Plucky Little Cherry Pickers

It's been a while (ok - a LONG while) since we have blogged anything, and we have decided that this will be more of a "photoblog" for now - if we have anything otherwise to say, we'll post it :-)

The cats have been great keeping the birds out of the cherry tree in the back yard ... so much so that we could actually get some cherries this year! So we sent our PLCPs (from the title above) to the heights to fetch us the sweet yummies ... with the desired results.


Up a tree

way up


teamwork


sweet rewards


really sweet


auch sehr süß!

Sound of Music and Berchtesgaden

We (recently? it's been over a week, now!) returned from a trip to Austria and Southeast Germany where Paul had a week of meetings to attend. The business side was well-attended and wonderfully staffed, so THAT was good - on the family side, we had a great time in and around Salzburg and the mountains of Berchtesgadenerland (say that 10 times fast).
Can you guess where we are in the film "Sound of Music"?
Remember to click for a larger view - because this post has so many pics, we're viewing them at smaller sizes.

Sunday Afternoon on the Hill Above Lörrach ...

... title apologies to George Seurat ...

The afternoon was wonderful, with a nice breeze up on the Berg, so we took a cue from Mary Poppins ...

















... and it was also a great day for making daisy chains

What a difference a day makes ...

... 24 little hours (sing with me!!!)

ah yes. March in Germany. Take nothing for granted, folks, this month will throw you for a loop.

From balmy Spring-like conditions one day, to a flurry of snow the next (wait five minutes, it'll change) it's always fun!

Here are some garden pics (for comparison) from this morning (click for larger view):

Magnolia tree in snow




Pansies in the snow

A Day in the Garten

With apologies to Miss Austin...."It is a fact universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a power saw is in want of a tree"... or in our case a shrubbery.

Paul spent Saturday morning with our neighbours auf Allemanisch, trimming our trees and shrubberies. Here are a few pics. Our garten was in need of a pruning and as we know men with chain saws love to see over grown greenery that needs a good clipping, al la Tim the Toolman Taylor ugh ugh ugh ugh.







...and one that got away. Our tulip tree in full bloom today, Sunday, March 18th

Random Pic(s)

We have been remiss ... yes, we have ... so don't try to stop us ... we're going to post some randomness in the form of pictures. It will keep the content "fresh" without us having to type too much ... and frankly, with me in language school (although almost finished?) typing anything in English is a small challenge :-)

enjoy the randomness

Language blopper...con't

Have you ever been in a situation where you KNEW what the meaning of a word was and you were so sure that you used it the way you thought...well fortunately this is a clean tale and not a biggy, but still a funny...the word is Mensa. Hey, I've been to college, I know what that word means and it does not include my brain power, but I know what it stands for, (according to Wikipedia)

Mensa International is the largest, oldest, and best-known high-IQ society in the world. The organization restricts its membership to people with high testable IQs. Specifically, potential members must score within the top 2% (98^th percentile) of any approved standardized intelligence test.

So I am at language school, trying my best to be cool and understand and I was asked something about Mensa. I'm thinking, yeah, I know that word, And reply, "Oh, no thank you, I really don't think I need to join as I'm not quite up to that at the moment ". And something else about how having children sucks all of the brain cells you used to have right out of your body and mind. So the guy looks a little funny, but than a lot of us are learning language here and he is used to not understanding what everyone says, so he does not say anything else.

Fast Forward, 4 weeks and then 6 weeks from November.... Mensa in German means a refectory! (Hey I went to Sweet Briar where we had/have a refectory) I was being asked if I wanted a student ID for the university cafeteria!! I did not realize this till I went with some of my friends about 4 weeks later to the Mensa. Which had great food, btw. Than it was reaffirmed by V's school....did she want tickets for the Mensa?

So that is your mini vocab lesson for the day....what really is MENSA?

An afternoon at the museum

Back home, one of our favourite things to do on a weekend — or a weekday, for that matter — was the museum. Science museum (SMV), nature museum, history museum, art museum, what-have-you ... we like museums. Yeah, we're funny that way. And Basel has (per capita) the most museums around!

So we took an afternoon and went to the Natural History Museum ... it was great, not crowded at all and the exhibits were a good mixture of static and hands-on. The kids could not help saying “Mom, come here, look at this!” One time I had a simultaneous tug on the sleeve to look at two things in two different directions! It was so much fun that when we closed the place down at 5pm we opted to up our one-time visit to the regional pass that covers about 170 museums in Switzerland, Germany and France! Yeah ... we'll probably visit most of them!! :-D

So here are a few pics of the day ...

Bees! very cool. Will have to return in the summer to see what’s going on with them ...


Why is this man smiling? ‘Cause he’s just found out that this room is a huge ant-farm! (and, as a child, he spent hours watching ants ... just watching ... watching ... we managed to pull him away this day, tho)


... and the next generation of bug-watchers is born ...

... but who is watching us?


and of course everybody’s got one of these ...

(... yours is fast, but mine is slow ...)

but does everybody have one of these?


... in the end, it was all just TOO much ...
so we’re going back to see the other 4 floors (we only got to see one wing in three hours, after-all, and not all of that one ...).

A Couple of Firsts

First snow for 2007 ... we’d like to get more, but this may be it!


The sled-run down a bike path. It's a good long run ...


Adjusting the gloves for improved aerodynamics


... the end of a satisfying day on the slopes.

And a first sleepover at the kinderhaus ...

... Getting ready ...


... getting set ...


... and going up to the Burg Rötteln (not to sleep out, but a nice night hike back after “grillen und stockbrot”)

As you can see from the pic above, the snow is all gone. We may not get more this winter, but last year the big snow hit in March ...

Silvester!

No, not the cat ....

Silvester is what the German's call "New Year's", and it was quite the party!!

If you are a fan of CS Lewis Chronicles of Narnia, you may recall the bit from The Silver Chair (spoiler warning) after the witch is killed. All of the inhabitants of Bism (the gnomes and sprites and what-have-you's) start setting off fireworks all over the Underland city. As it was described in the book, so it was in Rümmingen. Almost every street and street corner was transformed into a launching zone for fireworks of all shapes and sizes. Sparklers, crackers, black-cats (don't know what you call 'em here, but I've always called 'em "black cats"), as well as Cat. 2 and Cat. 3 rockets (yeah, big ones!) ... in short, it was a loud, bright, festive time! Everyone, young and old, was out watching or participating. We had been invited up the street to the home of two wonderful people. They are both multi-lingual, so we were able to speak English and German. His mom was visiting, and as her English was not as strong, we had a great opportunity to work on our German skills. She knew that I had family from Northern Germany, and as she was from Hanover, we had a good conversation about the differences between the North and South ...

The food was wonderful. We had a huǒguō (Chinese for "hot pot") in the center of the table and had shrimp (Krabbe), sliced pork and turkey (Schwein und Puten) as well as veggies (mushrooms, spinach, etc.), glass noodles and rice cakes!


Chinese hot pot in Germany

Yummy! And for dessert, Madge had made her pound cake, which we had with raspberries and cream.


Madge's Pound Cake (festively dressed)

After dinner, there were "table fireworks" (small poppers and crackers) for the kids, and then we went out for the 'roketten' (the ROCKETS!).


Wils gets ready to pop a cracker

We felt so welcomed into the community this first year, and it was so wonderful to be able to celebrate our first new year with new friends!