Introducing the Super Horses!

I am woefully behind, despite posting several entries about our Normandy adventure.

First, Mont St. Michel was wonderful. The hotel, Le Mere Poulard, was very nice and extremely clean. I have learned my lesson in terms of French hotels. Three stars or higher is the way this lady will travel from now on. Now, if only I could get used to French cuisine. We ate at one nicer restaurant on Mont St. Michel...I tried to be adventurous and ordered the local specialty, the Le Mere Poulard omelette, thinking it would be like something from a delicious greasy-spoon cafe. Yeah, not so much. They whip the eggs for their omelettes up until they are uber-thin and soupy, fry it for a moment while continuously whisking it in the pan, so that once it's "done", it's little more than a plate full of froth. There was not any cheese or ham to be found in that omelette. It was like eating a cloud. Luckily for me, the Normandy apple tart that I had for desert was plenty filling and delicious.

Mont St. Michel's main street sort of reminded me of Keystone, SD. You know, sort of charming but completely full of junky trinket shops. I was hoping for tasteful souvenirs, but no such luck. I wanted to find another great travel poster, like the two French ones that Hans and I have hanging in our living room. There was an overabundance of coffee mugs with silhouettes of Mont St. Michel on them, but no travel posters.

We spent Sunday touring the abbey, which you have seen pictures of in my last post. This involved climbing a lot of stairs. A loooooottt of stairs. This was one of those vacations that ended up with us losing weight instead of gaining, due to a combination of lots of exercising and very little edible food (ie: cloud-like omelettes). We toured the entire abbey and were about to exit when Josiah declared that he needed to use the bathroom...so he and I had to tear all the way around the back of the abbey and back up about 500 (possibly, I embellish) stairs to get to the only bathroom in the abbey. I really should have just stood him on the wall and let him pee into the salt marsh. I doubt anyone would have blinked, walking by. French men certainly don't try to hide the fact that they enjoy fully public urination. Except for Hans, who was a little more discreet the one time he used the wilds.

So that is that, Normandy wrapped up.

Now on to this busy week. Josiah had his first day of preschool on Wednesday. Everything went fine and Miss Kimberly, his new teacher, declared Josiah to be "sweet". He has preschool now three days a week from 11:30-2:30. Annika and I didn't know what to do with ourselves with our little cache of extra alone time, but I'm sure that will work itself out. We're planning a trip to IKEA on Monday, IF Germany's schools are back in session (recall our last, river of humanity trip there).

Soccer practice was on Tuesday afternoon. Josiah did better at dribbling, which we worked during the week. No, I'm not dragging him to the field to practice two hours per day. We just happened to be at the park with our soccer ball, so I was demonstrating dribbling. Which I probably am not that good at because I know nothing about soccer and I naturally blow at all sports. No matter, we'll get Titi to show him. She got 90% of the sports genes in our family. Anyway, the dribbling was better and he didn't use his hands AND I remembered to put his shinguards on under his socks. My only beef with him was that he acted kind of goofy during practice. There was a lot of making of goofy faces and falling on the ground, that kind of stuff.

Sigh. He's me, only male. Trying to get everyone's attention and make everyone laugh. Sigh.

They picked a name for their team, too. Remember that they're 4 and 5-year-olds. They are now the Super Horses! GO SUPER HORSES!

Let's see here, what else happened this week? We ordered our Routan. It should be here by November 19th, hopefully. Josiah picked Atlantis Blue. You can see it at the VW website. We're looking forward to having it even more after our trip to France.

Hans is currently on his way home to Minnesota, where he will hopefully get to spend some time with his Grandma, whose health seems to be failing. It's a very quick trip, he'll be back on the 9th. He had a decent birthday yesterday, though I made him mad by washing and waxing my car after supper and not spending my evening rubbing his feet, feeding him M&Ms and watching "Lost" with him like a proper wife. I did make him a pot roast and I MADE A CAKE. Not just any cake in a cake pan. Two layers of round cake with frosting in between and on the top and sides and sprinkles.

Must be love. Happy late birthday, Kit.