My Happy Kids at Happy Kids.....

Our Wednesdays these past few weeks we have been going as a playdate to Happy Kids with our new friends. Everyone has so much fun.

Brayden and Clara

Ahava climbing in the tunnel

taking a break

The Crocodile!

Catalina's Birthday Party.

Catalina and Mallory

"Look, Mom, no hands!"

They played Pin the tail on the Donkey........Brayden won!

The winning play!

This past Saturday, a friend of mine called us to invite us to a last minute birthday party. Mallory's friend, Catalina, was in Mallory's preschool class for awhile until her mom had to start commuting to work. We all had so much fun, but it was definitely the longest birthday party ever! It started at 2:00. We didn't leave the bowling alley until 6:30. We were all so exhausted afterwards.

The Farmer's Market...

I am sorry I have not been blogging as much lately but with the weather and the holidays just ending, we have been taking it easy. I have also met a new friend, Lizzy, who is new to Mannheim and to Germany. It's been a lot of fun showing someone around, not to mention, giving the kids and I something to do. I should be a tour guide! I love learning about my surroundings and telling others about them. :)

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Well, this weekend, our family bundled up and headed downtown to the farmer's market. We had some fun picking out some produce for a "fresh" salad and buy a nice flower arrangement for our kitchen table.

The band greeted us as we stepped off the train.

Mallory chose these flowers to take home.....it had to have some pink in it (her favorite color these days)

Some beautiful colored eggs. They don't dye eggs just for Easter here.

MISC.

Tried this soup the other day......it was so good. Sausage and Tortellini Soup

Thank you for all your wonderful cards! We love and miss all of you!

Some crafts the kids did at preschool, church and hourly care. This is a snowflake Mallory made at school (it is a coffee filter!)

Brayden made a sock snowman in hourly care. He was so proud of it!

Brayden made this at church. Rudolph's head is the outline of his shoe! (someone was really cleaver)

2010

Happy New Year!

We decided to do something this year seeing that the kids are a little older now. The bowling alley on post had a Family New Years Party. We haven't experience bowling before with them, but thought we could try. I had no idea that some smart genius thought of ramps to roll the bowling ball for them. I didn't have that when I was a kid. They didn't even have bumpers back then. We had so much fun. It was a lot of work....learning to take turns and bowl in the right lane (Mallory did it), but we had a good time. The kids couldn't hang the whole time so we ended up leaving before midnight, but we did get a little bit of a celebration with them.

Our Last Christmas Market of 2009.....Dec 27

Many of the Christmas Markets close the day before Christmas Eve. Baden-Baden is one of the very few which stays open a few days after Christmas. We had to get one more in before the year ended. It was a really nice town in the north part of the Black Forest. We stayed only two hours because it started to sleet and wasn't fun after that.

The beautiful landscape

I thought this was very clever. They had a wood burning pot below and this grill on chains was on a pulley to be raised of lowered to cook the bratwurst or steak sandwiches. I love bratwurst!

There were a row of stain glass windows along a walk way at the Christmas market. I don't know much German, but it look like different organizations throughout the community made one for the market.

Gingerbread

Up close of one of the stain glass

This merry go round had a date on it........1923.

Billy loves the Gluwein mit Rum. (mit is German for "with")

Our Holiday.....Around the house.

What a holiday! These past two weeks have been filled with lots of fun.......especially because Billy was home from work! We went to a few Christmas markets, had the kids in hourly care for a few days so Billy and I could have some "day dates" going around seeing things, went to Happy Kids to go jumping, went to our first theatre family movie "Princess and the Frog", watched a few family movies at home in our new tent (thanks to the Francis family Aunt and Uncles) and then New Years will be our first bowling experience (in the blog to come).

It also snowed a few days and was really cold so we had a few days curled up at home and playing out in the snow. All-in-all it was a fun filled two weeks, just having some good old fashion family time.

Mallory had her 4 year old check up....which included four shots. Ouch! She was a trooper.

My Mom had a wonderful idea this summer making a sticker book for both the kids. They have a great collection. Mallory had her stickers from her doctor's visit, so we had to put them in her book.

Reading some Christmas books.

He loves his cars.

I got her a paint book for being a great patient. She painted for hours! She is definitely the artist.

I use to do these when I was a kid. They are really fun. (I got these a while ago at the $1 bin at Target.....a while ago, we don't have Target here....)

Watching G-force in their new tent. I think the movie was a little over their head, but it was cute. They watched most of it.