Parker Power

Grandma and Grandpa Parker are here for 10 days, so we've been trying to keep things action packed.  First KT met them in Köln and they checked out the church and Christmas market:

The next day they got the tour of Aachen: my work, the Dom (they even took a tour and saw what may be Charlemagne's throne) and then to the kid's Kindergarten.

We went to Monschau:

and KT took this marvelous picture of the river and some of the houses lining the river.

While in Monschau, we went to this little display thing with wax figures showing all of the Brother's Grimm fairy tales.  I only knew a few of them, and even then they weren't always recognizable because of the creative rights taken by Disney (not to mention the more humane punishments of the bad guy).

Then for Christmas lunch, we had the Meldrums and Sarah's family over.  It was great food, and our landlords Mike and Bärbel brought a fancy dessert over for us to enjoy.  Post lunch activities included talking, Qwirkle playing, and digesting.  Post-post activity included putting the little ones to bed, and entertaining one of the missionaries while his companion was Skyping with his family.  We tried to keep them from getting too homesick after they were done.

Then we went to Maastricht, Netherlands.  I've already talked much about Maastricht, but this time we pulled over at the Netherlands American Cemetary.  It was from WWII, and they didn't want to bury their dead on enemy soil (Germany) so they created these cemeteries in Netherlands and Belgium.  Worth seeing.

On Friday, we went to Val Dieu, Belgium.  It is a little monastery about 30 min. or so from our house.  On the way, we stopped at some churches in random villages, and found this little gem: a manger scene that Hollywood model makers would be proud of.  One has to put some coins into the machine, then the whole thing lights up and wheels begin to turn and water flows and the whole thing comes to life.  Despite the technological advances present in the design, it still maintains its country feel with an assortment of rabbit, ferrret, squirrel, and mouse taxidermy specimens running around the whole thing.  

By the time we got to the monastery, it was pouring.  But we had umbrellas, which afforded us a bit of a walk-about before heading back to the car.  The place is famous for its cheese and beer.  Our neighbor Mike was astounded that we didn't try the beer, but the cheese was fantastic.

The week ended with a visit to the theme park Phantasialand.  Not my personal favorite past time, but the Parkers spent too much time living in close proximity to Disney land to know any better.  

How's that for action-packed?

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Timmy just informed me that he doesn't have a short intention span.  I was worried about his intention span being a little too short, but now I'm not.  I'm sure you were worried too.  Don't be.

Being weird in Maastricht

We went to Maastricht, Netherlands yesterday, and since I've been there a few times, I decided to see how many different house numbers I could find.  I found more than 24, but the batteries ran out of the camera.

Düsseldorf

We went to Düsseldorf for a Stake Primary activity that KT was helping out with, and we decided to make it a family trip.  First, we all went to the aquarium:

Then KT went to the activity and me and the boys walked around downtown.  It was rather chilly, and the Christmas Market was so crowded that we ended up walking around the outskirts of town.  We saw this crazy statue which I believe was commemorating a bloody civil war in Düsseldorf.

Then we found a nice quiet church and just went in to warm up and sat down.  That only lasted about 5 minutes (although it was 5 minutes longer than I would have supposed) so we walked around the church and I told the kids the stories depicted in all of the sculptures all around.  There was practically no one there, so we had a real nice time.  And no one stole our abandoned stroller.  Always a plus.

Dragon Hunt

A few weeks ago, me and the boys went to our favorite woods.  Since the boys are reluctant to just trek out and hike, I had to come up with a fun game to keep them going.  Hence the dragon hunt...

We started out by selecting the finest swords to slay our dragon.  Then we followed the orange arrows on the trees which we were sure lead to the dragon's lair.  I don't think it is allowed to hike off-trail in Germany, but we risked it.  To protect the innocent villagers from the dragon.
On the way, we stopped to brush up on our slaying skills.  Top notch, like always.

We found the dragon's nest at the top of the hill: a huge hole.  But the dragon was nowhere to be found, so we chucked some rocks in to break all of his eggs, and moved on.  The hunt ended with the traditional granola bar and banana, official sponsors of the hunt.

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