We enjoyed a family day last weekend in Cochem. Cochem is a quaint little village along the Mosel river about an hour from our house in Bonn. The town reminds me of Gepetto's village with Sleeping Beauty's castle up on the hill. We enjoyed a ride on the Sesselbahn (chairlift) up to the top of the mountain to get a view of the town and river. It was great!
It was quite windy at the base of the sesselbahn. We were a little worried about not having our jackets but as you can see, Aaron's didn't mind the wind at all.
Mike and Connor enjoying their ride up the mountain. Below is a view from the top. You can barely see the castle because it is camouflaged with the hillside. It's just above the vineyards on the hillside.
The idea was to take the sesselbahn and walk over to the Maerchenwald. Many little towns have these fairytale parks with kiddie rides. To our disappointment, they had closed the Maerchenwald so we had to quickly make alternative plans. Fortunately, we found out about a play park close by. Check out the post on "How to be a kid again!"
It has been 24 years since the fateful incident. My first Pinewood derby race. I was 10 years old and had build a super-fast racer, that won (by a mile) its first race down the track. But as it was back in those days, security around the holding table was not that great, and a small child (a Russian communist spy for sure) knocked my car off the table, breaking the back right wheel...it was over, and since then I have been handed one setback after another, never coming close to the glorious winners circle.
Fast forward to 2007. In Germany, home of Michael Schumacher, I had a chance to show...er...uh, Aaron had a chance to shine forth the racing genes he inherited from me.
Over a month and a half, Aaron and I designed, cut, sanded and painted the car to perfection. I was pretty proud that Aaron helped out as much as he could at 7 years old. He pushed the electric drill to polish the nail-axles, he helped with the spray-painting, and helped to set the wheels. We did have a few cracks/splits in the wood, but nothing a little wood glue couldn't fix. We had a test run on Friday, and I was not too impressed with the speed...but we added weight, reset the wheels (after another split in the wood) and by race-time on Saturday, we were ready to go. A quick squirt of graphite, a McGyver-like tape-job of the front axle (with scotch tape instead of duct tape), and a champion was born.
Aaron got a little upset as he wanted to race EVERY race, but after a little coaxing, he understood, and waited his turn.
The first race for Aaron was a photo-finish tie between three cars...we actually had a dad taking photos of the finish...and you could not tell who won. So they raced again, and Aaron won by a nose. After that he did not loose again in the qualifying rounds. He was the "regular season" champion, and he was excited. He then raced against the top 6 racers, and came in 4th, but they were all close. He got a ribbon and everything.
To say the least we had a good time. After dominating the German circuit this year, we are ready to come back to the states and try our luck on US soil! By the way, "Aaron" Gibbs wants to challenge "Caleb" Hatch to a race some time...the media reports that "Caleb" is too scared!
Here is a video of one of his winning races!
And just to prove he is a good sport, check out Aaron's cub scout spirit after a third place finish in one of the championship race rounds!
Connor was king for the day last Friday. He celebrated his 4th birthday with his classmates in preschool. He specially requested chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles. He was so excited and it was fun to see him so easily pleased. He was such a gracious birthday boy and was so kind and polite with all his friends at school. I was so impressed. More pictures on the link to the right.
Yeah...a visit with aunt Hollie! We picked up Hollie from Duesseldorf the day after we got back from Hamburg. We just enjoyed a 10 day visit with her. It was so great! She flew out to help me get into the baby nesting phase while her husband Kirk took of time off work to do the stay-at-home mom thing. Thanks a million Kirk! What a guy! We had such a nice visit. We drove out to Maastricht, a little dutch town just over the border to visit one of our good friends we grew up with. It was so nice to see her and her sweet kids. Then we drove up to Amsterdam for the weekend while Mike stayed home with the boys. Thanks Mike! It was so nice to enjoy the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank house at a leisurely pace. The weather was sunny and warm and we couldn't have picked a nicer weekend to be in the Netherlands.
On Sunday we drove out to Lisse to enjoy the day at the Keukenhof Gardens. It really is the most beautiful spring garden in the world! The park is 32 hectacres and has several pavilions where they host flower shows. Of course, we couldn't walk the entire park but we enjoyed going to the wooden shoe shop, shopping in the souvenier shops and strolling through the amazing gardens. And everywhere you drive you see tulip fields even in towns miles away. It was so nice. After our visit to the gardens in Lisse, we decided to visit one of the nearby seaside towns. Because of the nice weather, it was extremely crowded so we opted for the driveby view. Check out our Amsterdam pictures.
Easter weekend was spent up in Hamburg this year! Mike heard about a Volleyball tournament hosted by the Hamburg Stake and just had to get involved. He joined on with a team from Mannheim, Germany and said that he's never had so much fun loosing. Teams come from all over Germany, the Netherlands, and even Switzerland. Anyone interested in participating in 2009? Mike's trying to recruit. While Mike was playing his heart out, the boys and I enjoyed a visit to the Tierpark Hagenback in Hamburg. It was a lot of fun. Our favorite exhibits were the Mandrills and Orangutans. There were lots of babies to watch and of course the boys are really fascinated with babies right now! The highlight of our zoo trip was when we went to the Elephant exhibit. All the elephants were near the perimeter of their enclosure and people would hold out all sorts of fruits and vegetables while the elephants would reach out with their trunks and grab the food. It was so cool. We picked up some of the fallen carrots and apple slices and Aaron enjoyed feeding the elephants. One of the elephants we were feeding would also take coins and hand them to the zookeeper standing beside him. It was neat. We also went to the Planetarium and watched a little musical called "Das Kleines Tag" (The Little Day). It was about a little star that wanted to be born on a special day and he ended up coming on quite an ordinary day but it was still special to him. The music was good and it was pretty much like watching a light show inside the planetarium. We also enjoyed a visit with some of our german friends that are from Hamburg. They took us on a drive downtown and we visited the Michaelskirche and went up the tower. It was quite windy but you get a really great view of the city from the top. Aaron caught a glimpse of the building that the Lion King is showing in and immediately made a request to go see it again! We enjoyed a nice Easter service at our friends home ward and then had a little egg hunt at the church. The boys were impressed that the Easter Bunny managed to find them even though we were staying in a hotel. You can check out more pictures from our trip on the link to the right under the heading pictures.
Mike was in New Jersey the week before Easter for his interviews at PwC's national office in Florham Park. And of course, the majority of his time was spent house hunting. He took lots of videos and uploaded them on www.youtube.com so that I could view the houses online while here in Germany. If you're interested in checking out Mike's videos, you can go to youtube.com and search under mgibbs003 and all Mike's videos will appear. The ones of our new house are below. We just recently uploaded some videos of our house for some people moving into our flat in July. I also added a link to the photos of our house from the MLS listing. You can check those out right on our blogspot. It was a bit stressful for me to decide but we ended up deciding on the house that will be in the best possible school district for Aaron and we will also be in a really good ward and neighborhood. We're really looking forward to it!
Chatham House (1 of 3)
Chatham House (2 of 3)
Chatham House (3 of 3) / This shows the outside
(Mike Adds) I looked at about 30 houses in 4 days...my eyes were glazed over at the end. Of course the one we chose ended up being the first one we looked at on day 2 of the search. I met several friends that I will be working with that are also in our ward, so we are really excited to move. We will of course miss Germany and all the freinds we have made over the last two years.
It was quite windy at the base of the sesselbahn. We were a little worried about not having our jackets but as you can see, Aaron's didn't mind the wind at all.
Mike and Connor enjoying their ride up the mountain. Below is a view from the top. You can barely see the castle because it is camouflaged with the hillside. It's just above the vineyards on the hillside.
