He did have church and his religion education class so he wasn't too happy about that.
Then after lunch we went on a hike with another family to a forest trail about 30 min away. It was really neat and all the kids were having a blast. We walked for about an hour and then turned around and walked back for an hour.
Love this picture, Mr. Woodsman!
Look at all the holes in the rock!
Then all of us went to Pizza Hut for dinner. Then home to finish up the celebrations with cake! Perfect day for Sean's b'day!
After baths I was doing a tick check and I found one on Amber's back! Gross. I plucked it out and I don't think it had any blood yet. I guess here in this part of Europe ticks don't tend to carry Lyme disease. Ok good to know! I will keep an eye on that area.
Before bed Sean helped make the cupcakes to bring in for his class tomorrow. Tonight I frosted them as soccer balls!
Monday morning we brought in Sean's cupcakes to his class.
I went to the grocery store. I made some chocolate chip banana bread and froze it for later. We are going to Berlin this weekend with the long weekend and so I started researching what there is too see there, om gosh! There is so much I think it listed over 300 things to see, a lot of museums. I also started packing the kids.
After school Jacob went to a friend's house and Amber had a friend over. When I had to pick up Jacob I just dropped Amber's friend off. They live just down the street from each other, funny here b/c people live all over the area and even in different countries that go to the school.
Tuesday I went back to the pool with my friend. Two of our other friends were suppose to join us but one had a sick kid at home and the other wasn't feeling well. So it was a nice time and a good lunch there as well. It poured here on and off today. After school Sean had math and I told Jacob today he had to do tennis instead of track and it worked out ok, b/c there was a huge storm that came through after the track team got to the stadium so they cancelled it and came back. So he didn't miss anything. We had a lot of lightening and thunder which we normally don't get here. Then the boys did tennis. Tonight Amber and I baked blueberry muffins to take with us this weekend.
Wednesday after drop off I went over to my friend's house and we drove to France to the sporting goods store there to look for some things. We get there, about 25 min or so away and it is closed. So we try another store and it is closed-hmm. So we call the husbands and wouldn't ya know it today it is a holiday in France! So all stores were closed- seriously! Ugh! The highway was totally backed up going in the direction of home for some reason so we wound around the country side and back roads back to her house. I got my car and we went down to the city center and walked around and shopped for just a bit. It was crowded and a lot of traffic to get downtown. Then I headed back to school for Amber and her friend for pickup.
As I am walking in school to get Amber the nurse sees me and tells me she just picked a tick off Jacob's ear- ugh! I told her we went hiking on Sun. and I had pulled one off Amber. She said that this one was very small and doesn't think it could have been there since Sunday since it didn't really look like it had started eating yet. Gross. She couldn't get one of the legs of it out. So we are watching that and I tried tonight and couldn't get it out either. She said it will just fall out.
But if he didn't get it on Sunday then did we bring it home with us and he just got it? Or did he pick it up at school? The maid was here today and got everything vacuumed and cleaned and I got all the towels and sheets washed so hopefully no more! The nurse did say some kids have gotten them at school so maybe it was just a coincidence. Jacob did the right thing though. I had been talking to the kids about checking themselves especially Jacob with his big trip coming up and if you feel something go ask someone to look at it. So he asked a friend to look and he said it looked like a bug and then he went to the nurse. So he did a good job and seemed to feel it right away.
Amber had her "short day" as she likes to call it so I picked her up and 2 friends. We came home and had lunch, playdate and then back for ballet.
After ballet the boys had RE, Amber went home with a friend and the rest of us went to the chiropractor. Bad traffic to get there, then afterward we had to drive the other direction so 40 min. or so later we got to pick up Amber. My friend gave us some good taco soup to try so everyone enjoyed that for dinner!
I finally signed Jacob up for an email account. So he was happy about that!
Thursday was a European holiday so no school and then the kids have tomorrow off too so I planned a trip to Berlin, Germany. We left around 8:15 and got there around 3:30, We stayed in a place that rents apartments out and it is right around the corner from the famous Checkpoint Charlie. The apartment is ok. It doesn't look very nice on the outside but the inside has been remodeled and was clean and spacious. It has a weird layout in that when you walk in the apt., ours was on the 3rd floor, that is the level with the kitchen, dining area and family room. Then you have to walk downstairs to get to the 2 bedrooms and bathroom. Kind of weird.
After we dropped off our stuff we walked over and saw the Checkpoint Charlie and the museum that went with it.
I was here in the 90's on a high school trip and I remembered this one car in the museum. So this is the spot where people could cross from East to West Berlin when the wall was up, but only if they were from the West side or other countries. The Eastern Berliners were not allowed to leave. After WWII the East side of Berlin was ruled by the Soviets. The wall went up in 1961. So the museum talked all about people trying to escape. Many people were shot and killed trying to escape. If a wall guard shot someone who was trying to escape he got extra vacation days, lovely! So it was very interesting. The museum showed people trying to hide in fake floors of the car, in hollowed out surf boards on the roof rack, and one guy make the front seat with his girlfriend under the leather of the passenger seat! Crazy! 2 families did a hot air balloon. Once they got to the West side which was owned by the allies, America, France and UK the East side couldn't come take those people back. Some people dug tunnels from the cellars of houses that were close to the wall and escaped that way. After this we took a cab to a good restaurant that we have never tried- ha!
Hard Rock Cafe!
It was a nice 2 story restaurant and we enjoyed our dinner and then just back to the apt.
Friday we just ate breakfast in the apartment. Thank goodness I had brought our food from home b/c since yesterday was a holiday there was no food stores open to buy groceries. We left the apt. around 9:30 and we didn't return until 8pm, lots to see! We started out by walking about 1.5 miles to a museum I wanted to see. Here are some buildings we saw along the way.
This is the TV tower and you can go up it too.
The Berlin Dome.
We had to wait a bit to get into the museum. These museums are surrounded by a river so it is called Museum Island. We saw the Pergamon Museum. It is famous for its reconstruction of fragments from ancient towns and the Pergamon alter. This is inside the museum. The alter.
The big gate structure is from 120AD and is over 52 ft. high. It was the gate to a market.
Other neat things in the museum.
This blue color was beautiful.
After the museum we walked down Unter den Linden. This is one of the famous streets in Berlin. Here there are old buildings that have been restored. Very pretty.
One of the buildings was a memorial dedicated to those that died in the war and other victims. It was just a big empty room with this statue in it. It is a mother holding her child.
We got about half way down the street and then stopped at a German restaurant and ate outside. The street is under construction so now not much of a view, but I am sure it is nice when the construction is not there. We all ate some good soup and then split some dishes. I am able to get a bit of the German menus only b/c all the groceries here are normally in German if I need to know how to cook something I normally have to google it and my grocery trips to Germany I have picked up some words as well. There was an ice cream shop next to the restaurant so we stopped there for some ice cream and continued walking down the street. At the end of the street is the famous Brandenburg Gate.
Some characters there... Star wars characters were there too.
On top of the gate is a 20 ft. high sculpture of the Roman Quadriga driven by Victoria the goddess of victory. The gate was built in the late 1700's. The Berlin wall used to be right up in front of this. Here is where Ronald Reagan gave his famous speech in 1987 that ended with, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
Once we saw the gate we got on this crazy bike and did a little 30 min. tour on our way to the Legoland Discovery Center.
Our tour guide.
We have seen these bikes before in other cities but normally it is a rectangle with a bar in the middle and people just drink as they are pedaling. This one was round. So we all just hung on and pedalled, except Amber who couldn't reach the pedals. This is about the only way I would bike in a city since I knew I couldn't fall over or hit something or have a car hit me and he did all the steering and stopping! We were all over town and in the road and taking big turns around corners! It was fun! It didn't take long before my legs were burning trying and get the bike going after stopping!
As we pedalled by people would laugh or take our picture, too funny! I was taking pictures of things, trying to still pedal and not fall off!.
This is the Holocaust memorial.
The picture below is where Hitler's Bunker used to be. It was a building here that was their headquarters for something and then the 2 floors underground was his bunker which was a house with a cook and maid, etc. Here he went into his bunker and spent the last 100 days hiding in there as the opposition grew closer into Berlin. Hitler married his long time girlfriend and then the next day they committed suicide. It is scary to think how someone so bad could get so much power and do so many wrong things. So the building got destroyed but at first they left the bunker, but then it was attracting the wrong type of people so they took it all out and now it is a parking lot.
The famous East Berlin cars.
Part of the wall.
This was the headquaters to something....
Here is a tour in these little cars!
And we finally arrived at Legoland!
When you first enter they had alot of famous Berlin buildings all made by legos! The kids loved it.
Love the second picture of the boys!
All ready for the 3-D movie!
The area where legoland was was in Potsdamer Platz. This area is all new and used to be all empty space close to the wall. It is now a nice area.
Wall exhibit.
We walked around for a bit and they also had a flea market set up so we walked around that as well. We picked up some dunkin donuts for breakfast too!
Then we took a cab to an Argentina Steakhouse we had driven by the other night. It was a bit different then we thought it would be, but it was still good. Then we took a cab home. Busy day!!
Saturday we enjoyed our donuts and then once we were all ready we walked over
to the Topograph of Terror. Also here was a stretch of the wall that you could visit and this spot used to have a house on it that the Natzi's took over and it become one of their headquarters. So then you walk below ground, but now all opened up, like where the basement would have been in the house they tore down and it was the cellar that was used as a prison and a torture area. It was just the outer walls on one side that you could see and then they had an exhibit along there. The exhibit was about Hitler's rise to power.
Then back on the ground level inside the exhibit building is what happened once he took over. It was alot of pretty bad pictures of what he did to people, from humilating them, to hangings or shootings. This was actually more grapfic/grossume then the exhibits at the consentration camp. Pretty bad everything he did.
From here we just walked over to McDonalds for lunch.
Throughout the city after they tore down the wall they left bricks in place to show people where it was. So the kids have a foot on each side of the wall.
Jason was determined to figure out the metro system here. We had tried twice since we were here already but no such luck. One time we couldn't find a map to figure out which direction the trains were going. It is also all automated so there was no one around to ask. You just buy your tickets at a little machine and that is it. So this time he figured it out and we went to see the Berlin Memorial of the wall. It is a big open area with alot of the wall standing and then the green space behind it was the dead zone where it was a gap between the next wall or whatever was on the other side. So it just had some explainations of things here.
From here we took the metro back to the apartment to relax for a bit. But not first without going the wrong way on the metro! For dinner we wanted Mexican since we had seen some advertised. We can't get that in Lux. So Jason found one online that got alot of stars from trip adviser. I said I wouldn't be surprised if it was a dive. And I was right! It was a very young people's street. All the restaurants had a few tables on the sidewalk. Tons of people smoking. We got a picnic table inside right in front of a big picture window that was open and right in front of us people smoking- yuck!
Inside this place were maybe 7 tables and a bar. The food was good though. We had tacos, burritos and quesadillas. After dinner we walked down the street a bit to look for a cab to get back to the apt. The kids got an ice cream and we got a cab back. What is nice about our apt. is that since we are just around the corner from Checkpoint Charlie and all the cabbies know that location that is just what we tell them when we get in the cab. It is perfect and then we just walk around the corner.
So overall Berlin is not a pretty town, but it has a lot to offer and a ton of history here. Everyplace we went most people spoke some English and a lot of the menus where in English and German. So we had no problems getting around.
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