More of St Martin's Day

Just a little video to show off our new star...

St Martins Day 2009 from Moya Z on Vimeo.

St Martin’s Day

Nov 11 is the feast of St Martin, which is celebrated in Germany & Austria by children making lanterns & walking thru the streets singing songs about the good deeds of Martin of Tours (I don’t think many people here know he is the patron Saint of France…)  Both girls had festivals at their schools.  Sophia joined us at Alexandra’s, although we could only remember the words to one verse of one of the songs so we just sang it over & over again. 

The Geese are traditionally eaten during this feast.  The story is something about Martin hiding in a Goose shed when he found out he was going to become bishop of Tours & the Geese shouting & giving him away, so they were killed & eaten for dinner.  But they are pretty cute! Sophia’s celebration was during the school day yesterday, although it was so dark you could have used the candles to light the lanterns.  We started outside in the drizzle, and then went into the atrium for the rest of the show.  

She actually had a bit of a speaking part during the assembly, welcoming the parents & introducing the story. 

Then back to the classroom for Geese cookies, and a few class photos.

and the parent paparazzi!

Veteran’s Day

I’m not sure if this is even a holiday in the US anymore, but Sophia had it off today for Parent Teacher Conferences (which is now Student/Parent/Teacher 3 way conferences – hard to hear actually how your child is doing…) and the girls were playing with the flags after our US Hockey Victory last weekend, so enjoy, and thank you to all of the men & women in our nation’s history. 

Deutschland Cup

This weekend the Hockey teams from the US, Germany, Slovakia (I think) and Switzerland played in a tournament here in Munich.  Troy & I went to the Friday night match up between Germany & the US with some friends from Troy’s office & from Sophia’s school.  We thought it might be the same team we saw play at the World Championships in Switzerland in May (they were struggling), but they did manage to win, in an Overtime – shoot out 3-2.

We were the only people we could see that brought our US flags, and we even made it up on the big screen.  The Germans sitting around us were very entertained by us, and everyone stayed thru the awarding of MVP & playing of the US national anthem at the end of the match. 

Usually we aren’t much for flag waving when we are the foreigners, but it was great fun!

Of course Troy was also wearing his Slovakia team jersey, so we got lots of crazy looks…

Days with Alexandra

Alexandra, at 18 months, is amazing and so much fun. Her understanding of language is unreal, and she is just now starting to say yes & no, although she has been nodding or shaking her head for a couple months now. It is so cute to hear the little voice come out of her. A little voice that gets much, much louder the longer she has to call for you. The first “Mama” is quite nice, friendly, eager. But the second is almost a shout, and from that point on it is all earplugs…

Before the weather turned I would often pick her up on bicycle from nursery school & bring her home for nap time.

She fell asleep almost every day! It is just so amazing to have a child that transitions from bike to bed (including taking helmet, shoes, and coat off & putting the sleep sack on) without waking up.

Now that the weather is freezing, she wears her snow suit, and loves putting her hat on. (She is all about the accessories & shoes).

Breakfast this past week has been quite entertaining because she was on fall break, and we needed to mix it up a bit… Unfortunately it left a bit of a mark…

Sophia & Guignol

When we were in Paris for Easter last year, I managed to take Sophia, and Alexandra too, for their first puppet show, on the Champ de Mars.  Guignol, the main puppet in most of these productions, is a classic French childhood figure.  I had wanted to take Sophia when we lived in Paris, but she was always very scared of the puppets, and so I was thrilled when she thought it would be a good idea, and even more excited when she loved it.  She talked about nothing else for days.  Weeks later when my parents came to visit, and we went back to France, Sophia’s dreams of a puppet show were increased when she was given her own puppet Theater!  Over the past 6 months, we have added to her puppet collection, but she still talks about Guignol.

So you can imagine how excited we were on our drives this week when we saw that a traveling production of Guignol was going to be in one of the small villages near us this afternoon.  Sophia was so excited when we told her we were going she could hardly keep herself still.  Alexandra had a hard time with all of the hitting, so I took her out after 10 min, but Sophia LOVED it again.  And Troy was able to share it with her this time. 

The stories are always quite simple, and usually encourage LOTS of yelling from the kids in the audience (Sophia managed to remember enough French to participate).  She caught enough of the story to realize that eventually good things just happen to Guignol, even though – as she so brilliantly stated - “Guignol doesn’t have a really good thinker, he’s not the best thinker in the Castle!”

If you are ever in France with children & come across a Theatre Guignol, I would highly recommend it! (Here is the schedule for Paris in english!)

Ruins & Ribeauville

Troy & I have had a couple of experiences with the girls where we look at each other & say “bad parenting decision”.  Most of these have to do with hiking up rocks, a hill, or wandering around ruins.  Today we had all of those.  There are the ruins of three castles above Eguisheim (the town where we are staying) & they look so beautiful silhouetted against the Vosges mountains that we decided to spend this morning wandering around castles.  The plan was to explore these, and then drive over to the Haut-Koenigsbourg Castle. 

After walking up the hill, stumbling over rocks, and climbing ruins of stairs, and taking a couple of photos, we decided that we needed to work our way back down the hill, into the car, and skip castle ruins until both girls can wear hiking boots.

Happy Halloween by the way.

So we drove to the charming town of Ribeauville, and it happened to be market day (I love it when that happens), and we enjoyed the very picturesque streets, vineyards surrounding the car park, a wonderfully delicious lunch, and a black pig taking a walk thru the streets.  Delightful, and a much better decision…

Running fun in Kaysersberg

We try to be flexible in our travel with the girls, and after the vineyards, another market, and a bit of driving, Sophia was begging for a playground.  We had been in Kaysersberg the last time we were in the Alsace, so we really weren’t planning on stopping, but as we rounded the corner driving past it, a playground emerged next to a parking lot.  It seemed like a good idea to stop, play for a while, then find somewhere warm for lunch. (the sun isn’t out today – but it isn’t raining!!)

Sophia collected a pile of HUGE leaves! The girls knew exactly what to do with the cut outs!