Christmas 2013

I made the children pose for photos before allowing them to open presents.  They were not happy about the delay but they learned quickly that arguing about it just lengthened the delay...

The Netherlands 2012

My father and step-mother came to visit during Oscar's spring break in April.  We scheduled a three-day trip to the Netherlands.  Of course we went to the Keukenhof (3rd year in a row).  The weather forecast called for rain each day we were there but it never rained once.  On the day we went to the Keukenhof, the sunlight helped me get some great photos.  My dad brought his fancy Canon 7D camera so I got to use that for the photos.

A day trip to Strasbourg

In 1977, my father was employed as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Institut de Chimie, Université Louis-Pasteur in Strasbourg, France.  Strasbourg subsequently became the city of my birth.  When my father came to visit in April, he said he wanted to see the city again.  It was only a two hour drive from Wiesbaden so we drove there and back on the same day.  We visited the Strasbourg Cathedral (from 1647 to 1874 it was the world's tallest building), walked around the Grand Island (in 1988 it was named a UNESCO World Heritage site), had lunch at a French restaurant, and stopped at a pastry shop for desert as we walked back to the parking garage.

Oscar's baptism

Mormon children are eligible to be baptized when they turn eight (see here for an explanation).  Accordingly, Oscar was baptized on his eighth birthday.  Oscar spent several months preparing for his baptism.  We talked a lot about what it means to be baptized.  We also we discussed answers to questions that were in a "Baptism Book" that the ward Primary Presidency provides to each of the seven year-old children.  We are grateful that Oscar made the choice to be baptized.

Narula Family 2011 Year In Review

Tina made a 2011 memory book at shutterfly.com.  I made some small changes as I was reviewing the book for clarity and errors but the majority of the book is Tina's work.  We have not yet received the book in the mail.  Here is what it will look like:

Christmas decorations, Narula style

Here are some of the ornaments on our Christmas tree:

Auf Wiedersehen, Frau Bauer

The local Army base offers German lessons for Americans that want to improve their German language skills.  I started taking classes with Frau Bauer in early 2010.  I took four of her classes and was looking forward to a fifth this fall.  Tina had also taken two of her classes and was signed up for a third.  Her classes were really good for me and I learned a lot.  I always felt like I got more out of the classes than I paid for.

London with Tina

Tina and I spent three days in London during the second week of Oscar's fall break from school (in October).  Sara stayed with a family from church and the boys stayed with a different family (also from church).  I cashed in the last of my Hyatt points so we stayed at the Andaz Liverpool Street for free (same as when I took Oscar to London in July).

Jetlagged

I remember how hard it was for our family to adjust to European time when we first arrived in Germany in 2009.  We had come from the Eastern time zone in the United States (six hour difference) and it took almost a full week before all of us felt comfortable with the time change.

Separation of powers

Tina got home from her adults-only trip to Bavaria on Tuesday afternoon.  On Thursday, she left again -- this time to the States for four weeks (mostly with her parents in Las Vegas).  Calvin and Sara went with her but Oscar stayed in Germany with me (he still has two more weeks of school).  We looked at getting tickets after Oscar was out of school but leaving a few weeks later would have cost a lot more money.  So Oscar and I are by ourselves in Germany until the evening of July 6th.

Abandoned with children

Tina left on Saturday morning to go to Bavaria with her friend Debby.  She called tonight to say she will be back on Tuesday in time for me to go to German class.

Sunday evening report: the kitchen is a disaster, the only milk we have is skim (there will be tears in the morning), nobody made the bed this morning, and there is a pile of camping gear at the bottom of the stairs that needs to get put away.  We can definitely make it to Tuesday without doing laundry but at some point I'm going to have to empty the dishwasher.  Maybe tomorrow...

Nimbers and Numb€r$

Most readers probably know I have a degree in math and a minor in statistics.  You might think a nimber is a word invented by Dr. Seuss to rhyme with timber but I know better.  Learning about numbers has always been relatively easy for me.  It is not just learning about numbers that comes easily for me; I remember numbers too:

• I remember the first eight digits of Pi and am embarassed that I haven't memorized twice that many.
• I remember that 1729 = 1^3 + 12^3 = 9^3 + 10^3 is the smallest number that can be written as a sum of two cubes in more than one way.
• I remember that Don Mattingly hit .327 in 1987.
• I remember old street addresses and telephone numbers.
• I remember that 561 is the first Carmichael number.

I will spare the reader further details of the math party going on in my head; I think it is enough to say that I do not often forget numbers.  This makes what happened on the way to Legoland even more surprising. 

I stopped to fill up gas at an Esso station located just off the freeway.  When I went inside to pay, I confidently handed the clerk my Army gas card (this allows me to buy gas at a price that is about half what the Germans pay) and quickly entered the four digit PIN code necessary to complete the transaction.  I even began with some chit chat in German.

The machine processed for a minute and then reported that the PIN code was incorrect.  Hmmm.  I must have fat-fingered it.  So I tried again.  And for a second time, the machine indicated an incorrect PIN.

Normally I buy gas at the local military base where the PIN code is not required.  So this is a number I do not use very often.  But I had used it without incident just a few weeks prior during both of our separate trips to Berlin and the Netherlands.  So really there was no excuse for getting the code wrong twice in a row.

The store was empty when I walked in but now there were two people behind me in line waiting to pay for gas.  I was not particularly worried about them because I assumed I could keep trying the PIN code until I got it correct.  And I knew I would eventually get it correct.  But then the clerk explained (in German, of course) that only three attempts were allowed.  If I got it wrong a third time, I would have to pay the German price for gas (on the order of $7.50 per gallon).

The pressure was on.  I did not understand what had gone wrong the first two times.  So I tried again.  Still wrong.

Disgusted with myself, I pulled out my EC card and paid with that.  Of course, it too requires a four digit PIN and I got the correct PIN on the first attempt.

Having paid a heavy price for gas, I stumbled away from the register and began the walk of shame back to the car.  A few minutes after we had left the gas station, I remembered the PIN code (I had been attempting to use the code for a different card).  When I told Tina the story (before we left the gas station), she asked me how much I paid for the gas.  I told her and she hasn't mentioned it since.

When I went back to work on Monday, I told the story to one of my coworkers.  We both agreed that if one of our wives had failed to remember the PIN, this would have not have been so easily forgotten.  Thanks to Tina for being so nice about my rather expensive mistake.  I will try to be better about returning the favor.

Legoland Deutschland

Last Saturday we went to Legoland Deutschland.  It is a three hour drive from our house.  I didn't want to pay to spend the night somewhere so I offered to do all of the driving (which I would have done anyway) on the condition that we did this as a long day trip instead of something that spanned two days. 

The boys had a great time.

We saw buckets and buckets of Legos.

Why Oscar doesn't have a German backpack:

Both of the boys liked driving the cars.

 

Oscar's driving experience came with a fancier driver's license and a driving class that included a discussion about proper driver etiquette.  It also cost 5€ whereas Calvin's was free (Calvin wasn't old enough to do the driving lesson).  Of course, the instruction was all in German.  Oscar told me he understood almost everything.

Sara enjoyed getting her picture taken while we were waiting for Oscar to finish his driving class.

 

Driving one car wasn't enough for the boys.  They wanted to drive the jungle cars too.

Mini-Land was very impressive.  We saw lots of famous German landmarks built out of Legos.  Here is the Brandenburg Gate.

Reichstag building (German Parliament).

Allianz Arena, home of Bayern München.

 Airbus A380.

Neuschwanstein.

 

 Venice.

 Shaq.

Everybody had a good time.  The children were tired so they slept most of the way home.

The Netherlands (again)

During Oscar's second week of spring break, we went back to the Netherlands (you might recall that we went last year).  We stayed at the same Eurocamp trailer park as before.  The trailers are clean, cheap, have a refrigerator and oven (so we bring and cook our own food), there is free wireless Internet at the shopping center, and admission to the on-site amusement park is built in to the price of the trailer.  We had two full days in the Netherlands so we spent one day at the Keukenhof and we spent the other day at the amusement park.  Oscar complained that the Keukenhof was just "walking and looking".  He found the amusement park to be much more tolerable.


Day One: Keukenhof
The Keukenhof is the world's largest flower garden -- over seven million bulbs.  I learned during this year's visit that every bulb is lifted and replanted by hand each year.  On the day we visited, the weather was really nice -- mostly sunny, high temperature in the upper 60s, and a light breeze that lasted the whole day.  In short, it was a perfect day for walking and looking.

Really great logo design.

As we were walking in, Oscar and Calvin took a detour to play with this penny crusher machine.  I looked away for a moment and the next thing I heard was Calvin crying.  Oscar had spun the crank around when Calvin wasn't looking and it hit him (Calvin) in the forehead.  So that explains the bruise on Calvin's head in all of the photos.

Last year we waited until the end of the day to try and get a family picture and it didn't turn out as well as I had hoped.  This year we did the family photo before lunch.  I found a grassy spot in relative shade right in front of some flowers.  The great thing about this spot was the bush in the background.  I had been trying to find a place where we would not have other people in the background and this spot worked really well for that.  I put the camera on a tripod, set a ten second timer, and ran into the frame.  We tried that five or six times until we ended up with a really nice photo.  I knew we weren't going to get anything better than this so we packed up the camera and moved on for more walking and looking.

This is one of my favorite flower photos from our Keukenhof visit.

If you look closely, you will see a single gray hair on my right temple.  I suppose there will eventually be more.  Maybe even on both sides...

 Keukenhof = 80 acres of this.  So beautiful...

 This gardener was dead-heading some early-blooming tulips that were done for the season.

 The boys liked watching people play a live chess game with large pieces.  I like this photo of the knight.  The pieces are two or three feet tall.

Day Two: Amusement Park
The boys really enjoyed the amusement park.  We were there all day...

The boys wanted me to ride the "big" roller coaster.

The boys remembered this slide from last year.  This ride was self-service -- no employee supervision.  That meant nobody was enforcing rules like "Don't go face first" and "Be sure to hold on to your bag on the way down".

Sara only went once. She did not like it.

Whatever happened to "Collect All 4"?

We all enjoyed anther trip to the Netherlands.  We still haven't been to Amsterdam; Maybe next year...