Knights (Dare I Say D&D?)

When did I become the type of person that goes to medieval festivals on the weekends? Since I gave birth to two boys who LOVE knights and dragons. To Nils, every church we see is a Ritterburg, or knight's castle. Anyway, if I start dressing up for these things, please find me a therapist! We went to a festival (ha ha Lin!) and the kids were excited to meet a real knight (ha ha kids!) and see all kinds of medieval stuff.

Of course Jay is not allowed to have toy weapons, so he was the lame kid who brought a stick and used it like a sword. He doesn't really mind these kinds of things usually, but tht day he really wanted us to get him a sword. We would have settled for a shield, but he chose ice cream instead. Here are some photos.

May Day II

It was May Day here again and we watched the Maypole getting raised and took Nils on a horse ride. Not a pony ride- horse. He had (like last year when he was only 17 months old!) get on the biggest horse possible. Jay didn't want to this time around.

I don't have as many photos as last year. The Maypole is essentially the same, as were the bands, foods and Maibowle, a light wine punch that is served at the party every year.

Take a look at last year's entry and see how much they've grown!

http://stuehrenbergs.blogspot.com/2007/05/may-day.html But don't hit the links for the vidoes- I cancelled my MySpace account and the old links no longer work. Sorry! When I get around to it, I'll repost them in there.

Nils at Baseball

No, Nils isn't playing too. But sometimes he wishes he could! But most of the time he's happy running on the field or playing on the swings. This past week he actually ran to the very end of the field and back- soccer field distance from us!

Spring Training

Wow, I started this post a long time ago! Jay began baseball again and this time around he loves it (yay!). So I actually took the plunge and ordered him a glove. He's a lefty, so they are pretty hard to find here.

There are a lot of kids participating this year- well over fifty. The coaches are fantastic. They have various stations (fielding, base running, catching, hitting) that the kids rotate between. Jay really seems to like his coaches a lot.

Here are some photos. I hope to get some more off the camera this week to update.

Zzzzzzzz

It's been a while, but our Internet keeps going out on us for days at a time. Grrr.... I will be posting a few entries today since we have a lot of photos and different themes. First comes Nils.

Nils has started skipping his nap lately. I've been expecting this, but I am still not all that happy about it. He was never a great napper to begin with, 20 - 40 minutes is his usual nap. Even as a newborn he slept 3x 20 minutes a day. But that rest is really necessary! Now when he skips his nap, he is so dead that by dinner he is ready to collapse (if he hasn't already). Here are some photos of him literally passed out at the dinner table. He actually fell asleep while eating, you can see him trying to feed himself more rice. And, yes, he is always that messy. Since he has always been so independent, it's been hard to "help" him so that more food makes it into his mouth and not on the table. We're bad Chinese- we don't eat rice too often simply because of the mess!

I have a video too, but it is over the Blogger limit. I have to try and see if I can post it elsewhere (Facebook?) and link it in here.

Schokolade zum Fruehstueck

Schokolade zum Fruehstueck is the German name for Bridget Jones' Diary. It actually mean "chocolate for breakfast" and is why the kids love Easter.

Happy Easter to everyone! Easter here is a four-day weekend (yahoo!). Of course, Thursday afternoon our internet decided to quit on us. And since everything is shut down, we had to wait until today to get it back up and running. Our TV runs via internet too. Of course we forgot until Saturday that the cable company still has not shut us off, so we (shhh!) used it for a couple of days.

We took the kids to their first movie ever- Horton Hears a Who. We actually went to a theatre half an hour away because they had the best show times available. While we were waiting to go into the theater, Jay and Nils "played" a driver video game. We anticipated Nils getting fidgety and Jay asking to leave during the movie and figured we wouldn't see the whole thing. In reality, Nils sat still the whole time. Sometimes he was on my lap, sometimes in his seat. Jay asked only once to leave, but we didn't. In general, the kids didn't ask a million questions (like usual) during the film and were pretty well behaved.

On Easter Sunday, we woke up early to watch the F1 race (go Kimi!). The kids came down and hunted for eggs and chocolate and had a lot of fun. We also did some spring cleaning over the weekend. The kids seemed to like it a lot when we turned the sofa over to vacuum under it.

With all the action this weekend, Nils was so dead that he simply passed out on the living room floor!

Happy Easter everyone!

Birthday Weekend

Michael and I are dead tired. We had two birthday parties this weekend. I took Jay to the one on Saturday, but the one today was a family affair at an indoor playground. It started at 10:30 in a town about 30 minutes from here. No problem, but our kids normally let us sleep until (easily) 9:30 on weekends. So it was an early day for us.

After four hours, we were all done. Thank goodness the party was over. We ran, jumped, climbed, you name it. We enjoy doing the stuff with our kids, but, man do they have a lot of energy. Thank goodness it's bath night. They are sugary, sweaty and sticky (ugh).

I've attached a bunch of photos of the kids having fun. I've also attached a photo of Nils eating frosting- not to show you how dirty and sticky his face is. It's the first photo where you can see where his stitches were as well as the black eye he still has. And how he wants to ride the bucking bronco. I've also attached a link a blog post from the last time we were at the same indoor playground- my how the kids have grown!

http://stuehrenbergs.blogspot.com/2007/06/jungle-gym.html