Frohe Ostern

 Lincoln came home this week and said that he wanted to "paint" eggs.  I thought about it and realized that we have never dyed eggs with them.  YIKES!  

So Saturday, we got busy and died eggs!

 These pretty eggs became delicious deviled eggs today!

 Today was daylight savings in Germany.  We had to rush to get to church on time this morning.

 The fellas got to sit with us today at church!  

 We rushed home after an exciting two-hour service to hunt eggs!

 The hunt took about 2 minutes because they were RUSHING around!

SLOW DOWN!

When I used to hunt eggs at Mrs. Edwards house, the money eggs were always my favorite.  This year the Easter bunny put Euro in the money eggs!  

I hope you had a Happy Easter!  

Easter Centers

 Yep, you guessed it!  Easter Center Day!  I love that Link's teacher has something special every month or so and I get to go see how much he loves school!  

 It is so neat to see him happy, independent, social, and more!  You think you know how your kids would be at school, but to see them in action is so fulfilling!  

We are so lucky that he has two amazing women that love him and push him to do more than we could ever have imagined!  This boy is reading so much!  It's awesome!

 I was able to go to the library with him on Friday, as well!  On the way, we passed so many people who said, "Hi Lincoln!"  Everyone knows this kid.  It's hilarious!  

I love that they are in such a small school!

He also has a class full of sweet and funny kiddos.  It also seems that most of them live in our village!

Dynamikum

 Ethan had a field trip to the Science Center yesterday.  I rearranged my work schedule to tag along!  Mr. Woodfork was kind and gave me the BEST group of five!  They were so sweet and followed the rules (for the most part! :)

 Pretty much every single thing in the museum was hands on!  Poor Ethan is the smallest in the class and his feet barely fit the pedals.  His buddies helped out and pushed him.

This was my favorite experiment.  It took Mr. Woodfork telling me the proper way to do it, but once we got it the kids competed with each other over and over.  The experiment was to pull the bars apart to get the ball rolling, but not too far apart or it will fall between the bars.

After running through the museum for a couple of hours, I was super glad to sit down for some lunch.

 There was a nice playground right down from the museum. The kids played a bit and then hit the museum one more time for a scavenger hunt and shopping at the gift shop.

We had a great time.  We both agreed that we need to bring Link back next time with us!  

He would love it too!

Visit from Pap(py)

Pappy surprised us last week by letting us know he was going to catch a hop over!  We didn't tell the  fellas until Saturday because we weren't sure how hard/easy it was going to be for him to get on a flight.  He lucked out and made it out on the first flight he tried!  

In the last few weeks, the boys have been calling us Mom and Dad instead of Momma and Daddy.  I guess it carried over to Pappy, as well.  He is now being referred to as "Pap."  

Morning in Mainz

It was another blustery, windy, and overcast day in Germany.  

We decided to head to Mainz to visit a few museums.

 Our first stop was the Gutenberg Museum.  Gutenberg was born and raised in Mainz.  In 1900, the townspeople started a museum to honor his memory and his printing press.  There were NO photographs allowed, and to insure this there were some really creepy guards.  

I think because we had two kids with us they followed us everywhere.  

The museum displayed a great overview of the history of printing.  They had the very primitive wood carved presses, copper presses, stone presses, metal presses, and replicas of the Gutenberg press.  

The museum also houses two original Gutenberg bibles.

 The museum sits directly next to the Mainz cathedral.

 The Saturday market was going on.  

If it hadn't been so stinking cold and windy, we might have done some browsing.  

The fellas were on a mission to get somewhere warm quickly!

 In fact, this picture was taken with lots of moaning and groaning!

 There were lots of cute little shops on cobblestone roads!  We even found a NorthFace store.  

 FINALLY, we found a cafe.  This one reminded me of a European Panera bread.  They had breakfast, sandwiches, and ice cream.  Yes, these crazy boys had ice cream in 30 degree weather!

Nate had a European BLT (ham in stead of bacon), and I had a yummy ham and cheese crepe!

 Our last stop was the Antique Ship museum.  The museum had salvaged wood from Ancient Roman ships along with completed replicas of ancient ships.  We knew Link would love this museum.  Unfortunately, this one did not allow photographs either!  :(  

For less than 40 euro we visited two museums and had lunch in Mainz!  I call that a good day!

A week of laughs

At dinner on Wednesday, Lincoln told us that Ms. Hall stole money out of her husbands truck.  We died laughing and I had to tell her yesterday that he snitched on her.  She did some telling on him, as well.  Apparently, he was loving on her.  He was rubbing her back and telling her how much he loved her.  Then, he looked at her and asked if it was hard to find a wife.  He's always thinking ahead!

This morning, Nate stood on the scale (to make sure those Cadbury eggs and Reese eggs weren't affecting his figure).  As he got off, Lincoln asked him if he had a new record.  

He is always keeping us laughing!

Compliments

                                           We REALLY need to work on compliments.

I am hoping that Ethan's teacher is not reading this. I let Ethan and Lincoln off the hook for homework tonight.  I had only one condition.  They had to give me ten compliments.  I thought this would be super easy.  After four compliments, they were completely out.  

They put their heads together and came up with these:

1.  You're nice.

2. You're pretty.

3. The old standby You make good dinners.

4.  Your skin is soft.

5.  You have a nice look.

6.  You're belly is squishy.

7.  You're happy MOST of the time.

8.  You wear soft pants.

9.  You have blue clothes and blue is my favorite color.

10.  You're face is pinkish.  

Lohr Am. Main (Snow White)

We drove about two hours to Lohr Am. Main today.  Legend has it that the Grimm brothers wrote the story of Snow White based on Sofia Maria who lived in Lohr with her father and step mother. The above picture is the Old Town Hall.  

 The Saturday market was going on.  People were stopping to buy bread, vegetables, meat, and fish.

 We stopped in a cute half-timbered restaurant that was built in the early 1600's.  

We enjoyed roasted chicken and fries. The boys had their usual....schnitzel.

 We made our way over to the castle to see all about Snow White.  

 We bought tickets in the downstairs apothecary.  Maybe the witch made her poison here??  They say that there are apple orchards all over the region.

 The basement has lots of old mining tools.  It took both of them to pick up this hammer.

 The kitchen was tiny!

 The boys loved seeing how the old mattresses were filled with hay.

 Forestry is/was popular in the region.  This tree is over 300 years old.

 Antique toys.

 What's a castle without a knight suit.

FINALLY....the Snow White room!

 So, in 1986 a local historian did a lot of research to try to verify that Snow White was written about Sofia Maria in Lohr.  One of the verifying factors was this mirror.  

There is an inscription in the corner that translated says Self Love.  

 Crazy mirror!

 We ended the tour in the mirror room.  Mirrors were manufactured here in the 1600's.  These are some from the town.  This castle had three floors and a basement filled with antiques from the region.  

 I did not have high expectations for this place.  Mainly because it was not well advertised.  Trip advisor had NOTHING on it!  We are were pleasantly surprised.  It was also the friendliest German city we have yet to visit.  We had a nice man come to give us advice on where to eat and told us the castle had information in English.  Everyone at the restaurant smiled at us.....that's huge for Germans!  :)

On our way home, we drove through the alleged forest that Snow White ran to.  In the 1600's mining was big in the forest.  Many of the mines were small and they used children and little people to mine.

All the evidence added up that Maria Sofia was Snow White.   I am convinced and so were Lincoln and Ethan.