Last day of summer for the last kid

Nicholas starts his senior year of high school tomorrow.  Katherine starts her senior year of college tomorrow.  It's all sorts of crazy.

Yesterday Nicholas had his formal informal photos taken for the yearbook.

They were taken at the Kurhaus field in Wiesbaden.  Nicholas often has a lollipop in his mouth and I told him he should have his photos taken as such.  He declined.  We compromised and took some of our own.

Why do they make girls take these kinds of poses??

"Contemplating the Future"

He doesn't seem to know how to lollipop.

Duck poop and all.

One more year of having this kid at home.  We're so glad that boarding school isn't where he ended up last year.  Now if we could just get him to complete his ROTC scholarship packet!

He's 16!

Clopfers at the Apfelwein Fest

Dinner at Jamy's Burgers

Spaghetti eis dessert

A Working Summer

Becca had a busy summer.  She was full-time in the summer hire program at the Consulate.  She had dog-sitting jobs. And she took a 10-week summer 3D art class.

The last project for the summer was a clay piece with the goal of creating an anthropomorphic animal/insect/non-living items as a toy/logo for a children's store

Ideas were tossed around and the two final contenders were a ballerina mosquito and a corgi Queen.

The piece that resulted is quite remarkable IMO.  From the beginning when it was a drawing then a wire skeleton, to when it started taking corgi shape in clay, and finally the finishing painted details, it was amazing to watch. I've said several times that if we saw this in a store in a London, I'd buy it for Rebecca because she's all about the corgis, and this is a fabulous piece.

A royal shelf wave.

Working up to this piece, she started with a wire seahorse for an imaginary aquarium. This one she brought with her to work on while we visited Dublin.  Jeffrey was her carry-on:

It's about 18 inches, not the mammoth it appears.

A foam core "Bat Shramp" (not sure what location this was for). The task was to combine a macro-creature with a micro-creature:

Just missing whiskers.

And a tea light tree sculpture for the head office of an imaginary organic food company. The task was to pick any single item and build it up. This was her least favorite result, but I think it still has a certain charm:

And now she's back to Savannah, a couple weeks early to get her RA training before the rest of the kids arrive to school. She has a long 12 weeks ahead of her and we already miss her.

Muddy Angel 2017

Today was another check mark on the list of "do things that make you uncomfortable." The Muddy Angel follows the pattern of a Tough Mudder, but much (MUCH) tamer.  There's very little upper body strength needed and the 5K is broken up by low key obstacles.  The idea is fun (and fundraising), not overcoming fears and pushing yourself like the Tough Mudders and Spartans do.

We didn't even have a team name, much less a uniform!

Katherine went for eye makeup but there was no time
for the rest of us.

That yellow blob in the back is me. 

The muddiest part of the mudrun.

So happy the girls did this with me!

I was, by far, the slowest member of our team as I have no cardio endurance at all and a 5K is FAR for me, but I finished and even jogged some parts of it.

Thanks to my girls, Brandi, Alaina, and Jonette for saying Yes to doing this too!

What'SUP?

Last night Becca and I hit the Main River on stand up paddle boards.  A friend sent out an invite to a group of folks, 26 said yes, and off we went.

The Main River goes through the center of Frankfurt, and we paddled our way through part of it, and we paddled through sunset.  It was a beautiful evening.

And I only fell in once.

I don't think SUP is something I'll do again unless it's through a nature reserve of some sort, for while the city was lovely the big working ships passing by were a little less so.  And the folks sitting on the banks whistling. And it's hard.  Sleeping was a little tough as all those arm and leg muscles did their spasm dances from over exertion.

But yeah, it was fun and I'm really glad I went.  Another thing off the ever-growing bucket list.