Moran Family Fun

So last week there was no blog post because I've been feeling a little sick. From the middle of last week until Tuesday of this week I had a migraine every day. I've been feeling better since then - just a regular headache each day - so I wanted to get everything on the blog caught up. Anna Kournikova came to visit the wounded warriors at Landstuhl hospital and made a side trip to Madison, Emily, and Abigail's school. Emily came home and told me that some famous tennis player named Anna had come to visit her PE class. I asked her if it was Anna Kournikova and when she said, "Yeah, that was her name!" I didn't believe it. So we did an internet search and it turns out she really did visit their school. Emily told me that she talked to them about going outside and playing instead of playing video games or being on the computer. She also said that it was better to talk to your friends face to face instead of text messaging. Emily was excited to meet and get he...

This week Madison had a field trip to Space Camp in Belgium. It was a long day; she was at school at 5:45 am and didn't get back until 8:00 pm. It was a great day according to Madison. They watched a movie about space flight and the chairs moved so it felt like you were in the spaceship. She had a chance to be strapped into one of those huge rotating things (I wish I knew what they were called). Madison described it like a ball with a harness in the middle. Once she was securely in there it started spinning around every which way. She was very proud that she didn't get motion sickness like some of the other kids did. All the fifth graders divided into small groups to build and launch rockets. Her group named theirs MIB for Men in Black and Madison was excited that she won rock, paper, scissors and got to bring the rocket home with her. On Th ursday Jared, Samantha, Natalie and I went to the nursery here in town and bought a bunch of flowers to plant in the front of the house. O...

So our big trip to Italy was this week and it was a really great trip. We woke up early Monday morning and started our 9+ hour drive. It was a beautiful drive through Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. We drove through the Swiss and Italian Alps, literally through them, we passed through 71 tunnels each way on the drive. One of the tunnels was 17 km long. It was hard to pay attention to the road with the scenery flashing by. It was snow capped mountains, waterfalls, houses way up on the mountain sides, beautiful Alpine lakes and meadows; it was just gorgeous. One of my favorite parts of this trip was the drive simply because it was so amazing, it was like the most beautiful (and longest) Sunday drive ever! We stayed in a cabin at Camp Darby, an Army post near Pisa. It was good to have a place to spread out and relax when we weren't out sightseeing. There were huge umbrella pine trees all around the campsite and the kids enjoyed collecting the monstrous pine cones that were all over ...

The biggest thing that happened this week was that Natalie peed in the potty. We have been talking to her about using the potty at diaper changes, and of course she sees her big sisters and knows that not everyone wears a diaper. On Tuesday morning when we were making breakfast she said "uh-oh" and started grabbing her diaper so we got the potty chair and I let her sit on it. I really didn't expect anything to happen, so I think we were both surprised when she did it! Hooray Natalie! So far it's been a one time thing, but a good start to the real work of potty training that will begin this summer. Madison and Abigail both had field trips this week, Madison to the Karlsruhe Zoo and Abigail to Sea Life (an aquarium) in Speyer. Emily is sad about this because she has had zero field trips this year. Samantha's class goes on "field trips" every day that the weather is nice, but they just go out into the actual fields! This week we have been preparing f...