What a busy weekend we've had! It all started with wee one's very first haircut.

She'd heard me telling the boys that it was time for them to get haircuts and at one point she just decided that she was going to get one too. After several days of her touching her head and saying "cut? cut?" I promised her we'd ask the stylist if it was too early to cut her hair. (Yes, she's almost two, but her hair is still very thin in spots and short around the front. The boys didn't get their first haircuts until after they were two!) The stylist agreed with wee one that it was indeed time for a little trim. She hopped up in the seat as if she'd gotten her hair done every week of her entire life and got a pretty little bob, a pretty little bow and was delighted.

Pitch Car

Then it was time for a little something special for the boys. On Saturday, I took them to a local board gaming convention (one we used to go to regularly before we had kids: no war games or miniatures or LARP or anything like that, just the German-style board games we play at home). The boys enjoyed playing Keltis, Incan Gold and No Thanks with our old gaming buddies, but their favorite games of the day were the flicking games.

Crokinole

On Sunday, it was time for my special treat, swap day at Knitsmiths!

I picked up some lovely mohair to use in a scarf (like in the Purl scarf from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts) and some Cotton Fleece that might become another Smockie for wee one.

And for hubby, I worked a little each night on finally finishing up his t-shirt quilt. I know I posted it as being done last Christmas (um, yeah, Christmas 2007), but I hadn't actually done the binding yet. When I pulled it out to put the binding on, I decided that it needed a whole mess more quilting as well. So I spent the last few nights quilting a large grid through the centers of the blocks and sewing on the binding.

We've both been enjoying snuggling under it on the sofa. Hubby is very pleased to have his special quilt finally and I'm loving how soft, warm and cozy the flannel is.

So a little something fun for everyone. Not a bad four days at all.

we made it!

Kings of the corn maze. We were supposed to find four stamps in the maze. We had so much trouble finding the third one that our little piece of paper ended up looking like a chinese take-out order: 3 number 1's, 2 number 2's, 1 number 3 and 3 number 4's. Leider, no fortune cookies in the corn maze.

"Kniffel!"

King Kniffel. The weather's been a little gray and cool, so we've been playing games all day long. The latest favorites are Yahtzee and Wizard, and an old game of daddy's, Super-3.

proud builders halfway done!

Lego kings. Together with their uncle, the boys built their BIG birthday present from Oma and Opa, the Lego Technic Bulldozer. Here's a video of S, cleaning up the living room with the remote control bulldozer.

And when the boys go to sleep, daddy and uncle get to play with it!

We can't be sitting around in the lovely countryside all the time. We're Americans. We need to shop!

After one day in Germany, some crazy American urge to consume came over me. We drove into the city and picked out some new games for the family to play: Dragon Delta (a planning game similar to Roborally but with a less technical theme and more opportunities to mess up other people's plans) and Hase und Igel (a totally awesome race-style game, but, true to its theme, a race where you often have to be slow to get to the finish line first).

Next, the boys went shopping. They each got 10 Euros for their birthday to spend in the family stationery/toy store. They usually go straight to the toy corner and pick out Siku cars, which are like German Matchbox cars, and then spend the rest of their money on erasers and candy.

let's go to Cologne!

And then yesterday, hubby wanted to go to Köln with a friend, so I tagged along to, yup, do some shopping. Cologne is home to the Dom...

Cologne cathedral

...and the Mouse, star of kids' Sunday morning television here and the mascot on the side of the West German Broadcasting building in Cologne. Since I knew that the best knitting store in Cologne, Maschenkunst, was closed on Mondays, I just drifted around. I did stumble upon another yarn store, Casa Lana, which looks lovely on the website but is actually on the small side with the standard German selection of Lana Grossa and Lang yarns.

I did like these funny crocheted German flag washcloths in the window though. Washing up the dishes with the German flag...hmmmmm.....

Okay, American consumerism satisfied. Now back to German stuff. Another one of those good, hour-long German walks through the country perhaps. Or eating some sort of freaky meat.

Lucky for us all, S and B spent almost two hours this weekend playing Lord of the Rings The Boardgame with daddy and defeated Sauron, destroyed the ring and kept the world safe for hobbits everywhere.

This is one of hubby's favorite board games, not only because he liked Lord of the Rings but because it's just a good game (for an excellent review, see this site). It's actually a cooperative game where all the players are working together to defeat Sauron. Each player is one of the hobbits - B was Frodo, S was Sam, and hubby was Merry - and they venture through Moria, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair and Mordor together aided by other members of the Fellowship through cards along the way. They begin the game a certain distance away from Sauron (the original Dark Lord!) on the scoring track and as events unfold, Sauron creeps closer and closer to them. One of the hobbits holds the ring and if he is overtaken all is lost. The game is actually pretty tough to win with most parties eventually being overcome by Sauron. But although the boys did have some tense moments, they caught some lucky breaks and made it all the way to Mount Doom to toss the evil ring into the volcano.

Note this is not a Dungeons and Dragons-style role-playing game, although there is some die rolling and characters do have some special abilities. Still it's all card and decision based. It is complex though, requiring an adult to help negotiate the difficult choices. There is, however, an excellent kids' version for folks with younger kids. Oh and for the ladies, unfortunately it's not a movie tie-in game, so sorry, no Viggo Mortenson or Orlando Bloom pics on the cards or anything!

The eye of Sauron is upon you. But don't worry, S and B are looking out.

For this week's peek at the kids, the boys at play.

Their favorite activity these days is playing this "game" on the computer where you solve little puzzles Rube Goldberg style by building wacky contraptions. My old (old!) computer came with a game called the Incredible Machine that hubby and I loved to play before the kids were born. About a year ago, we introduced the boys to the thing and they raced through those puzzles in no time! This one is even cooler (the boys' words, not mine) because it has lots of bombs and explosions.

In both games, once they solve all the puzzles, they can invent their own contraptions and save them. The boys have over fifty contraptions saved on this game already. They'll build for a half hour or so and then when it's time to save, they'll call out something like, 'how do you spell explode?" Just check out these great names!

We're off to the airport soon to make the long trip home. Flying west from Europe to America is tougher with the kiddos because it's all daytime and they don't feel like sleeping. We tried to send the boys to bed a little early last night telling them that they really needed their energy for the flight home and they said, "yeah, cause it's boring." Yes, indeed.

We've packed lots of books and activity books for them as well as a few dvd's that they can watch on the computer. As a general antidote to the boredom around here, I give you a list of some of our favorite German games. I've mentioned the German games that we play a few times here and some of you have asked for some recommendations. Here ya go!

Family/grown up games:

Settlers of Catan - THE German game

Ticket to Ride - we gave this one to my sister-in-law and her family this year

Carcassonne - one of our faves

TransAmerica - cute little strategy game

Blokus - abstract tetris-style game for those whose brains work like that - the boys love this one

Lost Cities - great two-player card game

Wizard - awesome trick-taking card game

For the kids:

Hey, that's my fish! - we presented this game to S's class in show and tell and they thought the little penguin pieces were so cool

Chicken Cha Cha - awesome memory-style game for kids! - S's classmates liked this game the most because the German title translates to Zig Zag Chicken Poop!

Highly Suspect - a clever little dexterity and logic game with nice wooden pieces

They're not German, but they're fun:

Give Me the Brain & Save Doctor Lucky - gotta put in a word for these hilarious games from "Cheapass Games"!

And if you've got 8 or 10 people, you gotta play Werewolf

Have fun! We won't.

School doesn't start for another week, so I'm spending my days juggling three kids. When the baby sleeps, the boys immediately ask to play games and we spend her whole naptime and any other awake time she'll let us playing Mille Bornes, Fluxx and Set. The other day I managed to talk the boys into letting me sit by them and knit while they played Highly Suspect just with each other. I had to knit on their lion and tiger animals, of course. And I only managed to make four little shoes before cheating and accusations of cheating stopped the game. But I did knit.

So that's legs, feet and shoes done. There's still the back, a front (with intarsia patch), two arms (thankfully, the hands are knit straight down from the arms), head (with intarsia and muzzle sections), two ears, and a tail to go. At this pace, I should have them done by the time the boys start school. Next year.

And there'll be no knitting today. B wants us to go to Toys R Us to buy him a new transformer. It's all he's talked about for 24 hours. They've dressed themselves and are right next to me waiting for me to finish on the computer so we can go get the transformers. And so we're off to fill another day....

Let's see, first, wake up, build stuff.

Wendi wanted to know how we store all the boys' legos. Currently, they take up 3/5ths of a big IKEA bookcase and are stored either in their original boxes or in plastic boxes from the Container Store.

And one of the tea cups from the knitted tea set I made a couple of years ago serves as the repository for found pieces.

The boys' other current obsession, something we get to "enjoy" the whole day long, is these McDonalds toys that they got in Germany. They're like little pretend iPods that play a very annoying pop song (if you have never heard the "Dubi Dam Dam" song, thank your lucky stars right now, because I will never ever get it out of my head). They each have three of these music things with different songs and they like to turn them all on at the same time. Aaaahhhh! S has one with a German rap song and he turns it on and makes a pouty hip face.

S as Lloyd Dobbler in Say Anything

And finally, something to do on a rainy day (or a day like today where mommy has to clean and do laundry all day), new boardgames from the treasure chest!

They got this chest filled with boardgames for their birthday and since getting the Dead Man's Chest pirate toy in their last American Happy Meal, they are fascinated by treasure chests. They are convinced that by virtue of being in a treasure chest, these games have got to be cool. So much so that they've already learned how to play Parcheesi and want to learn Backgammon next.

Since we've been back, it seems like we've done nothing but visit doctors. Somehow all of our regular visits got scheduled for right after our trip. There was the boys' 5-yr checkup, my annual doctor visit, a follow-up with a specialist, and today we're all scheduled for our dental exam. One day last week I even had to go twice because the phlebotomist forgot to draw blood for some panel and had to stick me again. I've been over to the hospital and medical areas so much now, that I'm beginning to imagine there's something wrong with me!

Then there's the jetlag, which has been particularly harsh this time. The boys wake up early and want to play board games all morning (their current favorite is Monza). Then it's hot and humid all day and by about 7pm, we all look like this:

can we watch one more showzzzzzzzzz
(current favorite show: How It's Made)

All my usual knitting time has been lost to fuzzy-headed game playing, medical poking and prodding, unsatisfying sleep, and general malaise. I need another vacation.

How long can two four year-olds play Kinder of Catan?

Three hours? Four? I don't know. We're still playing the game. Right now B is singing: "I love it when I win. I winny-win-win!"

No one likes it when he losey-lose-loses.

For those of you anxiously awaiting the wrap up of games that were played....

Diamant

Australia

Ticket to Ride: Europe

Louis XIV

Poker!!

Ubongo

Memoir 44

And Tower of Babel, which I somehow forgot to photograph.

Favorite game played this year: Um Reifenbreite. Favorite new game: Around the World in 80 Days.

The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.

Eeewwwww!

Look, intarsia sheep.

Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck with worm tiles and dice.

Around the World in 80 Days via trains, boats, balloons and the occassional elephant.

Walk the Dogs with dozens of tiny dog figures that you keep in the "doggie bag".

Quackshot, with pigs and ducks and plastic arrows, oh my.

COSI. A giant museum to entertain the boys for five hours!

A Tab! I haven't seen a Tab in like fifteen years.

Cool game bits. These are from Um Reifenbreite, 1992's German game of the year.

A crack. Not as uncommon a site in a gaming room as you'd like.

If you know anything about German boardgames, you'll recognize the Sielder bus (if not, you can read a quick intro here). While we're here on vacation, the annual Essen boardgaming convention is taking place. Since we're just a few hours away we took a ride out to Essen each of the last two days to check out the new games, meet up with some fellow boardgaming fans (yes, others from Boston and all over America fly over specially for the event) and just join in on the fun. Two hours each way, each day, makes for some nice car knitting!

Here is one of the boys' Phildar vests in progress on the road. After our first daytrip to Essen, I'd finished the knitting on the first vest. Man, that bulky yarn sure does knit up fast! I was able to knit the second one yesterday in the car. Next up, blocking. Man, that bulky yarn sure does need a good blocking! Then seaming this weekend and the boys can be wearing their warm little vests next week. (Which is good, cause it's freezing over here! The car's outside temperature gauge read -8� celcius at one point on the ride out to Essen yesterday morning and we even saw snow falling outside through the window of the convention hall.)

Speaking of the boys, they had quite a bit of fun of their own while we were away. They went to visit their great uncle and his tractor!