A Dash of Everything

Here we have my favorite picture taken in Germany. For those of you who have been to our house- or I should say for Jes, Ma, and Boo- you know exactly which window this is. It is so characteristic of life here! Roswitha brought lunch out for Jensen while he sat on the ledge, and Vanessa (who turned 10 two days ago) brought him crackers from her house upstairs. We are so blessed to have had the opportunity to live with these wonderful people.

That same day another neighbor took Jence down behind our house where she fed him every raspberry on the bush (there weren't too many ripe- don't worry.)

And played with the chickens.

The video of this is up on YouTube- listen for his little German clucking sound.

This is a misplaced Prague picture- I took it for Jes. That's an Oreo Madness, my friend!

Nakey time is not a usual occurrence in our home, so I'm a little fuzzy on how this particular moment came about...

Jensen manifests himself as tired by not being willing to leave his binky or puppy in the crib where they usually live. Here he is as the Alfa Male of his pack on one of those groggy days.

HA!

Jensen's first bowling trip was less than successful. He has a knack for minding everyone's business, but we got a few shots before it got ugly...

(Al is very proud of this picture.)

Putting on the cool bowling shoes.

We went to the Documentation Museum in Nurnberg on Saturday. It's a really neat museum in what once was Hitler's largest construction project. This was set to be a rally center- and as we learned that rallies were what gave Hitler his power, this place was pretty important. The museum is strictly about the rise of the 3rd Reich to power. Very interesting to see illustrated and narated step by step how he carefully took control of every facet of the government while cheering crowds understood nothing of what he was actually doing...

At the end of the museum was this picture of Nurnberg after the Americans had come in and liberated the camps and whatnot. Alex goes, "See, we always look like we're havin' a good time!" The man cracks me up.

Here is the courtyard, which was to be the main assembly hall.

This is the backside of the glass/steel projection that starts as the entrance way in the front of the building. It represents the german feeling regarding the nazi's and everything that pertains to them, ramming through the heart of their central building.

And last but not least- this was taken about an hour ago, when Jensen realized that the light switches in the hallway are at a perfect (or one could argue, not so perfect) height for him to reach! Luckily for my sanity's sake, the hall light switches are the only ones set at this particularly entertaining height, and as I spend little time standing in the hall, the disco tech atmosphere will have scant power to offend.

Prague

We took last weekend to jaunt off to Prague. Here we have the monster wandering the square. I swear he doesn't always have that silly snack trap in his hands.

Al and Jence in Old Town Square.

Momma and Jence in Old Town. We let him run around for a while, bird watching, people watching, and stepping on weird cracks and grates on the ground.

He liked the busy window displays.

Al in daddy mode.

Us with the Powder Tower... and I just realized that I turned the guide books back into the library without looking up what the "Powder Tower" is....

We wandered the streets for a while on our first day. We found a lot of fun little places.

Always got to stick a baby in a funny place.

He loooved the marinates.

This lady was so nice, she made the puppets dance for Jence- who would have stayed all day long.

We met up with some of Al's friends from his unit and went to dinner at a traditional Czech pub. We had a great time...some more than others. Jensen was in rare form! He was all over the place.

Jensen and Allen had a grand old time together.

Allen was so kind to offer Jence some of his, um, apple juice...

This was the first of quite a few blurry night shots we took in attempt to see the pretty lights.

We got up early and went out on the town...it was a chilly morning, even the pigeons were hunkered down in their puffy coats.

Come here pretty little birdy...

Jensen wanted me to take some more pictures of him by himself.

My beautiful boys.

Strolling the legendary Karlov Most- or for you English speakers out there, the Charles Bridge.

Other side of the "most" and of Jensen- he looks all cute and cuddly in photographs, but here you see a bit of Jensen Hyde.

We took a moment while passing Saint Nicholas' Cathedral for a completely candid shot. They looked up after I posed them there and said, "oh, were you taking a picture?"

Me looking over the city.

Everyone was taking pictures with the Palace guards, so Jence had to join the party. Later we got to see this guard march on out to the highsteppin' tunes from the brass band sticking their heads out the palace windows.

Jensen hu-yucking in front the big cathedral in the Prague Palace-

Jensen found a little hole to look through. He loves looking through things that are otherwise solid. Jence and me and the Charles Bridge.

Ooh oh oh! This was great. We went down to the river to see the swans. Al was about to put Jence down when this swan got curious. Personally, I plead with him to put the kid down and see what happened next, but he said this guy had a "straight up I'm going to eat you look in his eye", and wouldn't do it until he moved on.

Come here pretty giant birdy...

I took about 200 pictures of Jensen and Alex feeding the swans with the Charles Bridge in the background. He was so cute throwing bread to the massive birds, and as you can guess if you have ever seen Jensen in action he was not terribly thrilled to leave.

The park was kind of fun, but it was pretty close to the swans, so needless to say the park didn't last long.

The Family with the Palace in the background.

Jence roaming Prague, like he did a lot of the time we were there. Here he has found the ball that I hid in the bottom of the stroller.

This is really the only good pic we got on our trip. It happens to be off center so you can't see anything of real import, but "we are a happy family".

All of us with the crazy astronomical clock. It tells about 7000 different things (even what color you should wear with your complexion, okay, maybe not.) And it was built 500 years ago. They say the city leaders were so impressed with the clockmaker's work that they were afraid he would build a similar wonder for another city- or worse, another country- so in a move typical to historical central Europe they poked his eyes out. Right before he died he broke into the clock tower, broke the clock and died with a smile on his face- no one was able to fix it for another 200 years.

Another night blur shot- this one in front of the National Museum. If you look really close you can see the light patches on the pillars (look on the left front ones) where Czech masons defied their communist bosses when ordered to invisibly patch up the bullet holes from the Russian crackdown in 68. Yay for the spirit of freedom!

This is the courtyard of our faaabulous hotel. It was so nice and the staff was unbelievably wonderful. If you look really closely you can see Jensen and Alex on the balcony.

And that's that.