School Performances & Rheinfels - 7 June 2009

Took Mallory to the Obsthof (fruit and veg market) and the owner put cherries on her ears and gave her a strawberry. He spoke German to her and she was quite confused, but sure she wasn't supposed to take the cherries off so she kept them on until she got in her car seat and I took them off. I wasn't about to haul her through the grocery store with cherries on her ears although, she thought is was quite normal.

Nash did a drama performance this week. He played the part of the nerd in the show. He put his costume together and never consulted any of us so when he walked out on stage in shorts that are probably a size 8, I couldn't control my laughter. Creed and I looked at each other baffled at where he got those shorts!

Mallory's dance performance this week.

Mallory doing a Polish folk dance, under the watchful eye of the dance teacher.

The month of May was beautiful -- weather in the 80's & sunny, even on weekends. June has been lousy -- cold and rainy. Despite the forecast for rain, we got up Saturday morning and drove about an hour south to a castle called Rheinfels, one of many castles along the Rhein river.

It is mostly ruins today.

One of the unique things about this castle is all of the tunnels under the hills around the perimeter. Apparently they put gunpowder in the tunnels, and then blew up the gunpowder as enemies approached. Above, the boys are standing at the entrance to the tunnels.

The tunnels are only about 3 feet high, so you have to crouch to walk through them, and there are several turns and side tunnels that are dead ends. They are also completely dark -- we had to take flashlights in order to find our way through them.

Above are Nash and Luke coming back from having gone down a dead-end.

The boys watched 'The Gods must be Crazy' last night and wanted to show us a game the kids that lived in Africa played. I laughed and said, "See, that's what happens when you don't have TVs."

After several attempts and much laughter from inside the house when they failed and fell on their backs, the boys finally perfected this amazing feat. They first sit on chairs and then lay on each other's laps. Then the chairs are removed one by one. When the last one is removed they should be able to still support each other.