One Sunday somewhere in this whirlwind of an April, we managed to get up at 3am and drive to Tongerin, Belgium to go antique shopping. Much to my eldest's chagrin, we drug everyone along. It was about 3 hours away and felt like that was too far and too long of a day to leave anyone at home. We did end up finding a prayer kneeler, a St. Genevieve plate, and a cool pilgrim silver bell. A sweet lady gave Drew a tiny, glow-in-the-dark statue of Mary because he was begging me for it and I had told him no. It was fun to look at everything and we ate lunch before driving back home at the same restaurant that we ate at last time we went to this famous flea market, Ben's Cafe. I remember the name because we were there on Judah's birthday last time and his first name is Benjamin even though I typically call him Judah Benjamin when he's in trouble. That's just because it is hard to start with a different name when you've got your momentum in the moment.
I don't have any pictures of the kneeler. As I write this my household goods are being packed away so it is too late now for a picture for this post. I should have taken before and after pictures of it because Brian took it to a woodworker a few villages away and had him refinish it. We were not expecting him to reupholster it too. It looks brand new now instead of it's one hundred years.
When we got home, my husband was not ready to call it a day and so he took the four boys up to the Hutte for dinner of sausages and frikadelle. They played at the playground and pet the horses on the walk back.
It seems I have missed a few local wonders due to my hesitance to go on field trips or adventures with just the kids. I used to try to do these types of things. I'd sign up, commit, and then dread it until it was over. So then I decided that I would just stop doing that to myself. It was always an exhausting day that left me with cranky, tired kids. But then time passed and they grew up and now I have big kids that can help me. I almost didn't realize that these days would not be as hard as they once were. In September I took the kids to a gem mine field trip and we left with crying little ones, but it was better than it used to be. Anyway, the point of all this was to say that I have been scrambling to do some of the field trip type of adventures in these last few months because I can do it now without so much dread. The Gartenschau (AKA the Dinosaur Park) is one of those things. Everyone was shocked that I had never taken my kids in all the years of my life I have lived in this area of Germany. Parking was an unknown to me there and I had just avoided it with the big van. Turns out that parking was super easy there.
Drew and Judah had gone on field trips with the German Kindergarten to the Gartenschau before. They had told me a few things, but they never told me how fun the playgrounds were in there or how amazing the Lego buildings were. We went with the Catholic homeschooling group in place of our gym day.
I didn't take any good photos of the playgrounds because I was too busy relaxing and talking to the other mamas in the shade while the kids played. Bobby stayed close to me for the first half and then found the sand and plopped down, without moving until it was time to go.
On our way out, we looked at the Lego display, complete with the Koln (Cologne) Cathedral, vinyards, and downtown Kaiserslautern.
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