Over the Desperado and Along the Modau

Grins:  Hey guys...I heard that Granddad wanted to know more about where our house is here in town.  What do you think?  Should we tell them?
Dash:  Hmm, I dunno, seems risky to me.
Chubbly:  SURE...I say go for it, we love all our fans, especially the grandparent types.

Our House, as seen from the street.

 I thought it would be best to start with pictures showing where we live since it seems our descriptions over the phone and other formats have been somewhat lacking.  SO here we go.  We live in the front left hand quadrant of a quadraplex on a hillside.  We live on the main road through town, over and behind-ish an "American West" themed-bar, the "Desperado", next to a bus stop.  Okay, have that image in your head?  Here is what that looks like from the street.  That's Dash pointing up at our 'house'...it's the building with the two small white window frames peeking out over the roof line of the garages.  Our master bedroom is the window on the far left.  That tiny yellow smudge is the Forsythia bush in our backyard.  The very last 'archway' in the peach/orange colored building is the gateway to our yard.  You can barely see the Desperado sign in the first picture, so I got a closer picture to show you.

The Desperado

See?  Now this is taken around noon, so they're not open for business, but still this is The Desperado bar or "bistro" as our landlord so blithely put it when showing us the house originally, we have only recently discovered that the roof of the 'bistro' is in fact our total backyard, which means that no where in our yard is the soil more than 4 inches deep.  SO we couldn't even put our shepherd's crooks up in the backyard due to not being able to actually poke them into the ground.  This was quite a shock as you will see why, our backyard is full of trees...without any roots showing through...so how on Earth are they surviving?!

Our Backyard

Okay, see the roof covered wall penning in the yard?  Okay now if you look back up at the roof line in the first picture you will see a similar red tile.  Yep, this 'wall' is the extension/roof of the garage/bar wall.  So if a ball goes over this 7 ft barrier...down it drops onto the sidewalk and into the main street below.  This would be a bad thing.  As it would be dropping from some 30 ft above location to the unsuspecting populace below.  Anyway, in the backyard picture you see where the wall turns and runs behind Dash?  That is the interior wall to our stairwell that leads up to our front door area, the same stairwell leading from the gate that the boys are sitting in front of.  Behind this gate is this fun and exciting stairwell.
Steep?  Yep, you better believe it, and made of stone tiles.  Makes ones heart beat faster just watching the boys, especially Chubbly ascend and descend it.  Once you get to the top where you see Grins in the picture on the right, you will be on the patio entrance area to our house.


There is a tiny 'garden' area that Grins is facing that contains a tree, and a couple of rose bushes.  On the hillside, running along the stairs are a bunch of planters for us to fill with flowers and another small tree.  However, this is the entrance to our humble home, sorry that the Rolladen (those metal blind type things over the window) are down, if it were up, you'd be looking into our kitchen window. :D


Anyway, that is pretty much the extent of the exterior of our house, You've seen more of the backyard/patio area in the video prior to now.
So here are just a few other pictures from around town,

Okay so the middle one isn't here in town, but in 'the city' and it was the first time since moving to Europa that we went to Starbucks, 10 days post-partum and hot chocolates FTW!  On the right is a fountain downtown and the left is a picture of the Modau Stream that runs though town, this is at the Hammer Mill, just past the 'wall' at the end is an old wooden mill water wheel, it's very cool, but no angle gets a good picture of it.

Now there is another cool stone building on the way to the boys' kindergarten, so one day we stopped and they took pictures next to it.  So here ya go, looking all European and stuff over by the City Hall leaning against the Remise building.  (Which I think is a restaurant, but don't know for sure.)

Tell the boys to give their best poses, and what do you get?

Grins

Dash

Yeah...boys will be boys and ours are definitely not the exception to that rule.



Well anyway, that's enough for now, and just to be fair here's a  picture of the younger two um...'enjoying' each others company.