Lyons Cub knew something was up when mommy researched medieval markets in North Rhine-Westphalia. We found one that took place on May 22nd in the city of Witten. Which little kid doesn’t love knights, armor, horses, castles, and dragons? Admittedly, the dragon that was supposed to appear at the medieval festival in Witten was the…
Lyons Cub loves to play outside, especially in the forest, where he can build and hide in wooden teepees, climb on tree trunks, and find all kinds of insects, such as lime hawk moth caterpillars, etc. We found a cool nature adventure park, Landschaftspark Rheinbogen, in the town of Monheim at the right side of…
Last Sunday, Lyons Cub showed his friend John from Virginia the Cologne cathedral, and this Sunday, we took him to the city of Oberhausen to climb the Gasometer and see the exhibit, “The Fragile Paradise.” What’s the Gasometer? First of all, it looks like a huge, rusty oil barrel. It was first used in 1929…
Lyons Cub really wanted to go on a ship. So the day came where he would experience making a panorama trip on the Rhine river at Cologne. But that wasn’t all. He also visited the Chocolate museum and got free samples and to try from the chocolate fountain, and he went into St. Martin’s church,…
Lyons Cub loves to watch and touch animals. We’ve been at the Reuschenberg Wildpark in Leverkusen several times already, but today, we tried out a different place, the Bird- and Animal Park in the city of Solingen. It has more birds than the park in Leverkusen, even big storks and colorful pheasants. The most interesting…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. While grandma gifted Lyons Cub a day each at Legoland and SeaLife in the city of Oberhausen for Easter, mommy offered him…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Have you ever painted Easter eggs with terrible, electronic Christmas music in the background? No? Then, you absolutely need to try the…
It’s Easter Sunday and our second day of adventures… We have a double ticket for Legoland and SeaLife, and now, we’re doing the second part of it. Lyons Cub had been to the AquaZoo in Düsseldorf before when he was merely 1.5 years old, on our summer trip to Europe. I figured that at 4,…
Lyons Cub’s Easter present was a visit to Legoland and SeaLife in the city of Oberhausen in the Ruhr river area in Germany (a former coal mining district). My son is a big fan of LEGO. Like other little kids, he started out with Duplos (his dinosaur duplos, for example) and evolved to dinosaur skeletons…
Today was awesome! Lyons Cub went to GeckoFun, an indoor playground with inflatables and lots of climbing castles. We went with another family with two little girls and spent from noon through about 4 p.m. there. This adventure playground is in the city of Burscheid, where we had never been before. It was totally worthwhile!…
Yay, the circus is in town! No, not the big Moscow State Circus or Circus Krone, just a small family circus, but for my son, it was the first time ever to see one. I had read to him a book about a happy lion who finds his lioness at a circus, his favorite story…
Strictly speaking, “Jurassic LIVE Tour” is a misnomer, and my son knows that the dinosaurs have long been extinct because a meteorite hit Earth and killed them all. Still, he seemed to forget about that from time to time, asking me, “When will they fight? When are the real ones coming?” We’re at the dino…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. This year, like in the past two, there won’t be much of carnival going on, at least not in our city, because…
Oh no! We’ve read in the press that from May on, the Tonieboxes and Tonies will get more expensive! I can totally understand that added material and production and transport costs will cause a little price hike, but 20 bucks more for a Toniebox is quite a bit, and it’s not cheap as it is…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Lyons Cub grew up with two cats, Frankie (our rescue from a reptile show) and Felix (our stray that came with our…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Today, Germany is awaiting a major storm, so the government of our state, North Rhine-Westphalia, has ordered all schools closed tomorrow. Since…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Lyons Cub already had LEGO Duplo dinos when he was little, over a year ago, and he visited the real dino skeletons…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. How can you spend your time when you have a cold and cannot go to kindergarten? Easy! Get out your playdough and…
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t JUST an art gallery, it was also a store for trading card collectors, and we took Leander’s Daddy’s baseball card albums from the 1960s and 70s there to have them appraised. But what we really wanted to do was to pick up his 4th birthday present, an awesome painting of Pikachu…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Today is Lyons Cub’s 4th birthday!!! He had been watching YouTube videos of kids playing with the Hot Wheels City for a…
Today was one of those days…. I took my son to the city (we went to see his pediatrician to get a prescription for nose spray and cough syrup, and then, we ended up in a shoe store, because mommy needed new shoes for work and Lyons Cub needed Crocs for kindergarten). In the back…
No mommy wants to have her baby in the NICU on Valentine’s Day. No mommy expects to be widowed for Valentine’s Day, either. Both happened, so might as well make the best of it… Our biggest helper was our dear Nanny Nancy, who had secretly printed a preemie onesie with a red heart, saying, “Mommy’s…
Especially during the pandemic, you might have considered online educational programs and asked yourself: “Is ABCmouse worthwhile?” While there are other alternatives on the market, we have been happy with our ABCmouse subscription for two years now. We don’t use it regularly; my son goes to bed with two books every night (one in English,…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. My son just went through the stomach flu, a gift from his kindergarten. Now, he’s feeling better, but is still under the…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Do you have an active kiddo who doesn’t know what to do with his/her hands? To calm down, he/she could play with…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Oh sh**, it happened, Leander brought the stomach flu home from kindergarten, which means for the both of us tea, apple juice,…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Are you an artsy, crafty mommy? I love to do art projects with my son, but as a full-time working mom, I…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Bowling is one of Germany’s popular indoor sports, often available in restaurants (but you can play it outside, too). My father went…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. As a child of the 80s, I loved to play Tetris (invented 1984 by a Russian software engineer) on my gameboy (invented…
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Lyons Cub had this one big wish for Christmas: The “green slime gorilla” from Hot Wheels! He had seen it on his…