Today Ana is taking off a little time with Ivan they are not scheduled to be back before the kids go to bed. So tonight it is just our three little ones on the night watch. Blaki did not want to miss out on the nightwatch so we were all cramming on one chair searching for our preferred animal pictures. Tonight we had no fixed topic we just invented them while we were at it. Markus wanted to look at snails, Gisele thought of cute cat babies and Papi searched for a butterfly fish, and Blake’s picture just popped up while we were browsing the pages of the zoo in Cologne.
Whether it really is an underwater snail or rather just something completely differenet we do not know but Markus liked it.
If that is not the cutest little baby cat ….
Reminded me of Nemo the fish that gets caught and his father looking for him.
We ran accross this one accidentally, when we surfed to the pages of the zoo on Colgne.
Markus was desperate not the sleep alone in his room so I let him sleep with Gisele. She was happy to do so. Recently the two are making a pretty good team. They like to play batman pretend with each other and run through the house hand in hand going through daring adventures, I am guessing 🙂 .
Today we wanted to check out amphibians, they are really cool animals. They start their life in the water and later after a metamorphosis acquire characteristics of an air breathing animal. They are like reptiles, cold blooded animals. Ivan did not really think amphibians to be very cool he suggested he would choose a reptile instead. Reptiles are air breathing animals which have their body covered in scales. They lay eggs to procreate. Here are our top choices of tonight.
Markus really liked the developing frog, in German ‘die Kaulquappe’.
Gisele loves the little baby frog.
Ivan decided he likes killer croc. A WII lego batman character.
Papi thought this little cameleon looked pretty special.
Excellent choices. Even though we had a great active day in the garden the kids are still not yet really tired and I let them watch a movie before going to bed. I am wondering how long it will take until everything is dead silence because they surrendered to sweet dreams. The bath must soon take its toll on them. Good night everybody!
Tonight we decided that each of us was going to choose a picture of his or her favorite cartoon character. That was pretty hard because we know a lot of really cool cartoon characters. Finally after a longer finding process here is our choice and each explains what he or she likes about the character.
Ultimate Humangosaur is Ivan’s favorite because he can transform his hands into anything and is just plain awesome.
Markus loves Sponge Bob because he is soooo funny and Sponge Bob always throws rocks at himself, but it does not hurt.
Gisele is a Dora-the-Explorer fan because she is so cute and helps everybody, and she has such a nice friend (boots).
And now it is time to go to bed, because the nightwatch with Papi is over. Good night, and sleep well!
Tonight at Dinner we decided it was really fun to watch animals on the computer. So everybody got to choose two favorite animals. Here comes our special gallery.
Gisele 1 — A beautiful dolphin jumping.
Gisele 2 — Ein Nachtpfauenauge, in a somewhat special color.
Markus 1 — A very cute little baby vampire bat… they suck blood.
Markus 2 — Dogs can fly: a flying dog.
Ivan 1 — An egyptian scoprion.
Ivan 2 — A ‘cute’ striped turtle.
Papi 1 — A longhaired Yak from Tibet.
Papi 2 — Germany’s biggest bug.
Recently Ivan starts to use the word cute suspiciously often 🙂 what does that mean? And now we have to have mommy watch and approve and then…. it is time to go to bed. Mommy liked it though Blake was making quite a fuzz while we were occupied. Maybe he needs to choose his own animal pictures?
Sometimes I am wondering how many orthographic mistakes I can put in such a small piece of text. It seems many.
Today we went with the kids along the minuteman bike path starting from Mill Street. We unpacked the scooters and Blaki’s stroller and off we went along the bike path direction Lexington. It was a perfect spring day with wonderful sunshine but still a little brisk. The kids were glad to be outside, at least that is what it looked like and Ana an I hoped for, and we strolled along the really nice path. Unfortunately there are actually quite some cyclist on the path — no surprise of course — and we had to watch the kids so they would not get in the way to much. Marki tried his new scooter (he has it already since we left Geneva, but rarely used it) and as it is a little more difficult to steer we had some falling but Marki mostly took it his usual way ‘I’m okay!’.
Gisele is by now quite good at using her scooter and she kept up pretty well with our two rowdy boys. Blake meanwhile just took in the fresh air and enjoyed the stroller ride commenting at times in his peculiar way. He demanded food and at times pointed out the good stuff on the path. I was calmly working on my large ice-coffee black which we had picked up at Dunkin Donuts right around the corner. I lite my cigar and Ana and I slowly followed or trailed the kids.
After some time they got bored of the scooters and we started to play racing. Ivan would mostly win, and Markus was the coach, so he would not loose :-). Gisele just played for the interactions and was happy, most of the time. After about 30-45 minutes we arrived at the playground which we figured must be part of Arlington Heights playground.
After our long walk we thought it was a good idea to pick up the two drawers from my ‘new’ office table which I had recovered from the office from one of our retiring researchers. A very nice old simple but solid wood desk. The material is in pretty decent condition but the varnish is all dirty broken up and scratched. Anyway we got the two drawers and on our way back I figured, if I restore the desk I should start with the drawers. So we stopped by ACE hardware and got some stripper and polyurethane and some sand paper.
After we unloaded the car I got started on the drawers while Ana made a classical wok and the kids played with our neighbors kids in the garden. When it was lunch time (a typical Spanish one at 4pm) I had just finished to strip both drawer and sand the first one. The result was rather promising. After an excellent lunch (many mmmmmms!) I sanded the second drawer and carefully put the first layer of polyurethane on. The result I though was really wonderful. The table has a rather dark color but looks so much better in its natural wood color. I really hope I can do the same with the desk.
After this is took a beer and lit a fire in the back to burn off some of the smaller and bigger branches which had fallen off the trees. A very ‘zen’ activity which I shared with Blake. Blake seems to enjoy to spent some quality time with his papi, and I do enjoy my time with him.
Marki on his way to gain some distance to us.
We are getting closer to our little man.
I’m okay!
I’m still okay…. but it hurt a little.
Ana with her cool Ray-Ban knock offs…. she of course claims the are genuine.
Blaki with pete.
Beautiful cherry trees at MIT in full blossom.
Beautiful cherry trees at MIT in full blossom with the dome in the back.
View from above of the freshly restored drawers. They are still drying.
And this is just a corner of the table… still to be restored. And yes, this is my Whiskey glass, my glass with excellent green tea and my fat cigar, in case you were wondering.
Today we celebrated Ana’s birthday…. an important one but I will stick to the etiquette and only mention that it was over 28. We got up pretty early and got the kids ready. Our cleaning crew came in early and we took off to have a relaxing breakfast at the ‘newly’ discovered bakery. It is not necessarily the best one we know, but the area with the tables is really comfortable. From there we took off and drove all the way down to Newport. We just followed our usual interstate 95 and it lead us to Rhode Island. With little problems we went on to interstate 195 and crossed over Mount-Hope bridge. The bridge with quite some mist looked spectacular which Markus commented with ‘Mommy it is dusty today’.
Mount Hope bridge in Rhode Island on a 'dusty' day.
We stopped at Easton beach and walked along the beach at a temperature of about 12 C and little wind. The swell was good and we even had the pleasure to watch two surfers doing there tricks on the waves. The water was of course pretty cold which did not stop Gisele, Markus and Ivan to ask for their swim suits. After some explanation they gave in and we had a good walk along the beach collecting beautiful stones and quite large and nice shells, which reminds me that I still have to take them out of the back of the car before they develop too much of an odor.
Ivan with his infamous double shells at Easton beach (Middletown, Newport, RI)
We also visited the playground, where Ivan took care of Blake as a perfect version of the older brother. They took all the slides and Blaki enjoyed himself and did not cry once. Meanwhile Ana and myself sat on a bench and stared at the sea, the surfers and were imagining how our summer would go if we stayed in the Boston area. We have not decided yet where the summer will take us, will it be Geneva, or rather the New England area.
We drove through parts of Newport and parked the car near the long wharf and walked down what in the summer must be a bustling street, but with the weather and the time of the year it was rather quiet. At least we did not have to pay the parking meter, which is switched off until the end of April. We took an all American lunch (hotdogs, hamburgers and Belgian waffles) in the Ocean Cafe and decided that we should take the ocean drive to watch the heavily advertised mansions. I had read about Newport and the mansions, which the fine New York upper crust built in the last centuries and even expecting great houses we were very impressed with the beautiful mansions in perfect landscape. In fact many of the houses were not small but rather big palaces and we imagined together what we could afford after having won a big lottery ticket :-). We decided most of the houses were way too big and we would under these circumstances settle for quite small and modest places. For anyone who has not been there, we can recommend this trip. The places are stunning and some of them are even open for visits. As it says in Edward Rutherfurd’s Novel ‘New York’: ‘Once one belonged in Newport society, one had reached the top.’
On our way home I took interstate 495 and Ana only realized it when we had already arrived at our favourite furniture store ‘Hardware Restoration’. Again it proved that I am lucky and they just on that day had received one of the Mayflower cubes which we had eyed for our night stands. This saved my day because this night stand at a great price made a wonderful birthday present for Ana. We hurried home, setup the night stand and I did some overdue reshuffling of my office. The kids went to bed smoothly and Ana and I enjoyed the rest of the day and night in harmony….
