Barcelona – Like a jewel in the sun

For this weeks postcard installment I figured I would stay in Europe just move from Münich to Barcelona.

This post card dates from 1998 and was sent to us by Amanda when she was on her trip to Europe with a couple of her friends.  I can’t remember if it was her senior year of high school or the year before but Jen was just about beside herself when she found out that Amanda was going to be allowed to prance around Europe with a couple of similarly aged friends all by themselves without an adult chaperon.

This postcard is a picture of the Fountains at Montjuïc.  They were built in 1929 for the World’s Fair and according to the Barcelona tourist guide, “The magic fountain is a spectacular display of colour, light, motion, music and water acrobatics – if you mix all these elements together in just the right combinations, you end up with pure magic! The magic fountain is a “must see” when you come to Barcelona and highly recommended.”

Amanda made it through her trip alright but I seem to remember something about her camera being stolen on the train at some point so I don’t think there were too many pictures of the trip.  Jen was able to to breath easier when she finally arrived back home.

Balloon Fest Pictures

For the past couple of years we have made it a tradition to go to the Plano Balloon Fest.  The launch field is right across the street from Andrew’s school so he gets the see the preparations going on the week before and sometimes they get to see a couple of the balloons out on the field.

I asked Andrew a couple of questions about Balloon Fest.

Dad: What was your favorite part of Balloon Fest?

Andrew: Jumping in the bounce houses.

D: What was your favorite balloon?

A: Animal one, and buffalo one, and that’s all.

D: Is there anything else you want to tell me about Balloon Fest?

A: Um, I saw a dragon one, a panda one, and a daisy one.  They didn’t go up.  I just saw them flash.  I also saw the fire and I liked it because it wasn’t burning anything.

Here are a couple of pictures I took from the night we went.

Earworms

You know when you get a song stuck in your head and you just can’t get it out.  Well this morning when I woke up I had “Beer Barrel Polka” running through my head, except the German version, Rosamunde. While I was getting the kids ready for school, getting breakfast together, driving to work, eating lunch, driving home from work, and now while I’m sitting here watching tv it’s still going through my head.

I’ve just given up trying to fight it and figured I would share it with everyone else.  Here’s Marianne & Michael (?) singing it for you.  (If you have the patience they don’t actually get to the chorus until 55 seconds.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy0mv3sXI48]

If that hasn’t done it for you Pearls Before Swine has some John Denver for you.

Happy Oktoberfest from München

1998 Munich PostcardSince Oktoberfest is in full swing in right now I figured it would be fitting to post a card that Omi and Opa sent from Munich from July of 1998.

When they were in better health they used to travel to Germany ever other year or so to visit with family and travel around the country to see the sites. Depending the on length of the trip and the number of places they visited I would get at least one postcard, sometimes more.

On most of the postcards they usually have some type of verbiage on the back describing the scene on the front but this one just had “8000 Münich”. After doing some research it turns out that I’m just not well traveled and 8000 Munich refers to Marienplatz, the central square in in the city center. When I did an image search I found a picture almost identical to the one in the top right corner of the postcard.

Omi didn’t have a whole lot to say on this card other then it weather was really hot and the hotels they were staying at didn’t have air conditioning. We found the same thing when we were in Edinbourgh in the summer and the hotel didn’t have any air conditioning and it was hot which made sleeping a little difficult.

Scary Tiger Alex

Alex with tiger face paint.Alex only had a half day of school today so he ended up spending longer then usual at after care. They had all kinds of stuff to keep the kids busy like movies, games, and face painting. To my surprise he actually got the face painting done and had them paint him like a tiger.

When Jen arrived with Andrew to pick him up he just kept looking at Alex in horror. All night he kept saying, “Alex has a mean face” and was very relieved when the paint came off in the shower. “Hey it’s Alex’s face again” he said. Jen and I thought it kind of looked like he had grown an Amish beard.

Back in the Water for Competition

Last night Jen and I represented our respective employers at the Richardson Corporate Olympics. With the exception of last year I have been competing in the event since 2002 and I’m pretty sure Jen hasn’t missed a single year in that time. The only change was when she defected switched from competing for the TI to RISD when they started fielding a team.

Each year they seem to tweak the scoring format a little bit and this year the only two individual events were the 50 Free and 50 Back. They also have a mixed relay but we didn’t swim on those teams. Since the meet has a large number of people who have never really swum before no one is allowed to start off the blocks which makes things a little difficult. Overall we were pretty successful in our individual races, RISD ended up winning the meet and TI placed third.

Swimmer 50 Free 50 Back
==============================
Jen 32.42 38.79
Derek 27.26 31.24

Hu! Ha! Uh!

Johnny BravoI received this post card in 2002 from Deanna and Doug after a trip to Atlanta, Georgia. She writes:

“We had a fantastic trip down south.” and “spent their time hiking, eating, drinking margaritas, enjoying Mexican Cuisine, visiting CNN, and touring Coca-Cola.”

In fact this post card is from visiting the CNN building. A couple of years after their trip we drove over to Atlanta and met them there and did just about the same things. At the end of the CNN tour they had the obligatory gift shop which had merchandise from all the Turner broadcasting networks including the Cartoon Network.

I never watched an episode of Johnny Bravo but according to wikipedia it was on from 1997-1999, and then again from 2000-2003.

Speling Test Friday.

Every day Alex takes has to take his daily planer between school and home. One of the first things they do in the morning when getting into class is write the message of the day that he needs to bring home to show us. We sign it, he brings it back to school and the cycle repeats itself.

Yesterday he came home with the following message:

Speling test Friday.

Apparently he’s inherited my spelling genes.