An American Party and A German Park

Our Family Home Evenings have been kind of long on activities and short on lessons. :( We're doing pretty good, but we get inventive. This past Monday, we went to a nearby park for some Monday night fun!

So, I know I have mentioned how the German Parks are low on safety standards and high on fun. This particular park looks like a bunch of sharp wooden poles fell from the sky and someone just said, "Hey, that looks like a good place for some kids to play!"

Matt was just telling me about a guy he works with whose daughter was playing on a German playground. She was swinging on the monkey bars and fell off and hit the back of her head. No big deal, that happens all the time in America, right? Except that just beneath these monkey bars were concrete stairs, which is where she hit her head. Not exactly the best planning and forethought with the construction of the park, huh? Brilliant.

The kids have been asking to play here for a while, this park is just outside the military base where Matt works. They did have a total blast playing:

We had a little picnic on the bench with some very nutritious food.

But the highlight of the park was this swing. It's connected by pulleys at the top, so the swings can affect one another. One person can move walk their swing back and forth and sort of launch the other person into the air. Then, that first person can jump on and swing and steal the other person's momentum so that they are swinging realy high instead. And, if you get them both swinging really high, their feet smash into eachother. I didn't have the camera when Daphne was on, which I regret a lot. I don't think I have ever heard her laugh that hard!

You can see Matt and Isaac trying it out here:

On Friday, before we headed out for the weekend, Matt's work had a party for all the families. It was so fun! We have definitely done lots of amazing and wonderful things this summer, but we have kind of missed the All-American cookouts, etc... They had a huge potluck and grilled chicken and hamburgers. it was awesome. Other than the bees. Everywhere we go here, the bees converge upon us! Since we are traveling, we are eating outside often, and the bees here are very attracted to us and are extremely persistent! My friend, Liz said she thinks they like us because we wear deoderant, so we smell better than most of the people they see. :) We sat at the picnic table and took a bite then swatted a bee, took a bite, swatted a bee.... you get the picture!

They had bounce houses ,

And Pets:
And Face Painting:

and a "Guess show many Pieces of Candy are in the Jar" Game, which Daphne won courtesy of a little help from her Dad:

And water guns, which had to be filled in this big green bucket. Once Tori found the water, we couldn't get her to do anything else! She kept trying to get in!