July-August re-cap

At the beginning of July we had the opportunity to fly to the states and meet up with Craig for the fourth of July week-end. We stayed with my folks and had a wonderful time reconnecting with family. While Craig was with us we took the kids to the ocean and we also took them canoeing and rock-climbing.

This is at the DeLorme Headquarters in Freeport, Maine. It has a really cool, huge, light-up, revolving globe.

Morgan with 2 cousins. Molly (left, age 12), Megan (middle, age 15) and Morgan (right, age 11)
When we came back to Germany we went to Legoland. This is Mia taking her driver's license 'test'. She thought it was soooo cool to get her very own license.
In the center of the park is Europe made with Lego's . It was amazing. They went into soooo much detail.
The girls watching a "Mama Mia" performance.
Going on the safari ride, of course we HAD to get a photo of the lego Rhino for Granpaw!!
and since Grandpaw wasn't there, the girls decided to adopt this one.
One day in late august our neighbors had about 20 butterflies on their bush. They were really neat to watch.
just a picture of Mia that I like.

Autobahn Adventures

So, on one of our many trips to and from our new residence I am driving towards home on the Autobahn. We are in a stau (traffic jam) and things get even slower. Eventually I come upon a disabled car. As I am about to try to merge into the right lane to go around I realize that it is Craig's car in front of me. His car had totally died. I stop, put on my hazards and push his car to the side of the road. Of course, we had to cross a lane first. If traffic hadn't been going really slow I would never have dared to be on foot on the autobahn! I called ADAC, the german version of AAA and they said it would be 45-60 mins until they could reach us. They had a lot of disabled cars (It was a HOT day-for here anyway). 60 mins later the ADAC guy calls and says that he is stuck in the stau behind us and it would be awhile before he could get to us. So, we wait some more. (We did have to let Mia pee off the side of the road). Finally the bright yellow car shows up. It is NOT a tow truck. The man gets out with a hammer. Craig and I just kind of look at each other. He crawls under the car and starts hitting things with his hammer and we're just thinking. 'duh, the old hit it with the hammer trick'. Well his car starts right up! We do the paperwork and Craig attempts to drive off but the car dies again. Again, the hammer trick works. Again, it dies. so, he hooks Craig up to a tow rope and tows him off the next exit. THEN, he finally calls the tow truck. Luckily, there is a McDonald's at this exit. The kids and I go there to get food while Craig waits for the tow truck. The tow truck driver though wants Craig to ride with him the rest of the way home. It turns out that the fuel pump was kaputt. (the mechanic replaced it for less than 20 euro). Not so fun adventures.

Summer Sledding

Morgan and Gaby went on a trip with Youth Sports to a Sand Mountain. You can ski, sandboard, or sandsled. It looked wicked fun. I hope we can go with the whole family some time!

Hiking to Kallmunz

Morgan (in brown), Gaby (in the middle), Amelia (lower left) with our good friends the Keeler's. That is Delaney (in the pink) and Teegan (in the light blue). We grabbed our dogs and went for a hike and ended up at the Kallmunz castle ruins. Check out how far the dogs tongues are hanging out!

Some random rock design in a park near the river.

It always amazes me that these German towns are built right next too and even into the side of the cliff/hill/mountain. As you can see there is plenty of land where I am standing but the town streets are so narrow we would call them alley's but they are 2 lane roads!

I think these look like giant zucchini flowers.

I think this house is pretty.
I think this house is crazy! ( and yes, there are people living there)
This is a converted bomb cellar--it's now an apartment.