Juicy Sunday

Glorious weather on the balmy side, the hip regional juicer turning his farm into a holiday market and two boys ready for some adventuring - reason enough to hit the road and to drive out to the lush hills of the "land of the five lakes".



First stop of course - the open pit barbecue serving some of the finest wuerstel since the invention of the pig. Plus some fries which could drive Belgium into bankruptcy (oops, sorry, no financial crisis jokes, Europeans are a bit touchy, now that we're about to lose our common currency and the romantic notion of a unified continent with it).

Then it was off to the various activities. Karl got his first workshop experience.



For a small fee you could get a piece of wood already pre-sawed in the shape of either a boat or a sword (guess, which Karl picked), a workbench and some tools. Obviously there was quite a few father-son teams all excited about some genuine male bonding.



Karl did pretty well considering that he is normally more into the theory than into the praxis of things. He got a kick out of rounding the edges with a heavy rasp. The carpenter made him a real leather handle. And so Karl paraded his self-made weapon around the apple orchards like a true knight.



While Karl and I were pretending to be anywhere near talented with sharp and pointy tools, Fred and Henri discovered a choo choo train pulled by a miniature locomotive with a real steam engine. It's as nerdy as it gets, but Henri couldn't get enough (no matter that he still needed parental guidance i.e. balancing, so lucky Fred got to ride around the choo choo train quite a few times).



Henri did not like the concept of finiteness. But off we went to the hills of the apple orchards.



He got over the end of train rides when he discovered that you can run really fast downhill smack into the arms of another parental unit and get both the thrill of speed and the kick of being held tight in one single run (notice his elder brother in full attack mode going against a horde of robber-knights in the background).

Later we did need a break.

Hangin' Out

So here's a post creating the illusion we're just hangin' out, although the lack of posts reveals the slightly busy nature of our current lives. There was not only Karl's but also Fred's birthday (a big one celebrated with the wiring of the largest sum we will probably ever wire, topped with a dinner at a fabulous popup restaurant featuring the menus of two multi starred chefs), there's the renovation of the house gaining traction (now fully ours, due to that wiring of money), Fred's new clients, the paper's various innovation projects, the social lives of little boys. But hey, here's to hanging out, which we still do, even if not always as a foursome. Let's start with Henri's and Karl's collaboration on a very traditional piece of avantgarde art (yes, there is such a thing, now that avantgarde is part of the history of a century past).

Which quickly dissolved in some solo projects.



This is not Karl's impression of Melancholia. Quite the contrary. He listens to his current favorite CD, which is an action packed adventure story of the Playmobil top agents, a world he has been diving into ever since he got the agents' headquarters for his birthday. And keeps on fueling his knack for the making up of ever more elaborate adventure stories.



So far it's a bit over the top for Henri, who prefers simple stories involving simple vehicles.



Karl in the meantime is so much into the top agents that he sometimes rebuilds the Playmobil world with Lego.



Once in a while we do get out of the house though.



Henri now very much shares his brother's taste for the luxurious cafe life of Europe, where you can share drinks and snacks and reads (and at our regular spot also toys) at a leisurely pace (oh, that shiner on his forehead? Henri had to recalibrate his navigational system, when we pulled out the extension of the kitchen table for a dinner guest, oops).

Although at the end of the day, somebody gots to clean up all that mess.

Happy Four!

Karl is four now!!! Crazy.

Weekend with Grandpa Paul

It was time to take grandpa "Opa" Paul out to the new house. Being an experienced house owner himself he gave Karl a quick lesson in seasonal groundskeeping (oh that pesky foliage, so beautiful when driving through New England, so sludgy when on the ground for a few days). Karl tried to relay his new set of knowledge and skills to his brother right away. Who was not convinced that a set of new kiddie brooms already justifies child labor on a mellow weekend afternoon.



The dispensing of cookies to reward the hard labor brought him back into the fold of the boys team though (mom used the opportunity of a free Saturday to juggle a myriad of chores from preparing an important presenation to stocking up on kiddie party supplies for next Wednesday).



After the visit to the house we stopped by my office, where Henri hijacked my desk for a joyride.



Karl in the meantime tested the sprintability of the premises, which included the reenactment of a famous bullfight. The day ended with a repeat screening of The Gruffalo, Henri's and Karl's favorite (and so far only) movie (full English version is on Youtube). As you can see the creature with the "terrible tusks and terrible claws and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws" doesn't just impress foxes, owls, snakes and little boys, but adults as well.



Nothing of course beats the classic medium of childrens' entertainment - a grandfatherly reading of fairy tales. In this case another Axel Scheffler gem, "Room on a broom". Dinner followed.



The day packed enough fun and excitement, so even hard-to-charm Henri was all smitten. Next morning at the kitchen table he repeatedly pointed to the chair Opa was sitting in, exclaming "Paul!" in a rather excusatory tone. As in "Where is he?!"

Bath Time

Karl likes to pose for pictures these days. I think this is a pretty creative pose, right? When there's going to be a Germany's Next Underaged Male Model show I'm totally going to register both my sons.

Nineteen Months

Henri's growth accelerator? Cookies!