When the weather is nice...

Story of my life:
This week the weather started off beautiful (it then thunderstormed quite dramatically, but we'll conveniently ignore that) and in middle of nowhere land that means tractor time!
On Monday the tractors were out in force to mow the grass.
On Tuesday the tractors were out in force to whish up the grass and put it into nice rows, and in one field there was no tractor only a lonely woman doing this job :-(
By Wednesday said grass had been gathered into bales and in the field outside had all disappeared.
On Thursday and Friday animals started appearing in the previously long-grassed fields, leaving many-a brown trail along the roads. There are now sheep on the way to Kindergarten (although M insists they are goats) and cows outside my window which thankfully do not have cow bells on.
/A side note on cow bells:
I used to think cow bells were cool and atmospheric. Imagine gentle jingling of bells wafting through the calm mountain air. Now I am surrounded by them, my view of them have changed. They sound horrible and are incredibly loud, making it nigh on impossible to find quiet anywhere. However it is very cute how animals have bells relative to their size. The whopping great bulls have these huge bells, and then the baby mountain goats (the bells are not just restricted to cows) have these cute little dingly things. I'm not entirely sure the purpose of said bells, except I suppose if you were blind you'd be able to distinguish between a field of cows and a field of goats.
\side note on cow bells

With the weather being so  lovely the kids wanted to play outside, and with the field now cut this provided ideal running around space. They love 'What's the time Mr Wolf?' and L is actually wanting to learn a bit of English! However on Friday, the tractor reappeared, this time to spread manure :( We were the far end of the field at the time, so we had to walk round. I thought the reason would be self-evident, but I still got repeated 'wie so?' (How come?) from M. This is the child that started eating a piece of chewing gum that had been thrown in a bin, so maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised!

Tales from the language barrier:
On Friday I started a german language course, and therefore I needed to buy a book for it. When we went shopping today, we went to the book store, where I asked for the book and the lady said they didn't have it in stock, but she could order one. I've been in Germany almost 3 weeks now, so I can understand a fair bit and understood that. However as I was buying a book which highlighted the fact I don't know much german, T (the mum with whom I was shopping) felt the need to translate everything for me, even 'Montag ab 9' (Monday from 9). Normally it's up to me to work out what's going on, and ask if I'm confused.

Comic Kids:
Kids have an endless capacity to amuse, so I'll leave you with just one event.
L has discovered the joy of locking doors (I even came back once to find my door locked, but L did return the key the moment I asked) so keys were the new favourite toy. M had the bathroom key and was trying to push it behind the chest of drawers. I asked him what he was doing with the bathroom key and he said it wasn't the bathroom key, rather the car key and pointed to the chest of drawers and said 'This is my car'. It didn't take long for the key to disappear behind the chest of drawers, much to M's surprise!