A quiet relax get-away - without pictures

7  years ago Jan and I were daydreaming about a quiet get-away in the country side. On some of our dive trips we had seen cute little old houses in tiny forgotten villages and I pictured myself there in the garden with a book with a wide view on the fields while the children were running around, playing in the garden.


7 years later, these are the scenes that you can picture of today:

A toddler riding a little wooden train with 4 colorful little wagons over wooden tracks while singing Jingle Bells loudly. 

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I have to close the open door as the smoke of a neighboring field where some farmer decided to launch a morning bonfire was coming inside. 

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A toddler in his underwear with bare feet, at 9 AM, digging in a blue shelled sand box. With a blue plastic scoop he fills a bucket ...and then empties it again with the scoop since the sand was too wet in order to turn the bucket upside down into a nice tower.  All of that happens while humming "happy birthday". 

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My feet up in a chair and a baby asleep on my belly, while a big boy and a little boy are raking the freshly cut grass in front of me ... one with a big rake and one with a little red rake. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of the birds and the buzzing of a lawn tractor further in the village and some kids running around somewhere.   The sound of summer.

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"One, two, three, four, five, six, nine, twelve, eight, ... many!" the toddler counts the cows in the field

"meeeeeuuuuuh",   I yell to the cows, that start approaching much to our amusement. 

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With a baby wrapped in my carrier on my belly, I hobble behind the orange ball and kick it gently just before he can get to it.

"Noooo mommy, my ball" he yells, but when he gets it he runs off "get the ball, get the ball". 

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A dinner outside on the deck with a glass of wine and a BBQ going and a toddler who had enough already and is riding his bike up and down next to us. We're all in shorts and slippers and running in and out the house to get some more drinks. 

What I wouldn't have guessed 7 years ago, that on such a wonderful get-away weekend I'd also be walking a toddler in his underwear into a sports store in the nearby town in order to buy a new short for the boy.  He has just thrown up all over his clothes in the car and we still have to do our grocery shopping without a set of fresh clothes.
He clearly feels already totally better compared to 10 minutes ago when he was whining in the backseat with a miserable face .   Now he was jumping up and down along the racks in the store in his underwear while I quickly searched for a short in his size to get him dressed again.
5 minutes later he could run outside again in a cool pirate themed swim short : happy boy = happy mother.