Summer Celebration

As usual when the school year comes to an end one event is chasing the next, so today we attended the Summer celebration at Henri's daycare center. Even though I could've done without the stress of his old place closing in the beginning of this year, I'm so extremely happy about where he is now. And so is he, I believe.

This is Nadine, Henri's lovely teacher giving out prices for carrying cups of cold water from one bowl to another (pretty good game idea for when it's 35° Celsius). My son plays shy here, but he likes her a lot. When she went on a vacation to Greece, he named his favorite stuffed animal 'Griechenland'.

Karl had some fun, too. By emptying out all the little kids soap-bubble liquid for example.

You're wondering where these delicious looking fruit skewers come from? Yes, I do it all.

The festivities ended with an obviously highly anticipated Punch and Judy show.

And when we left the premises around 4 p.m. it was so hot that I threw my two cool-packs in the bicycle trailer to chill my boys down a bit.

Robot Man

Karl is not really keen on taking any kind of classes. He's just not a big fan of authorities, I guess. Which he might have inherited from his parents. There's one exception though: English class at the kindergarten. Today was their presentation. They sang songs, answered questions, counted to twenty. The teacher is actually a lot of fun, but has a bizarre pronounciation (in my book at least – she must be from South Africa) and so has Karl by now.

I'm featuring the famous Robot Man song here.

Henri was very focused watching his brother and made sure I wouldn't loose my shoes.

With daddy gone again at TED Global in Edinburgh, I'm taking the opportunity to finish up our little construction project and to have some color added to the whole thing. Yes, our house is green and yes, that is my future office with the purple carpet in it.

Naked BBQ

Saturday we were invited to Petra's lovely post-birthday BBQ. After finishing their welcome ice-cream and getting over the usual shy-phase my kids got naked and stayed in Adam's costume pretty much for the rest of the party.

They were not the only ones though. The kids were probably inspired by Spencer Tunicks latest photo shoot here in Munich. And of course we shot quite a few pictures of this performance ourselves, but as you can figure: not exactly blogging material...

By the way in the last picture Karl tells the girls how his father secretly lends him his pocket knife. Yeah. Right.

Missing Mom

Big wake-up disappointment today - mom was already gone. As a true superstar she had to get up in the wee hours to go to a truly glamorous job - she's a stunt double for the boxing scenes of an episode of SoKo Kitzbühel. The SoKo (task force) shows are something like Germany's CSI, a great crime series franchise. This one's taking place in the very fabulous mountain resort of Kitzbühel, about an hour's drive South in the Austrian alps. So the day got only started with the promise of mom singing a lullaby upon her return. Even if that will involve singing to the sleeping angels.

Hardwood Floors

We appologize for the – hopefully temporary – partial breakdown of this blog. Unfortunately a bug in the Android cell phone OS might have accidentally deleted all the images that Andrian has ever uploaded to the blog. Or something like that. We're still trying to find out and hope to be able to save the contents.

In the meantime please enjoy the beautiful hardwood floor of our future kitchen, dining and living room.

As you can see quite a succes with the boys.

FINALLY a place in the new house where the don't have to be careful to fall in a pile of rubble.

And we even have bathrooms by now. Although we can't use them just yet...

Summer Lessons

Went to Bensheim (pronounced Pfszemmpfzzhime according to Henri) to see Oma Ulla and Opa Michael for a few days. As usual on a journey there were quite a few lessons to be learned. Starting with gravity - it's fun! Especially as an accelerator of moving vehicles.

Cousins! Even more fun, because shared giggles are double giggles.

Girls are boring! Who wants to draw poooonys?! Well, actually that was Henri's take on this scene. Thora's take was more like, it's really awesome to have an aunt who knows her ponys and can draw them too.

There's only one grandma Ulla! And she is the greatest. Says so on her coffee mug. And has been proven many a times.

Pollywogs are mighty fast! But that's the thrill of the hunt. Alright, we know they're not called pollywogs in the States, but admit it - hunting for tadpoles only sounds half the fun. Also, Thora and Tomas are now from the UK.

On the way back there was a much too short detour to Frankfurt to see Eva, Paul, Maria and Tim. Who took us to a really fantastic playground. Karl was all pro teaching Henri how to operate a digger.

Henri was a good student though....

...especially when he found out that you can make a mighty good impression on young ladies when you know how to make the earth move.

Alright - what have we learned? Yes - shared giggles are double giggles! We miss you. All of you.

Brothers Kreye

Having two boys from early on you're rather amazed, how very different their personalities shape up. And then there's of course those days when those differences are much more pronounced then usual(pink boxing gloves courtesy of Fred).

Beating the System

The supermarket strategy to place candy at children's eye-level around the cash register lines is nothing new. The German term for this is "Quengelware" (whining merchandise). Supposedly the whining of children drives up sales significantly enough to make this a staple marketing strategy. We found a way to beat the system though. Reading! Since there's always a magazine rack not too far from the cash register (I guess to get the bored childless customers to buy gossip rags), the easiest way to distract Karl and Henri from sweetened temptations are comic books. Case in point - just look at the size of the two chocolate displays.