Limes Museum In Aalen, Germany

There is no better way to learn about history than visiting the places where it all happened...

actually Godmothers idea, we went to the Limesmuseum in Aalen, which is a fantastic museum not only for kids...

My favorite part was our hike along the actual Limes wall...

...just imagine, this is exactly where many, many years ago, Roman soldiers pulled guard duty. I doubt they were ever dancing like that...

Things I Learned This Weekend...

...I learned that I should probably migrate to the South next winter because sonny weather is so much better...

...I learned, that it is possible to tell your mother about animals for 3 hours straight while going for a walk, only taking a break when petting a little calf with beautiful eyes and long black eye lashes...  

...last, but not least, I learned that no matter how hard I try I will never manage to make healthy food taste as delicious as the "potato and radish soup" that a farmer's wife cooked for us and thus will have to win the lottery and hire her as our personal cook...

Happy Birthday, Son!

Caves

Daughter, petrified of spiders wouldn't go inside the caves, but husband and son did...

Pointe Shoes

Finally - daughter's ballett teacher has given up. She has the strict rule of her students being 13 years old before starting on the pointe shoes. Which I think is a good rule and I agree with it.

But I guess daughter's pleeeeading eyes and her persistent "how old do you have to be???" wore her down. Last week, she handed daughter a brand new, shiny pair of ballett shoes as a gift.

Someone has been dancing on clouds all week.

Update

Spring is here and I am especially excited about the first spring flowers popping up here and there.
February has been a very chaotic month, work wise, for me. I kept on packing and unpacking my suitcase without ever going anywhere. Bad weather and strikes at several German airports were responsible for that and while I didn't have many flight hours and barely worked, daughter loved it that I was home so much.
On the one and only overnight I was on, the loaders ran my suitcase over with the luggage cart and managed to completely damage it. I must have been quite the sight walking though the airport with it.

Even more nerve racking was husband's job in the military, but then it always is...

To top it all off, on the day he got the good news we were hoping/waiting/praying for, his car got hit while driving through an enormously long tunnel. We still don't know what made the old lady speed up and run into the back of his car. Luckily, both she and husband are fine and while her little Fiat is totaled, his car has barely a scratch, which amazed the police to no end. "Of course, it's fine," husband told them in his broken German. "It's American."

Paris, Hamburg Or Who Knows???

I was supposed to work. According to my schedule, I was supposed to meet the rest of my crew at 4:55am at the airport for our flight to Paris. I had planned to hit "Laduree" and buy some new school clothes for daughter in Paris before heading back the next day. Then we were scheduled to fly to Hamburg and stay there for a day before flying back to our home base.

At 11:15pm before our first flight I get woken up by the ringing of my cell phone. The flight operations coordinator apologizes and tells me that our flight to Paris has been cancelled because our plane is stuck at another airport. Check-in time has been delayed until noon and we are now flying to Barcelona.
Even though I am going to miss out on my Laduree macarons I am happy that I can sleep in and go right back to bed.

When I get to the airport the next day, nicely rested and with my huge suitcase, the captain greets me with "no rush, our plane to Barcelona is delayed because of the snow" and "we will have to wait a few hours."

After several cups of coffee, the captain's phone rings again...and we are being told that another aircraft and another crew will be flying to Barcelona. The only flight we have to do is a short domestic hop of less than an hour.

Once there, we don't even have to leave the plane because we are being flown right back as passengers by yet another crew.

Now, my family doesn't expect me to be home for several days and when I walk in the door, in uniform and dragging my huge suitcase behind me, son looks at me with big eyes.
"We are having a party, "he says. "You are here just in time."

I am joining the party which involves playing games and eating junk food before unpacking my suitcase.

As for the flight operations coordinator....he promised to call tomorrow morning because he is not sure yet where he will send me next.