Electric Guitar

Tobias has had a guitar of his own for quite some time now as you can see here. It is still working, all the strings still there, just a few scrapes and bruises here and there, but in all Tobias has been quite careful with it, as I think he should be with any musical instrument. Recently he has been grabbing it every once in a while to play a tune for his sister. He'll strum the guitar and sometimes sing a song like "When you're smiling", which is pretty definitely Lorelei's favorite song at the moment.

Well, the other day I was playing my electric guitar. Tobias has take an interest in the electric guitar in the past, but he has only been watching me play and listening (and sometimes complaining it hurts his ears because it is too loud... :-)). This time he asked me if he could play. Knowing Tobias to be careful with his musical instruments (:-)), I didn't have too much of a problem with that, except that it is still way too big for him to hold. So, we held it together. Tobias strummed, I picked the chords, and Lisa took this picture.


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Halloween...

The Netherlands is not much of a Halloween celebrating country. Yet, we have bilingual and binational children, so, it is only fair they get traditions from both sides of the Atlantic. So, we celebrated this year. Tobias talked about all the candy that he likes and about what candy you need to eat when you want to be Dutch and what candy you need to eat when you want to be America. For example, you cannot eat "Drop" when you want to be American, yet you have to eat "Drop" if you want to be Dutch :-) (Drop is kind of similar to licorice, yet different... you have to try it to know it...).

Well, one of the things you do when you are American is celebrate Halloween; carve a pumpkin, dress up and go trick-or-treating. And that's what Tobias did. Lisa got a pumpkin and they carved it together. It came out quite well I might add, as you can see for yourself. Then, Tobias and I were going to scare Lisa. We were making a costume and had decided we would go around the back and then ring our doorbell and scare mama, his only trick-or-treat address on his route.... (since we didn't want to bother all the Halloween-unaware Dutchies...). You can see his costume in this picture. He is a "spider-ghost", the sheet being ghostly and his hat being a spider. It gave Lisa quite a scare (:-)) and it got Tobias some M&M's :-).

It was a nice Halloween.


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Beautiful....

...


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Swords, Guns, Canons, etc...

Tobias is currently very much into pirates, police, jail, bad guys etc. He also recently discovered cannons. Ever since he has been using his tinkertoys to build cannons and he has been asking a lot of questions about what happens when a cannonball hits you. In short, he is quite interested in all sorts of weaponry...

Well, we were in Monaco and at the Monaco Palace there were some cannons on display. So, I was all excited and said "Tobias, come see the cannons...". He grabbed my hand and we walked toward some cannons, but as we got close Tobias stopped and jerked my hand. I hadn't realized this, but he was scared.... I guess he thought the things still worked... There were lots of them and there were whole piles of cannonballs, so I guess it did look kind of threatening.

He later explained to me that it was not him, but baby-bear who was afraid :-)


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

I-i-i-i-i-t's n-n-n-n-not that c-c-c-cold

Tobias LOVES swimming, our vacation house had an outdoor swimming pool -> We HAD to go in it...

As I said before, we had some nice and some not so nice weather on our vacation. The water in the pool had already cooled down significantly and since the sun is the only heating system the pool has we had to deal with the temperature as it came.... which was, well, just pretty much freezing cold! But, like I said, we HAD to go in....

When Tobias first jumped in he could hardly speak, it was so cold.... he kind of stammered: "I-i-i-i-i-it's n-n-n-n-not that c-c-c-c-c-cold....". That was actually very funny, and I have to admire his stamina because we even stayed in that pool for quite some time...

After the pool we had to take a warm shower though in order to get Tobias warm again...


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Tobias Schumacher

My goodness, it has been a while since I posted. One reason for this is that we were on a vacation for a week during the fall break. That was really nice. My parents took us to a little town called Sainte Maxime in southern France, fairly close to Nice. We had some nice and some not so nice weather, but it was a really nice week out. It was in honor of my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. Friends of my parents have a house there which is where we stayed. We spent a lot of time in and around the house, but we also took some trips.

On one trip we went to Monaco. There they had a carnival and at the carnival they had bumper race cars. The best thing about them was that Tobias could go in there by himself (rather than with one of us...). He loves it and as you can see here he is quite into the racing thing :-).

The Carnival was probably the best to Tobias, but we had a nice day in Monaco too... although to us it was actually quite a shame the carnival was there because it took away from the view of the marina... Even so, we had a good time there, it is a beautiful place and a beautiful area. In Monaco we had a comfortable 23 degrees and a sunny day, but during the same week we had a day of very severe rainfall causing roads to be flooded and closed down, even the next day. From what I understood it was the heaviest rainfall they had had in a long time!

So, lots of different weather, lots of different sights and lots of food, wine, talk and fun!


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

In the Forest

As we were driving to the petting zoo last saturday we passed a thick patch of trees alongside the road. Tobias said: "Look Papa, a forest, I love the forest!". I of course told him that it was in fact a thick patch of trees and not a forest, and then suggested we'd go to the forest someday. He yelled: "Yeah!!! Let's go tomorrow!". Since I was with the kids by myself this weekend (Lisa and Shelli are off to the octoberfest in Munich...) I thought: "Good idea Tobias" so, this past sunday we went to the forest.

In this picture Tobias is holding baby-bear, a bear he has been carrying around for the past two weeks or so. He talks to him, takes him to bed with him, shares his meals with him etc. So, baby-bear also had to accompany him to the forest. Tobias was our "pathfinder" meaning that he would find the arrows we had to follow. He did a good job at that. Also he had to find leaves, acorns, pine-cones, and, in this case, mushrooms. He was actually quite excited. This afternoon (it is not my daddy-day, but Lisa is still in Munich today and will be home tonight, so I took the day off) we are going to collage his collection onto a piece of paper... or at least that's what he said he wants to do before he left for school this morning. That would be nice :-).


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle