Duck Pond

It is 5 days until packout. I should be working at getting ready for the movers. I would be except for some reason when we scheduled all this it didn't occur to us to check the school schedule for holidays. The kids had no school yesterday or today. A four day weekend with only 2 days left to finish up afterwards. (Insert four letter word of your choice here!) I tried to get stuff done with them home yesterday and today, but it was a loosing battle. They are trashing things faster than I can organize. I think my brain may explode if they get into one more area or pile that I have decided is ready for packing. I really wish we were allowed to pack some stuff up in boxes ahead of time just to keep the kids out of it, but we have been told absolutely no packed by owner allowed. (four-letter word here) In Jakarta they actually gave us boxes ahead of time so we could organize stuff. All we had to do was leave them unsealed. Here, forget about it!

The weather has finally warmed up. It is gorgeous outside, so before I totally lost my mind I decided to take the kids to the duck pond. My logic? If they are outside they aren't messing things up inside. After the winter finally ends and everything greens up it is so pretty that it almost seems as if Germany is apologizing for the long grey winter. I don't know what these pink flowers are, but aren't they gorgeous?

The boys and their friend enjoyed feeding the ducks and geese while I played with the camera.

Pay no attention the beer bottle. Honestly I don't think the kids even noticed it. They were having too much fun trying to get the baby geese to eat the bread from their hands. Every time the little ones would get too close one of the adult geese would fuss at them and make them back of from the dangerous humans.

I love this shot. The mother goose looks like any mom chewing out one of the kids. I have no idea why it came out all dark in the background like they are in a spot light. I wish I knew why that happened, but honestly I was just shooting in idiot mode like always. A bunch of pictures came out like this. Maybe someday I will learn how to really use my camera.

This may be my favorite shot of the day. It looks like a post card. They look so sweet sitting there together feeding the ducks.

Some of the ducks looked like mallards back home and some looked almost like mallards but the colors were wrong. I noticed that none of the ducks we saw were females. Perhaps they are still nesting. We saw the goslings but no duckings.





We also saw these little birds. They are much smaller than a duck, black, with such a bright beak it almost looks fake. The ducks and geese never let these little guys get much in the way of bread crumbs. They drive them off every time they come close. It is hard to get close enough to get a picture. I am pretty happy with this shot.



Of course I managed to take a few flower pictures too. Wild irises growing along the ponds edge in a few spots and some tiny blue flowers. I hate not knowing what they are.




After we ran out of bread for the ducks the kids amused themselves by rolling down a hill. I love when they just act like kids, not all caught up in computers or video games. After snapping some pictures of the kids I left them to it while I amused my self by stalking the big heron that hangs around the pond. He is gorgeous and almost impossible to get close to, I managed to get a few decent pictures.


Tomorrow David and Cody will be home and we will tag team back and forth so we can a get a few more things taken care of before Wednesday. Fun.