Colin Fun Day

Kaiserslautern Zoo and KinderSpiel

Tonight we had plans to leave Colin with a sitter and go out for the night, yay! So we made the daytime "Colin fun day" in an effort to wear him out and give him plenty of our attention, so that come babysitter time he didn't melt down about us leaving. He loves the nighttime sitter and she would adopt him if I'd let her, but the last time he had to stay with her it was a nightmare. He cried all night and asked for us the entire time :( The last time he stayed was for Shel's graduation, we both had to work all day so he was at daycare and then I picked him up and brought him home and had to leave again to go to the ceremony. I hoped that by spending the day with Colin this time he would be better when it came time for us to go. It kind of worked, he had a mini meltdown when we left but quickly got over himself when he saw the neighbor boy and went to play in their yard. He did fine the rest of the night after that she said, whew!

Colin fun day kicked off at the Kaiserslautern Zoo, which we pretty much had all to ourselves, it was great! Colin got to run all over checking out the animals and he loved feeding them. The tiger was very active and walking around and Colin was too funny talking to him and telling him what to do. The tiger was pacing and he'd walk away and Colin would wave him back and say "come on, come on!" When the tiger would growl Colin would put his finger to his lips and shush him, and a couple times Colin roared back at him.

The goats in the petting zoo were possessed and they attacked us as soon as we went in! They jumped up on trees and stumps and tried to climb up Shelby too. Once all the food for them was on the ground they stayed down enough to let Colin pet them. He was giving them all hugs of course and tried to kiss a few. One little goat did not care for Colin's affection and butted him a couple times to tell him to go away. Colin was so confused, lol! Colin also really liked the chickens. Of all things at the zoo he was very interested in the chickens. I don't know if it is because they were noisy, or if it was because a couple of them were out of the pen and he could chase them around, but he had a ball with the chickens. Crazy kid.

After the zoo we headed over to a Kinderspiel to play some more and to get some lunch. Colin loves these places and runs around like a nut. He especially likes it when we run around like nuts and chase him. He had lots of fun and was sufficiently pooped when it was time to go (as were Shelby and I!).

Our "anniversary" night out (a few nights early because Friday is so much more fun than Sunday!) was a success. Dinner at my favorite, San Rufo Haus. Good wine, muscheln in season (mussels), great pasta, and the yummiest tiramisu (fresh and homemade by the Italian chef, does it get any better?) I've ever eaten.

Wordless Wednesday

Just another weekend

Just another weekend in the nuthouse that is. It started off pretty normal, Saturday we went to the Hitcherhof Farm down the road and got some hay, pumpkins and gourds to decorate for fall. On the way we saw this awesome house.

I love these vines that grow on the buildings and about this time of year their leaves turn fiery red. Gorgeous!

We came back home and set up all the goodies in the yard, we also got to head out to the garden in the backyard and pick a bunch more gourds we had grown to add to the display. I have the front door area decorated too but it's dark out now and I forgot to take a picture of the whole house. So, here is all you get for now :)

Sunday is when the madness began. Holy toddler tornado! He started off the morning like this, refusing to wear pjs and insisting on his super cool rain galoshes.


I headed down to the basement to do some laundry for a total of maybe 5 minutes and returned to find Colin standing on the windowsil and playing in the fish tank. This time a cordless phone and the TV remote went for a swim. Thankfully, the brand new sound system remote that just arrived in the mail last week (to replace its drowned predecessor) was spared a swimming lesson today. Both are on the heater attempting to dry out...we'll know in a few days if amazon gets more of our business for replacements. This is what Colin looks like in time out...

We've been tossing around the idea of starting to potty train and today seemed as good a day as any to start. So off came the diaper and we gave the instructions to Colin about telling Mommy or Daddy when you have to pee pee and today we use the potty instead of a diaper. Of course, we couldn't get him to remove the galoshes...

He did really well and excitedly peed in the potty just a few minutes after removing his diaper.

Retrieving electronics from the fish tank reminds one how overdue a fish tank cleaning is. Colin was glad to help.

Now I thought that perhaps he just really likes his galoshes, or maybe they are just really comfy...but no, I think that little boy is smarter than we give him credit for. You see, he knew that when we removed his diaper there would soon be plenty of puddles inside to jump in. He made it to the potty about half the time this afternoon, the rest of the time felt like a flashback to having a puppy in the house.

Later on tornado Colin stole the SD card dummy that stays in the slot on my computer to keep the dirt and stuff out. He threw it on the floor and so I made him go and get it to give it back. When he returned it he shoved it back in my computer instead of handing it to me. Except he shoved it right into the cd/dvd rom drive instead. All the way in. As in, not coming out unless I take the computer apart kind of in. As in, I shake the computer and hear dummy card bouncing around in there kind of in. :/ Urgh!

After dinner we decided to take apart his crib and convert it to a big boy bed. He climbs out of his crib with ease each morning when he wakes up, so there really is no point to having one anymore.

I am a little hesitant because I am afraid he will stay up all night playing instead of sleeping since it's so easy to just get up and leave the bed. He was super excited about his new bed.

We put him to bed and kissed him goodnight about 8:45. It's 9:34 and guess who is still up playing with his toys. Wonderful.
**Update - at 10:07 we open the door to check on him and the door won't open. We discover it is because he has fallen asleep on the floor behind the door. Apparently big boy bed is not as cool as he thought, lol. At 10:10 we finally have a sleeping toddler in a big boy bed. Thank God, now I can go to bed!

Wordless Wednesday

Hoffest 2010

Each fall a little farm near our village has a nice festival they call Hoffest. The festival mainly centers around pumpkins, or Kürbis in German. They have truck loads of pumpkins and gourds of all sizes and varieties there to buy. They have pumpkin wine, pumpkin bread, pumpkin jellies and spreads, pumpkin seeds and the most delicious pumpkin soup I've ever tasted. For the festival they have several craftsman and vendors selling their handmade goods and foods, that part is always fun to walk through.

This year the weather was not very nice to us, it was maybe 51 degrees out and drizzling rain, but we still had a good time. We mostly go for the food anyway, it's always so hard to decide what to eat. We ended up with flammkuchen, bratwurst, corn on the cob, pumpkin soup and neuer wein (translates to "new wine" and is a special wine available in the fall season). We were pretty stuffed! Colin liked checking out the pumpkins and playing in the huge hay pile with the other little kids.

All the rain made the field where people were parking pretty yucky. Depending on how cars were parked some of them were going to have an interesting time getting out of there. We drove the Jeep today so getting out was not a problem for us. As we were leaving we noticed a Ford Explorer that was stuck and having trouble. Their wheels wouldn't get enough traction on the mud and wet grass to back up and their wheels were just spinning. Shelby jumped at the chance to come to their rescue and actually put the Jeep to good use. He got to hook up the cable and pull them out with the winch while all the Germans (and some Americans) watched in awe. Funny thing is the Explorer had a big ugly Tennessee T sticker on the back of it, I'm sure the guy was less than thrilled a Gator had to fish him out of the mud. Shelby probably could have sat in that field and made a fortune pulling cars out all afternoon. Good day!

Wordless Wednesday

Berglangenbach Bauernmarkt

Berglangenbach Bauernmarkt

Today we went up to a Berglangenbach for their annual Bauernmarkt (farmer's market in English). We had read about it in a local paper and it seemed like a small thing but it mentioned pony rides, and given Colin's love of horses, we thought it was a must see. It turned out to be much bigger than we thought it would be and was very, very nice. There were over 100 booths of people selling their handmade goods. Crafts, knitted items, beeswax candles, and other items were for sale. There were lots of food booths selling homemade mustards, jellies, oils, pastas, dried fruits and nuts, schnapps, liqueurs, fresh made goat cheese and meat and other fresh meats and cheeses. There were several tents serving food and there was all kinds of things to choose from for lunch. I was torn between the wildgulasch mit spätzle and the (sorry I'm about to butcher the spelling and google searches turned up nothing) lionnepand. The gulasch is some kind of game meat in sauce over potato noodles and the lionnepand is a regional dish of pan-fried potatoes, onions and wurst. I ended up getting the lionnepand, which was a good choice. Shelby had a pork steak with potatoes and Colin shared with us.

Colin got to ride the pony (and it was free, you just donate what you want in the little bucket near the entrance) and get up close and personal with sheep, goats, chickens, owls and rabbits. Of course he tried to feed everything and his mission was to get the animals to eat the hay he had picked up off the ground. Lucky for him goats will eat anything and he managed to get them to eat. Colin laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall over when the pony leaned its nose over the fence and touched Colin's nose with it, when I told Colin the horse just kissed him he squealed and cracked up laughing. There were also about 40 antique tractors there and Colin was pretty excited about that also. Of course Colin found the playground, he's good at that where ever we go. It turned out to be a great little festival, despite the heat and the crowd. Colin is a little hard to handle in a crowd because he wants to walk by himself but he doesn't stay with us when he does. In a crowd of people he is much harder to keep up with so he has to ride on Daddy's shoulders and that makes him very unhappy. The heat, well it wasn't really hot, but considering we've been in the 50's and low 60's here for a while a day of 68 and sunny made us think we were melting! Maybe I am more ready for fall than I thought :)

Dürkheimer Wurstmarkt

Bad Dürkheim

The biggest wine festival in the world is held in Bad Dürkheim, and ironically it's called the Dürkheimer Wurstmarkt, which means Dürkheim sausage market. This has to do with the history of the festival, which over the years has less to do with sausage and more to do with wine. We went last year at night, which is when the festival grounds turn into one gigantic party. Last year Shelby partied a little too much left some party favors behind in one of the tents, ewww. This year we would be taking Colin with us so we headed out Friday, opening day and got there extra early. We ended up getting there about noon and thought it was to open at 11 that day. Our info turned out to be wrong and it didn't officially open until 5pm that night. This actually worked out quite well though because there were no crowds, just a handful of people wandering the booths and grounds. Vendor booths weren't crowded with people and Colin was able to run all over the place taking in the sights.

We found an open food booth and had some excellent food for lunch, of course we had to sample some wine too...you can't come to the wine festival and not drink wine! After lunch we walked around the grounds some more before heading into the city park which backs up to one side of the festival. The park grounds were beautiful and made for some nice photo ops. Colin found the playground and was able to burn off some energy there before we had to get back in the car to head home.

We had such a good time we decided to come back again the next day. We wanted Colin to get to ride on some of the rides he missed out on yesterday when we were there too early. Day 2 at the festival was even better. Colin went on a bunch of rides and had so much fun. He even rode the huge (and famous) ferris wheel with us! It is 50 meters high (164 feet!)and didn't scare Colin a bit. He was pointing and telling it to go back up when we would start to descend. We ate more delicious food and had more wine, rode a few last rides and then headed back home to watch football. Shelby graduated just in time, he'd have been in BIG trouble if he had to decide between football and school work!

Graduation Day!

NCOA Graduation

Way back on August 2nd Shelby started NCO Academy. Since most of you probably don’t know what NCO Academy is, let me break it down for you :) NCO refers to the grade of rank Shelby holds, all Staff Sergeants and Technical Sergeants are considered NCOs. All Tech Sergeants must attend NCO Academy at some point before they can sew on the next rank of Master Sergeant. It just so happens that the NCOA for Europe is here at one of the local bases, so Shelby didn’t have to travel to attend. This had its perks and its drawbacks for sure. The people attending his class were from all over Europe and were temporarily assigned here for the 6 week duration of the course. Anyone not living in the local area was given a dorm room on base and had to stay there, away from their families. We were fortunate that Shelby didn’t have to leave us for 6 weeks, however the school is very demanding and time consuming and we didn’t get to see very much of him for the period.

The Academy isn’t quite as bad as going back to basic training, but it’s a lot like being back in technical school. Think mandatory study groups, service projects, extracurricular participation, organized physical fitness, fitness evaluations, uniform inspections and loads of tests and homework. Shelby was miserable most of the time, and I can’t say I blame him. Finally it was all over and we got to attend the graduation ceremony. Sometimes these things can really drag but this one wasn’t all that bad. The guest speaker was the 5th Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Robert Gaylor. He was hysterical, he had the crowd laughing the whole time and Shelby said he was by far the best guest speaker he’s seen in his 11 year career. On top of that Shelby got an award (imagine that! Lol) so that made the night better. The top 10% of the class is recognized for their academic achievements with a Distinguished Graduate Award. Shelby’s class had 140 people in it, so 14 were given the DG award for having the highest overall grade average. The recipients are not revealed until the graduation ceremony so Shelby did not know if he had made the cut until his name was called that evening. Hopefully it will come in handy down the career path. The next rank Shel will hold is Master Sergeant, and that one is obtained by scoring high enough on a test. However, the two ranks above Master are not earned by testing, they are awarded to deserving candidates after board review and interviews. So earning this DG Award will look very nice on those board packages in the future. After graduation Shelby has 4 days off before he has to report back to work in the tower (for the first time in over 2 months!) so we will be doing some long awaited family catch up time. Congrats Shelby!

Wordless Wednesday