Flat Stanley, Part 1 (John-Patrick)

Just after Rowan's birthday, we received a very interesting envelope from John (Patrick) Dignam... inside was Flat Stanley! (Who Michael, in his infinitely boyish humour, calls "Fathead Stanley".) For anyone who does not know, Flat Stanley is from a children's book and many schools use him to learn about geography...(Google it, it'll be faster than me telling you all about it...) Any-who... here are some photos of Flat Stanley's visit with us in Germany so far. As soon as Mike's home from Boston, I'll get the other pictures (and video!) off the camera and post them.


Flat Stanley at "Alsbacher Schloss"... built sometime around 1240, it's mostly a ruin now, but they have some interesting... um... "props"....
Rowan on the road up to the castle...
The castle's main gate.

All was going well till Flat Stanley mocked the gatekeeper.

They realized he could squeeze out of the stocks, so they tried the cage next.
He easily got out of the cage too, so next it was the manacles.

Several feet off the ground...

Stanley could slip those as well, so they put him on the spikes (don't worry JP, they didn't actually stick him on a spike....)
Even the spikes could not restrain Stanley... finally, the blacksmith put him in the vise...

After all that, Stanley was still smiling (though Rowan was beginning to get bored...)






Hey, I think I can see my house from here....



I'm King of the world!

And after all that, there's nothing like a nice gross (here meaning large) Hefeweizen at the beirgarten....