Volksfest!!

Every year the base hosts a Volksfest - a German festival, although in this case it's a German-American festival celebrating German and American friendship!  It's a fair.  Since we haven't been to an actual German Volksfest yet, I can't really compare, but it seemed like a fairly typical American fair to me.  But we did have a lot of fun!!

The basic setup was food, rides, and military vehicles.  I had just told Chopper the other day that the army should do a touch-a-truck event with military vehicles and here it was!!  Of course I think it was William's favorite part.

Of course the kids hadn't eaten a decent breakfast, so the first thing we did was stop for food.  We just got the kids hamburgers and Chopper and I decided to hold out for German food a little later.

Then we encountered the biggest bounce house known to man!

That's Abby on the right sliding down.  They got 2 turns each and loved it even though their faces looked pretty terrified on the way down!

Then we wandered over to the military vehicles.  There were some American and a LOT of German vehicles and most of them the kids were all to climb all over.

View from the top of a tank!

Afterwards we did some rides -- typical fair rides like bumper cars, mazes, spinning things.  The girls LOVE spinning rides but I'm finding as I get older (I guess that's the reason) that I don't do so well with them!  We went on one that made me literally sick for the rest of the day.  All my dreams of schnitzel and bratwurst went out the window!  Needless to say, it was the last ride and we left the Volksfest shortly after anyway.  On our way out, we did buy a GIANT pretzel!

Which William claimed a large chunk of it for the ride and walk home.

We had a good time even though I spent the rest of the afternoon lying down!!  I can't seem to handle heights or spinning anymore!

Our weeks are pretty slow.  We've put up a countdown calendar marking the days until we are in the new house.  The kids also start school on the 29th of this month and Megan says she's looking forward to it.  But I think that the same parks, legos, books, and toys are getting old.  I don't know that I necessarily could have done it any differently though.  There's only so much that you can pack of course and with no car we're limited by the amount of walking we can do.  Although truth be told, we are also limited by William's horrific behavior and his regression in potty training.  He throws a fit at least once when we do go out and has started ignoring his body signals.  We're almost a month here and in some ways I feel like things have gotten harder, not easier.

Right now we just power through our weekdays and do fun things on the weekends.  I'm not regretting our decision to make this move but I am looking forward to the routine of school and to hopefully somehow getting William to a better place.  He just turned four so I'm hopeful that he will begin to grow out of this awfulness.  I look at Megan and how much she has grown and progressed and I'm hopeful that he won't be like this forever.  Of course I may have four more years . . . which I really don't want to think about.

I am really enjoying exploring a new place though and we're making plans for taking bigger trips to places that we really want to see -- and it's quite the list!  Chopper is liking the people in his office and although the job is going to be stressful at first (he has to build the program from scratch), I think that it will be a good place for him to be the next few years.  The weather has been beautiful (although cool and that makes me worry about winter!!  I like mild Texas winters!) and I've started language lessons through a program called Mango that seems really good -- of course that doesn't help that I blank out when someone talks to me!!  We're adjusting and we'll get to where we need to be!!