I know I promised some pics

I know I have been promising some pics of our area for some time now, and here are a few.

The kids Grandparents were here last week and we took them to see this castle. It is very pretty with a wonderfully restored interior, and pretty grounds.

Here we are at the interior gate in the courtyard.

This is a lovely old windmill very near to our house, it is gorgeous and completely fabricated out of wood which has been faded to a soft silver grey by the centuries of northern German rains.

I love the shape of it with its peaked slate cap, and was surprised to see that there are many similar to this around where we live.

I always associated windmills with Holland...No?

An ok start?

Bach and Sushi...Date night with Riel

Riel has a great friend at school who shares lots of his interests. His parents share our philosophy of exposing their kids to lots of interesting and stimulating stuff, much like we do.

Dee , Sam's mom suggested we take the two boys into Hannover to a Bach concert in a beautiful old church, and I suggested we go for sushi before hand...so there it was ...Bach and Sushi...

We decided to take the train into town , more fun that way especially since we can walk the several blocks from our house to the train station, and it was a lovely balmy day.

The kids and I love the bright red colour of the train as it snakes its way through the green country side. We proceeded inside and took our seats, the commuter trains are super plush and very clean.

I love it. An image of the hills and farm land near where we live, we have lots of windmills around us though I see I did not capture them in this shot...they are so cool, and I love how many of them there are here.

Why don't we have them at home?

Riel on a stair case in the Hauptbanhoff (Main train station) at the centre of Hannover, posing with the girl holding the chocolate bar...

And the boys all giddy and excited out side the church before the concert... (Imagine??!!)


The concert was wonderful. Though we were expecting the emotional and petulant strains of a centuries old great pipe organ we were treated instead to the wafting melodies of a children's choir singing funerary music...We were enchanted none the less...

Niki Saint Phalle

In Hannover we have more sculpture than you can shake a stick at. There are sculptures EVERYWHERE. Some of it I get... and some of it I do not.

Nonetheless all very interesting and thought provoking, and refreshing I find that the city of Hannover has invested so much in supporting sculpture artists. There is an wonderful installation in the centre of town called "Die Nanas" created by Niki Saint Phalle, and here it is...

I love the form of these figures, the colour and the movement as well as the exuberant femininity of them. Nikki celebrates the female form in a fabulous way. Apparently she went on to design and execute another series of female figures dubbed the "Skinnies"

In the largest and most prestigious formal garden in Hannover, the Herrenhausen Gardens (translated to Men's House Garden incidentally) Gardens Nikki has created a sculpture grotto in the interior of a traditional stone 17th century garden building. Entering the Grotto is truly an otherworldly experience, as the artists vision completely envelopes you with shimmering light. The interior is paved with multi textured mirrors and dotted with more colorful figures...She plays with light and incorporates reflections of exterior landscape features. You can find some background information here about her here is her biography, and also a great site about a sculpture garden in Italy called the Tarot garden.

At the The Sprengel Museum (Hannover's museum of modern art) she has built a fibre glass Nana that is hollow and as a shelter and very accessible structure for kids and adults to experience. The kids loved it as not only could they go in and out of it, touch it and be right up close to it but the thing echos. Truly cool.

Way too cool....

Maitrand Bertrand

This is Maitrand Bertrand.

He is an egg timer, and as you can see... we only have 5 Minutes left!!!

He is one version of all the very cool and funky kitchen gadgets that can be had here in Germany. He and I decided to get busy yesterday.

Ever since I was really small and living on our farm in southwestern Ontario I have wonderful memories of my mother making preservers in our kitchen with her stainless steel pots with their bake-a-lite handles and all the produce from our garden. I have always wanted to do this and even thought I love to cook and bake all kinds of food I always thought the prospect of "canning" seemed a little to daunting to even try...

Here in Germany we have several apple trees, and a white, black and red current bush that were loaded with fruit this fall ...so I figured I had to give it a try.

Here is a pot of red currants bubbling merrily away. In another pot I have the jars boiling, and I have some delicious apple juice waiting in the wings to be turned into apple jelly.

I France we had the delight of sampling a fruit jelly infused

with Rosemary and Thyme, which is delicious with fowl, pork or Foie Gras

so I was determined to give it a try. Fresh herbs from the garden...

Once the jelly had passed the freezer test,

(jells on a freezer cold plate)

I poured the jelly into the bottles in which I had previously placed sprigs of herbs.

Then I re steamed the jars to be sure they were sterile,

Maitrand Bertrand surveys the results...Looks pretty good no??

*salivating*

Lily's 1st Bike!!

Hey!!! What is this!!!!

Whoa, just a little wobbly! Hang on Dad!!

Oops, a little spill...gee it does not look this hard...Awww I'm OK tho!!

Look at me GOOoooooo!!!

A Big Girls Birthday!!!

I will take a little break from the Sweden photos which I will try to get more up loaded for you, but in the mean time we have celebrated Little Miss Lily's 4th Birthday ...*sigh* time flies.


We made her chocolate cake together since as even she will tell you ...She is "CRAZY" for chocolate...

She got pretty covered helping me sift and mix everything together...and had fun watching the mixer...fingers out though...and did a VERY thorough job greasing and flouring the pans in preparation for the batter.

After we had baked it I sliced it in preparation to ice.... Then a certain someone got to sample a tidbit of the trimmed off parts with some icing...yum. We iced the layers and ...oops dropped sumpin' on the floor Mommy....












Then we iced the sides, and got to choose which candies we wanted to decorate with....oooh, the REALLY fun part.... carefully placed them on the top, wiped hands clean and TA DAAAA!!!
The finished product...not bad for someone who is just 4 huh!!!




Yummy cake!!! After that we opened presents, and with the help of a new friend for Lily, "Tina Prima" (Ballerina).



Hmmmm...birthday cake SURE is good...

Tina Ballerina had ALOT to say for someone constucted out of some polar fleece and fluff, and even Ballerinas can suck their thumbs too y'know...

A big kiss for the birthday girl and then...phew...busy day....ZZZzzzzzzzz.....



Happy 4th Birthday Little Miss Lily!!! We love you!!!

More rock art

These are some more examples of the rock art we found at various Bronze and Iron age sites on the South West coast of Sweden. Imagine over 3ooo years ago...we were so captivated by them, and found them to be so beautiful.

Several ships...

A deer or elk surrounded by dogs and sleds...

Some scholars suggest that the figure of a boat being carried by a single figure is symbolic of the spiritual journey of the soul to the after life. Riel was fascinated. WE had the site entirely to ourselves and since the art is so prolific, it is not covered and as you can see from the photo very accessible.

This one was a little more confusing and difficult to decipher but still so interesting...the carvings themselves were typically not coloured but have been painted for clarity and ease of viewing. In their original form they may have been coloured though usually are found in a watershed or sheet of runoff, and facing the sun, at the level of the sea at that time.

The round holes called Faery holes or cup holes were filled with fat as offerings early on to the gods and later on, up until early this century to the faeries of the woods...
My personal favorite... 7 children ; 4 boys (if you look closely...) and 3 girls playing ball with a "big"person...
Wow.

Ship Stones

A viking burial site, we saw it as we drove by and had to stop, it looked so mysterious off in the distance. Upon closer examination, we found a series of rolling hummocks, not unlike Moguls.

We strolled around soaking up the air of the place.

The next day we went to a viking grave, the graves set up in a curious pattern like a ship, they call them Ship Stones...

The granite slabs were immense and we marvelled at their size and shape.
and wondered how many men it would have taken to position them like that...and how many were buried there...