Entertained kids (and moms) during fall break.

I love fall breaks. I love all breaks from school, have I mentioned that yet? No matter how much I also love our school, and working there, there´s nothing that beats sleeping long and then having full, complete days to do whatever we wish, all of us together, or at least me and the kids.

So, for this year´s fall break, I made a little jar with paper snippets - actually it´s not even a jar, just a stylish paper cup - and each snippet features an activity we could do together. Every morning the twins pull a snippet and see what they get. It´s like a morning-lottery, when they come to cuddle.

Ideas we had so far:

• Making cookies
• Visiting the indoor playground
• Collecting chestnuts
• Eating fondue in candlelight (We didn´t make the chocolate version, but the one with meats and veggies cooked in broth)
• Making a shield
• Visiting a real castle
• Ordering chinese Take-out food and eating it with chopsticks
• Going to the outdoor store, checking tents and the ice-chamber.

In the right corner, that´s the shield we made. The castle? That´s in our former hometown. The Sparrenburg in Bielefeld. And I´ve got the tower tattoed on my back, just in case you wanted to know. I´m sure you did :)

We also did a guided tour through the catacombs, looked at real canons, real armour and climbed all up the tower and all the way down into the dungeons. And they currently have an archeological site:

I found that pretty interesting. I mean, I knew most of it allready, since I´ve taken that guided tour countless times, but still. And Mehmet and Miro were very eager, at least for the first 20 minutes. The asked many questions, some of them even made sense. No, really. Mostly, they were quite cute.

That indoor playground? That was a real sacrifice. I hate indoor playgrounds, for they are loud and boring. But my kids don´t think so, and, well, I managed o read bout 150 pages of "The Gargoyle", which is one of my all-time favourite books. So I guess it was a good deal.

The pic down in the middle shows a blow-up tent which we found in the Globetrotterstore - there´s a a gigantic store in Cologne for Outdoorstuff, and we went window shopping there. If you´ve read this blog for a while, you might have read about it - they also have a jelly fish tank and a pool to test boats and a room in which you can switch on rain, as to test your raincoats. The pic with the iceblocks shows Eva and Ronja in the frost chamber, which is also cool - it features an infra-red cam, and you can see your red body on the cold blue background on a screen.

Oh, and R2-D2, we found while doing window-shopping in Cologne. And liked him.

I took far too little pictures, and far too little good pictures, so this post made of collages has to suffice - but you get the gist.

I liked the picture of Eva, playing the guitar, in our friends´ warm and cozy little flat, where we warmed up after a long day out:

 I think I particulary liked it because I liked the whole day - first freezing, and then coming "home" eating hot spagetti, sitting on folding chairs or on the sofa or just on the floor, and the kids played and painted with watercolors, and we sang and talked until it was long dark. Very sweet.

And I like the picture of Ronnie sitting in a tree, because again, it´s just so Ronja:

 For this week, I´m planning two chocolate days: One day making chololate, one day visiting the chocolate museum in Cologne. But tomorrow, Miro´s getting glasses, and I´m going to a concert.
Well... I´ll show you :)

Music:

Sometimes I miss summer. Sometimes I miss my particular brand of Summer.
Sometimes I miss long, long days, sometimes I miss dancing barefoot on a muddy field in Devon, sometimes I miss the rocky shore and the warm sun on a Cornish beach. Then I need to listen to Seth Lakeman.