Christmas days

Just before we celebrate Theda's and Jonte's 4th birthday tomorrow, we at least want to upload some pictures of the past ten days. After all the christmas preparations were done, we spent some very nice christmas days.

Baking cookies together - what a mess!

 

we had some mild days we spent outside

Christmas Eve: Waiting for Santa/ Weihnachtsmann at Magnuson Park

 

 

 Christmas Day: Going to the mountains to try the new skis

view of Mt. Baker on our way to Stevens Pass in the Cascades

view of the Cascades

fun in the snow although it is -12 degrees Celsius

Habt einen guten Rutsch! And a happy new year!

Frohe Weihnachten - Merry Christmas

We wish all you dear friends and family a Merry Christmas! Right now you are celebrating Chistmas Eve in Germany - so will we in a few hours - our american friends will celebrate tomorrow morning. Last grocery shopping is to be done (I take the kids with me so Katrin has a kids - free - pre Christmas Eve hour to do last preparations). The twins are extremely excited about everything, more and more every year - when does it start to ease again? In 10, 12 or 14 years? Anyway it is great to feel the excitement with them.
We hope you find a rest, a moment of freedom and relaxation over the holidays!

Forest Playtime

A little impression of our forest playtime group which meets on Wednesday mornings. Another German initiated this group based on the idea of German "Waldkindergaerten". Usually we are about 6 - 12 adults plus kids, mostly Germans living in the Seattle area. Last Wednesday we had -5 degrees Celsius, so we were just a small group, but enjoyed a beautiful morning outside.

Just a nice weekend

We had a very nice weekend. Yesterday I, Katrin, went to a CPR/ First Aid class, which I had to attend since I am the person responsible for "Health and Safety" at Theda and Jonte's Preschool. I first was not very motivated to go, but it was a retired firefighter who held the session and he drilled us, why it is important to know how to do CPR (Wiederbelebungsmassnahmen). It was quite embarrasing how many participants memorized nursery rhymes (Kinderreime) from 25 years ago, but could not remember how to do CPR, including me. Now I am convinced and really hope not to forget the procedure (a little comprehension for you: ABC - A: Open the Airway, B: 2x Breathing and C: 30x Heart Compressions). It saves lifes and can be needed at any time!! (Sorry, if I sound a little missionary.)

After I came back around noontime we took a long nap. In the afternoon we enjoyed Lebkuchen (a big christmas package had just arrived a couple of days ago :-)!) and when finally Jonte woke up at around 6pm (fell asleep at 4), he was totally convinced that we still should go to a "Feuerzangenbowlenfete" we were invited to. So we spontanously decided: "Ok, let's go!" We had a great time! It was a German from the forest playtime group inviting, so we met a lot of Germans and a lot of kids.

Today, on Sunday, we took it easy. Made homemade rolls (starting the dough in the evening and do the kneading and baking in the morning is perfect and has reduced our waiting time in the morning by far). Had an extended Sunday breakfast. Kids went playing in the bathtub. I prepared Christmas cookie dough and baked cookies later. Had a great phone call with Kieler friends. And finally when it was getting dark again, I went on a short walk with the kids while Sunke was preparing our dinner. The kids get very excited about all the christmas decoration in front of houses and the christmas trees which are often already put up in people's homes. Today they took pictures of their favourite houses.

one of the heavily decorated houses in our neighborhood

On our way back we stopped at a place were they sell christmas trees (it is not even a hundred meters away from our house, so we will be able to carry our tree home). As an attraction they have a reindeer now. Theda and Jonte had been waiting for it to come and were very happy today that it had finally arrived. So I guess, we will visit the reindeer regularly from now on.

reindeer Juno

nothing without hand sanitizer

... and when we got home, dinner was ready. We had "Gruenkohl, Kassler and Pinkel"! Sunke managed to find all three specialties at the Bavarian Meat Market in downtown. The Gruenkohl was a glas of "Kuehne SchlemmerGruenkohl nach Holsteiner Art". Everyone and especially Sunke was very happy (well, Narne would have liked some too, I guess).

 

Other than that we had clear and sunny, but cold winter days the past eight days. So we tried to spend a lot of time outside - going to parks or walks in the neighborhood.

 This picture was taken from our backyard door.

Sunke on his way to work. Still biking. But he also had a bad fall on a icy slope on his way to work last week. 

  

Theda preparing for Nikolaus.

 

Sonnenbrillenindianer

 

 Narne being very happy about his new skills

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 Hope you all also enjoyed a nice third advent weekend!

Advent

Sunke:
The first advent is already a few days ago. Time is running as it seems, unbelievable that Christmas and all our birthdays are coming up in a few weeks. The last weeks we spent once again with getting furniture, picture frames and other stuff for the house and settling even more.
Certainly there was more in the last weeks. We got introduced to a wonderful American tradition - the Thanksgiving dinner. We were invited and got treated with a perfect dinner, turkey with delicious side dishes. Especially Jonte did eat as if we forgot to provide him food for days - it all just tasted so good, from the starters to the desert!

Katrin:
The nice thing about Thanksgiving is also that it is always on the last Thursday of November and it means you basicly have free from Thursday through Sunday. Originally we planned to go on a trip, but decided to take it easy and stay home.

Sunke:
On Friday we went to a local park. The kids had a field trip there about two weeks ago to watch salmon migrate up a little creek. Since Katrin was pretty excited about the salmon, we went there again alltogether. We saw about five salmon trying to make their way upstream. Quite incredible that these large fish try to swim in a creek often less than 10cm deep. Surprisingly they die upstream after laying eggs and thus provide rare fertilizer to the surrounding forest, directly and indirectly through the food chain. Katrin heard that this is only true for the Pacific salmon, the Atlantic one does migrate back into the ocean ... suicidal these pacific ones as it seems (one dead salmon was heading downstream)! Further more we had a look at the "Ballard ladder". A fish ladder for salmon and other fish to bypass the Ballard locks. Must be very interesting to see all the fish moving up there through the thick glass windows. Unfortunately we were there to late in the day and probably as well too late in the season to see many fish.

Katrin:
The rest of the weekend was about christmas shopping, making apple pie (as a substitute for Stollen and Plaetzchen, which we haven't baked yet, but will hopefully tomorrow) and decorating the house. Theda and Jonte love to make paper snowflakes right now - we have so many now that we might have to ship some over to Europe, we don't know where to put all these. Today they even started before breakfast. Usually the first thing underneath the table is oatmeal. Today our floor was covered with paper :-).


Sunke:
Got skis for the kids, mountains are now white capped. Crosscountry so far!

Katrin:
The kids can't wait until we finally go to the mountains to try out the skis, although they still get confused with skiing and ice skating. Theda and Jonte are signed up for a cross-country class in January: every Saturday at Snoqualmie Pass - a one hour drive from Seattle. We are excited and hope to get on our skis as well during that time (at least one of us).

Sunke:
Curtains for the doors - house much warmer now, even though we had the first frosty night. This first night of frost did raise my appetite for "Gruenkohl mit Pinkel und Kassler" (curly kale with bacon, a special small cooked sausage and smoked pork chop - I don't need the smoked pig's cheek with it) Is there ANY restaurant or food market here in Washington state? I have to find out ... I am starving for it!
Katrin got her Christmas "Stollen" - I need Grünkohl! :-)

Katrin:
What else is new? First some news about Narne: After he got stuck with his crawling techniques for a while and having had a cold which bothered him, he suddenly found out the right technique two days ago and since then he is much more agile: sits up, tries to pull himself up - he is really proud and happy. He also got a friend the same age he is. It is a girl. I met her father one day in a bakery/ cafe. He turned out to be from Switzerland and told me about his daughter. We decided that it would be fun if the two of them could meet. So now we have a little playgroup and meet once a week.
We also joined a network of German families living in Seattle called "Die Kinderstube". Through this network we found out about a forest playgroup who meets twice a week in a very nice forest north of here. I and the kids always try to go on Wednesday mornings before the kids have preschool - a long day, but a great chance to be outside - and for me to talk to other Germans.
I was able to get some tickets for the kids christmas symphony concert at Benaroya Hall for Saturday. Another German offered these tickets through the Kinderstube. So I am very much looking forward to this (hopefully the kids like it too, but they have been very interested in all kinds of music lately).
Another highlight which I, Katrin, haven't mentioned before is that I got a child-free Saturday three weeks ago. I took the bus and went down to the university district - I wandered through the campus and was fascinated by the buildings reminding me of typical British colleges. From there I took another bus going downtown. I quickly ended up in the big public market: the Pike Place Market which is a great place to spend time and wander around. Here are a few of my impressions.

German Christmas Stollen!

Sunke came home with a real German Christmas Stollen today! He won't tell me where he got it, but we have some now!!! We also had our first home made Gluehwein. What else do you need? (Well, Sunke probably would answer: Gruenkohl - he is desperate for a real Gruenkohl meal since this morning. He looked at our thermometer and it was at 0 degrees - the right temperature for Gruenkohl he thought.)

I thought that was worth a short message - more soon.

We wish you all a very nice Advent!

Last weeks summary

Alright, Katrin did mention that I do plan to write something about our Halloween experience in this blog, thus I better do so. A small summery of other things that happened during the last weeks can be found further down, as well as some humorous dialogs we had with the kids.

Halloween! The kids got a pretty good introduction to Halloween in pre-school. The art work, music and whole content in the last two weeks before Halloween was all about, bats, pumpkins and other Halloween 'utensils'. Katrin tried to prepare via a library book about tradition, history and mystic. And myself? Well except some stories during lunch time I had none - do you need any? I guess not, I had my family telling me all about it. Then two days before Halloween we had the pumpkin carving party at pre-school. In absence of any idea about a costume and time to make one I decided to just go as a doctor. I plundered the kids first aid and doctor play box, put on white trowsers, white socks, white shirt and done. At least two people I met were puzzeled in the first moment, asking if I came straight from work ... (sure, with a stethoscope around my neck ... feeling the pulse of the ocean ;-)!). And the kids at pre-school loved my outfit, constantly one was sick, needed an ointment or medicine or wanted to take over. My 'utensils' soon were spread among the kids, but somehow always returned to me after a while. Most of the costumes were really good, much more thoughtful, more effort put into and way more appealing than mine!
On Halloween Katrin went out with the kids to do 'Trick or Treat' while I stayed home with Narne, since it was his sleeping time. As Katrin told me, the kids were a bit shy and unsecure at first. They soon joined with a group of older kids from up the road they knew from playing. And very soon the penny dropped - they started running from house to house shouting 'Trick or Treat' ... trying to harvest as much candy as possible. Being back home they had to try most of it ... . We had some pretty candied kids that night and the next day. We allowed them to eat as much from their candy as they decided to only on the first day. But Katrin and I helped as good as we could reducing the pile and thus it was no longer a topic a couple of days afterwards.
The costumes of the kids that knocked on our front door varied quite a bit, from hardly disguised to completly unrecognizable, from scary to wonderful, from selfmade to bought and from perfect idea to well, just a costume. I definitely had fun opening the door and seeing who was there. One of the older ones that came to the door was disguised as skeleton - but Jonte told me that that surely was not a skeleton but a well known bone-pirate! (Jonte: "Das war ein Knochenpirat!")

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The Sunday after Halloween (2 weeks ago already) we had perfect hiking weather. Thus we went up into the montains to see the remainders of the first snow that came down a couple of days before. We wanted to do a short Mirror-Lake hike at Snoqualmie pass. Driving the I90 into the cascades we had great views enjoying the drive. After the pass we had to turn off the highway and drive a 'few miles' on a forrest road. They should have put a sign on stating: 'Careful driving techniques recommended' or 'Good dampers required'. It was a 10 mile drive along a road with many puddles. Many many puddles, several of them even one foot deep or more. The chassy of the car did hit the ground at one stage. Maximum speed was less than 20mph, thus it took us significantly more than half an hour for those last 10 miles. Surprisingly we found that even that far into the woods, in nowhere, quite a few shelters and camps were set up - it looked as if there do live people on a permanent basis, I wonder if that is true. Anyway on that road the kids started moaning that we did drive already for too long and that they want to get out of the car immediately - to our 'non' amusement that turned into I don't want to get out of the car at all as soon as we arrived at the trailhead. Still we managed and after a couple of minutes, after feeding everyone and getting winterly dressed up we started walking. We felt like walking through an old river bed - the first snow a few days ago and the wonderful sunny day did turn the steep gravel road into something that looked like a washed out river bed with a little stream flowing along here and there. It was a great hike and the ids had a lot of fun - and we returned to the car after 1 mile down the trail. Why? Well there was this little stream ... the trail led directly across. It was not really deep, but the melting snow made it flow quite fast - too fast for the kids. Thus we enjoyed the shortened hike with no final location. And going back the puddle road I already knew at which stage which side of the road has the less deep puddles. Next time we go there we definitely make a video of the road.

(Narne enjoys the hikes on my back.)

(The stream we did not cross. You actually can see the trail on both sides.)

(Snow is always fun!)

(The road that looked like a river bed.)

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And at last for today, here is a summary of the last weeks what we did not mention so far:

We managed to plant more than 200 bulbs in our back yard. I originally wanted to distribute a share of them to the front yard, but they all ended up in the back yard. Why? Every cut with a spade in the front yard showed 3-5 bulbs. I don't know the type, but looking foreward to spring to see what is going to come up.
It will hopefully provide us with a colorful front and back yard.

In the yard roses, the rhododendron and the dahlias started to flower. Due to lack of water there was nothing flowering when we moved in, but drop watering and the occasional hose did help most of the plants to last to the start of the rainy season. Now it rains pretty regularly - the last weekend even severe. Never the less it is warmer than in Kiel, and the amount of rain is pretty similar to some years in Kiel from my point of view.

By making contacts and friends with many people around, we slowly fill our house: We got a basket for playing basket ball in the back yard, Lego and a kids shopping cart. (Didn't we bring ALL our kids stuff with us? Didn't that already make up most of our belongings? Well it keeps growing incredibly fast!)
We even got a matress for the kids to play and guests to sleep on, a couch and many other things for the kids from new friends.


Here are a few dialogues we had with the kids in the last week. We started to write them down, so we would not forget all of them. I guess I will pretty soon take them offline again - don't want to post to embarrassing stuff, they might not like as they grow older:
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Katrin and I were talking about former times, how we used to cook things.
J.: In former times we were apes then humans.
T.: Right! We were first apes, then babies and now children, later human.
- Kids a bit confused, how can apes turn into human babies and get into the mothers belly? -
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On our way to Mount Rainier hike the kids are talking in the back of the car.
(J. got a small plasitic survival tool with a beer opener)
J.: With this beer opener I can open beer.
T.: Only when you are grown up, not yet!
J.: Yes, when I am a school kid and drink wine, then I can use my beer opener to open beer.
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Katrin and the kids are talking about age.
Kids: How old are you?
Katrin: 30 years.
Kids: How old is daddy?
Katrin: 33 years and he will turn 34 soon.
Kids: When daddy is 34 he will probably look as old as great grandpa Heinz.
(He was 86 - I thoroughly checked if I can find a gray hair on my head the next morning - none so far!)
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Katrin and the kids saw an electric tricycle. The kids wondered about it and Katrin explained them about solar energy and that our car goes on regular fuel. Further that this does pollute the air, thus we try not to use it, if not neccessary. Next day Jonte comes inside from playing outside:
J.: "Outside there is yucky air."
K.: "Why is the air yucky Jonte?"
J.: "Because we did drive with our car such a long way yesterday."
(We only went for a very short 4mile drive to the park)
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J. is a postman for Halloween. Everyone in the house is getting mail delivered regularly.
J.: "Here is mail for you"
T.: "Oh, thank you"
J.: "Nothing special, just advertisments"

More pictures of the pumpkin patch field trip

Sunke wants to write more about our Halloween weekend. That's why I am just going to put some more pictures from the pumpkin patch on the blog.

Spiders, bats, ghosts and more ... just Halloween

We just returned from our Halloween pumpkin carving party at Theda's and Jonte's preschool - now we have three sleeping kids in their beds, two carved pumpkins lit by candles and two tired parents in the house.

Coming Saturday, October 31st, will be Halloween and it seems like the entire country is going wild. In the past three weeks at preschool the topics were: bats, Halloween and pumpkins. Thus Theda's and Jonte's English vocabulary increased dramatically the past weeks in that direction. They talk about spiders, bats, ghosts, pumpkins, ... (and since tonight they know about vampires and talk about Dracula - I think they do not really understanding what they talk about, but they got Dracula teeth from their teacher).
Furthermore our front window of the house is decorated with cardboard pumpkins the kids made at preschool and on the steps to our door we put pumpkins as this is one of the traditions. Other houses are heavily decorated with ghosts, witches, skeletons, or other scary things.

Last Sunday Theda and Jonte were invited to their first Halloween party. They dressed up as postman and princess. Yesterday there was a field trip with the preschool going to a pumpkin patch which seems to be a must-do before Halloween. They had all the different farm animals there and a hay maze we luckily did not get lost in. Aftre some time on the farm we went onto a tractor ride to the pumpkin patch where each child could pick a pumpkin. It did not rain and we all enjoyed the day outside (not Sunke, he had to work :-( ).

...  next thing was tonight - we took the pumpkins to preschool to carve them at the party. The party was a lot of fun. All kids and most parents were dressed up. Besides carving there was food, games, a costume parade and at the end all pumpkins were lit with candles.

Tomorrow there will be no preschool. So we have one day to relax before we go for "Trick or Treaty" on Saturday night. As you see this has been an exciting time!

Besides all this, we are enjoying beautiful fall days in the garden and at the different parks in Seattle. Last Saturday we made a trip to the Cascades and had a nice walk on an old railroad trail finding two geocaches on the way.

 (animals in our backyard) 

(Magnusen Park)

 (walk on the old railroad trail - the "Iron Goat Trail")

 (Theda and Jonte are proud and happy about their caches)

Furthermore Narne has been very eager to figure out how to crawl. He gets on his hands and knees rocking back and forth. We are as excited as him about this!