Return of the Osterbrunnens!!

They're Baaaaaccckkk!!

A year later and I'm wiser on this whole Osterbrunnen thing. The tradition originates in northern Bavaria in the Fränkische Schweiz region. A little history on the Osterbrunnen (Easter Wells):

This custom has its origin in the fact that years ago people realized how important it is to have good water. Water that was blessed on Easter was believed to hold special powers. Children baptized with it would grow up to be especially smart, drinking it would protect you from sickness, and spraying some in your house would keep the bugs and mice away. (quoted from a website on Easter Fountains).

I love to drive through the countryside here and look at the Osterbrunnens. They are beautiful and it amazes me the patience it must take to decorate these eggs. In the Fränkische Schweiz all fountains are decorated with real hand painted eggs. The further you get area from this region it is more likely to see fountains with plastic eggs which can not even compare to the beauty of those with real eggs.


To kick off the pictures I wanted to share with you the Osterbrunnen in Bieberbach. It has been documented as the world's largest Easter Fountain with close to 12,000 hand painted eggs since 2000. You can get an idea of how large this fountain is by the man standing next to it. I would say he was roughly 6 feet tall.








You can see how stinky our weather has been lately. Look at the ice forming in this fountain:


This is a real plant hanging from this fountain covered in snow. This fountain is made with the plastic eggs. It is pretty but not nearly as impressive as those with real eggs.






A few more pictures of Osterbrunnens. Get ready for picture overload:

Happy Birthday Sydney!

Today is Syd's 10th birthday! Where does the time go?

We don't have much planned today for her birthday. It's going to be pretty low key. Syd is having a huge slumber party next month to celebrate her birthday. It originally was planned for this weekend but Oriental Trading company is taking forever with their shipping. I ordered several things for her slumber party from them.

Syd is getting a bedroom makeover for her birthday something she has been begging for. I can't wait to see her face what we got her for her room. She picked out these items from a Penney's catalog and has been begging for it ever since she saw it.

Dad and Diana already stole my thunder this morning. I let her open three presents from them and one was the Hannah Montanna Wii game. Syd was beyond excited about that.


For her birthday dinner she asked for schnitzel, taters, peas and pineapple. I got to the butcher so early this morning they didn't have any schnitzel yet so I got to watch the woman cut and tenderize the meat and then bread it. Syd will be having plain schnitzel the rest of us are having cordon bleu schnitzel.

Banjo tried to lend Syd a hand this morning in opening some presents:



Of course the first thing she wanted to do when she got home was open more presents :)

So Now Winter Decides to Finally Show Up

The view from our bedroom this morning:


My neighbor told me an old German wise tale today.

If you see clover at Christmas you will see nothing but white for Easter

That German wise tale sucks right about now.

We have had more snow in the past three days then we have all winter. This morning the snow is coming down pretty steadily not sure why school wasn't canceled or delayed. The roads are pretty nasty out. Paul said he slipped and slide the whole way into work. Given it's Good Friday all the Germans are off work today hence no hurry to get the roads plowed.

Banjo is enjoying the snow. He had a blast this morning playing in the snow:




This was on the way home yesterday after I picked the kids up from science club:



This was Wednesday:

Future Ninja in the Making

Just wanted to share a pic of the Z man. He has been taking Karate now for about a month. He hated it at first and every karate lesson was a battle the first month but he is slowly warming up to it and seems to really enjoy it now.



We had to get him some sort of self defense system from his sister. She is getting pretty tall these days (5 foot 1) and doesn't hesitate to pound on him if he looks at her crossed eyed.