First lost tooth!

Noah is so excited that he lost his first tooth here in Heidelberg! He has named the tooth fairy Ms. Sparkles, and is looking forward to seeing what she leaves in his special box.

Missing home

The kids have been doing extremely well adjusting to this adventure, but in the last few weeks Noah has been asking when we will be going back to our house, asking where his things are, and missing his old school. Benjamin hasn't been as vocal about missing things, but we are pretty sure he is feeling the same way. If you want to send them a little note from home, they would definitely love it!

Our address is: The Lucas family, Pepperdine University, Graimbergweg 10, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany 

For fun, we did some crafting the other day - Turkeys for Thanksgiving!

Noah's:

Benjamin's:

St. Martin's Day

Last evening we got to join with Noah's school to celebrate St. Martin's Day. (There is a great paragraph in that link when you click on Germany to see what the tradition is for this country.) Noah and his classmates made lanterns at school and there was a schoolwide procession with the lanterns and the kids sang songs ("This Little Light of Mine," "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," "Ich geh mit meiner Laterne," and a few others) and we had some snacks.

Berlin {part 2}

On Friday, we enjoyed the Aquarium and Zoo (after we had Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast!). Noah really loved the aquarium. And the donuts.

He really likes the seahorses, and instructed them to "Smile for the picture!" It cracked me up!

Being rhinoceroses. Obviously.

While the kids played at the zoo playground with daddy, I got a couple of hours to go through the Museum for Photography, featuring photographs by Helmut Newton (beware, not kid appropriate. he liked nudes, apparently.).

Then we went to Checkpoint Charlie.

 On Saturday, we went to the Berlin Wall Memorial.

And finished our trip with the Berlinerdom.

The Berlin train station was basically a huge mall with trains running through it. We had a little compartment all to ourselves on the train ride back, and it was so relaxing. It was a great trip! I feel like we could spend many more days there enjoying more museums!

Berlin {part 1}

Tim's long weekend and Benjamin's autumn vacation lined up perfectly this semester, so we left Wednesday morning for Berlin (about a 6 hour train ride from Heidelberg). We stayed until Saturday afternoon, and really enjoyed it! 

On Wednesday we checked into our hotel and then went to see the Brandenburg Gate.

Right next to the gate is where the US Embassy is located.

We had reservations to go to the dome of the Reichstag, which is where the German parliament meets.

View from the dome over Berlin.

In the center of the dome is this column of mirrors whose angle can be changed to direct sunlight into the parliament room below.

Where the parliament sits.

On Thursday morning we did something for the kids, which was to visit the Legoland Discovery Center, complete with a mini-Berlin. 

The mini-Berliners would push down the wall every few minutes.

There was also a Star Wars section.

That afternoon, we visited The Story of Berlin Museum, which was fantastic.

It has a Cold War-era bunker beneath it.