Family Fun with Oma and Papa!

Oh dear, I have really been neglecting this blog.

All week long I've been meaning write this post and put up these pictures, but I've been majorly procrastinating everything.  My parents were here all last week (Sept. 10-19) and when they left on Monday, Bryan left also.  Sadly his grandpa passed away and he went back to Michigan for the week to be with his family.  Dylan and I went from having a very full house of people to a very quiet house.  Better late than never, I suppose.

On the day that my parents arrived, Dylan and I went to his buddy's birthday party in the morning while Bryan went to the airport to fetch my parents.  By the time we came home from the party, I knew my parents would be at our place, so I kept saying to Dylan that Oma and Papa would be at our house when we got home, but he didn't really believe me.  As we climbed the stairs to our apartment Dylan began chanting "Oma, Papa, Oma, Papa, Oma, Papa" with every step.  As we opened the door, my dad was standing there and Dylan froze in complete shock that he was actually here.  Then he started pointing and shouting "Papa! Papa!  Mommy, Papa's here! Papa's here!"  He then set out to find my Mom who was upstairs resting from the long trip, and we all climbed up the stairs and Dylan in pure elation of having both his Oma and Papa here literally jumped up and down for joy.

Dylan was quick to show Papa his basketball skills, which he still calls "shots."  It's pretty funny to have your two-year-old constantly telling you that he wants to go do shots, but we understand he means basketball and not vodka.

This is the only family photo that we got, which was taken just a few hours after Mom and Dad got off the plane.  I had told them over and over again to plan for fall weather and the day they arrived it was in the 80s.  Good thing they each brought one pair of shorts.

Our friends loaned us some bikes for my parents so we could all take bike rides together.  Our first day we headed out to Hoxfeld / Probsting area to the playground.

Dylan got really revved up going down the big slide with my dad.  Both of them had dirty pants from going down the slide so many times.

We also enjoyed a picnic.  Check out Mom and I both making sure Dylan doesn't spill his cup of juice.

Bryan had a basketball scrimmage that we all went to and Mom and Dad got to see how attending one of Bryan's games doesn't actually mean that you get to watch the game.  I estimate that in the 40 minutes of game time, I get to really watch about 10 minutes of it and the rest of the time is spent keeping Dylan from running out onto the court.

Oma and Papa brought Dylan some new books to read.  He loves his "Little Golden" books, especially when Papa reads them.

Against our advice, Dad tried to teach Dylan how to use the iPad.  Mom and I would snicker each time we could hear him in the kitchen with Dylan saying "No, Dylan. Gently." and then we'd see Dylan stab his finger into the screen like he was trying to break through to the other side.  Good idea, Dad.
 

We took a nice bike ride to the Schloss Gemen and Dylan had a monster temper tantrum.  He wanted me to carry him the entire lap around the castle and when I wouldn't he laid like this in the middle of the path  and screamed for about 15-20 minutes.  It was hard not to laugh at him, so we took this picture.

We were able to get a babysitter for an entire afternoon and evening so the four of us went into Dusseldorf and left Dylan at home.  We did a semi pub crawl and tried 4 different kinds of Alt Bier (special to Dusseldorf) and had a delicious schnitzel dinner and enjoyed wandering around the city.

Dusseldorf's riverwalk along the Rhein is really nice, especially when you don't have to chase a very fast toddler through the crowds.

While Bryan was busy at work, the four of us rode our bikes on a super windy day to Raesfeld to check out the castle.

One .. . two ... three ... swing!  This never gets old to Dylan.

Wherever Papa was, Dylan wanted to be also. If he sat down, Dylan sat down.  If he went upstairs, Dylan followed.  If he went into the bathroom and didn't lock the door, Dylan was coming in ready to say "What are you doing, Papa?"

Sometimes the only way to get Dylan to look in the direction of the camera is to hold out something in front of him (like keys, candy, etc.).

A familiar pose in photos with Dylan is holding him back so he won't run away when the photo is snapped.

We also rode our bikes to Ramsdorf where we walked around town for a while.  To Dylan, this was a really big rock.

On Friday, we went into Muenster and walked along the promenade while Bryan worked.  Dylan's favorite park here has an old airplane that you can climb in and pretend to fly.  He's a very demanding little kid, so he climbed up the ladder and shouted "Papa! Oma! Sit down!!" and he had all of us sitting in the tiny little seats while he "flew" the plane.

Dylan and Oma flying the plane.

At any given moment throughout the day, Dylan would drop everything and shout "Papa! PRACTICE!" And he would drag my Dad into his room and close the door and make him practice basketball and golf with him.  My poor Dad was not allowed to leave the room, and although Oma and Bryan were allowed in, Mommy (me!) was definitely not invited in the room. Dylan created a special little club in there, but whenever I tried to come in and see what they were doing he would shout "No, Mommy! Close the door!" and shove me out and slam the door in my face.  Now that no one is here anymore, I'm invited to "practice" but it was kind of nice to be Dylan's least favorite playmate that week.

Roughhousing with Papa - the highlight of Dylan's week.

We had a fantastic week, and thankfully fantastic weather the whole time.  It was so sad on Monday morning when Dylan woke up and immediately asked for Oma and Papa and I had to tell him that they had to go home.  He took it really well and seemed to understand, but every day this entire week the first thing he says when he gets up in the morning is "Papa here? Oma here?"  We're already looking forward to Christmas when we'll get 3 whole weeks at Oma and Papa's house.

Hotel Foltice - Wrapping up the Winter Travel Season

It seems really quiet around here after an eventful week with Robyn and Dan. Here are the highlights:

I spent weeks teaching Dylan how to say "Aunt Robyn" and "Uncle Dan" leading up to their arrival.  He calls Dan "Uncle Deeeeen" and Robyn is "Bus."  We have no idea where "Bus" came from.  I swear he can say "Robyn" quite clearly, but only when she is not around.  Whenever she was near we would ask Dylan "Can you say Robyn?" And he would smile and say "Yea ... Bus."  And thus, a new nickname is born.

The above photo is Bryan, Dylan and Uncle "Deeeeen" playing Angry Birds on the iPad.  Side note: if you have an iPad, or electronic device that has the Angry Birds app on it, don't let Bryan near it.  He was completely obsessed - obsessed to the point that they actually won the game before Dan and Robyn left.  One day I yelled at him for playing it too much and not being social and he called me an "angry bird" under his breath.  

On their first full day here, Dylan face-planted teeth first into our glass coffee table.  We're lucky he didn't lose any teeth, but it was pretty ugly and bloody and he was not his usual self for the rest of the day (but, who would be after that?).  We still went into Munster in the afternoon for some walking/shopping and we introduced Robyn and Dan to döners, our favorite Turkish food.  They are very similar to gyros, but better.

Robyn and I had a girls night out at one of our local restaurants, Kaffee Klatsch.  There is a waitress there who speaks excellent English, so we were pleased to be seated in her section.  My German, although it is better that it was a few months ago, is still barely passable. The class I'm taking is good, but my brain is really slow.  I seem to know a lot of individual vocabulary words but can't put any of them together to make a comprehensible sentence to a native German.

Bryan took Robyn and Dan to Winterswijk, Netherlands on Saturday.  I stayed home with Dylan because we didn't have his car seat (long story; totally my fault). See the previous post about Sergeant Peabody to learn how the car ride there went.  Turns out Winterswijk has a really good specialty beer store with lots of special Belgian brews.  This is where we learned that Dan and Robyn are total beer snobs, so don't even try to serve them run-of-the-mill American style beers.  If you do, Dan will give you this line:

American beers are like sex in a canoe.  F#$%ing close to water!" 

On Sunday afternoon we left for Karneval in Cologne.  It was our first ever full night away from Dylan, but I was really more worried for our babysitter (read: worried for us that she'd never come back after dealing with Dylan for 24-hours straight), than I was about being separated from him for a night.  Actually, I was really looking forward to it since he has been in a major clingy phase for the past few weeks and it's starting to get under my skin.  According to Dylan, here are just a few of the things that only "Mommy" is allowed to do for him:

Feed him, bath him change his diaper, read to him, hold him, put him down for a nap, wake him up, kiss him goodnight, and play with him.  He follows me into the bathroom, bedroom, kitchen and closet; if I'm out of his line of vision even for a second he screams my name; if I have the computer on my lap, he straddles my lap and sits facing me blocking the computer; if I'm talking to someone on Skype, he climbs behind me on the couch and flicks my ears to distract me (Did Bryan teach him to do this?  It sounds like a 'Bryan' tactic for getting attention.); and he generally has to be touching me at all waking moments of his day (again, sounds like Bryan). 

Anyways, back to the trip... we made it to Cologne around 5:30 p.m. and promptly changed into our costumes and headed for downtown.  I am a glass of beer, Robyn is a cowgirl on a horse, Dan is a sleazy wizard, our friends Kurt and Claudia are Elvis and Pippy-Longstocking, and Bryan is a lion.

It's really easy to get in the spirit of Karneval in Cologne.  Almost everyone is dressed up, but the costumes are happy and in good fun (not scary like Halloween).  There is German Karneval music playing everywhere and impromptu street dancing and singing can break out at a moment's notice.  We got back to the hotel around 1:00 a.m. and crashed.  We had another big day of parade watching and festivities that we needed to rest up for. 

 

Thankfully our hotel had a nice, big continental breakfast in the morning with extended "Karneval hours" for those of us who needed to sleep in a little extra on Monday morning.  It is difficult to get used to the German breakfast of cold cuts and cheese and Robyn had to send Dan back to the buffet when he showed up at the table with only a half a kiwi and a mini croissant.

We made it into town around 11:30 and found a spot on the parade route.  The parade had already started, but it lasts for more than 4 hours.  The coolest thing about the parade is they throw candy from the floats (way cooler than beads), so you don't really even need to take a break for food since it is provided for free, as long as you're quick enough to snatch it mid-air from the people around you. The man next to me took his candy-snatching very seriously and was dubbed "The Human Vacuum."  He gave me evil-eyes every time I snagged one from his grasp.

The floats are also huge and come dangerously close to the edge of the crowd.  It doesn't help that the parade route is along ancient cobblestone streets. In the picture above the big pink float is about to round the corner and come our way. 

We headed home around 2pm and had a special treat of European Union trivia and Karneval trivia games courtesy of Bryan (also the driver, drinking alcohol-free beer in the photo above for those of you wondering...) for the ride home.  We were all pretty exhausted once we got home - all of us sat around quietly reading. The above picture was also the last photo that I took while Robyn and Dan were here.

Wednesday morning came quickly and we saw them to the train station so they could continue on their trip to Brussels and then Amsterdam before heading home. 

This wraps up our winter tourist season at Hotel Foltice.  We're looking forward to the spring and summer travel season to begin ... who is going to be our next guest???

Sergeant Peabody Gets “Blog-Posted”

Sergeant Peabody reporting for duty!

Hi everyone.  I just wanted to give you an update now that we are back from Karneval in Cologne.  That will be a whole separate post.  In the meantime, here is a story from our time with Dana’s sister Robyn and her husband Dan, our second set of guests this year. 

   

Saturday was scheduled to be a pretty quiet day with us making the trip over the Netherlands border to Wintersvijk.  (Click here for our previous Wintersvijk post.)  Around noon, we made the 19 km (11.4 miles) trip to Winterswijk from Borken. 

Aware of the Europe bathroom situation (they usually cost 50-cents and they are not very plentiful), we all went to the bathroom immediately before leaving.   Robyn has been given a notorious car trip nickname of Sergeant Peabody for her frequent rest stop requests, so we made sure she was all set before leaving.  

As we drove through a city called Oeding before the Netherlands border (9 km/ 5.4 miles from Winterswijk) and 8 minutes into the 20 minute trip, Robyn called from the back of the car in a very nice and polite voice, ‘Bryan, if you know of a convenient spot to stop off, I really have to pee.’  My immediate response was, “What?  No.  We are halfway through a 20 minute trip and I know for certain that you went right before we left.”

Robyn responded with an “I don’t think I will make it to Winterswijk if we don’t stop off.” 

I initially told her that the only place I knew of was the Cotton Club, a “Sauna” (read: brothel) right over the Netherlands border.  I argued, “if you really have to go, I can drop you off at the Cotton Club.”  Not wanting my sister-in-law to get a disease for a petty rest room break, I decided against making this the only option.

Knowing that we were going to get gas anyway in the Netherlands, we stopped at the first gas station over the border and I told Robyn “Ok Sergeant Peabody, I will stop off here, but that means you will get blog-posted for this.” She agreed to the terms and thus a new term was born, “Blog-posted.”  The term can be used when somebody does something so ridiculous that it’s worthy of a blog post. 

Now, any time Robyn stops off for a break, we will yell while giving a salute, “Sergeant, reporting for duty!”

That’s the risk you run when you spend a week with a blogger; anything you do is fair game.

Hotel Foltice Pt. 1

Bryan, John and the babies in the Borken town center.

We are in the middle of having company here at Hotel Foltice.  Our friends from church, John and Rachel (and their 7 month old) came to visit us for a couple of days.  John is heading the leadership/pastoral team for Celebration Church in Belfast, Ireland.  Hopefully, it’s the beginning of great things to come in Europe. 

It was great to have them over and Dana always steps up the cooking when we have company.  I love it.  She had spaghetti ready on my way back from picking them up in Dusseldorf Weeze (though they really need to drop the Dusseldorf part…it’s not even close to there.)   The next day, she already had sheppard’s pie cook.  It just needed to be reheated and we were set. 

We spent their full day with us showing them around Munster.  We introduced them to Doner’s for lunch and showed them some good shopping around the city.  Strangely enough, the highlight was trying to get their British Pounds (they had just come from Ireland) converted into Euros at a bank.    

We first found a Sparda Bank, where we were told that they did not change money over, regardless of what the currency was.   We were directed down the street to the nearby Sparkasse Bank and went inside to get their money changed.  

When we arrived at the counter, I asked the banker, in German, to change the money into Euros.   We handed him the British Pounds and after 2 seconds of looking at it, the banker gave this horrific look on his face as if we farted after eating hot dogs and ice cream all night (not that I would know anything about that) and quickly passed the money back to us.   He told us to go to a Western Union down by the train station (15 minutes away by foot) to get the money changed.  I even tried to ask in English (maybe I asked wrong somehow) and the answer was the same.

Afterward, we speculated what the banker would have done if we had given him a less valuable currency and easily agreed that he would have wiped his nose with a US dollar if we tried to change it over there.   

Nevertheless, we gave up on that scavenger hunt and went on with our day. 

Dana and I had a great time and really got to know John and Rachel even better.  Dylan was a gentleman to his friend, Anikah.   We joked that for 5 years, we lived 8 houses down from each other in Florida, and it took us both travelling 5,000 miles to get to know each other better.  

Here are some pictures from last week. 

Dylan and Annika were fast friends.  He did a good job sharing all of his toys.

"Here, Annika - smell my feet!"

Dylan piled up all his books around Annika and they had a book reading party.  So cute.

Our little travelers.  So good together.

Rachel and I in the Borken town center.

International Hotel de Foltice: Part 2

After two days of traveling to Münster and Amsterdam, we all needed a respite at home, especially Dylan who desperately needed a day or two with a normal nap schedule. So we spent our time Christmas shopping in Borken and having Thanksgiving, which was a bit strange since we were the only people in town (and the country) celebrating.

Dylan bonding with grandpa while watching Sesame Street.



The Dom Cathedral in Koln

 Friday was our day to go to the Christmas market in Koln, which is our favorite city. Bryan and I have spent a fair amount of time in Koln, including twice going to Karneval (German Mardi Gras) and visiting several other times for shopping and sight-seeing. Most impressive in Koln is the Dom Cathedral, a massive Gothic-style church that dominates the skyline.

Dylan had other plans for Friday, namely not traveling anywhere.  He was amicable during the hour-and-twenty-minute drive there, but once we got on foot he pretty much refused to sit in his stroller and was extremely "shrieky."  Ever since Dylan was quite little he has had the ability to create a head-splitting, blood-curdling shriek that will make your ears bleed and cause permanent hearing damage.  It happens most often when he is tired (or teething), but sometimes he seems to do it just for fun.  Turns out that on Friday he was both tired and teething, which made the shrieks that much more unbearable.  I got a lot of grief that day for forgetting to bring the baby pain medication.  I can name about 100 other things that I did remember to bring, but of course we would have traded every single one for a drop of infant-Tylenol. 

Bryan and Dylan with the Dom in the background.

Mom and Dad in front of the Christmas Market (Weihnachtsmarkt) boat.  We really wanted to go inside to warm up, but Dylan was too shrieky to go anywhere enclosed so we had to stick to the outdoor markets.

Mom, Dylan and Bryan.

Mom and Dad in front of market booths.

The main entrance to the Christmas Market.

We originally planned to stay until nighttime to see the markets under the lights (and miss traffic), but it was really cold and since Dylan's shrieks prohibited us from going inside anywhere we were chilled to the bone so we left early.  


The next night was Bryan's basketball game, then a babysitter came over to watch Dylan while we went out to dinner and to enjoy Borken's Christmas market in the evening.  It was bittersweet since we all knew that Mom and Dad only had one day left before going back home.

Bryan took Mom and Dad back to the Düsseldorf airport first thing Monday morning.  International Hotel Foltice is awaiting their hotel service assessment and will tell you the number of stars we receive for future guests to look at. 

We went to eat at a local restaurant called Kaffeeklatsch.  Somehow the waitress was British so we didn't have to stumble through ordering like we would have in most other places.

Enjoying the Borken Christmas market.