WeilThings.com

Spring has sprung.  That means Easter and spring soccer.  It’s good to get outside.  But first, one more indoor event.  It was a big night for Bastian’s kindergarten class.  They performed on the stage at the high school with the other kindergarten classes singing train themed songs in “The Kindergarten Express“.  Very cute.

Easter came with fantastic weather.  We took the boys to the annual town Easter egg hunt on the high school football field.  Lots of kids and chocolate.  Then we traveled to Gran’s house where we enjoyed decorating and hunting eggs, homemade ice cream, and another town Easter egg hunt.  Bastian found one of the silver eggs and got his picture in the newspaper.  His 15 minutes of fame already at age 5!

That takes us to spring soccer.  Bastian moved up to U8 this year and playing on the high school’s turf field beats the heck out of the Y’s muddy community fields.  His new coach is great and a few of his good friends from class are on the team (pictures from game 1 and game 2).

The boys had some fun with water and top soil improvising with empty Downy bottles from Miss Betty.  Yes, that’s dirt splattered up the wall and on the hot tub.  Joe had his own fun upgrading the front brakes on his car with new Stoptech cross-drilled rotors, Pagid Red pads, stainless brake lines, brass caliper slide bushings, and rebuilding and painting the calipers.  Makes 10 year old brakes look sweet.

And finally, we celebrated Mathias’ 3rd birthday train style with another amazing 3D cake by Jen.  It was a great party with close friends, family and more perfect weather.  Seems like just yesterday we were celebrating Bastian’s 3rd birthday.  Unbelievable.

The webmaster already broke his new year’s resolution (reference the last post) but nonetheless, the year is off to a great start.  Joe and Bastian warmed up their ski legs by sneaking away for a long weekend of skiing at Snowbasin, Utah, with Joe’s good friend Tony.  Joe hadn’t seen Tony in a few years so it was great to catch up.

At the end of January Jen turned a year older.  We celebrated with a homemade amaretto cake and Jen loved the Matchbox car the boys bought her.

In early February we had a couple feet of snow at home and enjoyed it.  To gear up for the winter Olympics Joe carved out a bobsled track in the front yard.  It was a little hard on the buns landing that final jump (video coming soon).

Fun in the snow didn’t end there.  We made the journey back to Taos, NM, for another great week of skiing with our friends, Dave, Dawn, Eric, Megan, Sue, Morley, and Donna.  This year we were wiser and got in shape with the help of P90X (yes, the one from the infomercial).  No second day soreness, potassium pills or ibuprofen for us!!!!!  The only problem we had was deciding if the headaches were from wine or altitude.  Everyone skied great and Joe and Dave finally tackled Al’s Run.  Bastian’s skiing made a step change and he was joining us on the green runs each day after ski school.  Mathias enjoyed “skiing” in Joe’s arms across the bunny slopes and riding the lifts.  Thank God for the on-mountain coffee hut, good friends who are good cooks, live music, and powder on the last day.

Webmaster’s new year’s resolution:  never get more than one month behind.  Catching up is hard to do but here goes.  We start all the way back in October when Gran came to visit just before enjoying Halloweenwith the Cornejo’s.  Kids in costumes are just too cute.  In November Bastian sang and played the bells in the kindergarten Thanksgiving feast.  We were very proud parents.  Thanksgiving found us flying around with stops in Graham, TX, to visit Clint, Marcia, Avery and new baby Jack, and then in Hoisington, KS, to visit Grandad, GG, Aunt Sissy, and the rest of the Kansas family.  December was all about Christmas, family and friends.  First the boys got to tell Santa what they wanted when he stopped by our municipal building.  There was no fear from Mathias this year.  Then we had a farewell dinner for the Smith’s who are relocating to PA.  Our first measurable snowfall prompted us to break out the sled and try busting our butts on the curb at the bottom of the front yard.  Just enough snow to work and the kids loved it.  Just before Christmas we spent a night at the Great Wolf Lodge where the kids exhausted themselves at the indoor water park.  Keeping the kids from drowning was exhausting for Jen and Joe as well.  Gran came to visit for Christmas while we enjoyed a wonderful meal by Jen and celebrated Jesus’ birth.  Santa remembered what the boys requested and the boys celebrated rock band style.  The day after Christmas we headed for St. Louis where we caught up with the Borah’s, Falkenrath’s and Kniker’s and got to celebrate Christmas at Gramma’s, Grampa’s, and Gran’s.  No time for relaxing as we headed back to Cinci to celebrate New Year with friends and say farewell to the Smith’s.  Pat, Kathleen and the boys stayed with us a couple days before heading to PA.  The boys played hard and the grown ups got some quality time together.

We pray your 2009 closed with fun, friends, and family like ours did and that God blesses you with health and happiness in 2010.

Well the webmaster is improving.  This is our October post only in December.  His goal is to be caught up before all the Christmas pictures are taken and start the year out with his head above water.  We’ll see.

First we wanted to share a couple school pictures from earlier this fall.  The boys are growing up.

In early October we had a surprise visit from some close friends that we haven’t seen since before moving to Germany, Larry and Marilyn Phillips.  Larry and Marilyn were Joe’s closest friends while he lived in Springfield, MO, back in the late 90′s.  They made Joe feel like he had family there.  Wonderful people.  It was great to catch up and felt like we just saw them the week before rather than more than 5 years ago.  They boys were all over them.  We hope it’s not another 5 years before the next visit.

Uncle Curt and Aunt Jerry came in from California so we went to Fenton for a weekend to visit.  We hadn’t seen them since our ski trip to Tahoe back in January.  While there we enjoyed a great day at Grant’s Farm with them and Gramma.  Family is a blessing even if you don’t get to see them very often.

While in Fenton we had a quick visit with Grampa and Miss Maureen.  Always fun and the boys love to hang out at Grampa’s house.

We hope to get Halloween and Thanksgiving posted soon.

Our lazy webmaster seems to have gone from monthly to quarterly posts.  He’s been given the feedback and will try to improve.

In the last months of summer we…

Celebrated Bastian’s 5th birthday.  The grandparents came in and Jen rocked another birthday cake.

Bastian started Kindergarten.  He’s growing up too fast but sure does look cool with his Spiderman backpack.  The first day of school went off without a hitch.

We continued our new tradition of spending Labor Day in Hoisington.  Another great trip to visit GG, Grandad, and the Kansas family.

And traveled to Connecticut to visit the Gelfand’s.  While there we spent a day in Manhattan catching the view from the Top of the Rock and running around Central Park.

We pray everyone had a great summer and don’t have too many leaves to rake.  Oh the leaves…  Good thing Joe doesn’t own a chainsaw.

As you can see from the date of the last post, Joe has been slacking.  He wishes he could blame someone else.  And then, rather than spending his time catching up, he redesigned the website.  Now it can’t be ignored any longer so this is catch-up post #1.

• We start with a long weekend in Chicago to do a little sightseeing, visit with Gran, and watch the US beat Honduras in a World Cup qualifier at Soldier Field.
• The Kniker’s came to visit from StL.  The kids played during the day while the grownups enjoyed a few adult beverages and got caught up at night.
• Joe joined in with the boys for ”wear your favorite sports team jersey” day.
• We packed up the tent and headed for Camp Caton and the annual Emrie family reunion.
• The boys rocked it for “crazy hair day” at day care.
• The Smith’s threw Bastian a pre-birthday party and outdoor sleep-over.
• And finally, the Bott’s came to visit from Michigan and we reminisced about our time in Germany (the Bott’s were in Stuttgart while we were in Cologne).

That gets us to the end of July.  With any luck we’ll have August done still this year. 

In an effort to simplify the website maintenance I have moved to a blog format powered by WordPress.  I will be adding new posts here and slowly migrating old posts from the past year.  All older posts will be on the Archive page in the old format.  From any page you can click on WeilThings.com in the header to return to the main page.

We were just going through some pictures from our trip to Chicago in June and realized that we didn’t post any pictures from the rest of May.  Joe has been a slacker on the website.  In May we traveled to Hoisington for Memorial Day and had a great visit with Jen’s family.  We celebrated GG’s 84th birthday with a nice dinner prepared by Jen.  The boys enjoyed cooking with GG and hanging out with Grandad and Shake.  And, of course, no trip to Hoisington would be complete without the boys getting a little spoiled by their Kansas Aunties.

At the end of May we celebrated Bastian’s graduation from preschool.  The teachers and class prepared a very professional ceremony complete with caps, gowns, songs, a little dance, and diplomas.  The first of many graduation celebrations with the kids, God willing!  Bastian was ready to go to kindergarten the next day and was disappointed to find out he still had two months of preschool left.  They grow up so fast.

Since our last post was more than two months ago we have changed seasons.  Now it’s almost summer here.  In the meantime we have enjoyed Bastian’s first season of soccer, Easter here at home, and celebrated Mathias’ 2nd birthday (Mathias’ favorite word was cake for a couple weeks after the party, which he pronounced KEEEEEEEEK and usually said it with the same sort of enthusiasm that a Mexican soccer commentator announces a goal).  Jen outdid herself again with a 3D elephant cake.  We also posted some school pictures of the boys and Bastian’s soccer team pictures.

The end of January, beginning of February brought another big dump of snow at our place.  It’s pretty cool to see a foot of snow in the Midwest.  Joe even got his skis out and skied down the road in front of our house.  The boys had a blast playing and making a snowman.

In mid Feb we went to the Cincinnati Children’s Museum which is inside the Cincinnati Museum Center which is located in the old Cincinnati Union Terminal.  The kids played 100 miles per hour with all the interactive activities.  It was chaos but fun.

At the end of the month Gramma came to visit.  She got some quality time with the boys and it even snowed again.

The first week of March we enjoyed another ski trip.  This time to Taos, New Mexico, with a group of friends.  Bastian’s skiing really improved and now he can ski down the bunny slopes unassisted, turning and stopping at will.  We can’t think of anything cuter than a 4 year old skiing but we are skiing people.  Although the snow conditions were bad we really enjoyed the ski area.  Taos offers some of the most challenging steeps, bumps, and glades in North America.  It’s a small ski area that is not over crowded and the atmosphere is laid back and fantastic.  Taos is famous for their Ernie Blake ski school so Joe took a group moguls lesson that turned into a private 2.5 hour guided excursion of the most challenging stuff Joe could handle.  A couple of close calls prompted Joe to buy a helmet that night, much to Jen’s approval.  The best compliment he got was “nice self arrest” (the real skiers will understand that, it was steep, click here for a pictorial explanation).  What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger (or at least smarter or more careful).