The tooth fairy's 2nd visit

Hailey was a victim again of shark teeth!!!!  Apparently, it's extremely rare for the top two permanent teeth to grow in behind the baby teeth, but it happened!  Read here for our visit to the dentist for her shark teeth on the bottom around this same time last year!

 

Her top two middle teeth had just started to get loose at the end of 1st grade.  All summer long she wiggled, but there wasn't much progression.  Close to the end of the summer we noticed her adult tooth sneaking in behind.  We love our pediatric dentist, Dr. Clark, and he said it was up to Hailey whether or not to get them pulled or wait it out since they were loose.  She opted to get them pulled!  He commented that she was either crazy or extremely brave!!!  :) 

 

A few days after her holes filled in a bit, I asked her to smile for a picture for the blog and this is what I got!!!!  When I told her that I would still put it on the blog, she cracked up even more!  :)  Love this kid!!!!!

Fresh new smile for starting 2nd grade!!!!!!!!!!!!

The European Tooth Fairy visited again (a day late because Hailey was at a sleepover at Ava's) and left her 4 euro...2 per tooth and again a little extra because she had to have them pulled!!!  :) 

Buffalo Park 2013

One of our last summer hoorahs was a trip back to Mannheim to Buffalo Park.  We also drove by our old post, Benjamin Franklin Village, (we couldn't get close enough to see our house) and it was just so sad...over grown and pitiful!  So many memories during those 2 years!!!  We invited the Greens and Millers to come along and all 8 kids and 5 adults had a blast!!!!!

 

Feeding the deer and buffalo...Luke opted for eating the carrot instead of sharing with the animals! :)

 

 The stinky pigs...

 We walked through the bird sanctuary, had a picnic lunch, and played at the playground.

 The monkeys!  It's hard to tell but Luke's feet are about an inch off the ground! :)

 The zipline is ALWAYS a big hit!!!!  Even the adults got in on the action!!!

We left the playground and hiked through the forest to the Foot Bath.  I should have taken a picture of the sign with what the German's call it, but it's an ICE COLD knee deep pool that you are supposed to march your legs slowly around to increase circulation...a form of hydrotherapy.  (I tried to do a google search and Sebastian Kneipp, a Bavarian priest, discovered the benefits of water therapy over 125 years ago...the sign definitely said Kneipp-something.)  You take a lap in the pool and then take a lap on the outside and repeat.  It really does feel great, but it was pretty crowded and I felt we came barging in like loud, obnoxious Americans!!!  Quite a few of our kids were totally soaked and it wasn't exactly peaceful!  LOL!  There was also an ice cold hand bath!

It was a great day trip and we are so sad to see summer come to an end!  Hailey starts 2nd grade tomorrow and I was truly as bummed as she was for summer to be over!  I'm not ready for the grind of the school year!!!!

Cherry pickin

For the past month or so, we had been cherry pickin while out on our walk to a park from some random trees on post.  BUT Leevi found the jackpot while out running one morning and there are 8 cherry trees in a row over on a section of post that doesn't have too many houses.  We could have picked and picked for hours!!!  We took a walk with the Greens and Millers and stocked up, but I forgot my phone to take any pictures (it would be IMPOSSIBLE to try and get some pictures with my camera vs iPhone because of our MESSY Luke gets!)  So, the kids and I went back later and got some more!!!  DELICIOUS!!!!!!  We've also noticed a few fruit trees around post that we are keeping our eye on....apples, pears, and plums!!!!

They were black and juicy from being soooooo ripe!!!!!!!

A few of the trees were low enough, but we needed the ladder on some which was a big pain with Luke! :)

And I searched through our albums (yes, my computer crashed years ago and I lost ALL of baby Hailey!) looking for this one of Hailey eating cherries in Washington! 

And a fun random one of Hailey and Leila that was in the same photo album!  :) 

Barefoot Park (Barfusspfad)

We had plans to go to Belgium last weekend that fell through at the last minute, so we opted to stay close to home and check out some German nature parks.  We have been wanting to go to Barefoot park since we heard about it last summer, but we definitely wanted to go on a warm day.  The weather was PERFECT!!!  And the hour ride was full of country side and small town sites!  Barfusspfad in Bad Sobernheim is a 3.5K walk through mud, ice cold water, rivers, bridges, rocks, mulch, etc while BAREFOOT!

 

Hailey had a rough trip down and got car sick from the windy roads (while sitting in the way back and watching a movie!!!)  It was her FIRST time EVER in her entire 7 1/2 years that she has thrown up!  :(  She told us that she wasn't feeling good and she laid down and fell asleep (that alone should have been a sign for us!)  We put our expensive fitted car mats to the test and also the car seat protector under her booster!  Thankfully, I had thought to grab the girls dresses to change into in case they got wet/dirty at the park, so at least she had a change of clothes!  We were almost there and she felt much better, so our day wasn't ruined!

 

The map of the 3.5K barefooted walk

 

They started us off right into the MUD!!!!  It was above the girls' knees!  (Take note of Leevi's mud "socks" in the bottom right picture)

The river crossing was a lot more treacherous than I had expected! :)  It was pretty deep (above my knees) and the current was flowing really fast! 

 There were tons of fun "obstacles"

 About 3/4 of the way through was a shallow river bank that we played in for quite awhile (I definitely should have brought their swimsuits!)  After a bit they just decided to dive in!!!! 

 It didn't take too long to dry off!!!

The final crossing was over a rope bridge or a raft (the girls looped around and did both)

We finished with a picnic lunch before the ride home!

Practically caught up!!!!

I really wasn't sure that this day would come, but I think I'm almost caught up on posts!!!!  Here are a few random fun photos (that I didn't feel like putting into individual posts)!

At Leevi's work they had a pie in the face contest and the girls were just enthralled!  I told them that I'd get the supplies and they could get Daddy at home!

 

Leila is not an in-your-face-licky kind of dog, but she definitely wanted in on the clean up!

Crazy kid!

Kai's drawing of our family

She intentionally didn't smile! :)

New frames for the kids' 6 month pictures...I got a good price on eBay and spray painted them.

This is the perfect tent corner...

The girls will sleep in it for a night or so, but Luke equally enjoys playing in it.

She was having a "Grand Opening"

Crazy trampoline static

This has definitely been the warmest summer we've had in Germany (I can't believe that this is our FOURTH summer here!!!)

We go with the Greens each week to the storytime/crafttime at the library...we ride scooters across post (about a 20 min ride), go to storytime, and then have a picnic lunch at a park.  This week the Millers (Ava and Ella) joined us!

A different storytime week with her Flat Stanley

The girls and I had a date night to Despicable Me 2!  I was just as excited as they were to see it!

Jenny and I took Kai and Eli to the USO Sesame Street Experience...they are touring around Europe now to all of the military posts.  It was FREE, but first come, first served and we were really skeptical at what the crowds would be like with limited theatre seating.  We left the 3 big kids (and Luke) with the dads and the Kai and Eli seemed to enjoy their alone time! :)  Tiffany and I took Hailey and Colin to Sesame Street Live oh so many years ago when they were 2 (but it wasn't free!).  We found it funny that the same souvenir toy that I bought Hailey back then (which we still have!) was the one that the USO gave out for free! 



Smooth shopping! 

 He fell asleep looking out the window at the rain...

He loves doing the Potato Head 

They were grilling dinner...wonder what they were talking about! :)

 Our neighbors next door have two adorable Corgis...Scarlet just turned one and Gillian is only 2-3 months old.  The kids have found a spot under the trampoline where they can greet them!

 They are so sweet!!!

Luke is equally obsessed with going over to pet them!

We are definitely enjoying SUMMER!!!!!!!!  So not ready for the back to school grind of sports and homework!!!!!!  Hailey will have soccer twice a week and Kai once but during the day (yay for one less thing to do AFTER school!) And I was able to get them both into the same gymnastics class this year (a 5-7 yr old class...we'll see what happens in Feb when Hailey turns 8, but for now I will enjoy the ease of only one practice (Luke will too!!!!)  And they both will have Awanas on Sunday evenings. 

 My handsome pool boy!!!!!!

An evening swim!!!!  We just took the pool down again yesterday because we have a streak of mid-70's and rain and clouds coming for about a week.  We definitely haven't complained about the glorious amounts of sun we've seen this summer!!!!!