Happy Easter!

We wish everyone a happy Easter! Though the picture is deceiving with the bright and warm-looking sunshine, we are bundled up and dressed more for Christmas.  It is quite chilly here and we were forced to have our Easter egg hunt indoors this morning.  But the girls snuck outside for some quick pictures as the sun peeked out of the clouds for a few minutes. May you and your family enjoy all the joy His blessings can bring today and the year to come.

Decorating Eggs

We squeezed the worktable in the kitchen for decorating eggs in the afternoon as it was cold and raining outside. This year I only cracked three out of the 20 eggs when I was cooking them. 

The girls had fun drawing on their eggs and then selecting the dye color. Adeline only lost one egg when it jumped off the spoon and onto the floor as she was transferring it to dry. Eric took some sandpaper to his eggs to create a crackle effect. The girls thought this was neat. It was great activity to pass time during the dreary weather.

A new bed

Adeline decided her doll Anna needed a baby bed and then came up with the idea that it would be much more fun to make one than buy one.  (Surprisingly, this needed no encouragement from Dad) So her and Eric set about designing a simple baby bed that they could make together as her first woodworking project.  Eric tried to come up with a design that he could accomplish with the very limited amount of tools he had brought with us.

They started out Saturday morning by heading to Baumarkt (the German version of Home Depot), which has a pretty thin lumber selection.  After finding some pine boards that would pass and picking up various other supplies, they headed home to hurry up and start cutting. It started to rain halfway through the cutting portion, so they had to move everything under the balcony. 

In Germany, Sunday is considered a rest day, and you are not allowed to do anything noisy outside on Sundays (grass cutting, power tools, tree trimming, etc.)  So Adeline and Eric had to make sure they did all of their cutting on Saturday in order to save the quieter activities like sanding for Sunday. Shortly before sundown on Saturday night, the last pieces were cut.

On Sunday, a lot of hard work was done sanding all of the pieces down and preparing them for painting and staining. Adeline thinks cutting is much more fun than sanding.  

The next weekend was spent putting on multiple coats of paint.  Finally, the last major step in this project of stenciling the design was ready to be executed.  There they ran into a little problem that the German tape they used for masking is quite a bit stronger than the American version. After pulling away the mask, there was a ton of sticky residue left behind. After a few hours of hard elbow grease and plenty of WD-40, the bed was finally ready for assembly.  

On Good Friday morning, the pair finished their big project. Adeline is very proud of her new self-built baby bed. 

Emmie quickly gathered her baby blankets to share with Adeline. The two of them made the bed together and then placed the bed next to Emmie's baby doll bed. It was a restful night for everyone.

Treehouse Adventure

The first week of Easter vacation has been rainy and getting colder everyday. The first few days we relaxed and rested. Thursday afternoon we bundled up and the Lotz brothers took us to a treehouse they had discovered on one of their walks. 

The treehouse is located in an open field near a river. It was big enough for all six of us and Bandit. The windows even had working shutters and curtains for decoration. We enjoyed a picnic lunch on the bench in the treehouse. Afterwards, the kids played in the treehouse and around the big tree while Melanie and I chatted. On our walk back, the girls were already making plans for another visit to the treehouse. 

and the winner is...

The crazy upsets from Friday during the second weekend of March Madness hurt all of us in obtaining points. Unfortunately, it knocked Adeline and Emmie out of the race for first place as they had no more teams advancing. Unfortunately, leading into the Final Four, none of Eric's picks made it either. In the end, I correctly picked the championship game of Kentucky versus Kansas. I predicted the winner of the Tournament to be Kentucky and it was! 

Wow, what luck I had this year. I filled out the bracket without reading up beforehand on any of the teams and during the downtime I had while the car's tires were being changed, so there was no strategy or basis with my team picks. Initially, Eric joked with me of looking at his bracket and cheating since he was the first one to complete his, but we now know the truth based on the outcome.

I am looking forward to the celebration dinner at a Greek Restaurant. 

Purple Milk

Sunday afternoon, Adeline helped get the drinks for lunch. She opened the milk container and became very suspicious when purple milk started pouring out. Eric and I kept her guessing and sidetracking her on her assumptions about the colored milk as she reluctantly filled Emmie's and her glass. At the table, Emmie was super excited about the milk, while Adeline would not even take a sip. Emmie tried to cheer her sister up by explaining how the purple milk came from a purple cow just like chocolate milk comes from a chocolate cow. I finally told her April Fool's. Adeline perked up and claimed she knew it was me all along who changed the milk color.

...wie es früher einmal war...

...wie es früher einmal war... (as it once was) is the week long project theme for Emmie and the other children who will be attending school next year. Each day the children will do an activity related to this topic and take trips to learn more about it. The teachers created an old city map and displayed numerous old  pictures of the lifestyle as it used to be.

On Monday, the children learned about the layout of a walled city. They then created their house to be placed on the map. They discussed the types of clothing and houses people lived in over 100 years ago. Emmie informed me the dresses the girls wore then are not as pretty as the dresses today.

On Tuesday, the children walked downtown Hofheim. Emmie was excited to share with us that the police used to work where the current bakery is at and that she can show us where a 100 year old house is in our town. She also found it fun to pass by fellow classmates as each group took a different way.

Wednesday the children did a craft. Emmie chose to make a little bag from leather and string. When she showed me her craft, she explained what people used it for.

Thursday, the children went on a fieldtrip to Hessenpark. They took a bus to the open air museum. They rode a train and walked through buildings replicating life from over 300 years ago. In addition, they saw a play and had a picnic. Even though it was a cold and windy day, Emmie had a great time and was super excited to share with everything she had seen and done at this interactive museum.

On the last day, the children took another walk to downtown Hofheim to explore more historic areas of the city.