Monday, April 17, 2006
Many eggs and several hunts ago I started a blog on Yahoo, but since no one seemed to receive my invitations to view it, I have decided to go somewhere else and try again. So... here I am. We'll see how this goes.
This Easter weekend we had great plans. Great plans, it seems, even in Europe are prone to hotel availability, illness, and weather. So, the original plan was to go spend three days and two wonderful nights in Leuden, Netherlands visiting the Keukenhoff Gardens, the cities of Delft and Gouda, and of course, the Mauritshuis Museum in Den Hague to see the Vermeer paintings. Our hotel search was amazing with so many beautiful options that were not horribly priced, but each one was booked entirely - the perils of last minute planning and spontaneity. In the midst of the hotel dilemma Kirk's ankle mysteriously swelled up and turned purple - a malady that is still plaguing him four days later, Tiara decided to eat two helpings of Velveeta queso dip for breakfast and had a very "green" afternoon with a bucket by her side, and a lovely group of dark grey clouds hurried their way from the Atlantic over to our neck of the woods for a visit. The entire region was plagued with spotty rain and some storms and so our trip was put off and our Easter became another quiet weekend in Gillrath.
On Friday, we discovered a new playground not far from our house that the kids loved. We were all going a bit stir crazy. It seems this last couple months the weather and our daily lives have gotten in the way of any real interesting outings, so I absolutely needed not only to get out, but to actually communicate with some sort of adult-type
person. As good fortune would have it, our newly discovered park is a favorite of a wonderful woman that I'd met months ago. Our kids are on the same soccer team and we just hadn't had time to talk. We spend about an hour longer at the park that day because she and I were both enjoying the adult conversation. It was wonderful. Tiara stayed home with her bucket and missed pizza night. Today I casually mentioned Velveeta cheese and she appropriately made a horrible face and said "no thank you." I think she's been cured for life.
Post park play included the traditional, but oh,-so-horribly-messy, dying of Easter eggs. It was fun and the kids got creative. Later as we were putting them to bed and Kirk was reading the next chapter in
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Elise quietly left the room. She came back about five minutes later, crawled up in my lap, and showed me her bright green hands saying "Easter egg." Yep, she's got "two" written all over her. I hope she survives it!Saturday was a bit melancholy at first since I'd hoped to do something interesting and the weekend just wasn't looking too exciting, but Tiara had ballet at 1 and it was observation day, so we went to see her dance. She did a beautiful job. The class was pre-Pointe. Yvette teaches 90% in Dutch, but makes clarifications in English as needed. I learned some new Dutch vocabulary and Kirk pointed out the German words he recognized after class. It was
nice to see and hear the class and I was particularly impressed with the foot/toe strengthening exercises that they were doing. Sittard, the city where Tiara dances, has become my little get-away. It's a very nice city with a nice market and city center, so I enjoy my times away taking Tiara to class and exploring. Kirk had never been to that part of the city, so it was nice on Saturday to take him there too. We walked all over the market and surrounding streets. I think he enjoyed that true European feel - the small pedestrian only shopping areas - the 
sounds and smells... it's all so beautiful. Almost every child we saw carried a big bunch of green cotton candy. Two girls dressed in pink bunny costumes were walking around the streets passing out chocolate eggs to all the children. My girls got two each. There were live musicians and a lot of holiday displays. It felt very festive. At the other end of the market we saw two tall teenage boys in brown bunny costumes passing out larger chocolate eggs. Once again, the girls were all too happy to accept the small gifts. We ended up having lunch at a Tapas restaurant on the markt, sitting right on in the open square people watching. We saw quite a few couples and groups of adults enjoying quite meals while their kids played soccer in the open area in front of us. It all felt very comfortable and safe. Afterwards we went to the Eis Cafe for some yummy Italian gelato. A very "sweet" end to our day.
Easter morning was delightful. The kids not only slept in, but forgot that it was Easter, so they woke up and ran off to play instead of searching for their baskets. Kirk and I enjoyed some quiet time together looking through the Super Sontag paper and having a nice breakfast. Since it was raining pretty hard, the Easter bunny decided to hide all the Easter eggs in the living room. Eventually Tiara came down the stairs with her sisters close behind her asking if the Easter bunny had been here yet. We opened the living room door and the kids ran in as though escaping from a cage. Their eyes got big. "The Easter bunny came!" was the universal cry. And Kirk and I laughed and
watched as they all plopped down in a circle on the living room floor with their baskets. The each went through each one excitedly emptying them onto the floor piece by piece. Elise was the only one who kept everything in her basket. Instead, she kept standing up and trying to carry it, staggering around repeating, "Heavy, it's heavy." About 15 minutes later, the older three were still looking through their baskets, opening things up and testing out their new treasures, but Elise had seen, from across the room, a brightly colored "Easter Egg!" She ran over to it, picked it up, shook it excitedly while grinning ear to ear and ran back to show me. Her sisters all took notice and also jumped up realizing that where there is one Easter egg, there probably are more. Within seconds they realized that the Easter bunny had brought their annual hunt inside and they were all looking around, laughing over the eggs they'd found, and breaking them open to see their contents. At the end of it all we had about 80 Easter egg halves strewn from one end of the living room to the other.The afternoon was quiet. They were all on a chocolate high and seemed very happy playing with each other. I cooked a simple dinner... no "real" ham this year as I forgot to get one at the commissary and neither the Natex nor the local markets have real American-style ham. It's crazy too, because almost everything here is made from schinken (pig meat), but I can get about 50 varieties of ham sausage/deli meat/pate... but absolutely no big ham. We settled with my usual rosemary blue-cheese scalloped potatoes and a nice sauté of white asparagus and little tiny ham strips that I found at the Natex. I'll cook the real deal next weekend just so I can use the hock for soup. After dinner the kids wanted to eat the mini MnMs that the bunny brought. I asked them to wait and then it got very quiet. Kirk and I were talking. The kids, we thought, were playing nicely together. A few minutes later Aria came down telling me that she couldn't find her MnMs. None of them were in their baskets where I'd left them... up high. I looked at Luci. She blamed Elise. Elise couldn't reach them. Arianna explained that Luci got them down for Elise. Supposedly Elise ate all three packages of MnMs BY HERSELF! Hmmm.... highly suspicious. They are learning to cover for each other and blame the littlest. I found two empty containers later stashed behind Luci's bed. The third is still MIA. Needless to say, they didn't get any more chocolate that night!
All day yesterday we heard the train whistle coming and going every 45 minutes or so. The Gillrath steam train was running. Each time, the kids would stop what they were doing and run to the window to see it as it crossed a road very near our house. Today it ran again, so during a sunny patch, we went down to the Selfkantbahn to get on the train. Last time we'd gone was for the Nikolaus train when St. Nick actually gets on the train and hands out treats to the children. This one was just a train ride. It was beautiful though and it felt great to be out. In the grocery stores, markets, and bakeries all times of year, you can buy brightly dyed 
hard-boiled eggs. Today as we stepped off the train, the girls all got excited to see that there were real colored eggs nestled in among the flower beds by the train track. Other children were picking them up, so we let them each pick one. We followed the crowd to a near building where they had old train memorabilia and model train parts for sale, then we got ice cream at a nearby shop and enjoyed walking around outside until it was time to go. On the way back we stood outside at the very back of the train and watched as the train went through little villages and the neighboring farm fields. We saw a lot of people walking together. We saw windmills and old buildings. We saw a lot of pheasant. And, as if this train was something extraordinary, we saw people turning out all along the track taking photos. Every time the train stopped even for a moment, people would jump off and take pictures. It is an old train and it has character, but I think that small town pride has taken a particularly strong hold of this one and it is very sweet. (http://www.selfkantbahn.de/ -- look for the small British flag at the bottom right hand corner for the English translation)Tomorrow is back to some sort of reality. Kirk goes back to work and I start week 2 of spring break - a second chance at a little fun if the rain finally lets up a little. The kids all had a week off for Carnival in February and now two weeks off for spring break - it all seems a bit excessive... but then, Europeans take their vacation time VERY seriously and the Americans try to follow suite. We'll do a bit better once Kirk is done with training... some days I feel like I just moved here. We're settled... but still, not quite.
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Life In Germany
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5 comments:
Hey! Thanks for sharing your blog with me! I'm always intrigued and entertained by your writings. And I just love hearing about what's going on with you and your fam. If it's ok, I'll link ya to my blogs! Chat with ya later...
Pammy J.
I'm so glad you started your blog too!!!! What a fun way to keep up with new events! The girls are getting SO big...and adorable!
Love your new blog! The girls are so adorable and getting so big!
It sounds like an absolutely lovely weekend. Thanks for sharing...and it's so good to hear how the troupe is doing.
Hi Tiffany! Glad to hear that you are doing well and enjoying Germany! Take care! :-)