A Road Trip and Recycling

Kelly and I took a road trip to see our friends in Germany, lucky for us they live near the Ritter Sport Chocolate factory.  So we got to visit the museum, here are pictures of old candy molds from the early days of production.

 Chocolate bunnies...

 Smaller bunnies.

Next stop after this photo was the chocolate factory shop- smiles all around!  We bought lots of chocolate bars to bring home.  We had a good visit and enjoyed some nice fall weather.

While we were away Greg, Katie & Charlie were home playing soccer and visiting with the Barata family-still no photo with all the Baratas-I will fix that the next time we catch up with them. they visited the Musee Herge (cartoonist who wrote Adventures of Tin Tin)..the kids didn't love the museum so we'll cross that off our list to check out...here they are...

I returned home and spent the next day working on a new version of the chore chart...when the cat is away the mice will play and forget to clean up...so now the mice have a full listing of what they are supposed to do around the house.

Charlie is back on recycling duty (he also rocked that this summer in NH)..which leads to lots of entertainment for all of us...

 First just a plain box that was on its way out...

Then he steps up his game and builds his own robot...you will see the finished version in a few weeks for Halloween!

A Visitor from Home-Yippee!

Our friend Eric from the US had to come this way for work, so we were thrilled he came to spend the weekend with us.

Prior to his arrival, Charlie and I had been riding on the tram when a lady got on with a Giant Teddy Bear (sorry no photo).  I began calling it the big pink teddy bear and I dared him to go past and touch it.  He did touch it but didn't know the story of the big pink teddy bear...which is Eric's specialty from years of camping trip ghost stories with our kids and his kids.  Charlie wanted me to tell him the story, but I made him wait for the master...so here is Charlie hearing the Big Pink Teddy Bear...

 Look at the smile!

There is nothing like a good story!

Eric was a trooper and came to school to see Katie's soccer game then in the evening we headed out for an excellently researched pub crawl led by Greg.  We sampled some great Belgian beers in some very unique pubs- each one different than the one before!  I didn't bring my camera along, so no photos to share, but we have a good list for our future visitors that might like to recreate it!  

Greg and Eric also went to see Waterloo, it is less than half an hour from our house.  The museum was redone for 200th Anniversary in 2015 and they reported that it was well done. 

We look forward to when all the Bodenhoffers come for a visit and we hope more of our friends will have work trips this direction! 

The Hague

Greg has been to the Hague many times and he was our tour guide for a quick trip, we plan to go back and spend more time.

We first found a skate park for Charlie where he made some new scooter friends, one kid could speak English well so he would translate for the other one...he would still be there if we had not made him leave!

 We got a kick out of these double decker bike storage racks in the parking garages here-bikes were everywhere!

 The beach was pretty at sunset, we didn't ride the ferris wheel at the end of the pier yet...

Charlie's sand art..it says "I like the ocean".  Now we all know why Greg likes the Hague so much, we look forward to a future visit!