Happy Halloween!

So, I've skipped a little to bring you pictures of my little frog. I'll get back to the backlog of pictures and video as I get time. :)

So, we went to TWO Halloween parties. There was a party on Thursday night at the elementary school. My camera stopped working right at the beginning, so I only have pictures of Christian sleeping on our way there. He fell asleep with his pliers in his hand. It was so cute! He ended up having a great time. His favorite part was hitting the pinata and the table full of cupcakes, cookies and candy. There was also a jumping castle. Aside from an issue he had with Winnie the Pooh, he played really well with all the kids and lots of fun!



On Halloween we went to Trunk or Treat. It was crazy. We had to get there super early to park on base, but it worked out well. Christian napped and we had lunch while we waited. The Wesleys met us there. The boys were pretty patient waiting for everything to start.

Here they are waiting. Mads is the prirate, Christian is the frog.

He even hopped around saying "Ribbit, Ribbet".

Christian tried to climb this and other trees to entertain

himself while we waited in line for our tickets to get in.

Christian LOVED this lion. He went back a couple of times to play with the lion - not even asking for candy. There were lots of booths with different themes. The next one was a morgue, with a guy doing an autopsy. :) He didn't like that one as well. He started off just holding his basket up to ask for candy, but as he went on he said "Happy Halloween!" to ask for candy. By the end he would sometimes say "Trick or Treat!", but always "Thank you!" or "Thanks!". The boys were remarkably polite and really enjoyed running around to all of the booths.

This was one of the last booths. It was "the monster under the bed". They were hesitant to bring the "monster" out, thinking it might scare the boys. Christian Loved it. He bent down and yelled, "Come out, monster!" and tugged on it. When the monster went back under the bed he was dissappointed that the monster had to go to sleep, but he noticed it come out again for the people behind us and ran back over to it. He had a lot of fun at this booth. They thought he was so cute that they gave him extra candy and a sheet of pumpkin stickers.

This is the end of the day, Christian with his loot. There was an activity center with games. One of them had velcro balls for him to throw at a ghost target. He won the dump truck that he's proudly holding in his hand. He evidently "zoomed it" (that's what he told me later), and so it was lost. We retraced our steps and actually found it. He was so excited! He was shouting all the way back to the car, "We found it! We're so lucky! Yeah!! We found the dump truck!", etc. His basket is full of candy and a couple of toys. One is a beanie baby bear holding a pink heart that says "Cutie". He chose that over a penguin or a bear with a red heart. The lady, wearing all pink, thought that was wonderful. He also got a storm trooper Mr. Potato Head - we thought of you, Farleys! All in all, a great Halloween. He is still asking to go to another Halloween party, though sometimes he accidently calls it a Happy Birthday party. I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween, too! We look forward to seeing your pictures, too. :)

Leipzig

We decided to take a short vacation to a beach during Cliff's three day weekend. As it turns out the weather was not so good for that, and the ticket prices were higher than we were willing to pay. We opted for the "Blind Booking" option on German Wings, which I highly recommend. German Wings selected Leipzig for us. We weren't very enthusiastic about it at first, but it ended up being wonderful. I'm missing most of the pictures, but we have a few.

The hotel was in a perfect location. The main train station was across the street in one direction. There was a nice park across the street the other direction. The pedestrian area was just a few minutes walk. The hotel was pretty child friendly. They gave Christian a stuffed animal at check in. There was a small play area in the lobby, and they had a bowl of apples. The apples were Christian's favorite part.

This is at the park across the street, complete with this water fall.

Our family picture

Christian loved playing in these leaves. We all ran around in them for a while. It was a nice place to take a break from the sight seeing, and to give Christian a place to run around at the beginning and end of the day.

More playing in the leaves

We went to the hobby trade show at the Messe. Here Christian is watching the demonstration of the model boats.

This was at a booth that paints things. Christian liked these elephants.

This area had a ton of model trains. Nearby there was a display of remote control cars, tractors and trucks and such driving in a scene with muddy hills and roads. There was another war scene with camouflage trucks, tanks... I think there may have even been a couple of helicopters.

Cliff was disappointed that we missed the remote control airplane section, but we were off to see the St. Thomas Boys Choir. That is the same choir that Bach directed. They have concerts every weekend. With lots of rushing we were able to make it on time with a few seats left. Cliff decided to run to the bathroom just before we went in. In that time the last few seats were filled and we missed it. He did feel sufficiently guilty about it. I tried to listen through the door, but to no avail. So, we went to a coffee shop for lunch instead.

They had a jazz festival this weekend, so we listened to some music and browsed the vendor booths around. We went to the art museum. Mendelssohn's house (now a museum) holds a concert every weekend. We went and heard a wonderful pianist. Christian listened for a bit, and ended up napping through the rest of it. It was really nice. We also went to a museum that showed how life in East Germany was.