BBS Craft Fair

Each year the PTA hold a craft fair at the school for Year 1 and 2. 

They kids buy tickets for different craft activities. 

 They can paint, stamp, colour, etc...and make all the mess at school, and not have to do it at home! Perfect! 

The boys took a liking to the ceramic placemats. You draw a picture on them with special textas, then bake in a slow oven for 90 minutes to set the colour. Cameron did one "I leov Mum" with a giraffe. Alexander did 3, Qantas plane, Mallorca scene and a space scene.

They had a great time.

1st Snow for the Winter

Our first snow of the year! 

We woke up to lots of it, and it was so exciting to see! 

After the boys were ready for school, we stood out on the balcony catching snowflakes and making snowballs to throw off the balcony! Everyone seems to be surprised that there is snow so early, but the weather forecast has been saying snow for a few weeks. Until now we have only seen a little bit, it melts as soon as it hits the ground. 

Some people are not as pleased with it as us. Most people change their winter tyres over on the 1st of December, so people were caught out! Here is a picture of our street (our fence is on the left side with the terracotta bricks and dark wooden fence rails, and the second photo is at our local park up the street!

Let's walk to Poland!

Sounds crazy I know....but when Phoebe suggested a trip to Poland, I thought it would be a great idea...then I heard "walking", and thought twice! 

But in the end I decided to do it....a weekend away and what a great time we had! There were 9 parents from school. It was a fast pace walk, as we needed to hit our nightly spot by about 4pm, as it gets dark here early at this time of the year, and we were walking through the woods with no lamp posts! The woods are all marked with walking tracks, and it was easy to follow! Our first night we got to Cottbus, and stayed the night in a Youth hostel! It was like being a 16 year old again, with a lot of giggling in our hostel room, and some nude runs in the corridors....some of it alcohol induced!

Here are 8 of us (Tom took the photo) Faye, Christoph, Me, Elli, Sonia, Phoebe, Luke and Giselle in Cottbus...1/2 way!

Up early the following day to walk the rest of the way to Poland. At about 9.30 it began to snow, which was great. Although the weather warmed up and then it just drizzled on and off all day! By the time we got to Poland we were looking rather damp! 

We got to border control around 4pm. We showed our passports to the border attendants, (both German and Polish attendants gave my Australian passport a really good look, and it took longer to process than everyone else's, the look on their face said "What on earth is she doing here!"). Then we stepped into Poland! 

Right on the border is a large market. Interesting, but I didn't buy anything. If you smoke you would be able to buy cartons of cigarettes at every second stall....and DVD's, CD's and ots of clothing stalls.

A couple of bottles of Buffalo Grass Vodka were purchased for the trip home on the train! That helped warm us up on our trip back...some of us were warmer than others! We got back to Berlin around 9pm, and I think we all slept well that night! 

Overall a great trip, feeling sore today, but really glad I decided to do it!  You can see how quickly it gets dark..it was about 4.10pm! 

Thanks Phoebe, that was terrific!!!!

Change of hair colour again!

Out to buy new hair dye, as the orange/red colour is fading away. 

I took Alexander with me. "It's my turn to chose Mum" 

Yes, I guess that was right! Cameron chose the last one. 

Alexander chose this bright purple/red colour! What the hell, it is only hair, and it washes out after 40 washes!

I picked the boys up from school. The kids in both classes know me, their jaws dropped as they saw my hair 

"What happened to your hair Mrs Owens?" says Julian

Mrs Jackson quickly replies..."Julian, it is not nice to comment like that when a lady has her hair done!"

Bradley, wants to chose the colour for his mum. Sonia says "No Way". So I told Bradley he can choose my next colour...he is thinking about blue/black! Interesting! 

Autumn in Berlin

What a difference a week makes. 

After a week in Mallorca, we come back to Berlin and most of the leaves have fallen from the trees. It looks spectacular! From our bedroom window we can see our neighbours garden. It is covered in a bed of coloured leaves. It looks great, my absolute favourite colours all over the place. Everywhere you go in Berlin there are leaves everywhere! 

The boys are enjoying walking through them and hearing them crunch under their feet! The council have people to sweep the leaves up in piles, then a truck comes the following few days to collect them. I wonder why the council doesn't collect them straight away? You see lots of kids jumping in the neat piles of leaves and throwing them at each other, then the men just have to come around and do it all again! 

Highly amusing, and cheap fun for the kids!!!!

Sightseeing in Mallorca

 

We wanted to do a bit of sightseeing.  The lady at the car rental shop told us not to worry if we ran into anything. She says the staff do more damage than the tourists. Phil braved the roads of Mallorca, driving on the other ride of the road to what we are used to.  With a very limited map, he headed off.

After 1/2 hour of winding roads, Cameron threw up all over himself in the car.  Thank goodness we took a couple of large bottles of Evian water with us, although we were hoping to drink this, not use it to wash vomit from clothes.  It was a public holiday and few shops were open.  We managed to find a shop to buy a tourist tshirt and shorts.  

We had a good look around the island.  Some of the homes are built right to the edge of the road. There are also a lot of stone walls lining the roads, with nowhere to pull over and stop.  Sometimes I felt I could stick my hand out the window and touch the walls and houses.  There were many times I sucked my breath in because I was sure we were going to scrape the side of the car and lose a read vision mirror.

On  the North Coast of Mallorca are some Roman Ruins.  They are only small, but incredible to see. Also a really interesting castle, complete with a moat (although dried up now). It was fascinating to see the infrastructure and layout of the castle.  The windows in the outside walls appear to be long slots, but on the inside was enough space for a person to sit in there and shoot arrows from.  Obviously it was harder for their enemies to get their arrows through the narrow slots.  Mallorca was a haven for pirates with so many small harbours to hide heir loot in.

The closest main town to our hotel was Porto Christo. We caught a local tourist street train to town one day when it was a bit grey.  Porto Christo has a really lovely harbour, and some of the boats in port were incredible. $$$

Spanish is the main language of Mallorca, followed by German,French and then English.  We learnt a bit of basic Spanish to get by.  We spoke more German than English. Phil thinks he spoke more German in Mallorca than he normally would in a week in Berlin.

We had a great time in Mallorca. Phil and I feel refreshed, and have enjoyed our family holiday. Phil is off to Australia in a few weeks, (without us) so it was nice to spend a week together! Now to plan the next holiday. London after Xmas and then skiing in February....just have to work out where!