Exciting things this week

So I am finally caught up with posts! On to what happened this week. Lots of big news. First off last Sunday Max announced that he wanted to wear big boy underwear and use the potty. He has been doing great and basically running off to do his business when he needs to without much direction from us. We had a couple of accidents the first 2 days but things have been going great even when we are out and about. So far he has not wanted to go to school in his big boy underwear so he is still in diapers for school but hopefully in a few weeks he'll feel comfortable going at school too.

Stephan has been looking for some classes for us to take for entertainment and to try to meet some more locals. This week we tried out a ball class for 3 to 6 year olds. Max had a blast and it looks like a good place for me to meet some German moms. It is a 30 to 40 bike ride for us so it will require some effort on my part.

I just finished my second week of German classes 3 days a week. It is good to be learning something and making progress. There are about 20 people in the class. About half of my class is Turkish. Then there are women from Latvia, Ukraine, Thailand, Guyana, Portugal, Morocco and a few others I didn't catch. We only have 3 guys (2 Turkish and one from Morocco). Some people have been here for years but haven't gotten around to taking language classes. There are 3 women who have married or are dating Germans and have just moved here. I sit with the Turkish ladies and they are really sweet and fun. A couple are from Izmir which is where one of my cousins was born. So I think it is really cool to get to learn a bit about the place. I spent one of the breaks having coffee with a lady from Izmir and the one from Ukraine. I enjoyed having a little girl time!

We heard from the rental agency in Atlanta that we finally have renters starting June 1st!!!! We are so excited to have someone in the house and relieved not to be paying for 2 places!


Stephan's father came to visit for a long weekend since Monday is a national holiday. I'll write about that in the next post. Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Mainz Beach

When we got back from Italy we saw that the beach had followed us. Along the Rhein they had brought in truck loads of sand, beach chairs, umbrellas and tropical plants. They also set up some food and drink stands. Max and I checked it out one sunny day
after school. It was really fun with an area set up for kids with sand toys. it is just a few blocks from our house so we will probably spend a lot of time there over the summer. Sadly you can't swim in the Rhein any more due to pollution but it is a great place just to hang out and imagine you are on a tropical beach somewhere.

Opel Zoo Visit

Last weekend we checked out the Opel Zoo just outside of Frankfurt. It is a lot like the Atlanta zoo with lots of trees and green space. They had a great play ground so we spent some time there. My favorite thing was the hippo. His cage was mainly a big pool of stinky water that came right up to the viewing window. He spent most of his time underwater but would pop up at random in front of the window. At one point he popped up and opened his mouth for some carrots a lady was holding. it was awesome because we got to see all his teeth. It was so intriguing that I completely forgot to take any pictures!

More from Sardinia

Videos of Max's Pizzeria, meeting up with Phil & Kristen and the wedding weekend.

Sardinia Trip

So I have finally gotten caught up to the second week in May. We took a trip to Sardinia for our friends'(Phil & Giovanna)wedding. We went a few days early to spend some time on the beach with Max. We rented an apartment near the town of Villasimius on the southern end of the island. After 4 days there we went up the coast 30 minutes to the city of Cagliari. We had a rocky start as a few minutes after we left Mainz on our way to the airport Max threw up. We stopped and cleaned him up and he looked like he felt fine. He slept the whole flight which was great. I actually read a book! We flew into Algheri on the north of the island and had to drive about 3.5 hours down to Villasimius. Sadly as soon as we got in the rental car and Max had a little water he threw up again so we stopped and did the whole clean up routine again. We got back on the road but had to repeat the process 3 or 4 times, making a few miles down the road each time. We decided we would never make it to Villasimius and Max really needed some medicine to help him keep something down. So we stopped in the first city we came to and tried to find a pharmacy that was open at 7pm on a Saturday night. We say signs for an emergency room so we went there just to ask about a pharmacy. There was a line of people waiting at a door with no hospital personnel in sight. Turns out you wait in line by the door. Every once and a while it is opened and the first person in line goes in and the door is shut again. Needless to say I wasn't able to ask the hospital staff any questions - I never actually saw them. I did find someone was waiting in the line who spoke a little English and got directions to a pharmacy. We got Max some medicine and got back on the road. About an hour from Villasimius Max is crying and begging us to let him sleep in a bed. We just had to ignore and drive on. We finally arrived around mid night and Max went straight to bed (not normal for him). In the morning he was completely fine,playing around and eating salami for breakfast. Luckily that was the only major issue we had during the trip.

The weather was sunny and mostly warm - we had a few chilly days. Villasimius is surrounded by sharp, rocky hills dropping into beautiful beaches and turquoise water. The town itself is no more than about 10 streets by 10 streets. We spent most of our days checking out the different beaches. As in most of Italy everything shut down from about 1 to 7pm. This was a problem because Max without fail wanted pizza at about 5pm! We found a pizzeria called Max and he was thrilled to eat pizza at "his" restaurant.

We met many old friends in Cagliari for the wedding (Dave & Emily, Phil & Kristen, Morten, Troels). One video is of Stephan and Max seeing Phil & Kristen for the first time. Max could barely wait for Phil to show up. Another is us hanging out with Phil and Kirstin at the beach. Max was not too keen on the actual wedding ceremony so we stayed outside the church where he had a ball chasing pigeon and playing with confetti from a wedding that ended about 15 minutes before we showed up. He had a blast at the reception where he played no stop with other kids form the wedding in the courtyard which allowed us some adult time. The reception was a "lunch" which lasted from 1pm to about 7pm. I lost track of how many courses we had but they were all fantastic and we seemed to get several bottles of wine with each course! Even after a day of celebrating everybody went home to change and then met up again at 10pm to continue the party with some music and dancing. max and I opted out on this last part!

Last of Family Visit

Here are videos of a visit to one of the most well-preserved castles on the Rhein - Marksburg and a cute video of Max with cousin Campbell.

Amusement Park w/ Family

Here are some videos of our family trip to a local amusement park.

Knights Festival - Jousting

So we have been back from Italy for 2 weeks and I am just now getting back to the blog. Here is the last video from the knights festival we visited when my family was here.

Lots of posts

I was trying to get all the videos of my family's visit posted before we leave (in a few minutes) to go to Italy. Looks like I will only get half done so more to come after our trip to Italy.

Here is a castle above the knights festival. it gave us a great view of the area and the massive festival - tents for miles. Notice the big squares of yellow in the fields. These are everywhere right now and are fields of flax seed plants.

This video is of the jousting event. The costumes and horses were great. There are 3 women in this group and one of them was 15. Go ladies.

Oops I wrote about this video in the last post. The video in the last post was where our boys all got swords and had a blast acting like knights. It was great until max hit himself in the head with the very large sword he insisted on getting. After hitting himself in the head he decided he needed a smaller sword!

Knight Festival #1

This is the first video of a knights festival we visited. It was enormous and people created medieval camps where they stayed all weekend living in the style of the period. You'll see a sword fight enactment. First the knights fought one on one. When you were hit you sat down until the last man was standing. Then they did various battles with multiple people. The costumes were amazing and looked to be extremely hot. There were several women in the group which was really neat.

The Family Arrives

Here is video of us waiting for the family to arrive and our first days visits.

Family Fun

My family came for a visit on Tuesday. So we have my mom, my sister-in-law and 3 nephews, Max and Stephan in the apartment. It has actually worked really well. All the boys are sleeping in max's room and he is thrilled to have his cousins here. It has been pretty cold and rainy most days but we did get a great sunny day yesterday in the low 70s. We have visited the Gutenburg Museum workshop where Oakley and Henley (the 10 and 8 year old cousins) had a printing session to make their own prints. We have gone to the farmers market and loaded up on anything that looked interesting. We also did a tour of the old town, the citadel, St Stephan's church to see the Chagall stain glass windows and the swimming pool. Of course we stopped at many play grounds along the way. Yesterday we went to an amusement park (I mentioned this in my last post). Luckily we have video this time which I'll post in a few days after the family goes home. The boys had a blast and Max was so tired at dinner he was eating with his eyes closed! Today we are off to a knights festival that Stephan found and tomorrow we plan to drive up the Rhein to visit some castles. Sadly they all go home on Monday. Seems like they just got here. I know Max is going to be really sad to see them go.
You may be wondering how we get around with such a large group. During the week we walked around town but Stephan has rented us a 8 person van (enormous even by US standards). It is fabulous for getting us around with 2 car seats, 2 strollers, snack bags , etc,. The only problem is that is is almost as high as our parking garage so I have to push up the entrance gate to squeeze the van through. We'll see how it goes once we get onto some of the small streets in the towns along the Rhein! Lots of pics and videos to come!