Germany Trip November 2008

Hi All- Loelle here, posting a bunch of pictures from John's trip to pick up his car. All of this is second hand info, so don't blame me if there is something incorrect in here. If you want the real scoop, talk to John :-)

First full day in Germany, John and friends went to pick up his car. The BMW factory gave them quite a welcome. Your new car is put on a pedestal, literally, spun around and shown off. John said it was worth it for the trip alone to BMW Welt. (BTW, John's car is the silver coupe - the only silver one that day.)
A fancy-dancy building.

Here are Paul and John B sitting in the new car:

Here they all are having lunch at BMW Welt.

A BMW race car out front of the factory:

An engine? A special engine? The engine in John's car.

Walking around at night in Munich:

Dinner with musik!

Back the next day for the actual "pick-up":

Proud new owner:

Rear shot, the factory in the background:

Driving on the autobahn, the real reason for going.........

(I am told that John B took this, not the driver!)

Driving in the Black Forest.

Peeking in the Porsche factory the night before the tour (no pics allowed in the actual factory tour!)

Porsche Museum:

A 911 cut-away:

All sorts of race cars......

Another cool building, and many cool cars!

Another engine, special again no doubt.

Mercedes Museum?

Driving at night in Stuttgart - the new PanAmera, in disguise out for a test drive?

There it goes........

Out for dinner in a lovely resturant. John, Paul, Ringo.. no - John, Paul, John and Mike.

Food was predominantly meat-based, with a few potatoes.

Ahhh! A vegetable!! Who put THAT there?

Amsterdam was the last destination, after leaving the car in Munich for it's boat ride.

Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam:Boat ride on the river-

Bike riding in Amsterdam (John B and Paul?)-

John was amazed at all of the people riding bikes. They have so many bikes there, that they have a barge to park them on:

Whole families ride one bike at a time!

Flower markets, of course (I had to put these in, it *is* my blog after all...)

Look at all these bulbs!

Last but not least, the red light district. This photo is beautiful - apparently this is a tourist area - families walking around, swans in the river.

The Power of MOMS

Yes, this isn't even my world anymore, and yet it struck me. I saw the ad, felt the anger that all of these moms felt. This article is too cute, the power of mommy-bloggers:
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/moms-and-motrin/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Yes, we are powerful. Don't mess with us or insult our way of doing things!
http://www.motrin.com/

I think everyone on here knows me pretty well, and knows that I was a huge babywearer. My kids were in a sling or back carrier for most of the first 3 years of their life, if not in my arms (or John's). Yet, they learned to walk, be independent. There are a lot of us out there.

I'm back!

Hi All-
I'm back from my Nia intensive. They call it an intensive because it is, well, intensive. I'm really tired. I learned so much, danced a lot, made some great new friends. Now I'm a certified Nia teacher too - but I won't teach for a while, I need to learn some rountines. There's a lot more to it than you see at first!

I am so grateful to my family for allowing me this time for myself. I know it was hard on them - John really rearranged his schedule to fit the kids' pick up times in, passed up a great opportunity for himself. Owen and Elise asked me every night what I did, how it was, and gave me the most wonderful greetings as I came home each night. So warming to my spirit. I am thankful for friends who helped with child pick up and drop off a few times. And friends who were supportive and encouraging for me to do this.

I don't have any pictures. I should have taken my camera, but didn't.

Keep on the lookout for John's Germany photos, soon, I promise!

Nia White Belt Intensive

For the next week, I will be off doing my Nia White Belt Intensive. I'll try to post some about my experience, but I might be too worn out :-)
Nia is an excersize class that focuses on body, mind, and spirit. You either love it or you don't care for it. But a lot of people come to one class, get hooked, and feel a need to keep going. Finding words to describe Nia is difficult. It's best to give Nia a try, and see if it resonates with you.
An opportunity came up to do this training close to home (it usually comes to Boulder about once a year - which is too far for me with kidlets and all to worry about) and it seemed like a good time for me to do it. We met tonight for 3 hours for introductions, tomorrow we start at 7:30 am and go til 6:30 pm. We do this until Thursday. Eleven of us are in this intensive, a wide variety of people, three are good friends from my Nia class.
I'm still trying to decide what I want to do when I grow up, and this will be a huge learning experience, part of my path to find my way. I might become a Nia teacher after this - several possibilties for teaching seem to floating in my circles, so we'll see what comes of all this.
Nia just fits so well with my current philospohies on life, family, friends.

I promise to post some pics of John's trip soon, too.

Elise is 6!

Elise had a great birthday last week! Thanks to everyone for your well wishes, cards, gifts. She definitely feels loved :-)

Snow Fairy:

Queen and King of Rainbow Fairies:

Elise communicating with me after a misunderstanding between us:How cool that she can now write her words as well as say (and draw) them!

Thought I'd post a few projects that Elise has done lately. Of course, some involve Owen, too.

Creatures from the after-school clay class: (Elise - 3 birds, Owen, a septopus)The leaf pile (so far - it has much greater potential!) before going onto our garden:Owen's "Starry Night" from school:

And of course, a gratuitous sleeping kids picture.I'll miss having both of them cuddle with me all night. Amazingly, somehow both can manage to get their feet on me at the same time, even tho I am not the one in the middle. Talented, huh? Elise still comes in to cuddle us most nights, but Owen prefers space (a king bed is still not big enough for 4 of us at this age!), so this is special. Some day they won't want to do this anymore.

About those videos - I fixed some of them, but have decided it will take too much time to go back and fix them all. SO, if you want to see the older videos, email me and I will invite you to be a viewer on my youtube account, where you can see them all, plus many more.

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted any old pictures. Here are pics from Christmas 2005, and January 2006, Science Fair:

From John

John is having blast in Germany. Right now he is in the Black Forest, he got to drive on the autobahn, tomorrow he goes to Nurburgring.

John and his car.......Beer.

Election Eve

Here we are waiting, as a nation for tomorrow, a day that will decide the direction we go in the future. I wanted my kids to see what is happening, to feel a little bit of the excitement.

They get it, at least on their level. They know that something big is happening.

Here is Owen after shaking Michelle Obama's hand:

And here are my totally freakish pictures. We were close, she came out to say hello to those of us in the overflow crowd. We didn't make it inside :-(

See the hair?

Reaching out to shake more hands (Owen is in there somewhere!)

Talking to the crowd:

Owen playing with a funny button we got - McBush.

Anyway - go out and vote. Whatever you believe in, make your vote count.

Videos on this blog

I am aware that the videos haven't been working correctly on this blog. For me, it's been off and on, so I thought it was youtube's fault (I need to upload my videos to youtube before putting them on here since they are so large). But apparently, since I made the videos private, you have be a viewer of my videos on youtube, AND be logged in to view the videos on my blog. Confusing, eh?
I recently made all of my online accounts private (blog, youtube, photos) after our PTO had a guest speaker on internet safety. Now, I wasn't really worried yet about anything I or my kids had done, my blog had very little personal information, I was extra careful to not name my friend's kids, etc. This guy gave me some food for thought, about how only 3 pieces of personal information is enough to "find" a person. And I was getting some unfamiliar viewers of my youtube videos, and a few comments. None bad, but enough to make me want them private.
Solution: I think I have found a way to bypass the youtube part. My videos will have lower quality, but they will still be private and viewable by my blog readers. I'm working on it.
You will still have to log into my blog to read it. And I will still probably load videos onto youtube, I will let you know if tere is something interesting to see, and you will have to sign in and become my friend to see them. :-)

Sunrise

Today we got to see the sunrise - a rare occurance for us! Owen's comment - the back of our sunrise is someone else's sunset. I like that.
We dropped John off at the airport on his way to Germany. Have a safe trip.....