FHE wall.

My friend gave me the idea to use phrases from our children’s favorite primary songs to decorate the home.  I quickly decided to use a phrase from Katie’s favorite song, “We’ll bring the World His Truth” as the ‘title’ of a new family home evening spot on our dining room wall.  October’s theme for Family Home Evening was Book of Mormon Stories so each time we talked about one of the stories we added the picture up on our wall. 

Early in the month each of the kids picked which story they wanted to help present.  Luke’s was first.  He picked Enos.  He helped tell the story and then demonstrated how to fold our arms, bow our head, and close our eyes for a prayer.  Everyday at lunchtime I asked Luke a question about a picture.  If it was a question about Enos… he knew it.  If it was a question about another story, he said, “No, do Enos.  That’s mine.”    The kid  knows Enos.

Even Matthew points in the direction of ALL of the pictures when I ask ‘where’s Nephi?’  It has been fun to add pictures weekly and talk about the stories together over meal times.  Each month we’ll rearrange, and add things to our FHE wall.  As an added bonus we seem to want to sing Katie’s favorite primary song each time we pass it.    I love it already.

Halloween in Germany

 

This Halloween I gave myself the year off.  I told the kids they could pick something that we already had in the costume bins and wear whatever they wanted.  I thought they would be excited but instead they whined about no new matching costumes.  {What do I expect… I created them.}  Truth is, I really just wanted my last little boy to be a cowboy for his first ‘walking’ Halloween… just like Ryan was at the same age.  OK, AND I wanted a year off. 

Matthew loved being all dressed up.   He could tell he was something special.  All the kids made such a fuss over him and he just couldn’t help smiling.  He loved wearing his hat and kept it on the whole night.

I got the doctor costume out for Luke to wear but he was sure he wanted to be a pirate.  And he was adorable.  He called himself the ‘happy pirate’ although his picture could state otherwise.

Megan was a pirate princess again.  Emily was absolutely positive she wanted to be a cowgirl for Halloween.  For the last two months she’s been wearing this outfit around the house to play.  Katie couldn’t decide decide between a pirate and a cowgirl and when she left the decision right up until the last minute, it was even harder.  ‘Do I want to be buddies with cute sheriff Matthew or happy pirate Luke?’  Ok, cowgirl.

 

Ryan wore his pirate costume again and was already at the Ward Carnival helping to set up while we were having picture time.  The ward put on a fantastic Halloween carnival at the church on Tuesday night, Oct 26th.  We played games, won a cake from the cake walk, ate donuts from a string, went into the young men spook alley, iced sugar cookies and got lots of candy at the trunk or treat.

Because Halloween was on Sunday night this year we figured our Halloween fun was over, but then heard rumors of trick or treating on base on Saturday night. The kids excitedly donned their costumes again (this time Megan chose to be a witch with black and white stripped tights) and drove to PHV (Patrick Henry Village – the main post).  We parked near the Colonel housing along with everyone else on base.  The Colonel housing is actual houses instead of the stairwell apartments covering the rest of the base.  The streets were wide with lots of colorful fall trees and more trick or treaters than I’ve ever seen in one place in my life.  It felt like we were on the set of a movie and was really fun to be a part of.  The residents of the Colonel housing had chairs and tables set up outside, some had fire pits, most had elaborate Halloween decorations, and one was projecting Gremlins on the side of his house.  It was really fun. 

On Sunday night, Chris, Ryan, Katie and I were playing Settlers when the doorbell rang the first time.  We were surprised to see a group of German kids in costume at the door.  “TRICKORTREAT!” they said together with an accent.   A few minutes later the doorbell rang again.  We probably got 10 groups of German trick or treaters throughout the night.  Emily, Megan and Luke manned the door while we played in the dining room.  The German kids loved when Luke handed out handfuls of candy and said, ‘DANKE!!!’ while their mom’s behind them reminded them to say ‘THANKYOU’.  Luke really never clued in that he was GIVING HIS OWN CANDY AWAY.  It worked out perfect though, we had pretty much eaten all the really great candy by that time anyway.  So even though Halloween is NOT a German holiday, there are quite a few who have adopted it as their own.  Why not?… I mean, if there are Americans living in your German neighborhood who have bowls full of candy to give away at the sound of one English word… it’s worth a try.

Owl cupcakes.

We had a family over for dinner and made these cupcakes for dessert.  I love fun fall treats!

The season is over.

Happy day, I can finally move this pile of dirty soccer cleats from my entryway… at least for a couple of months.

We had a remarkable soccer season this year.  Ryan and Katie were both able to play in the 10-12 division of CYS soccer on base and were consequently picked for the same team after the coach’s draft meeting.    Their coach was amazing and the whole team loved him… especially my kids.  Yes, it was Chris.   Chris is a natural born Coach.  He LOVES soccer, he LOVES coaching, and he LOVES that his kids are just as excited about this sport as he is.   This is the first season in a LONG time that Chris has actually been the head coach – but Chris’ schedule here allows him the flexibility and time for practices and Saturday games.  He was in heaven.  They practiced every Monday and Wednesday from 5:00 – 6:00 with quite a few 4:30 starts whenever Chris could manage it.  Stretches with cadences, ‘suicides’, and all kinds of drills that had the players asking if they could do them over and over.  At the end of their UNDEFEATED season the players and parents gave Chris a ‘team ball’ with all their signatures and lots of praise.  He did a fabulous job.  Here are his thoughts on his favorite players…

“As Ryan’s coach, I loved finally having him play in a league that plays the full field with complete rules.  With the normal 11 players per side, I was able to institute a 4-4-2 formation (4 defenders, 4 midfielders, and 2 strikers).  Although Ryan has usually played offense in previous seasons, I decided he would be the perfect player to field the Stopper position.  This is the middle/forward defender.  He played the role very well.  I had him push up quite a bit on offense and he was usually there to turn back the other teams offense before they were really able to get anything going.  But I could also trust him to hustle back and support the other defenders whenever he needed to.  The way we played it pretty much kept the ball on the other teams side of the field all game, and resulted in a lot of blowouts.  Because of his position, he didn’t score as many goals as he wanted to, but he was a big key to our success. This was Katie’s first season of actual soccer.  She is so small and petite and still working on her coordination and kicking, but what she did bring to the team was speed and determination.  I think other teams would describe her as annoying, because the bigger and more skilled players thought they could get past her, but she was surprisingly stout on defense and if she did get beat, she could recover fast enough to annoy them again.  She played left defender most of the time, but loved it when I would put her in at midfield.  She did great for her first season and had a great time.”

Emily’s first season, which I posted about previously, ended the same day and all three have new trophies on their shelves. Our Mondays and Wednesdays shall be wonderfully empty now… well, actually, not at all empty… family home evening, homework, piano practicing, a sit down dinner at a reasonable hour, reading time and a sensible bedtime.  Sounds fabulous.

Pumpkin Festival in Ludwigsburg

The 23rd of October we used our free Saturday afternoon to head down and explore the Pumpkin Festival in Ludwigsburg’s Palace Children Gardens.  The drive was exactly one hour.  We parked and walked across the street, through the massive palace gates and found the pathway to the Festival. 

On the way we found leaf covered hills perfect to play on.  Chris videoed the kids running down and falling into a heap at the bottom, and then getting up to do it again. They wanted to roll and yell “As you wish” …but it really was much too steep.

{Chris wasn’t feeling good this day which is why he is totally bundled up and no one else is… This time HE was the one saying, “Kids, are you sure you are warm enough… it’s freezing!”  That’s usually my job, but on this 55 degree afternoon we were all just fine—and he was sick.}

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The Ludwigsburg Palace… I hear there is a fun tour inside but we’ll have to do it without the kids someday.

First place winner: biggest pumpkin in Europe.  From GERMANY!  We’re so proud.

I guess people take the Ludwigsburg pumpkin festival seriously because there were TONS of entries from all over the WORLD here to be judged.  Each pumpkin or gourd had a name and then what city and country it was from!

This was the runner up and 4th largest pumpkin in Europe.

There was a large area of hay for the kids to run around in.  They threw hay at each other so it got all over their clothes and hair.  Katie stuck it in her arms and boots to pretend she was a scarecrow.  We also went on a small boat ride, played in the playground, fed leaves to the little goats, and went into some strange little houses with pretend German people talking.  The kids said we didn’t do anything long enough.   We did NOT try any of the pumpkin soup, or pumpkin spaghetti, or tons of other pumpkin food they had.  {Trying to save our Euros…}  but maybe next time!

 

This year’s festival theme was ‘Under the Sea’.  Gourds and pumpkins of all sizes arranged into ‘works of pumpkin art’.  It was so fun to wander around and see everything.

Field Trip to the Pumpkin Farm

Our October weather has been pretty nice all month… generally in the mid 50’s… but for a couple days it dipped down to 40 degrees and it just so happened that Megan’s kindergarten field trip was during this cold spell.   Katie’s 5th grade class is ‘buddy class’ to Megan’s Kindergarten class.  Once a week they come work with their Kindergarten partners on different projects.  Today they escorted their kindergarten buddies to the Farm and Katie and Megan were thrilled to be going on the same field trip together.

Luke, Matthew and I bundled up and met Megan’s class to walk out of the base and down the road into the nearby German farm.  The farm owner spoke only German but Katie’s teacher translated everything she said.  This farm grew every kind of vegetable that is grown in Germany.  She help up each vegetable and said the German name while the kids shouted it’s name in English… if they knew it.   At the end we chose our pumpkins and then walked back to base.  A fun morning.

Megan and her friend Naomi, one of her church friends that is in her Kindergarten class.