More from Sunday in Thallichtenberg

These are just more photos of Ian and Leah from our Sunday trip to the castle.

Ian at the rocks:

Just a different one of Leah:

And then my favorites of the kids are the ones where they are together:

. . . or especially when they hug!! This is going to be great ammo in several (lets hope many) years:

Have a wonderful day everybody. Tschau!

Marc

Finally, some decent weather

After a solid week of cold, wind, and rain, we finally caught a (brief) break in the bad weather. Since Catherine was in Paris for a bread baking class, that left me and the kids. So I loaded them up in the Mini and we headed to the castle.

I, of course, also brought my camera and flash. Unfortunately, the battery on my wireless died and I'm still waiting for the replacement to get here in the mail. My other method of triggering my flash wirelessly doesn't work so great in direct sunlight, which is what we had today.

The kids had a nice time playing at the playground at the castle.

While I took advantage of snapping away at them mostly while they played. Below they are taking a quick break before we head out into the rest of the castle grounds.

They also had a nice time climbing on some rocks . . .

. . . which you can see them here below in action prior to taking their photo, above.

All in all, a very nice day. Hopefully yours is as nice. Tschuss!

Marc

Ian and his Stomp Rocket

We brought out Ian's Stomp Rocket toy this past weekend and took it outside, even though it was raining, for a little fun. It gave me a chance to play around with my flash, which is always fun for me. Anyways, just a couple shots of Ian having fun.

Too close to the flash on this one, but still a good looking kid!

Have a great day everybody!

More from Garmisch-Partenkirchen

So I've finally made some time to put together some of my photos from our recent trip to Garmisch. As many of you know, we don't really "plan" our vacations. We go to places where we have ideas of what we want to see and do, and then get there and change up where we go based on a variety of factors.

Well, Garmisch was no different. The only thing I really wanted to see was the Partenachklamm. Apparently "klamm" is "gorge", so we went to the Partenach Gorge. It is a 20-30 minute walk from the parking area to the entrance, and a mostly pretty walk, but nothing amazing. The gorge itself is pretty cool - I just love that shade of green water. Ice cold at this time of year, and probably just as cold in the summer, but I'm guessing much more refreshing.

Anyways, at the far end of the gorge the trail divides. We took the wrong turn (blame me, my German is nicht sehr guht). Funny thing is, after a long climb from the valley floor, this is where we came out:

Not bad for a wrong turn! I don't think that "village" even has a name. There were hotels there and a nice restaurant with this amazing view.

The shot below here is from inside the Partenachklamm. It is a very narrow gorge, and the water isn't all that deep, but it does move pretty quickly. There are all these overhangs and tunnels that have been cut into the rock, and from one end to the other is only about 1/2 mile.

This is at the "top" end, where we exited. The sun was finally able to make it to the bottom of the gorge, and really helped to warm things up.

And at the very end people had made these rock cairns in a bizarre sort of zen-garden kind of thing. Ian and Leah had a great time deconstructing one of them while I was occupied trying to get a nice photo. There were plenty to choose from, so no real harm was done.

And a parting shot from some of the fields just behind the Edelweiss hotel, where we stayed. I'm not entirely sure what all those buildings were for, but some were packed to the gills with wood, others hay. But this is generally what we were waking up to every morning outside the hotel.

Have a wonderful day everybody!

Good Morning from Garmisch!

I woke up early this morning to go grab this photo. It was a beautiful morning to admire a sunrise here in Germany. It is hard to tell from this photo, but if you zoom in on the mountain peaks, you'll see they are being kissed by the sun. I have a couple of nicer ones that will get some photoshopping done on a larger monitor, so look for those sometime soon.

Have a wonderful day everybody. We will here!

Edelweiss - in the German Alps

This past week we've (me, Catherine, and the the kids) have been in Edelweiss, a hotel in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps. I have been here for work, continuing education really. Pretty awesome place for continuing education, but too bad they fill our days - literally - with programming. We got here Sunday and we've been go, go, go until this afternoon.

Thankfully the weather has cooperated and given us crappy weather while I've been in conference, with good weather the past couple of days. Today we headed into the foothills and made our way to Riesersee (Lake Rieser) where I discovered this little gem while on a run a day or two earlier.

The water is crystal clear, it is too easy to watch some of the fish swimming. I didn't dip a toe into the water, as there is snow higher up and I'm sure this water is part snow-melt. It used to feed the bobsled run that was used in the Munich Winter Olympics (pretty cool to see the old school grass, wood, dirt embankments for the turns).

Catherine found the kids some Bavarian-type clothes prior to our Oktoberfest trip, but we didn't have any luck finding ourselves dirndl's or lederhosen. So we saved the outfits for this trip and broke them out today.

This shot above was technically difficult, technically the least pleasing shot of the group. But I just love those Alps!

Finally, on the way out we saw this little chapel that I hadn't noticed before on the two previous trips past. This gave me a good chance to play around with the flash. All in all, this has been a nice little get away. We have a couple more days here, with no definite plans. Typical Skinner vacation . . .

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween everybody! This is just an excuse to show some photos of Ian and Leah from their Halloween adventures earlier today.

Ian was an astronaut.

Leah was a witch.

We went to the "Trunk or Treat" for all the people that live off post. Catherine had a whole basket (German shopping thingy) chock full of candy. I thought we'd have enough for every kid to have two pieces of candy. She managed to convince me that one would do, and we gave everything away in 30-45 minutes. Crazy!

The kids made out like bandits. Man I love raiding the kids' candy stash . . .

just kidding : )

Tschuss!

Marc