munich

I ran out of gifts to give Rocky eight years ago so now I try to give him experiences. They are a lot easier to move and he usually hasn't already bought them for himself. This year for Christmas I got him tickets to a Bayern-Munich soccer match. (Though we didn't know until the match whether or not they were fraudulent--I need to vet my booking sites more thoroughly.) Since the game was on a Saturday afternoon, we all drove up Friday afternoon--mainly because we were excited for the hotel pool. Turns out hotel pools in Germany are really, really cold. 

 We did score with the hotel when they double booked our very small suite and gave us an extra room for free.

 I went out for post-bedtime treats that night and after the gourmet ice cream shop was closed, I stopped at a gas station. They had all my favorite American candy--rolos, reeses, skittles and Ben and Jerry's. I panicked and bought the skittles. The next day, Rocky attempted to pass on his incredible ability to catch small objects in his mouth.

The kids don't remember having skittles and kept asking for the smarties that are not chocolate.

I should note that the weather forecast was for rain all day. So I made everyone only bring rain boots. We looked quite silly walking around all day in the sun with rain boots. Oh well.

While Rocky and Eliot were at the match, the younger kids and I went to the Deutches Museum. They have a small kids play area where we hung out building giant legos and marble tracks.

One day before Christmas, Eliot was having a rough day and I mentioned the tickets I had bought for Rocky (but told her not to tell) and asked who could use the other ticket. She quickly responded, "Dad loved taking me to the hockey game last month. He says I'm super fun to bring to stuff and also, I play soccer so I think he would be really happy if I went with him." How do you say no to that.