Kraxelmaxel, Peggy and Football :(

I can't believe it's still Saturday. Oh - wait - it isn't! It's Sunday! But Saturday was at least three days long and it has only just become Sunday, so really, we're talking about Saturday.

So, Saturday was Peggy and Julika and Felina (and Felina's boyfriend Dergo, pronounced not at all the way it is spelled since he comes from Serbia or some such) but not Wolfgang because he's off in France gliding with friends.  Peggy offered several activities - the pool, the beach and river, a bike tour or the ropes course. Since we had planned the ropes course anyway, everyone thought it would be even more fun to do with friends.  Correct.


But first we had to shower and such and it was time for Hunter to comb his hair. It was a group request, so Hunter had to comply.  What a hoot.  He spent a good bit of time enjoying "the look" before he shook it out.

With Peggy and the girls it is always a bit awkward at the beginning.  After all, they only see each other once a year and beginnings are not so easy.  We met at the ice cream parlor, made our intros and went in our own cars to the rope park.  We were NOT the only ones there!  It's vacation time and though we'd let them know we were coming, we still had to wait a bit, and had time to eat some food, and get comfy with each other.  


Julika is half monkey and can zip through this course.  Hunter wants to challenge Hannah and Kenley, but that's not so much fun for the girls, so we paired the two monkeys (Hunter and Julika). And did they have fun.  Julika was always the first to do the course and challenged Hunter with "I can do it better than you!!" and in English!  Hunter of course was up to the challenge and always managed to do whatever Julika did.  That let the girls have fun too. Sometimes Felina and Dergo were between, sometimes not.  Werner brought up the rear.  I got my exercise trying to get pictures of them all all over the place. (Next time, someone else can be the photographer and I'll do the ropes course.)

The start was hard - everyone was a bit nervous but they all bucked up for everyone else.  What's amazing too is how much each one is responsible for themselves - you get the orientation lecture and supervised practice and then participants are pretty  much responsible for themselves. Staff are always looking though, but definitely not holding anyone's hand.


It took about three hours to do, over courses that were gradually more difficult, longer and higher in the trees. Pretty amazing.  Only Hunter and Julika did the last parcours where you had to jump and swing into a vertical net and then climb up to the last platform. 



Whew.  Back to Peggy's for hamburgers and Bratwurst.  And while we were preparing the food, they jumped on the trampoline like they'd been penned up all day.  Wish I had their energy.

After filling up on the salads and burgers and brats, the "little" kids jumped some more (??!!) and Peggy, Werner and I watched the beginning of the USA-Ghana match.  We hurried home to catch the end, but the kids HAD to shower before going to bed so the showers were quick and in the end the girls were standing in their towels watching the final minutes.  What a disappointment!  Oh well.  It was still a fine fine day.

Thanks, Peggy!!