May

Here are some highlights from the month of May.

Brennan creating some masterpieces and helping to water various items in the yard.



Enjoying some good weather and siblinghood.



Brennan practicing his left handed batting and taking a ride on his Laufrad.



We biked to Geilenkirchen and met up with some friends for the Children's Festival that the Turks hosted. This picture of Patrick with our children and a stick of cotton candy really makes me smile for some reason. I love that man. We rode the little train around base, ate some Turkish food, watched some Turkish dancing, jumped in the bouncy house (some of us) and checked out the fire truck that was on display. Brennan passed out on the ride home and we couldn't even wake him for dinner.



Happy Mother's Day! Me with my beautiful babies and some photos from a town parade. The couple in the bottom right are our next door neighbors and he's wearing that silly hat because he had won some sort of hat toss earlier in the day. When he found out that he was subsequently going to be part of the parade he came over to ask if Patrick remembered how to tie a tie. Fortunately for him there is an app for that.



Papa and Grams and Aunt Loretta came to visit! Happy birthday Dad/Papa and a food stop on our way to Hamburg. Notice the top of the menu... just read it phonetically, it'll come to you. =)



Visiting the miniature train museum and exploring the docks in Hamburg.



Eating Hamburgers in Hamburg (the food, not the townspeople.)



Fun times around the house and story time with Grams.



Brennan and I attended the wedding of one of the teachers from his Kindergarten. The kids sang a song during the ceremony and had the newly married couple walk under these arches while cutting crepe paper with Kindergarten tandem scissors. Then they sang/enacted the wedding song, which is a popular German game telling the story of the princess, evil fairy, good fairy, tall hedge, rescuing prince. Sort of like Sleeping Beauty, minus the sleep.



More fun times around the house. Before Patrick left for his latest stint in Italy he and Brennan installed some tape-up screens on our windows. I can't believe we didn't do this sooner!!! The flies are a real problem here and none of the houses have screens. It was so nice to get a fresh breeze (on non-fertilizing days) without the flies.



I took some photos of the kids and flowers to send to Patrick in Italy and the Hudocks swung back through after their whirlwind tour of Eastern Europe.



Here are the fish we ate at a local festival put on by the Danes, and Brennan at his school "construction is over" festival. I was juggling both kids and the door prizes we had won so Isla ended up getting set aside with my purse a few times. Brennan was supposed to perform a song with the other kids but he preferred to hammer nails in the background.



More nice weather, another great ponytail, and some sibling love.



On May 30th Patrick and I celebrated our 7th anniversary! He was in Italy and I mowed the lawn, but the love was there. =)

April

It's time for some catch-up! Here are a few pictures from the rest of April.

I was excited to discover that if you combine Isla's bangs and her rat-tail you can achieve a legitimate ponytail!



Grandma and Grandpa came to visit! They were just in time to help us decorate our Easter eggs.



Isla enjoying our new desk, our finished eggs on our new tablecloth from Provence, and a dinner outside during some nice weather.



Happy birthday Mom/Grandma!



Jeremy's birthday party at the Erlebnisbauernhof and Brennan's first pony ride. Brennan, Jeremy and Saskia are the 3 musketeers in their Kindergarten class. They play together, are wild together, hug each other "hello" in the morning, fight over each other, and very sweetly yell out "tschuss!" to each other at the end of class.



Fun times around the house.



Happy Easter!



Candy from the Bunny and Easter brunch.







Brennan helping Patrick build and fill our new sandbox. Now we have a home for all of his construction equipment!



Brennan playing along to a cd and Isla practicing her standing. Sliding at our local playground.



On April 30th the Maibaum goes up in front of the church and the local youths stay up all night drinking (except for the lucky lad who has to drive his friends around in the tractor) and delivering trees and floral hearts to their sweethearts. I had put window boxes out that afternoon and our neighbor came by to tell me to take them down, lest the hooligans get to them.