Omi Ulla's Big Bash

It was a quick trip up to Bensheim where Omi Ulla celebrated her 80th with a big bash. It seemed everybody who had ever known Ulla convened at the Blauer Aff (the Blue Monkey), a rustic, but refined inn not far from Omi's house (here you see her as the lady in red reading through the "Ullphabet", a dictionary of her life created, designed and produced by Fred, Markus and Carolin with a little help from the rest of the family... surrounded by from left - Tony from Ireland, Edda, Fred's sister Carolin's mother in-law, Ulla's old-time friend Sandra form Ireland, Carolin's husband Ivo and Carolin).

Ulla was having a riot...

...so did the kids, although under the supervision of Sofia, an experienced childcare professional who knew how to keep the lil ones enthralled (fairy tales) and in excited (ice cream).

Anna Lynn (here seen in the arms of Jessica) wasn't much into the party scene upstairs...

...but Henri sure was into Anna Lynn. He's been for a while, talks a lot about her. Might be just a survival bond being the two littlest cousins in a gang of rowdy rascals. Although those velvety eyes don't quite confirm that pragmatic interpretation.

Uncle Markus proved himself as a skillfull kids' wrangler, although those skills were nulliefied by the slamming two-man band mixing in some kiddie dance songs...

...which got that dance-floor shakin'

Karl was ever more the listener, hangin' out pumpkin style, while Henri sashayed round and round and round the restaurant until he collapsed in instant REM sleep mode on the way back to Omi's

What is there left to say? This is how we define GOP! And another happy birthday to Omi.

An Ice Cream A Day...

... keeps the whining away. For as long as the ice cream lasts at least.

Relax

This picture looks way more relaxed than things actually are these days, but it's too cute to ignore!

At The Movies

On top of being burdened with a crippled husband Fred had an antsy Kindergartener on her hands, since there was an off-day, so we went out to the Bavaria Film Studios. It's pretty much a fullsize studio campus with a dozen hangar size studios. Our friend Gaby, who is a film producer, is shooting "Paganini: The Devil's Violinist" these days, a fairly big budgeted, star studded period piece about one of the music world's first superstars back in the 1800s.

Unfortunately we are not allowed to show talent in costume, even the prison wagon might be a stretch in our off-the-record nature of our visit. But we can tell you that in the photo above Karl is sitting in the chair of the film's star, 21st century's real-life devil's violinist David Garrett and Gaby is sitting in the chair of the man who plays his/Paganini's manager Jared Harris of "Mad Men" fame. They were shooting a London scene inside with lots of really thick fog and horses and suffragettes loudly protesting the lusty performances of Paganini including some menacing drums, so Karl wasn't much into watching the filming itself. Jared Harris and Christian McKay tried to clown around with him and even lent him their top-hats, but since those were almost the height of Karl that kinda scared him too. He preferred the carts and carriages waiting outside.

Later-on we hung out at home and while Fred was picking up Henri (yup, no, can't drive a car for the next four to six weeks, which shifts the burdens of family logistics way, way to the disadvantage of Fred) we had our first drop-in visitors. Comes with the territory of living next to the best ice cream parlor of Eastern Munich. It was Marlene from back in the daycare days of Karl. So went out and got ourselves some ice-cream. Karl could relate much more to Marlene's older brother Julius though, which mainly had to do with common interests like comic strips, Playmobil action toys and big water pump guns.

Countryside

A couple of days ago a friend told me about a really nice farm playground and cornfield maze. Today I came to realize that the place is really close to our new house. Yes, we live in the countryside now. Guess who was thrilled? Henri and Karl. And so was I actually. I mean there's ice cream,

...horseback riding,

...relatives of my kids

...and most importantly a mixture of a maze and bouncing castle made out of bales of straw.

Pretty awesome. Especially when you're the captain of it all.

I brought four rosy checks home to this man. He thought our life was getting too boring now that we live in the countryside and had turned his early morning routine into an episode of Jackass that turned into a late morning episode of ER.

Vacation Roundup

Well, after being offline during most of our vacation, here's a quick roundup of our trip up North (which, considering the heatwave we missed around here, was indeed the right direction)... first stop was a hotel next to the ruins of an old fortress Fred found. Which of course was a hit with the boys and was a mini-adventure-vacation in it's own already...

...the next day though we were quite thrilled to arrive at the beach...

...where Henri and Karl made some use of their imported arsenal.

It was quite a find that small house on the beach, built in 1930, when nobody cared about the fragile nature of dunes. The website had promised "distance to beach: 5 meters", which sounded like an exaggeration. But we measured - it was right.

So this was our view in the morning.

There was some great enthusiasm about sea life.

And not quite that much enthusiasm about a hike along the beach on the single storm day (not in frame - Henri escaping into deep sleep on dad's shoulder).

One great advantage about sea life lessons though - you can eat your learning materials!

Yah, we know, you're not supposed to eat self-harvested shellfish, which can lead to some very unpleasant parts of a tropical journey. It was a great meal though and nobody got as much as a hiccup. Henri preferred the local harvest from the much safer land anyways.

Even though the weather did not permit too much indoor activity, the boys enjoyed the confined spaces of our beach house very much.

Well, you know, nature can be very yucky.

The arts though were quite appreciated. And since Karl and Henri can't read the "do not touch"-signs yet, some great gymnastic activity was had at the Nordburg sculpture park.

Where one pop art piece left a lasting impression with Henri, who now calls every sinister looking built male "Hulk". Well, you go deep into the woods and discover there's a grumpy green giant hiding in the bushes, when you're two years old.

More about the great stopovers on our way back soon....