Happy Boxing Day!

We got to eat Indian food tonite. Well, 4 of us and not the schnitzel boy. Jal frezi, rogan josh and chicken korma with naan and safron rice warm the heart and fill the tummy on a night as thick as pea soup out there. No flying until January, but maybe some school come Monday the 29th. Yep, I'm just about mean enough to get a few days at the grind stone while Daddy goes back to work for the week. I do sometimes miss my old job of substitute junior high teacher and then I realize, I'm spending time with some of the most important people in my world.

Type at y'all next year. For now, I watch a little House on the nasty tv and plan field trips for the new year.

FRIGID!

Home schooling on the go this week. With sledding included after lessons today. We appreciate hills in Iowa now that we've seen the lack of hills in Chicagoland. It's just that there are the trees at the bottom which aren't too handy. Where's the chainsaw? Mommy needs a lesson on a new power tool!

BTW, we included the great circle route in the lapbook as well as three or four of the minibooks from Homeschoolshare.com country report site. Many of the pieces are from train or site tickets which we experienced on the trip. It will all be stored in their school binders after I show it to the other set of grandparents this weekend.

Winter observations

The brightest moon I've seen just went to bed after keeping me up in the middle of the night. The owl that was whoot-doot-doodling on the tree outside my window around 2 am. is gone to bed too. There are still reindeer "food" and snow angels out there in the yard though. A beautiful new day awaits...

Space Rocks or Asteroid Belt, either way it's cool

We've moved into the chapter in astronomy about asteroids, meteoroids and the like. I also played the Bill Nye episode about comets and meteors. It was difficult to resolve the time spans discussed during the video and the reading, but I pray that these three will continue to understand that in His own time frame, The Creator made it all. It's a fine line for someone who's studied Earth Science for over twenty years. Lately, I've been trying to claim Psalm 90:4 "For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night."

The last major site

We visited the Deutsches Museum on the only inclement weather day and it was a bit rainy. My favorite places were coffee with the little girl in the Internet Cafe and the basement Kinderreich with an amazing water display that helped to explain locks and damns. The next time they encounter those I hope that it is on the Mississippi River near Keokuk Iowa where I first saw it as a kid. Afterward we ate chinese food across the street.

This was definitely worth the stress of getting 7 people on an international flight stand-by. It wasn't free to fly, but it wouldn't have ever, ever been possible had we not taken the opportunity to try. God has a plan and we all learned a great deal on the trip even how to say hello and goodbye, our numbers in German. We learned that it isn't always possible to go to the bathroom for free, if you wish to sit down that is. We learned that even the most picky eaters would like kiwi and schnitzel, zaurbraten and apricot juice. We learned that we didn't need to see the inside of Mozart's home this time. We learned to stay together and follow the leader who had been there several times before. We learned to trust him as he knew what he was doing most of the time and was thrilled to share it with the rest of his family.

Of course we did Neuschwanstein!

How could we go that far and not visit the castle that inspired Disney or gave Chitty Chitty Bang Bang a place to land? It was the first organized tour I'd ever been on. Yep, I gave in to the luxury and swallowed every word the guide gave us. The children rode the train well by playing cards, drawing and yes, playing the leapster. It was a two hour trip and the day was beautiful for us to see the countryside, but the return trip was dark nighttime. I just couldn't get over how good Wagner had it to be bankrolled by Mad King Ludwig. The castle was still beautiful both inside and outside in the winter. I enjoyed the mosaic floors, but couldn't get over the lack of wildlife along the walk except for crows. I was looking for European Buckthorn which is such an alien nuisance here, and I found it in many places. We even listened to the tour guide when he told us a good place to eat on Leopoldstrasse named Wurthaus Brez'n. He was right.

BMW Museum and Olympiapark

While the girls shopped up and down Marienplatz, the boys went off to explore BMW and see a little of the 1972 Olympic Park. The big hit was the 1938 model car and the yellow one person car with the door in the front. Boys are so intrigued by this type of mechanical/ transportation history...