Halloween 2009

We took the kids to my friend in Geneva for a Halloween weekend, we decorated her whole house and made ghoulish treats. The kids dressed up and (of course) came back loaded with candy. I believe they are starting to learn their lesson and managed not to eat all 6 pounds of candy within the first 5 minutes. Shocking!
Mandy dressed up as a dead Princess Peach (Anyone play Mario?) and Jason was Jason Vorhees from Friday 13th--all entirely their idea by the way!
For dinner we served chopped off monster feet, dead man's fingers and giant's eyes. For dessert there was eyeball muffins and spider crackers. Very delicious!
We can't wait until next halloween to do something fun like this again!

Happy Birthday, Amanda!!!

Amanda at age 3


Amanda at age 5


Age 6


Age 7


Age 10 (She is playing air-guitar in case you can't tell!)

Our darling daughter finally turned 10, she got to celebrate once on her birthday (it was Monday, first day back at school) and once with her friends. The theme was "popstars" and we had wii dancing, singstar singing, make-overs, outfits, photo shootings and lots of fun and games.
I didn't know that girls could eat so much until I saw them gobble away more than two trays of pizza! Now I know better...

I call Amanda my sunshine because she is always cheerful, there is very little that can dampen her mood or make her fussy. She never whines, not as a baby and not now either. She will make up her mind as to what she wants and go for it, never taking "no" for an answer. Some call it "stubborn", others call it "driven". Amanda takes her time in choosing things, a rash decision is something she will never make. She is thorough in everything she does, sometimes to the point of being slow--for example when it comes to food. Yes, she can take up to 20 minutes to eat one scoop of (now turned mush) ice-cream. Better than rushing anyhow, I say. (Her brother is off the table in about 5 minutes with his mouth still full of food!)
She is a good student who hasn't had one "C" last year and wants to study to become a dentist when she is big. When her brother got his tooth filled, she was allowed to "assist" because our dentist knows of her possible soon-to-be profession of inflicting severe pain to our mouths. (With assist, I mean that she got to hold and use the tool that blows air onto the tooth so that the dentist could drill and finish the filling.) My growing daughter is a talented artist and ballet dancer who can also beat you in chess and card games due to her wit. She is girly but not prissy, feisty but not mean, honest but not hurtful and is a caring person who is growing into the perfect woman! (Praise be to Tom and Hanna for creating such a creature!)

Plitvice Lakes & Waterfalls

Croatian National Park / Plitvitcer Lakes

We decided to head out to the Plitvicer lakes on our way home, little did we know that the area is a full 217 hectar large and it takes between 6-8 hours to just walk around all the lakes. Luckily, they have a very neat ferry and mini-bus system where you can tour everything but don't have to walk all that far.
There are sixteen lakes in total, but I think we only saw 6 or 7 of those. They also fall in a sort of step-fashion, which creates little waterfalls whenever it goes to another step. The largest waterfall on the upper lakes was 78 meters high (255 feet) and was absolutely breathtaking. All of the lakes had gorgeous colours ranging from azure to green and blue, apparently the colours will change depending on the quality of minerals and organisms in the water.
They had several trails that you could trek on, and we took the little ferry-boats to cut across some of the larger parts and make our trip shorter.
Fish were everywhere, as well as ducks and birds and lots of butterflies. The kids got a bit tired after a while and after 6 hours of pure walking and climbing, we got into the car to start our trip back to Germany.
In retrospect, although it was nice for the kids, I think it's more of an adult tour.

Caves

We visited one of the largest stalagmite/stalagtite caves in Croatia name Biserujka on the island Krk. It lies about 12 meters under the ground It was breathtaking when you realize how long it took for those pillars to become what they are, when it can take 20-30 years for just one milimeter to grow. As you can see from the pictures, many of the calcine pillars are well over 3 meters. It's cold all year round, about 10-13° constantly and you could feel the humidity in the air, a bit like a very moist air con.
Legend has it that pirates of old hid a treasure of pearls in the cave, and "biserujka" means "little pearl" in Croatian.
Oh, Tom says Jason and me look like aliens in that picture...

More Croatia pictures

Holidays in Croatia

Halrighty then: pictures!!!

We drove down to the Kvarner bay where we had rented an apartment for a week. We spent most of our time at the beach, lazing in the sun. Tom and Jason went fishing (no pix, sorry) and caught our dinner once, that was yummy. The weather played along most of the time, and although it was supposed to turn sour it stayed lovely until the day we had to leave--perfect!
Of course we had some great seafood when there, it's just different when served mediterranean style and fresh from the sea. Luckily, the area wasn't heavily bombarded by tourists, mainly Croatians, some Czechs and Hungarians and of course your all-time favourite: Germans! (Ze Chermans arr comink)
It took us about 14 hours to drive down because we got stuck in Italian traffic jam, and the trip back was only 10 hours since we took a different route and drove at night. We taught the kids to snorkel and Mandy is really good at it. It's always a bummer when the holidays end but they were fun nonetheless.