William's First Day of School . . . Sort've

I'm interrupting the fairy tale for a little dose of reality.  Ok a big dose of reality.

William needs preschool.  He is pretty attached to me and can be very helpless when he wants to be.  Being the youngest, I'm sure that he's spoiled and it's honestly been a long 3 months with him since we've moved.  A few weekends ago he went on a Saturday with Chopper to do some things and started crying about halfway through that I needed HIM and he and daddy needed to go home.  He can be a good sweet boy and I love him but we need space.

And actually, he really wants to go to school.  And he wants to go alone.  We've gone to a music class for toddlers hosted by a friend from church and he is adamant that I not participate because it's HIS class.

He has started speech therapy at the elementary school but it's 1/2 hour one day a week so I went in to sign him up for preschool.  No surprise, it's full -- unless I want to drive 40 minutes one way to Graf for an open spot over there.  Nope.  So on to the wait list he goes.  But child and youth services does have what they call an on-site daycare program.  It's a three-hour session on Tuesday and Thursday that is more daycare than class -- mixed, multiple ages, a lot of play time, some arts and singing but nothing very academic.  But it's pretty cheap and it's something while we wait.  So I signed him up for the rest of October and this is how the first day went.

Wake William up.  Tell him today is a school day.  He's really excited and gets right out of bed.  Try to change his clothes.  He starts crying and throwing a fit.  Go through his entire drawer and figure out that he wants to continue wearing his pajamas.  His short-sleeved pajamas.  In October in Bavaria.  Not happening.  Leave him crying and screaming in his bedroom for a half hour while I finish getting the girls ready for school, load up the car with my purse, his backpack, shoes and socks, and something he can eat for "breakfast".  Arm myself for battle.  Go back upstairs and force him into pants and a long sleeved shirt.  Carry him down the stairs and buckle him into the seat while he screams, cries, stiffens his entire body and then hits me.  Lose it in the car and start crying while at the same time be grateful he's still in a 5-point harness that he can't unbuckle.  Yell at him pretty good and get his shoes and socks on despite my shaking hands.  Start the car, turn on some fairy music for the girls, get about 3 minutes down the road and William is fine, eating goldfish, and talking about going to school.  Get the girls to school and drop off the paperwork for William's IEP meeting tomorrow and then drive over to the CYS center where he let's me put on his jacket without fuss and goes right in.  While the teacher is giving me a brief orientation for our first time, William asks what I'm doing there and says I need to leave.  I walk out the door, get in car, come home and breathe a sigh of relief.  It's 9 a.m.  I'm exhausted.  

Castles Castles EVERYWHERE!!!!!!

13 years ago Chopper stayed in Germany for Christmas on his way home from Iraq.  He had been sent out of Iraq because of a kidney stone and so he was in Germany for a little while as they decided what to do with him.  I had been spending Christmas with my parents (rather than be alone) and was so so jealous -- of course after knowing he was safe and not dying.  Chopper wanted to bring me a present but the only thing I could think of that I really wanted was a castle.  He did bring me some good presents, but of course a castle just wasn't in his suitcase!  This summer was rough and so I decided that I wanted to reward myself (honesty here) with a trip to see the iconic castle of Germany -- Neuschwanstein!  Chopper is a great husband and he agreed so off we went this weekend!!  Our location puts us about 3-4 hours away so it was perfect -- we got up Thursday mornings and drove out and saw Linderhof and Ettal Monastery that afternoon and then did Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein, the Museum of the Bavarian Kings, and Wieskirche yesterday.  Today we had planned to hike a little bit in Garmisch but it was rainy and cold and William was having a lot of meltdowns over ridiculous things (and kept asking to go home -- I think he was worried that we were repeating the upheaval of the summer!) so we came back just a little bit early.  It doesn't matter because that area is close enough for us to visit often while we live here and really the entire vacation was absolutely fantastic!!  So here it all comes -- lots and lots of pictures!!

This is the view from the front of Linderhof palace.  Ponds and fountains and some kind of Greek thing at the top!

This is the front of the palace from right almost on the doorstep (so at an angle).  The carvings and the detail work are magnificent.  The tour guide said there were only 6 staff -- that poor cleaning maid had it bad!!

You can't take pictures inside the palace (and it is fantastic!) but when you come out the back door after the tour you have this on the other side!  Ludwig II knew what he wanted and he wanted in this case French and grandiose!

The kids loved this statue of Neptune with his sea horses.  They love that all the statues of animals that we see are basically barfing out water.  Their words.

The side of the palace.  Linderhof is Ludwig II's smallest palace and the only one that was completed in his lifetime.  It's modeled in many ways after Versailles in France. All the portraits are of dead (in his time -- ok in ours too!) French rulers and their ladies and the gold carved gilt work is tremendous!!  He lived there as a hermit basically -- he never married or had kids and this palace is basically his bachelor pad.  The grounds are dotted with other small houses that are decorated like different places so that Ludwig could "travel" without going anywhere.  We didn't see them all because we didn't realize until I looked at the brochure afterwards!  

I have really enjoyed all the statuary that we've been seeing.  I'm sure much of it is symbolic but I am mostly amazed that these can be carved from stone.  In fact, in all his palaces I can't help but think of the amazing talent that is on display!!

This is the front of Linderhof and the amazing gold statue in the pool which apparently turns into a very tall fountain!

Our goal was to get a family picture in front of every castle.  We forgot Hohenschwangau but our Linderhof pictures are the best.

So another weird thing about statues -- mermaids are not traditional one tailed creatures.  This is the second time I've seen a mermaid statue that's really a naked woman with fish-scaled legs.  Two legs!  It's frankly weird.  

This is a really good one!  It was cold but not rainy and we were comfortable in coats wandering around outside.  

You could tell in the grounds where they have flowers in the spring and summer.  The patterns in the grass were still beautiful but I imagine that it is gorgeous when it's full of color.

A squishy family picture

One of the features on the grounds is a grotto that Ludwig had built for the production of Wagner operas.  So the cave isn't natural and it's actually lit by electric light and the water can be heated for swimming in the winter.  I read somewhere that Bavaria's first electrical tower/station whatever they are was built for this purpose.  The grotto is closing for renovations for the next 5 years and we got in the last weekend it's open!

From the back up by the grotto.  The setting just makes it that much more spectacular.

Ludwig was known as the swan king and swans are a pretty big part of Bavarian royalty symbolism and such.  This one decided to come right up to us and fortunately didn't try anything but he/she did try to bite a British guy after this . . . 

Poor William.  I only took coats with us and his is way too big.  I didn't try it on beforehand!  Looks like I'll be buying another and saving this one for later years!

Chopper and Abby are a lot alike really.  They both like to pose LIKE the statues (See Abby with lion above as well).

Ok I'm a little out of order here but I'm on the laptop without a mouse and things are hard to drag around.  I need to find the mouse.  So here we take a little detour to the Ettal Monastery (which we visited after Linderhof).  This was a display of REAL tiny books in the gift shop.  They are real and about 50 Euro apiece.  But they're adorable.

That's the main chapel portion of the church.  We should have taken a picture of the inside -- I think there was a no photography sign?  Anyway it was pretty spectacular itself.

These are the ceilings of the Moroccan house.  We didn't go in the Moorish house and we should have because there are peacocks in that one!  But there were porcelain peacocks in the house that were put by the front door when the king was in residence.

Flower arrangements are porcelain as well.  And a specific kind but I can't remember which.  In addition to the gold leaf in the palace is the extraordinary amount of porcelain - Ludwig was apparently a big fan.  

Some other features about the house -- this is one where a portion of the floor of the dining room could be lowered into the kitchen, the table set, and then raised into the room so that Ludwig didn't have to see anyone.  He really was a hermit here.  He also had a reading room (small like our reading nook but a LOT more fancy) and was reported to sleep late and then stay up all night reading.  Because of the paintings and the gold leaf and such, the house was never really lit.  There are some beautiful chandeliers lit by candle but they're mainly for show.  Apparently they just carried around small lamps to reduce the amount of smoke exposure in the building.

Ludwig is Bavaria's favorite king, even if he was called Mad King Ludwig II.  But I don't know that he was mad in terms of insane.  He certainly was somewhat eccentric and wanted to live in a fairy tale world.  Which I find ironic because he was a real-life king and yet he escaped into the fantasies of what he felt a kingdom should be.  He idolized French rulers that lost their kingdom due to their extravagance and neglect and spent pretty much all of Bavaria's money on trying to recreate that world for himself.  He never married and his father died when he was 18, making him the ruler.  He was deposed when he was 40 and removed to another castle where he died mysteriously in the lake.  It really is a fascinating story.  

After Linderhof we went back into the town of Ettal and visited the Basilica there and these are the rest of the pictures from that that I couldn't get moved down here on the blog!

It is a working monastery.  They have a boarding school, a library, and produce a lot of their own sustenance -- mainly a brewery (everything in Germany has a brewery) and a cheese making factory.  The cheese making part wasn't open but we bought some cheeses.  A really mild swiss type cheese that's good and a "feuerkaese" which is fire cheese but really is more like pepper cheese.

The kids and I were taking some selfies while Chopper finished purchases in the gift shop -- this is my favorite one!

Ok I'm going to stop here for now because the pictures are being weird on uploading.  But all of this is just the first day -- the drive down and then Linderhof and the monastery.  After just this one day I would say our vacation was a success.  The kids were doing great and the travel was going well.  The one thing was that William kept asking to go home and where our read house was.  We've only been in the red house for a month and so in his mind I think he thought we were on the move again with staying in the hotels and driving.  He has been a little bit of a homebody since this summer and I can't say that I blame him but he is adjusting pretty well too.  I think we all are!  We still have our hiccups but we're rapidly settling in to our new normal!

Bluhendes Barock in Ludwigsburg

I feel like I should make a disclaimer here that I think sometimes I am writing -berg for -burg or vice versa and so it may indicate the wrong city occasionally.  However, in this case I have checked my spellings and Ludwigsburg is correct.  It's a city on the outskirts of Stuttgart, about 2.5 hours from us and I had heard about this pumpkin festival through a travel Facebook page.  Since we're missing the Dallas Arboretum this year, we decided to make a day of it and see if the hype was worth it.  It turned out to be an awesome day trip!

This sweet girl loves to have her picture taken!

I love that even in a hedge there are umlauts over the "u"!  This palace has not been occupied in a long time of course but the grounds are amazing and open to the public.  We didn't take the castle tour -- just touring the grounds was a long day for us and the kids.  The pumpkin festival is in the back yard (which I'm sure they don't call it that!) and so we wandered through the front gardens for a bit.

We're trying to prove that we're actually there!

I tried to get Megan to get in the picture by asking for a funny one but she said no.

Selfie skills lacking

Abby wanted to see the ducks and their bridge into the water.

This statue cracks me up -- to me it's proof that kids in all generations of time have fought with their siblings.  I mean can't you just see the stonemason channeling his frustrations into his work?  Darn kids just can't get along!

Part of the inner courtyard.  

Another interesting statue

When you came around the back, then there are the pumpkin sculptures and they were pretty amazing.  We actually think that the Dallas Arboretum might do the actual pumpkin part better but they certainly can't compete with a castle!

The back of the palace -- I think!

I could not get high enough to get good pictures of this garden!  It's called the embroidery garden and if you get on a satellite map and put in Bluhendes Barock then you can see the design really well -- it is gorgeous!

Ok I actually don't know what this was but it was behind the palace and across the street.  Either it's the neighbor's house or maybe it's the guest house.  We did have a brochure in English but it didn't have a ton of historical information.

Clowns are always creepy

There was a giant pile of hay that the kids enjoyed and then we found a playground.  This was a great place to go with kids -- lots of fun stuff for them to enjoy!

The face I get when I try to sneak a picture.

After leaving the area of the pumpkin festival, the grounds are still extensive and include a whole path called the fairytale forest.  They have lots of houses that are set up with automated scenes telling the stories of a variety of fairy tales.  The automatons reminded me of the old Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland -- slight creepy but fun to watch!  The whole thing was pretty cool and there were enough fairy tales that we were familiar with to find things to interest us.

There's a boat ride to tell the tale of Pinocchio. 

One of the houses with the scene inside.

About to be swallowed by the fish!

I got a picture of it later with another boat party going through and wondering why I'm taking their picture!

Hansel and Gretel -- the gingerbread house.  With the creepiest witch I've ever seen.

Can you see her?

Yeah that's awful.

Part of the 1001 Arabian Nights

Aladdin and the lamp -- the lights made a pretty cool genii on the wall.

Statue of Strauss

There is an old carousel on the grounds that was just beautiful and the horses looked real!  They also had a chariot pulled by a naked lady with 2 fish tails.  William didn't want to ride in that one.  I don't blame him!

The carousel from the outside.

They also had an aviary with flamingoes (what?) and other birds including pheasants.  Being the Jane Austen addict that I am, I'm familiar with pheasant hunting but I had no idea they were so colorful!!  

After the aviary was a walk through this amazing area with different displays on birds where you could push the buttons and hear their calls.  Megan is really into birds right now and she particularly loved this part.

I thought I had a picture of the tower with Rapunzel's braid hanging off the side but I guess it's on Facebook.  We didn't go up the tower although I'm sure the view was fantastic.  It came at the end of our day and the kids were tired and hungry and wouldn't have handled it well.

Everyone has raved about the pumpkin soup but the lines for food were pretty long so I ended up just getting everyone pumpkin bratwurst that was fantastic!  I don't know how much actual pumpkin was in them but they WERE full of pumpkin seeds which was kind've weird but tasted really good!!  We didn't explore Stuttgart at all and will probably go back.  We're going to make a list of things we want to see while we're living here but also have to be content with what we do get to.  Not that I'm complaining!  It's going to be an amazing five years because there's so much to see and do!!

On a side note, I'm really loving small town life.  I love seeing the same people over and over and look forward to the day when I will actually be able to talk to them!  I have access to a pharmacy, grocery store, bakery, and post office in a 5 minute walk radius and we love the farms and their equipment that are always rolling through -- William particularly loves it!!  Every morning we walk to the bus stop and admire the beautiful mornings -- the fog is amazing (especially since I don't have to drive in it!) and on Friday there were swans on the Vils River!  I didn't have my camera or phone of course.  When we get into bigger cities it is very nerve-wracking to me to drive and communicate and figure things out so I honestly don't do it much but I'm really ok with that.  We are coming along pretty well I think and looking forward to the holiday season.  We're all decorated for Halloween and Ive got materials ordered for costumes.  Then Thanksgiving and Christmas are just a hop skip and a jump away!!  And although I'm not looking forward to the cold, everyone says that Christmas is truly magical in Germany so we're very excited for that!