Summer Calendar

School Holidays Begin!!!

The Bear, the Monkey and the Mouse have done extremely well settling into school here. It hasn't always been easy. Firstly to change schools is never fun, to switch into a different language adds to the level of difficulty and to be at gymnasium means a lot of self organisation for the older two. This added to the school day starting at 8am, homework taking us a bit longer than normal (except the Mouse who is a gun at homework and loves it) and a hefty weekend programme run by their wonderful and fantastic mum (of course I am going to talk myself up) has meant that the start date of the summer holidays which was etched into our calendar in the early weeks of our time here has been much anticipated. To add to the excitement a 3 week visit from Grandma M was planned and at the end, just after school goes back Family M from Australian will visit us for a week. With all this and a pool in the garden we were looking forward to a great holiday and we didn't disappoint ourselves. As well as France (Paris) all the kids said they wanted to see Italy and particularly visit Pompeii. So as Grandma was also coming this was our big summer trip. 

But first Grandma had to arrive and in true me style I double booked her arrival in Duesseldorf with my birthday present tickets from my German sister and Co to see Les Miserable. Eek, how do I always manage to do this. No fear Grandma overnighted in a nice hotel as part of her birthday present from us, Herr F and I went to our a date to our first Freilichtbuehne in chauffeur driven style thanks to Herr G who luckily had beautiful weather to roam around in the wood and drink tea at a cafe while he waited the 3 and half hours to pick us up. 

After a fitting first day of summer holidays we headed up to Duesseldorf to pick up Grandma

Luckily the night in a hotel worked wonders for Grandma's jetlag and we embarked on our adventures together. Firstly with a look around Duesseldorf where we just happened upon a parade with horses. This isn't actually that hard to do, parades pop up everywhere. 

 I found a basket shop and whist it looks like I am stealing something I am just trying to put back all the baskets I knocked over whilst trying to look in conspicuous and cool...I think I achieved that!

Then it was back home to show Grandma the sights of our hometown. That included watching kids theatre in German. Luckily physical humour transcends language and "Hans im Glueck" was understood by all. We babysat Possumn Boy and took him to the science fair. A visit to the science fair is a bit of a tradition for us as we visit every time we are here. Once we bought season tickets and spent a lot of the summer popping in but, this time as most of the kids are just about too old for it we only went once. But of course we didn't just go alone. What happens when 3 teachers plan a day out...you end up with a whole lot of kids. So we banded together with Familie N, an old kindergarten firend and a friend from the neighbourhood and had a lovely day in the sun building, experimenting and letting the kids teach each other and us.   

The it was waffles at the Wednesday food market and Coffee and Cake with Familie N including the grandparents as Opa R was an english teacher and we thought we could all have a chat. His english is impecible and it turns out Oma R who was a French teacher has more english than she ever let on to her daughter and cooks an amazing Blumpskuchen (can't remeber the real name but this is its nickname.).

 Throw in a trip to the museum (this is our yearly pass this time) and a bit of art and suddenly the first week was over. Hopefully the high quality intellectual and outdoor programme made Grandma so tired she didn't notice the second rate accommodation that was being made to sleep on a mattress in the dining room.