Posts from — August 2008

We had a bit of a sick day yesterday, hanging around the van, giving everyone a chance to relax and recover. We gave the kids a computer each and an awsome quiet descended on the van. Hamish got a chance to catch up on his beloved footy stats, and Zoe had a play on her favourite website. I got to knit…here’s how the first cardigan sleeve is coming along so far:

We then headed into Berlin late in the afternoon. Here we are at the Brandenburg Gate:

We had a great time in the city and had the best Vietnamese food we’ve had in years for dinner (which would have been quite cheap too had we not fallen for the ‘bottled water’ to drink which ended up costing us 6 Euro…that’s near enough to $10!).

Unfortunately it turned out that today was the real sick day as hubby broke out in a fever, so we didn’t get to see any of Berlin at all today. All was not lost – I got to do more knitting whilst Zoe drew pictures. Here is the view looking out from our van:

And here is Zoe’s picture of Santa delivering presents:

The boys hung out upstairs listening to Buddy kick his 100th goal for the Home and Away season:

I know it looks so picturesque, and it is…except for the low flying planes that roar just over our head every 20 minutes on take-off from the local airport. We figure we could be stuck sick in worse places and hope that tomorrow we will get to see a little more of Berlin before we move on to our next home.

I know I said I would make some more order out of the photos but I’ve decided to give up on that idea as everyone uploads at different times and as computer time is scarce it’s a matter of grabbing whatever photos I can when I get the chance. So here are a few more moments in Germany:

Zoe outside the Frauenkirche in Dresden:

Who would have known she was about to throw the most God awful tantrum whilst in the said church which I’m sure the people of Dresden are still talking about today? This Cathedral was quite recently rebuilt after being destroyed near the end of World War II (Check out this picture of the ruins taken in 1991).

Here’s Hamish in Heidelberg:

And Zoe eating ice-cream in Munich:

OK, time for bed. Here’s hoping everyone is feeling better tomorrow!

Well technically we’ve been in Germany for over a week now, but it took us that long to translate the installation instructions for the USB modem so I apologise for the delay in logging in.  There’s already a lot to share, but there’s never much time in the evenings as by the time we’ve set up camp and put the kids to bed we’re dropping off to sleep ourselves.  I’ll start with a few random photos of our travels and hope to build up some coherency as the trip progresses.

Hamish in Frankfurt with his first packet of Gummy Bears:

Zoe pretending she’s a princess at Heidelberg Castle:

A knight’s armour in a museum in Rothenberg:

Neuschwanstein Castle in the Bavarian Alps:

And the view from outside the castle:

Munich Olympic stadium:

A subway station in Munich:

And what do the kids think of all the travelling we’re doing?

It’s not often that your children beg you to put them to bed but these poor guys have been sick from the moment we arrived and they are exhausted by night time. And as I mentioned so are we – so I’ll leave it here tonight and work on uploading our pictures from Dresden tomorrow. By the way we’re in Berlin now – just arrived this afternoon. Yeah, we get around pretty fast – but that seems to be the German way. Man you should see those cars travel on the Autobahn. And I always thought that was a bit of an urban myth!

Ok, so once we’d got the passports, booked the tickets and organised the campervan it seemed obvious that something was missing.  What kind of self respecting computer geek (and his wife..that’s me!) leaves home on a 5 month adventure with kids who have no blogs?  Not this one (or his wife).  Thankfully the problem is now rectified Check out Hamish and Zoe’s blogs (who are 6 and 4 respectively) – and don’t forget to keeping dropping back in to follow their journey around Europe.

The kids are trying out their new sleeping bags ready for the trip. 2 more sleeps!!!!

We walked past a caravan this morning and Hamish excitedly pointed it out exclaiming ‘look Mum – it’s like the one we’ll be living in’. I had to shake my head and point to the delivery van parked nearby and explain that was what our van would look like. He looked confused and concerned all at the same time. Ahh well, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger right? And besides hubby has just told me that the big camping grounds in Europe have cinemas – so why on earth would we need a large living space…or an internal toilet? Right?

Europe here we come…12 days to go!

In between packing and cleaning and booking and homeschooling I decided that now was a good time to learn to crochet. Well technically I am re-learning to crochet, since I was quite good at it when I was 8. And what better time to do it than at 2am using the light from my computer screen to help me crochet along with some You-tube tutorials?

Here is my progress so far:

Those little lumps on the bottom left are supposed to be balls (I don’t seem to have quite re-mastered decreasing yet), and the rather amorphous shape in the right corner is my first try at a flower. The large circle is a, well it’s a large circle really. I seemed to finally be onto a good thing so I just kept doing what I was doing. I like it!

If you’re impressed by my crochet and want to see some more fabulous work then have a quick look at What Not to Crochet. Make sure though you’re not anywhere where you can’t giggle out loud as you read!