Mostly Bikes.

These bike pictures are from today.  Today was a holiday- Pentecost, I believe.  We probably would have gone somewhere really fun, but it was really windy and really quite cold, so we didn’t.  Instead, the kids rode their bikes.

Orrin goes soooooooo slooooooooow.  And he wants you to be right by him.  He also has a hamburger bell.

 

 

 

That Hazel is a tricky girl!

 

So then Brett had to try it.  :)

Later we watched a movie.

  

Ethne and her cute nose-scrunch smile that I love.  :)

Just like when she was a baby.  :)

 

 

And this sweet little boy –so adorable!  I love his little hands here.

These pictures are from last Saturday when we went geocaching near our house.  I kind of get annoyed sometimes when we geocache, because since the caches here are in German, Brett picks them out, but I don’t feel he does a good enough job researching it first.  I always read all the description, look at any available pictures, read the clues, and every comment, so that I have the best chance of actually finding the cache.  Brett just sees that it looks pretty good, and goes.  Anyway, so this particular one required doing some math to figure out the coordinates.  Brett thought that would be fun (math, fun???) but it took much longer than he anticipated.  Here is Jethro and Brett working at it.

 

I love this.  :)

Brett finally got the math worked out (it was some kind of Sudoku-like thing that took a long time), and then we hiked for a little while.  Isn’t it soooo wonderful when the trees have leaves again?!

And the sun was actually out a bit!

Then we had to look for a clue so we could get to the final coordinates.  We didn’t find it for awhile- but we did find a waldsofa.

Finally Talmage spotted the clue!  Good find Talmage!

Unfortunately, once we got the final coordinates, we hiked to them and searched and searched and never found the cache.  Sad.  That’s the thing about geocaching—after you’ve looked and looked and not found it, I wish you could declare ‘I give up!’ and then magically be shown where it is, but you don’t get points for it or something.  Oh well.

Couple funny stories-

Yesterday we took a walk out past the farm to the tree and bench we always go to, and the little kids were going into the farmer’s tall grain field, and they were having a lot of fun, but we told them to come out because they were mashing it down.  Orrin ignored us and kept walking in father.  We weren’t actually keeping our eyes right on him, so he got in there pretty far, and only the top of his head –actually his bike helmet—was showing.  Then the farmer started coming down the road in his tractor, so we called to the kids to come back by us because the farmer was coming (insinuating that he was going to drive through the field, even though he really wasn’t).  Well, first I have to explain that Orrin has a VERY healthy respect for cars, and if he’s riding his bike in the cul-de-sac and a car starts coming towards him he’ll start crying.  So, anyway, we were telling him that the farmer was coming in his tractor, and he started trying to move back to us, but the wheat was long and he’s short and it was difficult for him.  Then he started crying, so we told Hazel to go get him, but for some reason she doesn’t get there, and he started completely flipping out—just screaming in terror that he was going to get run over, and he fell down trying to hurry through the wheat.  I hurried and got him really quickly and the tractor turned the other direction and all was well, but I have to admit that Brett and I laughed quite a bit.  Poor guy was traumatized and likely scarred for life.  Good times.

One time we were all walking through a parking lot.  Orrin and I were behind the others.  We came up to Brett and Jethro oohing and ahhhing over a really cool car—a Lotus Elise or something like that, and they walked around it, looking and admiring.  Then we all started going on again, and Orrin stops at a really ordinary, not-cool car, like a Golf or something, and starts pointing and exclaiming and calling for Daddy to come look.  Brett came and looked and took Orrin’s hand and  walked away again while  shaking his head and he said, “I have a lot of work ahead of me with you.”  Hee hee.

So.  Ten days until we fly to the States.  I can’t believe it.