Saint Martin's Day

This was several days ago, but I thought it was a cute picture. We had a pirate day and we made pirate hats for the boys. Super easy fun!

Last Friday, Freisen celebrated St. Martin's Day. The boys had made paper lanterns at school during the past week. 

On Friday evening, we walked down to the little church. The school kids put on little play (in German, of course) and sang songs (more German). So basically, I didn't understand anything, but it was cute.

Mikey's class got to sit in the front with their lanterns and sing a song for everyone.

After they were done at the church, everyone (in the whole town, I think) walked down to the 'festplatz'. Translated, da google says it means 'the fairground'. Basically, it's the place in town we take the boys to ride their bikes and when the town has things like this or the carnival several weeks back, this is where it is. When we got there, the firemen had a huge bonfire going. And you can barely see it in the picture, but there's a man on a horse dressed as St. Martin.

Oh, and wanna know why Martin is a saint? Well, so did I. So, this is what Wiki says -

The feast day is November 11, the feast day of St. Marin of Tours, who started out as a Roman soldier. He was baptized as an adult and became a monk. It is understood that he was a kind man who led a quiet and simple life. The most famous legend of his life is that he once cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar during a snowstorm, to save the beggar from dying of the cold. That night he dreamed that Jesus was wearing the half-cloak Martin had given away. Martin heard Jesus say to the angels: "Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptized; he has clothed me."

Impressive, right? Or not. I'm pretty sure that in my Bible, Jesus told the rich, young ruler to go and sell ALL of his positions and give the money to the poor. Keyword ALL. But hey, half is good enough for sainthood, so lets go with that. lol Martin Luther was named after him, though and was baptized on St. Martin's Day in 1483, so that's kinda cool.

This is me trying kinder gluhwein. Gluhwein is hot, spiced, mulled wine. Holly got the boys and I 'kinder' gluhwein. Which just means there's no alcohol. It tasted rather like wassel, but with grapes in it.

I like it, and the boys seemed to as well. 

After the gluhwein, we went home and had dinner, by candlelight per the boys' request. 

On Saturday after lunch we walked down to a new kids play area in town. It's a place where the kids can roller state or bike and they were having a little town party to celebrate it. They had jump ropes, hopscotch, bean bag toss, etc set up for the kids to play with. It was fun seeing even middle school aged kids content to play with the simplest of games. I love the German town we live in! They had a big chess board in the concrete with big plastic chess pieces set up. Mikey and I had fun playing with that. He's getting better just in the time I've been here, it now takes me a little longer to kill him. lol I'm allowed to have one game where I just always win, right?

They also have a little climbing wall that the boys enjoyed. And the orange/metal things are exercising things so parents can work out a little while their kids play, I assume.

After the park, we went to Globus and after we were done shopping, we got bratwursts and Berliner doughnuts. They were pretty yummy. Below is a picture of the view across from Globus. Grey, but pretty nonetheless. 

On Sunday, Ezra handed me this when I picked him up from his class. I thought it was sweet that I made the list. I read it aloud and he said "And Mommy!" so I think he meant Holly to make the list too.