flowers and told me Happy Father's Day. "Thank you for making me a father." How sweet is that? It made my week. And, he knew I had experienced a long one.

So, Happy Father's day to my dear hubby! I love you. He didn't get too much of a celebration this morning. His present that I had ordered May 23 didn't arrive. This is part of living overseas that's not so much fun. There's not much to choose from here, and if your going to a German store you'll pay almost double what you pay online. Anyway, I cooked him pancakes and bacon and then we were off to Trier for a policeman sports day.

A few from Matt's office participated and it was a lot of fun. Basically, there are 5 events that have to be passed and then you qualify for some German medal. At least, that's what we think took place. Matt started out with the high jump. Keep in mind, he's never done this before and its in front of a bunch of people who don't speak the same language. Has the potential to be a little embarrassing, to say the least! He did it though. He got 3 tries and did it. Then, they measured wrong and he actually had to have it up a little higher to qualify so he had to do it all over again. He cleared it the second time. Since he qualified in the high jump, he didn't have to participate in the long jump. Whew!

Onto the shotput. He had to clear 8m and he cleared 8.45 the first attempt. When they asked him if he wanted to try again to improve his score (since he'd already passed) he replied "No, my shoulder is already hurting." lol For those of you who don't know, he really does have a bad shoulder that pops out on occasion. I think it was a wise choice he made.



After that, came the sprints. They had one shot at passing 100 meters in 14 seconds. He took 14.8. Rats! So, that was the end of our day. He didn't participate in the long run (which would have been his strong point) and swim. He has until December 31 to go back and complete the sprints to get the medal. We were all really proud of him and thought he did great considering he hadn't trained for any of this stuff and made it 1/2 way through. The boys enjoyed watching and playing some events of their own.





Happy Father's Day all you dads out there! Enjoy.

Bye, Bye Baseball

Baseball season has come and gone. We stayed busy, but enjoyed it all. In fact, we wish Landen's season was a little longer and so does he. He's taking it fairly well though.





Hayden had a fun time and really loved every minute of it. He always had a huge smile swiped across his face. He was just so happy to be on a team, finally. They rotated positions, but his favorite position and the one he played the most was 1st base.I was very proud of him because he received the coveted "sportsmanship" medal that only one player from the team receives. Pretty good for the youngest t-ball player in the entire league. They celebrated with a party at Happy Land which is a post in and of itself. I'll have to take more pictures of that place and share at a later date. Let's just say safety isn't the main concern there, but the kids had fun.









Landen finished the season up 4 - 2. Yep. 6 games total. He got to be starting pitcher every game, usually 2 innings. He really improved his pitching and has a lot of potential if he practices at it. It became a running joke that the kids were afraid of him because he hit somebody almost every game. He felt bad, but learned to take it in stride and proved to us on the last game that he wasn't 6 for 6 games of hitting someone. ha! His highlight last weekend was that he got to be catcher 2 innings. He's been wanting to try it and had the gear on a couple of times at the end of a game, but never got to do it. I think he learned its very hard work being a catcher, but he enjoyed it.



As you can see, Jordyn didn't miss getting in on any of the action. Matt's already letting me know that she will be playing soccer and t-ball. I told him that's fine, but she's gonna have a pink glove, pink cletes and a big bow in her hair! He has agreed to my terms. Stay tuned.

Now, onto summer. Landen gets out of school on Thursday. Let the fun begin!

Volksmarch

First, thanks for all the comments and emails from that last post! It really wasn't that bad of a day, I think I was just whiney. I got lots of nice comments and emails and almost felt guilty for complaining about such petty little things, lol.

Onto other things. Last Friday, Landen's school had a Volksmarch. Hayden and I participated with Landen's class, while a friend watched Jordyn. It was a pretty day, a little cloudy but it was nice. The Volksmarch consisted of a 5K, 8K, or 10K walk. Landen's class chose to walk the 10K, of course. Hayden was a trooper. I had to put him on my shoulders here and there, but I would say he walked at least 5 miles without much complaining. Landen didn't have any trouble. I'm attaching a few pictures. After it was over, they had a huge hot dog cookout, with lots of snacks and gave all the kids ribbons for finishing. It was really well organized and the kids enjoyed it. Today, Landen had his regular field day but I didn't go to it so I won't have pictures from that. He gets out of school next Thursday and then the fun begins.

Matt's been working a lot lately and this weekend is no exception. He'll be working through the weekend, but he's close by. It's funny how kids deal with mommy's and daddy's being gone. Hayden came up with tears last night asking when daddy was gonna be home because he missed him. It had only been 1 night! Then, Landen comes up this morning telling me all about this dream he had about daddy getting deployed again. I think this stems from his friends at school. His best friends dad is in Iraq, and several other kids dads are too. Its kind of nice for him to go to school with all of them together because they all can relate on that level, unlike if he were in some random public school. I like that he can see lots of moms and dads are gone at times. Military kids are tough little kids, you have to hand it to them. I think sometimes, the general public forgets about the little ones and how much they sacrifice too. So, kudos to military kids! And military wives :-)

Let's see. Tomorrow is our last round of baseball games and team parties and then sports will be finished until the fall. I've been dreading the summer a little, but in the last couple of days I have started looking forward to it. Maybe this is a good sign :-)

Tschuss

You know you live in a foreign country when you wake up in the morning, and your husband says you continued to say "Tschuss" (cheers!) while sleep talking during the night.

Speaking of talking German. I must brag on Matt a little bit. His German is really coming along! We went to dinner the other night for our anniversary, and I was very surprised to hear him talking to the waitress with such good German dialect. Granted, he was reading a lot of it, but he's learned the pronunciation, unlike me. I guess he is exposed to it so much more with his work. I get frustrated and freeze when I can't understand what they are asking me. I don't do well under pressure. I do lots of hand gestures, smiling, and saying, "I don't know." Matt says I say "do what?" a lot, which I'm trying to break myself of. I had no idea I was saying that!!

Matt's always so calm and collected. Nothing is a big deal to him. I wish I could be a little more like that. I'm really in kind of a bad mood today. Nothing terrible has happened, but its just a chain of little things that I let stress me. To Matt, it wouldn't be a big deal. To me, it ruins my whole day. For starters, Jordyn got up at 5:30 (as she has for almost a week now.) I am not a morning person. I like my sleep, so this does NOT start me off on a good note. Then, after two bowl fulls of cereal spilled all over the kitchen floor, I head to the base and get stopped at the gate for a car search. It's really not a big deal. But, I was meeting someone at the gym and this put me behind a little. Then, I had problems finding my car registration while the kids are in back crying and asking why its taking so long. I get to the gym and Jordyn cries after bumping her head. I might have gotten 1.5 miles in on the ellyptical but then it was all over because I couldn't calm her down.

Hmmm... maybe I'll go get myself a cup of coffee. So, I drive to the coffee shop (we have a Starbucks now!) and yep, NO parking places. None. Zero. With two kids in tow, I'm not walking blocks to get one little cup of coffee. So, I'm off to my next errand. We need to order oil for the house. Our house and water is heated by oil which is filled into these huge tanks (taller than me.) And, its NOT cheap. We've already had it filled, though not to the top, about 3 times. Today, I got $2000 worth. You know how much that bought? 1600 liters. It won't even fill up 1/2 of 1 of the tanks. Ok. I didn't mean to get off on that. Back to the oil ordering. Evidently, I'm the first customer to order oil since they switched computer systems. So, 3 men, 4 phone calls, 8 swipes of my card, 2 antsy kids, and 45 minutes later, I got my order placed. It'll be delivered on Thursday. I wonder what more fun that will bring.

Sorry to be so negative, but I'm a little blogged out and don't have much to write about at the moment. I'm tired. I'm cranky. Hopefully, I'll be in a better mood next posts.

Tscheuss!