Divide and Conquer

Brian took his sister, brother-in-law, and oldest niece to Munich (Munchen) for Oktoberfest for a few days.  I stayed back with our nephew who is Isaac's age.  Here are pictures of their adventures in Munich first.

Oh yes, those are Lederhosen, traditional leather pants that the German men wear to these fests.

Meanwhile, back home we were chilling on the porch with all the nice weather.  The kids were listening to Weird Al some, playing a ton in the woods behind our house (building a fort), and playing games and Legos.  They also made slime and ate Chef Isaac's unique version of an ice cream pie.

A slice of ice cream pie for Bob

At bedtime, we tried to catch up on sleep and get to bed at our normal bedtimes while the fun and crazy people were away.  We did our traditional routines: family prayer time, separate stories for bigs and littles, and tuck ins.  The littles chose picture books, and I read Pagoo to the big kids.  Hannah doesn't like Pagoo, but everyone else has been enjoying it.  Unfortunately, we've been going through it slowly because usually Daddy reads Chronicles of Narnia at night right now.  I only have day times and nights he is away to read Pagoo so we may never finish it.

Bedtime Reading with my Littlest Two

Then we went to a gem mine that is an hour away with a group of homeschoolers for a field trip.  That was quite the adventure.  I have not been brave enough to sign up for many of the field trips since moving here because of Bob and Judah being so young and not being able to carry both of them.  The girls can help some, but they can't carry long distances and most things are not stroller friendly.  So, this seemed like a short enough walk to be able to handle it, and Judah is old enough now where he can walk further on his own.  It was a success until the end when it was time to go, way past nap time, and they both didn't want to leave.  There was some crying, but we made it to the van nonetheless.  Then there was more crying.  Hannah got a little frustrated that they were crying and I tried to explain that if we are going to take field trips, this is what it might look like on the way home.  They were pretty good during the actual field trip and she would have to be understanding that they were tired.  In retrospect, it is kind of humorous that the first field trip I took all the kids on in Germany I actually had seven kids instead of my normal six.  My nephew was, of course, no problem at all, but it just seems funny to me.

Bobby did throw a fit at the beginning of the tour because he saw someone had a red hat and he wanted that one.  The little boy gave him the hat, which I normally would have refused, but that Bobby's fit was making it impossible for people to hear the man speaking in the cave with the echo (and, of course, no where for me to take him to calm him down.)  So red hat it was for Bob.

Isaac found amber in the gift shop that matched his eyes.

I packed a picnic lunch for everyone to eat in between the tour and the "dig."

For the dig, they had an easy side where you could just look around and find gems to take home and a hard side where you had to find geodes and have the leader break them open for you.  The biggest kids did both and everyone came home with lots of gems.

Judah and Bobby were none too happy that I didn't sign them up for this part, but it wasn't cheap and I was not sure if they'd even be able to do it since I'd never seen it before.  Here they are pining to go in and dig for gems.  If was not easy to keep them occupied that long, and I am sure this dissatisfaction fed into the fits they both threw on the way to the van and in the van.

Our van suddenly started making awful brake sounds and so I have to take it in the next day after this trip.  The brakes were so bad they wouldn't let me drive home.  I had to have a friend pick me up and take me home.  This was a terrible time for this to happen.  We had day trips planned for the rest of the week while our family was visiting.  The Germans had a holiday which made fixing it take several extra days.  And then to top it all off, our extra car broke down as well on the way back from Munich.  So we were 12 people with one tiny manual car that held 5 at max.  Rental car, here we come!  And we still had to drive two vehicles everywhere because the rentals only go as big as 10 seaters.