KarlsPreis and A-man's Birthday

Thursday was the Karlspreis in Aachen. It is an award (given every year since 1950) to someone who has done something for Europe.  This years prize was given to a Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council.  

It was a holiday, and Scott had to get ready for a conference.  While the baby slept, the boys and I decided to go downtown and check out what was happening.  

 Here are the boys in the ATM.  They call it the "Dr. Who" box.  :)

The "ship" playground.

 The fountain entitled "The circulation of money."

 The Rathaus after the Karlspreis was awarded inside.

 We decided to order an ice cream and cocoa at the Eiscafe so that we could sit and listen to the speech.  He did a German introduction and then spoke in English the rest of the time.  We were super excited when he started in beautifully clear English, but then the volume was turned down and a translation was begun over the loud speaker.  Couldn't hear much. :(

We realized after the ceremony was well under way that we were "camped" on the Russian protester side. The Ukrainians were cheering on the other side of the Market.  There was a Ukrainian politician there, Arsenij Jazenjuk, who spoke.  Due to the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the traditional Laudatio was not given, since it might be interpreted in favor of one side or another, I suppose.

In other news, Timmy has been doing swim classes twice a week and he is doing great!  It's the most strenuous part of my week to get the kids there and home, but it's been really good for him.  He has learned the leg motions, and how to propel forward.  He can swim the length of the pool 5-6 times now.

 The doting brothers.

  Aaron celebrated his 5th birthday on Monday!   He has been anxiously awaiting his birthday for about......364 days now.   He chose to go to Aquana with the family, a family friendly pool with a few waterslides.  He was big enough to ride the big slides on mom and dad's lap this time.  He did it about 100 times, and loved it!

 He was so happy that he got a chocolate cake at home, AND got to make a chocolate cake in Kindergarten with his teacher and 2 friends of choice, Miss Sylvia, Timmy and Maxim.

 He was super polite and happy about his whole birthday, which I think is actually a miracle, is it not?  Everything was "Just like I WANTED!"  He got a skateboard, just like he wanted!, and birthday cards, emails and some other great gifts.  He is excited to spend his birthday money from his grandparents on both sides, and is in the city picking something out right now, actually.

 We spent the evening at the park, so he could try out his new skateboard.

Aaron is such a great kid.  He is always saying funny things and making us laugh.  He is a really fast learner and catches on quickly to new sports, games, rules and routines.  He likes to get his way, but knows (most of the time) how to ask nicely and politely for things he wants.   He likes to try new things and has seemingly endless energy.   His German and English has skyrocketed this year.  He speaks very clearly in both languages.  We are so proud of him and love having him in our family.

HAPPY 5TH BIRTHDAY AARON!  We love you!

Skyping with Daddy, who was playing "the Shadow Master" while wrestling with the boys.

Awkward Avoidance Viking

I just heard the boys playing in their room and Timmy singing the Awkward Avoidance Viking song with perfect pitch "Lala-lala-lala-lala-lalala-la-lalala-laaaaaaaaaaaaaaa."   Made me laugh so hard!

VIDEO LINK TO A.A.V.

In Love with Cora Jane

I'm completely in love with this cutey.  So great that I can spend my day with her everyday!

We got a generous Amazon gift card at work from Scott's friends, and I have missed my "krabbeldecke" that is at home in storage, knowing it would be perfect for this age.

I decided to use it to buy one here for Cora.  She loves it!  It's fun to see her get excited when the toys swing and move.

PS - Scott wants to trim Cora's hair, but his mom said "Don't you dare!" and he's afraid of her, so he won't.  What is the general consensus?  :)  Do you trim your girls' hair as babies?  We are used to razoring our boys' hair clean off every 6 weeks, but don't know how to take care of girl hair yet. :)

Crete

Sorry, pics only.  Maybe someday I'll fill in the rest...

Tag der Arbeit: the aftermath...

 We went to some caves in  Remouchamps, Belgium today.  The tour was in Dutch, which was kind of boring.  It is similar enough to German that we could get the gist of  what he was talking about, but not enough to find anything actually interesting.  But it was a nice cave, and half of the tour was a cool boat ride through underground rivers.  I was trying to get a picture from the boat, but as I was lining up a picture I almost got my head taken off so I decided best to go pictureless on the boat.  After my near miss on the boat, I think all the rest of the people were taunting me in Dutch.  No idea what they were saying, but it was definitely taunting.  I unfortunately probably just solidified the stereotype of the dumb American.

And just to make sure that squimish people permanantly stay out of our blog:: day 3 of the finger.  It is nearly impossible to successfully change a baby with a poopy diaper without being at 100% tactile capacity, so I got my wrappings ripped off while trying.  Here is what it looked like, enjoy:

Tag der Arbeit

It was the german labor day yesterday (Tag der Arbeit) and we went over the border to Belgium to check out the local climbing spot.  It was a nice little area, with a abandoned, unkempt castle at the end:

 ... and on the way was the rock wall.  It's just a random wall on the side of a hill, but it was pretty nice.  The thing was bolted like crazy, with something like 10 - 15 routes all around this face.  I was kind of bummed that I don't have any gear with me, and I'm going to ask around at church on Sunday to see if anyone has a rope and some gear.

 As we were at what ended up being the end of our walk, I started carving out a stick to make a bow and arrow (we did that last week and made a pretty cool bow: I got a knife from my bro. for Christmas, so I'm trying to put it to good use).  Katie had the baby and didn't want to wake the baby up by stopping, so we kept walking while I was carving.  Which as you can tell is not really a great idea.  So I dummerweise cut myself, and shaved a big hunk of skin off of my knuckle.  I wanted to clean it up and super-glue it, but KT was insistent that a doctor be involved.  So I tied up my shirt around it and we went to the ER.

At the ER they first sent us away and told us to go to another hospital, but then KT battled her way in.  I sat in the ER for 2 1/2 hours with a T-shirt wrapped around my bleeding hand.  I didn't really want to complain because I was the stupid guy who cut his dumb finger trying to make a stupid bow out of a stupid stick.  I finally got to see someone, and by then the skin I had partially shaved off was pretty much dead.  They cauterized it to stop the bleeding, and stitched the dead skin back on.  Even though there was no hope of it growing back on, the doctor said that dead skin is the best bandaid.

Since I had been so long without food or water and just watched the guy stitch up my bleeding hand, I almost fainted when I got up to leave.  When they finally let me go, KT was home alone with sleeping kids and a baby so she couldn't come and get me, so I just got in a bus and rode a few the buses around till I eventually got home.  It must have looked pretty scary with blood all over my hands and a blood-soaked shirt, but nobody dared to say anything.  So happy Tag der Arbeit!