Make hay, not war.

So this is gonna be a long post about berries and trailer parks and gay pride-parades and christmas cookies in July. It also contains a lot of pictures, because I gave up on hoping to write a structured post - there were so many fun things last week, they are sufficient for several, long posts, but I won´t make that, so - here´s just all of it.
Last Sunday, we visited Janne, our spring-longterm Couchsurfer, in her van.

Remember? She stayed with us for a month, when it was cold and her van was broken, but now it´s warm, and she moved into a very alternative, very hippie-like trailer park. We made waffles in the sunshine, and Mehmet used her neighbours tree-swing.

It was my 33rd birthday the next day, and I felt like a five year old. Really, you know, when you´re a mom, or an adult, birthdays might loose their excitement-factor? But this one was faboulus! All my friends came and brought me presents, and we sat in the sun, and the kids made a mess and I totally enjoyed myself.

I got love letters and homemade strawberryjam and lighters and indian rice-fleas,

 and theatre tickets and a juice-maker, oh, I made so much juice this week :) I´ll post about it!
I have a firend who has berries. Loads and loads and loads. We got sunburned yesterday, spending hours picking them, and they looked so lovely:

Very fourth-of-July, don´t you think? They are all currants, red, white and blue, and now they are all frozen or juice of jam or syrup.
Meanwhile, our sons cooled their feet in the well.

And later we all had barbecue together, which was sweet, too.

By the way, there are thousands - and I´m not exaggerating - fireflies around here, and every time we go to our Wupper, they dance in the forest and it looks like fairies.  I tried taking pictures of them, but I´m not skilled enough and they don´t glow enough. But.. on those walks, we pass some fields, and our neighbouring farmer just made hay, so...

 ....our kids build huts from the hay, and burry themselves in there, and burry Tim in there. And it smells terrific, too.  And the farmer allows them to help feeding the cows, and when they come nack, Ronja always brings me camomile or some other herbs she finds to make tea.

And the Christmas cookies, well...
 I wanted to cheer Eva up, who was angry with the world (aren´t we all from time to time...), and I know she loves making cookies. Also, I thought our Elisa, who´s staying with us, would like to have the experience of authentic german christmas cookies. And then, the kids just came:

Oh, and the gay pride! See, Cologne has the second biggest Christopher Street parade in Germany, and it was blazing hot and we loved to join people dancing on the street.

Also, we liked to check out marvelous costumes.

When it comes to celebrating and carnival, our region is just up front, and, oh, it was so much fun. I also liked the little booklet with hot gay calender boys some nice guy put into my decolltée, and I´m thankful I´m living in a country where it´s not just legal, but totally normal to have all kinds of people loving each other for all kinds of reasons.
I think my favourite picture of the parade though is this one:

Tim and Eva checking out my gay sailor calender. I love love love the smiles on their faces :)
Yeah, and I´ve got matching music!

More structure and not-diary-style content is coming, peomised ;)