May 18, 2007

The children and I left Arizona on May 1st and arrived in Frankfurt, Germany, the following day. Unfortunately, we arrived without our luggage (6 suitcases and a car seat), which was a huge hassle at the airport. It was delivered to my mother's village the next day, which was a big relief.
We are continuing to homeschool, as I brought most of our books with us.
Naturally, it would be ridiculous of us to spend a lot of time cooped up inside, poring over books. We go out on most days. A coupe of days ago we drove to an old castle (Eberstein) that was situated up on top of a hill. It's been raining a lot since we arrived, but we determined to hike the trails around the castle anyway. We only hiked 2 km of it, since Christopher complained heavily about his legs hurting him. ;-) The constant drizzle might have been a nuisance to most people, but I found it refreshing! Everything is much greener here in Germany, so utterly different from our desert climate in Arizona. We stopped frequently to take closer looks at different trees and shrubs, and also to look at wildflowers, spider webs with rain drops glinting in them, fallen tree stumps, moss, etc..
The following day, which was yesterday, we wanted to visit another castle, that supposedly had fun activities planned for children. My mother typed the address into her global navigation system (GPS) in her car, but it led us to Heidelberg instead. Ugh! No worries. We decided to make the best of the situation and have coffee and cake in a small city Cafe. Afterwards, my mother drove us to an airpark, where they fly motorless planes. I'm not sure what they're called in english. "Seegelflugzeug" in german, though. None of the planes were in the air, probably because of the bad weather. We walked along the meadows surrounding the airpark, and even saw a young deer bounding through the tall grasses. But then it started to rain yet again, and we walked back to the car. By the time we got to it, Lillian was soaked to the bone. She had her rubber boots on, and decided to jump into each and every puddle. Hence the soaking, lol. There aren't many puddles in Arizona, so I let her have at it. Christopher jumped in a few of them himself, and got mud on his clothes, too. Annika preferred to avoid the puddles.
Yesterday was father's day in Germany, and I learned that fathers traditionally go on picnics with other fathers that includes a lot of beer! They put their beer in a wagon ("Bollerwagen") and then pull it along as they make their way to wherever they're having their picnic. I never really knew about this tradition, even though I am German myself. My father has never done this, though, and we usually lived in other countries anyway.
I dedicated a lot of time today to homeschooling. I want to finish up this week's lessons, so that we don't have to worry about it on the weekend. My brother, Eric, and his girlfriend, Kati, usually spend their weekends here in Gaggenau with us. They live in Frankfurt, which is about 2 hours north of us.
Annika learned how to estimate this week by rounding numbers either up or down. Christopher is still working on the times tables and we also touched on division. Both children learned about odd and even numbers. Annika still struggles with writing inequalities, but I've noticed an improvement.
Christopher reviewed nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs this week for his grammar lessons.
He's not really reading anything, but will start reading in his book "Indian Legends" soon. He does read on his own time, though. He currently has an infatuation with books on bionicles.
We worked on other things, too, but I'm too tired to write it all down.
Early on in the evening, when my mother was taking her pilates class, my father took me and the kids to Baden Baden for a walk through the city's center. It was nice, and didn't take long. Ordinarily we would have stopped for ice cream somewhere, but I wasn't in the mood to deal with the inevitable sticky faces. Plus, Christopher has been fairly grumpy today.
It is almost time for dinner, and so I'm going to take some time now to go and freshen up. :-)