Liam's Scary Seventh Birthday

Liam went with a vampire/witch/ghost theme for his seventh birthday party last Saturday. I made a quick slideshow with the pictures and posted below.
Enjoy.

Liam and Rosalie at the Naturkunde Museum in Berlin

There appears to be a conversation going on in this photo.

Assembling a new Swing and Slide

Yesterday was a very busy day here, as Project New Swing and Slide moved from the planning phase to the Realisation phase. Fortunately Heike’s brother Hans-Günther was on hand with the appropriate power tools to get the job done.

There were one or two moments of incredulity as we realised that the instructions were not written in the traditional linear style. The essence of page 6 was that in order to get to page 7, you really need to re-do page 5.

Such problems notwithstanding, we did manage to get a functional swing for the kids before the barbecue started, and I added the slide today.

Below is a slideshow of the Saturday photos, and the finished product from today.

From 2010-08-08 - New Swing and Slide

Kindergarten Sommerfest

On Saturday Liam and Rosalie’s kindergarten celebrated their summer fest, this year with a medieval knights & damsels theme.

Fortunately there was some help from the freie kurpfälzischen Ritterschaft, a local group of medieval fans who kept the children enthralled with stories, games and bouts of jousting.

Some pictures below:

Felsenmeer

We visited the Felsenmeer (literally sea of rocks) near Darmstadt last Sunday. The boulder field gave the kids plenty of opportunity to climb around and have fun.

A few impressions are in the slideshow below:

Tired Children

We went for a walk today near Burg Frankenstein, and yes, it was Mary Shelley's inspiration. The effort was all a bit much for Liam and Rosalie though, for the last third of the walk they chose to get some sleep in the buggy.
It was a tight squeeze, but they didn't seem to mind!

Studio pictures of Kieran plus family

We made the effort last week to get some photos made professionally of Kieran, and the results are in my opinion worth it.

Judge for yourselves…

Imperial measures of Kieran

3720 grams = 8.20119615 pounds

53 centimeters = 20.8661417 inches

Sources:

• http://www.google.com/search?q=3720+grams+in+pounds
• http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=53+cm+in+inches

Liam and Rosalie visit Kieran

Liam and Rosalie dropped into the hospital together with Anne from across the road. They were happy to see their new baby brother, but not all that keen to share. I’m hoping they learn that before they pull him apart like a rag doll.

Selva Val Gardena

Liam, Rosalie and I joined up with my dad for a week of skiing in Selva Val Gardena (Dolomites) last week.

Heike was ordered by the doctor to stay home and rest, which was lucky for her as she would have gone mad on the drive there. Snow caused traffic chaos through Germany and Austria on that day, so that we were on the road a total 13.5 hours getting there!

Below are some pictures of the kids both in the apartment and on their sledges, and a video of Liam skiing.

 

Kids love snow (shock)!

The winter has finally delivered with a nice dump of snow, so the kids and I headed up the hills outside of Heidelberg for some sledging. Some pictures below…

From 2010-01-09 - Sledging at Lingental

From 2010-01-09 - Sledging at Lingental

From 2010-01-09 - Sledging at Lingental

Baking Xmas Cookies

Below Rosalie and Liam display their culinary skills as the family got together to bake the traditional Weihnachtsplätzchen.  Rosalie manned the Fleischwolf, while Liam was responsible for cutting off the extruded cookies at the precise length required.

From 2009-11-22 - Baking Xmas Cookies

The end results look and taste pretty good, below are the Spritzgebäck they created:

From 2009-11-22 - Baking Xmas Cookies

The kids get a new bunk bed

Liam and Rosalie were thrilled today when Dieter Schumacher of www.schumacher-kindermoebel.de/ arrived to assemble their new bed. With a fireman’s pole, climbing frame, crane, steering wheel and swing attached, it’s more than just a bed for sleeping in.

Images of Corsica

For the second year in a row we spent two weeks of September in Corsica. Last year we were in Tiuccia, this year about an hour further north near the town of Porto.

View Corsica in a larger map

The Marina Livia complex of bungalows provides simple but also charming accommodation just a couple of hundred metres from the beach at Bussaglia. This is a great location for our sort of “walk in the morning, beach in the afternoon” holiday.

One of our first walks was through the red granite of the Calanches. Just off the road and away from the tourist buses there’s a nice walk along the old mule path from Piana to Porto. The kids were happy to walk this, as long as the promised lollipops materialised.

From 2009-09-07 - Mule Path through the Calanches

From 2009-09-07 - Mule Path through the Calanches

From 2009-09-07 - Mule Path through the Calanches

Along the way people have built cairns as way markers. While some of these are mere piles of stones, some like the example below are veritable feats of balance and creativity.

From 2009-09-07 - Mule Path through the Calanches

The next day we drove north to the Fango Valley – a much flatter area than the mountainous area around Porto. Here the river gorge is famous for providing little pools to paddle or swim about in, which we promptly did.

From 2009-09-08 - Fango Valley

This was all very well for the humans, but Elsa and Tosca found the whole experience very exhausting, and just dozed off at the side of the river.

From 2009-09-08 - Fango Valley

The beach near our accommodation was pleasant despite being pebbly rather than sandy. One odd thing however was the establishment just up the road. We never figured out exactly what goes on there, but from the outside could be deduced that it is a business where camping and parking and dogs are forbidden. Not visible in the photo are the cows who grazed there, or the scrapped cars in the back. Answers on a postcard please.

From 2009-09-12 - Bussaglia Plage

The sea around Corsica is clean and warm, and the kids loved swimming there. Our guidebook complains about the fact that it gets deep relatively quickly, hence is not suitable for children. Our kids didn’t mind that – they found it all the more exciting that they could swim out to little islets in the bay.

From 2009-09-09 - Bussaglia Plage

From 2009-09-09 - Bussaglia Plage

The other good feature of Bussaglia beach are the sea cliffs which have been developed as Escalades. The kids and I spent a few afternoons climbing on these. Strangely these cliffs have been bolted, but all of the lower bolts have been removed. I’m not sure whether this was vandalism or well-intentioned removal of unsafe equipment, as the sea water makes the bolts rust fairly quickly.

From 2009-09-09 - Bussaglia Plage

Back in the Calanches we went for a walk which we had done last year, and photographed Rosalie in a cave she had been photographed in a year earlier. In case there's any doubt about her growth in the last 12 months, the right hand photo is from this year.

From 2009-09-11 - Chateau Fort

Another place we revisited was the Piscine Naturelle in the Forêt d'Aïtone. We were spared the hassle of last year when Liam managed to throw himself into the water, this year everyone stayed dry.

From 2009-09-12 - Piscine Naturelle

The water looks lovely from the picture but it comes from high up on the mountain and was much too cold for softies like us.

From 2009-09-12 - Piscine Naturelle

Back at sea level, and in water above the freezing point we decided to give snorkelling a go. For 5 Euros a head at the local supermarket, Liam and I were kitted out in snorkel and mask – we already had the flippers. What I hadn’t expected was the number of small fish which had clearly been swimming around our feet all week.

From 2009-09-12 - Bussaglia Plage

From 2009-09-12 - Bussaglia Plage

Because the weather was so pleasant for most of the time we often stayed at the beach until sunset. This had the advantage that we could watch a few spectacular sunsets, to which my photographic skills don’t really do justice.

From 2009-09-12 - Bussaglia Plage

The nearby town of Porto has a magnificent Genoese tower overlooking the bay, with a little museum inside. Liam was thrilled to hear that the tower had been the scene of some pirate activity, and was rather disappointed that there were no pirates in evidence as we visited.

From 2009-09-13 - Porto

The Porto beach also sports a bolted crag where Liam could try out his climbing skills again.

From 2009-09-13 - Porto

Having tried roped climbing a couple of times, both kids were insistent on dispensing with all safety equipment on the boulders along the beach. Because it was physically impossible for me to stand under both kids at all times with hands outstretched, I tried to ignore them and only pick them up after a fall. This earned me some stern looks from more safety-conscious French people, but I maintain that if I let them be silly a couple of metres off the ground, then they’ll learn not to be silly when they’re higher up. Time will tell.

From 2009-09-17 - Bussaglia Plage

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t great the whole time. During the second week we saw a couple of spectacular thunderstorms, and we even managed to use some of the warm clothes we had brought with us.

From 2009-09-18 - Marina Livia

From 2009-09-18 - Marina Livia

From 2009-09-18 - Marina Livia

All in all it was a fun holiday, and despite the long and tiresome journey, Corsica remains a destination we’ll go back to in the future.

From 2009-09-19 - Homeward bound

Volkacher Lebensart

Last weekend the Heidelberg Cassidys travelled to Franconia for the Volkacher Lebensart festival. 

The idea is simple, and explained in the leaflet linked here (for German speakers). Nine wineries open their doors for the weekend, put on a different band in each winery, serve matching food and their own wine. We spent most of the evening at Weingut Erhard, and I can heartily recommend their blend of Scheurebe wine, Cuban food (tasted more like creole) and Latin American band „Frutos Tropicales“. As a result we’ve order a Probierpaket of 6 bottles which arrived today. As I write I can state that the Riesling is good too.

Some pictures below:

Skiing in Selva Val Gardena

We spent last week skiing in the Dolomites, together with my parents. The weather was for the most part excellent, and the skiing fantastic.

From 2009-03 - Selva Val Gardena

This was the first time we’ve gone with self-catering accommodation for skiing, and we were very impressed with the Apartment Renata. The location could hardly be better, about 50 metres from the Costabella lift and not much further to the town centre. The apartment itself is brand new and very tastefully decorated. And as an optional extra, Frau Lanzinger will deliver fresh breadrolls from her bakery in the mornings. Highly recommended.

Liam went to ski school, and learned to snowplough, which was handy as his initial attempts didn’t include any braking manoeuvres.

From 2009-03 - Selva Val Gardena

The kids enjoyed their sledging in the afternoon as well, as the photo below illustrates.

From 2009-03 - Selva Val Gardena

On the down side I managed to pick up a concussion by unknown means on the last day, and spent three hours wandering about the slopes not knowing where I was until my father found me. This has resulted in me spending this week visiting a doctor per day, and undergoing the following tests: CT, X-Ray, EEG, ECG, MRT. After all this effort, the net effect seems to be that I’m ok.

Anne Müller’s 75th Birthday

On Friday evening we helped Anne celebrate her 75th birthday.

From 2009-02-20 - Anne Müller Geburtstag

The location of Restaurant Carlos in Leimen was well known to us, as we celebrated Rosalie’s christening there in December 2007.

The pictures below show that everyone had a good time.

  

Not content with still photographic evidence, Heike also took this video of us murdering a birthday song (not for the faint-hearted)…