Mother's Day

The boys and I had a lovely Mother's Day on Sunday. We met Liesel and her kids at an enormous public park in Munich located on the grounds of Schloss Nymphenberg. It was originally a hunting grounds for the Royal Court. Today, The park apparently hosts the largest beer garden in the world, seating over 8000 people. It is also home to a Wasserspielplatz (basically a playground with sprinklers on some of the equipment) and a deer garden where kids can pet and feed deer through a fence. On Sunday, however, we didn't do either of those fun activities, though that will definitely be another trip sometime soon. Instead, Mother's Day was the seasonal opening of their Wasserspielplatz, so the park was filled with all sorts of games, rides, and other family-friendly activities. After eating our picnic lunch, we wandered the fairgrounds. Here's a taste of what we saw.

The Wasserspielplatz. Sprinklers are located on and inside
the equipment so that kids can play and stay cool.
Unfortunately, even though it was the opening day of the
season, the water play had not yet begun.

Willem takes a ride down the slide.

Structure building. Mostly this consisted of Gerrit trying
to attach poles together while Willem tried to rip them apart.

Building towers with wooden blocks.

The boys were much more interested in sitting inside
these crates to watch OTHER people build towers.

Gerrit's first face-painting experience. He looks a bit nervous.

When she first started he touched his face and smeared
all the paint. That's when we came up with the plan to have
Gerrit sit with his hands together on his lap.

All done. Check out my airplane.

Willem balancing on boards with mommy's help
(Look at his ice-scream smeared face and
tell me if you think he had a good day)

Gerrit carefully navigating the balance boards.


A video of Gerrit on the balance boards

The Rollercoaster Slide

Unfortunately, I wasn't fast enough to get a picture of Gerrit
going down the slide. Here's a shot of Ella riding the slide,
with Thomas ready to slide down next.

A short video of the slide in action.

Two very happy but very tired boys with balloons.