Springtime in Borken

One of my favorite things about living in this part of the world is that the seasons change when they are supposed to.  It seemed like exactly on March 21, spring was ushered in and the temperature started to rise and now that it is April the weather is perfect - sunny, mid-high 60s - and everything is green and in bloom.  It's a far cry from spring in Michigan which probably won't come for another 2 months, or spring in Florida which already happened back in January.

This past weekend was Borken's Easter Market.  It was a perfect warm, spring day and the whole town came to the town square for good food, craft vendors and fun.

Below is a video from the Easter Market of some nice older ladies dressed up and singing an old German song.  I have no idea what organization they're with, but they really added to the festive German-village atmosphere of the market.

Dylan had lots of fun at the Easter market for many reasons - he got to play on his favorite mechanical auto, there were tons or playhouses and kids slides set up on one street in town that he got to play in, and he had an ice cream cone. Here are some pictures from the day:

If we within 100 yards of this auto in the market place, we have to stop so Dylan can play on it.

Dylan had to stop and play inside every single playhouse or on every toy that was set up in the town center. There were probably about 2 dozen total.

Ok, all done with this one. On to the next.

He spent some extra time on the pirate ship, which was his favorite.

Playing on the little plastic rocking horse.

Getting ready to go down the slide.

And another slide...

Notice his tractor on the table and the basketball in his lap - can't leave home without them.

Mmmm, good ice cream.

A Basketballer is Born

One of our neighbors put a basketball hoop in the driveway a few weeks ago and ever since, Dylan has become a little basketball-playing fiend.  Every waking moment he has to have his basketball nearby and if he can't find it even for a second he runs around saying "Uh-oh, ball! Uh-oh, ball!" until he finds it, and the basketball must go with him everywhere.

As you can see from the video above (sorry about the grainy quality - it was taken with the video setting of our little Nikon CoolPix camera), he has to get his "shots" up for the day.  In fact, whenever he sees a basketball hoop now he immediately shouts "Shots! Shots!"  

He has not lost his love of tractors, although the basketball is now of equal importance to Dylan.  He still sleeps with his tractor and wants to sleep with the basketball too, but we won't let him because he'll wake up in the middle of the night and start bouncing it off the walls (it only took one night of experimenting with letting him sleep with the ball to figure this out).

We're getting really strong shoulder muscles from lifting him over our heads a dozen+ times a day.

Our little "basketballer."

Everything he needs: food, blanky and a basketball.

March Madness 2011

During the first week of March Madness, Dana and I usually take Thursday and Friday off from work and watch basketball from noon to midnight each day from Thursday through Sunday.  By Sunday evening, we would be so sick of watching basketball that we could barely make it through.  This year, we were able to watch March Madness on the Internet, but only for the day games, which started 5 hours later (we didn’t have daylight savings until March 27^th.  Here are some thoughts on this year’s tournament:

1. I won.  Each year, we choose who we think will win each game and you get points for each correct game.  This year, I won.  It’s was official even before the Final Four games as there were no more possible points to be won (i.e. nobody in the group chose any of the Final Four teams.)    This is the most important point.
2. I won…and it counts!  Dana and I have completed brackets against each other (see last year’s March Madness post) for nearly ten years now and we have no record of past performance.  We have no historical proof of previous victories and we are blurry (I will never admit to any defeats) about the details. Maybe it’s the PhD research influence (actually, I am pretty sure it is) because I have started a database/spreadsheet detailing the results of our competitions against each other.  This way, we can track overall trends and have official data that we can use against each other as the years go by.  I can’t wait to boast to an 18 year old Dylan with 100% accuracy that I’ve beaten his Mom in the last 16 out of 18 NCAA March Madness brackets.  
3. College basketball is so much better than the NBA.  It’s not even close.  The games are so much more exciting and better played.  I wish the German basketball fans would have access to watch more college basketball on TV and the Internet.   I hope for the day when more of my German friends will inquire if I stayed up late to watch the Duke- North Carolina game rather than the NBA All-Star game. 
4. I am still losing to Dana in the overall standings.  Although the spreadsheet is new as of this year, I have failed to mention up to this point that, even with the NCAA Tournament victory, I am now losing 2 to 1, due to a couple of early losses.  Dana beat me in the College Football Bowl Pick’em this year and she also beat me (quite handily) in the NAIA (Small College) Basketball bracket. 

Dana did so bad in this year's March Madness bracket. Worst bracket ever.

She is still winning overall, though.

Finally, I have to mention that both my High School (Tri-Unity Christian) and College (Cornerstone University) alma mater’s won their respective State Basketball Championship and National Basketball Championship.  What’s more impressive is the way they have handled their success.  I am proud of these guys and my schools! 

• http://www.cugoldeneagles.com/article/615.php
• http://www.cugoldeneagles.com/article/619.php
• http://highschoolsports.mlive.com/news/article/-4615097150330334803/tri-unity-christian-seniors-program-is-in-good-hands-after-fourth-state-championship/
• http://highschoolsports.mlive.com/news/article/-4615097150330334801/tri-unity-christians-mark-keeler-no-plans-to-leave-coaching-after-class-d-state-title/

Dylan's New Obsession

A few days ago I successfully cured Dylan's helmet obsession by accidentally pinching his chin in the clasp while I put it on. Now the helmet pendulum has swayed the other way and he fights me when I try to put it on him. He has now moved onto his next obsession - tractors!

This tractor phase, like the helmet one, is both cute and annoying at the same time. We have a book from the library that has some tractor pictures in it and he follows me around with it whining "Tractor! Tractor! Tractor!" then jumps up and down and giggles when I flip directly to the page with the big tractor on it.

A couple of days ago I needed to start cooking dinner and that usually means that Dylan will follow me into the kitchen and wedge himself between me and the counter and demand that I pick him up otherwise he will throw a tantrum (dinner time is the time of day where he gets the most timeouts for bad behavior).

Instead, I decided to try to avoid a tantrum by pulling up some YouTube videos of tractors for him to watch while I was in the kitchen. I was shocked that there are hundreds of tractor videos - some longer than 10 minutes - and they each had millions of views!

I started to get a little suspicious that these were really porn videos masked by 1-2 minutes of tractor shots at the beginning, because of the insane amount of views for each tractor video plus some of the video descriptions.  Here is an example of one of the cleaner ones:

• Tractors Working EXTREMELY HARD! (Yes, the words were in all caps)

The double entendre names (or do I just have a dirty mind?), plus the 1.5 million views were too much for me to be able to walk away and let Dylan watch these by himself while I made dinner, so I had to screen every one in case I needed to quickly shut it down. Thankfully, not a single tractor video contained any hidden porn.

Lesson learned: There are at least 1.5 million other moms who have their kids watch tractor videos while they get something done during the day.

We were in Essen for an afternoon and Dylan spotted the only tractor in the city down a side street.

I helped him up onto the big wheel.

This is his "proud" face.

Here is Dylan stealing another kid's tractor toy at the park.

Adventures In Borken - Part 3 - Pfand Thief

 I found all sorts of cans on our Sunday walk around town.  Evidently, there were some good outdoor parties around town.  Yesterday, I was so excited to turn the cans in to our local grocery store.  Unfortunately, the metal cans would not correctly scan in the machine.   So, I took these 12 cans (3 euros worth) to our other grocery store that is checked by a human.  About halfway through, the store clerk checked the bar code and somehow knew that these were not legitimate cans.  

Upon further investigation, I had found all cans that came from the Netherlands (that doesn’t charge pfand) and tried to get money for these cans.  I was really embarrassed that I had tried to get money for smuggled cans.  What was even worse was that I couldn’t properly explain what had happened to clear my name. 

I started by explaining to the store clerk that I found all of the cans in the park, but quickly learned that this explanation was not making me look better, so I just said, ‘Sorry’ and got out of there as quickly as possible. 

In Germany, a daily trip to the local grocery store is quite common, so it’s not like I can avoid seeing the grocery store clerks.   Moving forward, Dana is going to be doing all grocery store shopping until they take down my photo that says, ‘Do not take pfand from this man.’

Do not Accept Pfand from These Guys!