Our little family in the great big state of Texas

Jacob loves to ride his bike to school, so we try to do it as much as possible while the weather is nice. One of the routes we take is on a small road, mostly used by bikes and tractors. It goes by a couple cow barns, and through some crop fields. You can see some cabbage, and potatoes in the background. Also, the church in Wolframs is in the background. His kindergarten is near the church, so we eventually curve back towards town. It's a nice ride for him, not too hilly and not too much traffic. Only a few more days of school, then he's off for 3 weeks for summer break.

I added some pictures over on the photo album, just everyday stuff. More of him on his bike, and even a few of the dogs! Click here to see the most current. You can always click the link on the sidebar to see the whole album. I may have said this before, but if you want to see an enlargement of a picture on the blog, just click on it. It should open in another window a little bigger, and usually a little better quality.

We went Sunday morning to the Sea Life Nürnberg exhibit. It is a somewhat mobile aquarium, it is going to be in Nürnberg for about 3 years. We were a little disappointed, perhaps because it mainly focuses on the North Sea. Not too many pretty colorful fish, and mostly all small ones. But it was a nice way to spend the morning, and Jacob had a fun time.

After that, we headed into the old center of the city, to get some lunch and enjoy the nice weather. It was quite crowded for a Sunday, since most of the shops are closed. The restaurants and cafes were open, and a few of the souvenir shops. We had some lunch and windowshopped, and admired some of the cathedrals. I am always able to find some new feature on them that I didn't notice the first time around, it is really quite amazing. Here is the detail over the doorway of one of them:


This time of year is particularly nice for sightseeing, as all the flowers are blooming like crazy. This building I thought looked really nice, all the matching flower boxes. And even the umbrellas at the restaurant on the bottom floor match!



Unfortunately, the photo just isn't the same as seeing it in person. I just wonder who was in charge of doing all that, and I don't know that I would want that job. I have a hard enough time maintaining my 4 flower boxes. But it seems like everywhere there are flowers, in all colors and types. It really makes you appreciate it after the gray of winter, and is so nice to see.

I get great delight from browsing the free tracking service I have on my blog. It doesn't give me a lot of info about each of you, but it does show me how people arrive at my blog. For example, if they come to the blog by searching for something on Yahoo, it shows me that, as well as what they were searching for. Also, I can sort the number of visitors by time zone, language, internet domain and some other parameters. But by far the most interesting is what people have searched for and found us! Some examples of what has been typed in a search and led someone to our blog:

• Best way to keep a house cool
• ansbach furniture store
• summer rodelbahn
• breitenbronn germany
• walking picture snow germany

These are all pretty normal things, I saved the best for last. Not sure exactly how we fit into this one, but somewhere most of these words are in one of my posts.....

• pics of pedestrians killed by trains

When I ran a search for this, we didn't come up. So thankfully, there are other sites out there that match that better, and mine is no longer one of the options.

Well, the pox are all gone, the dog is better from her surgery, and things are back to normal (whatever that is!). It seems like this went on for a while, although it probably just seemed that way to me. Kenny was able to return to work on Monday, although he has one more recheck with the doctor on Friday.

We went to see Madagascar over the weekend, at Cineworld, a german movie theater in Würzburg. They usually have 3-4 movies playing in "orginal version", that is where Kenny went to see the latest Star Wars movie. It's very nice, stadium seating and lots of theaters. We reserved our seats online the day before, you are given an assigned seat. Doing it online we were able to pick out exactly where we wanted to sit and not have to figure that out at the ticket counter. The snack bar is the same, although you have a choice of salty or sweet popcorn. (We stuck with salty!) The movie was okay, Jacob enjoys any movie with lots of talking animals. A nice Saturday afternoon for sure.

Jacob only has a little more than a week of kindergarten left, then he will be out for almost 3 weeks. It will be his summer vacation, a rest from all the hard work they do at kindergarten :)
We are planning lots of fun stuff for him to do, like go to Playmobil Park, and the pool.

We cooked out on the grill over the weekend, everything came from little supermarket up the road. (We were feeling pretty lazy!) Pre-seasoned pork steaks, bratwurst, and pre-made potato salad. It was very yummy on a hot summer afternoon.

So, just as Jacob has finally recovered from the pox, now Kenny has it. He seems to have a really mild case, probably because Jacob's pediatrician gave him a vaccination. But it has kept Kenny home this week from work, mainly so he won't infect everyone there. Needless to say, we haven't been doing too much, just hanging around the house. Soon we will be able to go somewhere and see something, at least that's what I hope.



Jacob has a new bike, he loves to ride it. He rides everyday to kindergarten and back, and usually around the neighborhood every evening. Here he is on the bike, that was his first time on it. He's still a little nervous on the big hills going down to kindergarten, so I hold onto him to slow him down a bit. That really has been the most exciting thing going on around here.

I have something else to keep me busy, I am the "Programs" chair of our PWOC (Protestant Women of the Chapel) on post. I have to plan monthly fellowship programs, which are always lots of fun. I'm looking forward to it, although I was a bit apprehensive at first. It will last until next summer, so it should get me through the boring winter months!

It was pretty cool the last week, but warming up again. We are hoping to go the outdoor pool again soon, so we keep hoping it will warm up enough. That's about all here, maybe something more exciting soon...

A few Saturdays ago, a couple of friends and I made a quick trip to Poland. By quick I mean we left about 4am and returned that evening at 9pm. While going anywhere at 4am is not my idea of fun, it really is a good idea. There was hardly any traffic on the autobahn, and we arrived in Poland about 9am. So plenty of time to shop at all the shops! We got a little confused when we first crossed over the border, every time I go it looks different. Between the construction rerouting the road, and all the new buildings popping up, it is a trick to remember exactly which way to go. Our first attempt was wrong, we stopped at a little gas station/shop to see if we could manage some directions, or buy a map. Unfortunately, we were just more confused after we left there, and they had no maps, so we headed back the way we came to try a different route. We knew there were more gas stations so we stopped at a larger one, more like a truck stop. Inside they had a large selection of maps, and we unfolded one to see if it had the area we needed on it. After doing that, we saw how simple it was to get where we needed, so we folded the map back up and took off! We just didn't want to buy a map of Poland we didn't need!

We made it to Boleslawiec, and started stopping at the shops outside of the town. We decided to look in them first, and we could always stop back by on our way out of town. There is just so much to choose from, it can be a bit overwhelming at times. Even if you choose a particular pattern, then you can pick from all the types of dishes, casseroles etc. in that pattern. Almost all the stores take dollars, euros and credit cards, they just want our money! Then there are the kids that wash your windows for money, they are very persistent. We shopped and shopped and shopped, stopping for lunch at a small restaurant that had surprisingly good pizza. Near the end I think we all had pottery overload, but we all had gotten things that we really liked. I found the polish pottery butter bells I was looking for, and also a couple more casserole/serving dishes. I didn't get too much, since we have to ship all this stuff back to the US eventually. We really are trying not too accumulate to many things, so I had to restrain myself.

Every time I go I think that it is getting more and more expensive, which it is. But overall it is still reasonable for the quality of the pottery, and it's something to keep forever. I have a box packed up in storage in Tennessee, just waiting for my return. But since I can't remember exactly what is in there, I keep buying a few more things every time I go to Poland. Just in case there is something I need....

I seem to have really gotten behind on my blogging, not that there is that much exciting going on. But I do have a few things that I would like to get on here! Jacob is over his chicken pox (a.k.a. windpocken in German), and it really wasn't too bad. I don't think he had it as bad as some kids, and his doctor treated it differently than we do in the U.S. No baths, only a quick shower every 3 days. It seems like that helped the pox dry out and heal more quickly than if they were getting 2-3 baths everyday. So, anyway, on Friday he got a clean bill of health from the doctor so he was able to return to kindergarten today. We had no special 4th of July plans so he did go, no reason to stay home. ( We had a trip to Verdun planned for the weekend, but between Jacob and the dog we decided to postpone it)

Last week Heidi (our fuzzy dog) also had to go to the vet, she was diagnosed with bladder stones. She had to have surgery immediately, and then they also found that her heart is not so good. She seems to be healing from the surgery now, and we will learn more about her heart on Friday when she gets her stitches out. We thought she was our healthiest dog, so we were quite surprised by the turn of events with her. We have the stones, the vet gave them to us. Not quite sure what we are going to do with them, except perhaps being amazed at how large and how many there are.

So, all these doctor/vet trips, plus we had some other appointments scheduled that week that we couldn't change, added up to a busy week. I have to get downstairs now and finish up my Bible study that I should have been working on all week, since we meet tomorrow! So, I promise to post soon a picture of my pottery and some other things.