Orienteering and National Forest Weekend

The days are passing faster and faster. This may be due to shorter daylight periods from approaching winter time, but more likely it is the amount of things we would like to accomplish and squeeze into these 24 hour days. Weeks as well as weekends just seem to fly by. By tomorrow we are six weeks in the country but it seems like ages. Quite often we are amazed what got achieved within these weeks.

In the moment we try to prepare the garden for winter time. We got told from neighbors that it is possible to grow some vegetables in winter time and thus we try. Katrin and the kids planted broccoli and salad seeds. The broccoli sprouted already, but will it really grow during fall and winter? I am still skeptical, but looking forward to home grown harvests. I will try to get some railroad ties as soon as possible, so they can finish the raised bed for the veggies. Do we need to cover it?  - When we moved in a lot of plants suffered from the draught and some roots Hanna did find and moved to new places did not look too good in my eyes - anyway they seem to do pretty well, despite it is already mid-September they grow at a significant rate. Maybe, with the certain care even vegetables will flourish over fall and winter. I will check if I find some good online resources for this climate zone about that topic. Mild and wet winters seem not to be a major threat for most plants.

Last weekend was packed with nice activities again. Saturday was a rainy day, nearly ideal for our first orienteering meet here in Seattle. They held a newcomer event in the Woodland Park right next to the zoo. We met many nice people and joined the Cascade Orienteering Club (COC). Katrin did a stroller friendly 1.5km beginners course with the kids and I went onto a 3.5km course. Knowing orienteering maps I was quite surprised at the start line picking up the map for course 3. It had the outer limits of the park marked, out of bound areas marked, a few stones and height contours - nothing else. Well, in a park like this any more information probably would not justify to call it orienteering otherwise. Anyway I thought it is a great idea for training, since I normally don't really pay enough attention to height contours and go more for special objects. This way I had to concentrate on them and found it to be a great experience - I think I need more training orienteering maps with purely height contours (not even vegetation). Orienteering season is just starting over here, since ground vegetation is to thick in summer they mainly meet in fall, winter and early spring.

After orienteering we headed straight to the US Health Works to get a tuberculosis test. We do need this for our voluntary work at pre-school once a week with the twins. They injected something just under the skin on the arm and rechecked the arms today for a anti-body reaction on that spot. Both our tests were negative; thus not stopping us from taking turns working with the kids now. On our way home we stopped at a hardware store, getting a second set of keys for our car and buying spate and fork for gardening. The rest of the day we used just for relaxing and hanging around the house. At night looking at the National Forest Services web page we decided to go hiking again on Sunday.

After baking fresh raisin buns and having a reasonable quick breakfast we were on the road by ten. We drove straight to the Verlot ranger station and visitor information and bought an annual pass for the North West National forests (since we definitely will be in all the national forests around Seattle more than five times a year). We had a rough idea where to go but asked the ranger for further suggestions in that area of what to do with kids. She suggested the "Big Four Ice Cave Trail". It was another 14 miles up into the mountains.
Arriving at the parking lot I knew why they call it the Big Four: a steep mountain with nearly identical peaks.
It was a 1.1 mile hike to the base of the nearly vertical wall of that mountain and the ice field.
Due to wind circulation underneath the ice shield the massive caves form in late summer. It can be lethal to enter them, since constant melting makes them pretty unstable. Standing in front of them was amazing enough. It is hard to guess how high the cave was, but certainly 8 to 10m - just have a look at the pictures we took.

If I understood it right, even several ice caves can form in some years. Despite quite a warm day, the air blowing out of these caves was freezing cold. They form since huge amounts of snow slide down the steep face of the mountain in numerous avalanches during winter time. There is more than enough proof of these destructive avalanches in the forest several hundred meters away. In the closer vicinity of the ice shield only shrugs are growing.

Due to the cold air fan we did not stay very long at the cave to the disappointment of the kids, but it was just too cold. Maybe we should have checked the other ice shields, but we headed back from that north facing shading spreading wall into the sun. We did some huckleberry picking on the way back to the river bed, we crossed on our way up. Amazing that there are still man-high bushes full of huckleberries around this time of the year. (Huckleberries are a type of blueberry, also called 'American Blueberries')

Finally arriving in the warm sun of the river bed we had an extended late picnic lunch. Chocolate, fruits, veggies and many raisin buns! At different times of the year the position we sat is most likely covered under water just above freezing point. Luckily we had a dry warm late summer ;-).

Narne enjoys all the hikes in is backpack seat on my back, but we try to take him out of there as soon as we stop, though he never complained about being up there at all yet. He really seems to like that position up there overlooking everything.
The hike was only 1.1 mile per direction, but we did not want to do anything more challenging for the kids. Enough to experience, do and explore is on the shortest trail. Again we faced a little furry fellow we were not able to identify. We realized that we are in urgent need of a small light, but still comprehensive field guide of birds, plants and mammals (deliberately left out insects and reptiles in this list). Maybe depending on the area of the hike, one for the shore line, one for in land lakes and one for the mountains is needed. The ranger station had a variety of them, but we did not decide yet which one - but we did buy a book: Hiking in the North West with children. It is a description of 184 hikes in Washington state that are suited for kids. We will see if we only stick to them or find even more nice ones. Looking in the internet I realized already that trying to hike every single trail in Washington would take a live time, thus we better stick only to the most recommended ones and a few lucky choices, for the time we have here.

Car enables Nature

Alright we have got a car. In the end we did not wait until we found a reasonable priced car on sale from an owner. We went to a dealer, talked him 25% down from the original price and bought a 8 year old minivan. A Toyota Sienna that can seat 7. Thus we can pick up 2 from the airport with the whole family, or go camping with a lot of stuff without being masters of logistic packing. Millage per gallon is reasonable (23mpg on highway are the average for this car we heard - 10l/100km) for the US and that size car - for Germany and even CO2 based this is the worst we have had -  our old one did do 36mpg on the highway ... but did certainly not seat 7. Anyway with the cheap gasoline over here we will end up doing more miles for less dollar than ever before (alright, to be honest who can tell how much an enhanced CO2 output will cost me in future, thus it is not a completed calculation ... anyway!). We are not planning to use it much in the city, but it is nearly mandatory to have a car to get out into state parks, national forests and such with 3 kids.

And this is exactly what we did on the first and second day of our ownership. Immediately after buying it, we went down to Mathews Beach Park and had a swim in Lake Washington. Jonte was trying to swim and all had a lot of fun in the water. It was still above 80 degrees at 6pm - just a lovely late summer beach day. The 2nd day, on Sunday we had a slow start with German rolls again, before heading off to Wallace Falls State Park. Why there? Actually pure chance! We did not know where to go, looked at a map and found many many green spots indicating parks and forests. But where to go? We decided to look for nice geocaches and head off to find them. Well we soon found out that there are much more geocaches than parks - anyway we picked 2 caches in a distance of about 30 miles and took off. These two caches just happened to be located in Wallace Falls State Park.

It was a fair hike for the kids, but they managed very well. The trail rated "medium" was 2.1 miles to the picnic area and lower falls. We did the same hike back to the start (overall ~6.75km). Not a problem you think ... but it went up and down quite a bit, it went up 1000 feet (300m - with going up and down in between I cannot estimate how many steps the kids went up). It was on the limit for the kids, but it was worth it. We saw moss covered trees, a little mouse-like-creature that nearly looked like a squirrel as you can see. We surely saw the waterfalls and had fun in the rapids on our way back. Narne enjoyed it all the way, maybe due to the fact that he was the only one that did not have to walk one step. Just a couple of photos so you get an impression of it.

Next day was Monday, back to work for me. The kids had their first day of pre-school that day. It will be 4 days a week for 3:15 hours, from 12:30 until 3:45. This week is still a slow start in preschool, shorter periods and parents more frequently joining the kids. I took a long 3 hours lunch break to accompany the rest of the family there. Theda and Jonte were a bit nervous, but tried to be part of the group despite the fact that they don't speak English, yet. They observed the other kids a lot and tried to behave and do as they did. Whenever they got asked something that ended with an "OK?" they nodded. I am very sure they will pick up the language in no time and start to correct my pronunciation within a year from now. We will see! - remind me that I said that in case I forget! The pre-school is a cooperative - meaning that we will have to work there one day a week as all the other parents do. There is one permanent person and alternating 2-3 parents. Our day will be Friday - I will work in advance and be home early to either take care of Narne while Katrin helps out at preschool, or I go and play with the bunch of kids! Due to this parental engagement in this preschool it is well affordable for us - in opposite to others.

The coming up weekend there will be our first orienteering event right in the middle of the city next to the zoo. The start of the orienteering season with a newcomer event as it seems. We want to attend and see if we get involved into more events in fall. Before that we plan to have an IKEA shopping visit on Friday after preschool. As you can see or rather read, more to write about soon!

Looking for nice Brötchen and bread recipes

While Sunke is car shopping, I tried to lay down with the kids to take a nap, which didn't work out that well this time. After having read a lot of Michel stories, they started jumping on our bed over and over again. They discovered our neighbor sitting on her roof which was much more exciting than listening to a story or sleeping. And when Sunke came by with a car to take a look at it, nap time was definitly over. After Sunke having left again together with the car dealer, we decided to bake a chocolate cake instead - I think it is called "Double Fudge" with chocolate frosting. Yam!

As Sunke wrote we tried to bake Sunday Brötchen and apart from being quite flat and crispy, they turned out to be really delicious. We baked 11 Brötchen and they were gone at the end of breakfast :-). But making the Brötchen in the morning, we had breakfast not before 10.30 am. So can anyone give me advice how to prepare the dough the evening before and have the yeast dough rise in the fridge? Does anyone have experience with that?

Another thing Sunke did not write was the story about my first rye bread, I wonder why? I went to a food coop - a dream for everyone who loves to buy locally grown or produced organic food - a true paradise! - just to buy rye flour (1 kg for almost 4 $ - just by the way). Then I found a recipe for rye bread and it took me 26 hours to make it (2 x 12 hours plus additional 2 hours of rising). At the end wanting to serve it to freshly made cauliflower soup, the bread was really hard and somehow didn't rise at all, though it looked really nice. So if you have easy bread recipes (using preferably yeast), I would be more than happy to try them!

If you like, you can write your recipes as comments at the end of the post! I am looking forward to hear from you and profit from your experience.

Now I have to go. While Narne sleeps in his stroller outside and Theda is concentrated on doing some puzzle, Jonte is tired and totally bored and does crazy things. I guess I have to prevent some trouble.

I hope to write more about Theda and Jonte starting at the "Victory Heights Preschool Co-op" soon. But so far enjoy your weekend!

another week flew by

It is already Friday again, how did this week disappear so fast? Well since Monday was Labor Day, it was a short week, but a full week nevertheless. It was the week of accidents, the kids got many bruises and scratches, band-aid was needed often. But before that we went to the "Museum of Flight" last weekend. The kids wanted to see a cockpit from the inside, since they missed out on that on the flight to Seattle. It was really great, the kids got to sit in a few smaller planes and had a look at the big ones from the outside and even inside the Concorde and AirForceOne. They even had a chance to build their own air-rockets in the kids area. We definitely will have to go there again with visitors, since it is really great for kids in that age - this was also obvious by the number of families we saw inside the museum. But now what happened within the week, why band-aid?

(The photo is our shed in the garden, many things fit in there) - It started all last weekend, within 24 hours Jonte did hurt his knees and Theda her right elbow severely. How? The way kids do it, running around on the side walks not paying attention. Jonte did so during playing with other kids up the street and Theda on our way grocery shopping. It even got worse, in the middle of the week. Theda had a bike crash going down the hill tired as she was. She did hit the concrete with her head, leaving many wounds near the eye, forehead and upper lip as well as her hand. Luckily she did wear a helmet that probably prevented worse. It looked quite bad, but after cooling the wounds with a lot of ice and cleaning them carefully with wet tissue they did look a bit better. Cleaning the wounds was only possible while distracting her with several episodes of "Caillou" - a TV series about a little boy aged 3-4. He has very similar adventure Theda and Jonte have: bruising his knees, picking apples, going to day care and such ... . We were afraid she may be concussed, but since she did not complain about any headache the next day and even jumped around this is probably not the case. She still looks very bruised and scratched in her face and will probably for the next weeks, but is already jumping, climbing and running like she did before that accident. We did not use the push bikes since, but probably will do so again this weekend - it was just the time to make a 3-4 day stop of using them. This photo was taken about 2 days afterwards.

What else is happening? I am spennding a lot of time on the internet at night to check out cars on "craigslist". But we did not decide on one yet - but want to get serious on this within the next couple of days. We weren't to sure which car to get, but decided now on a mini-van. Depending on what is available our favorite is probably a Toyota Sienna, 7 or better 8 passenger version, aged 4 to 8 years. Let us see what we come up with. Car insurence and the car itself hopefully "turn up" soon, since we really want to see some more from the country side around Seattle before the rainy season starts. It is hard to believe that the weather is changing. We have constantly nice summer weather and only very few rain days in between. Today it was above 27°C and tomorrow we are supposed to reach even 28°C. This is just great for mid September. I keep comparing the Seattle weather with Kiel online ... and as it seems now, 2 out of 30 days Kiel was nicer, 4 days similar and 24 days Seattle did win in the direct comparison. I wonder if this will be similar in winter. - Everyone here is trying to tell me that the rainy season really means rainy season, well ... I can't imagine it will be worse than Kiel in winter, but we will see.

Katrin and the kids started to bake regularly, even fresh buns on the weekend. We still need to improve on the shape, but the taste was already great. Fresh german buns, recipe from the internet ;-)! In Winter we will need to have them atleast twice a week, .. or maybe more often? After one month USA I do miss already our German rolls, buns or however you want to call them! I Miss My "Brötchen"!

One month? Wes, we are today in the USA since one month - looking back it seems like ages. So much has happened, though we did not really do a lot. Oh yes we did a lot concerning getting settled, organizing, but not concerning things we used to do, like making trips, visiting friends and such.

I think it is the moment to say that we are about to get an everyday life. Katrin - just by talking on the play grounds and meeting someone who knows someone - got in contact with another German family that has been in living in Seattle already for several years and organized via them pre-school for Theda and Jonte, starting already on Monday. It is an affordable coop for 4 days a week, three hours a day and we have to help out one day a week - sounds great, looks great! I am looking forward to see how Theda and Jonte will get along there and socialize. It will teach them English pretty fast I guess. On the day, one of us has to work at the coop, the other one has to take Narne. Thus I will return from work early to either help out at school or spent some Narne time. I guess Katrin will write more about the pre-school in the next days, since she is the one who started all this and is getting more involved in than I am.

first days at work

OK, I will provide some media so that you get a better impression of our new life in Seattle. First of all the twins want to show the house, all the rooms upstairs atleast. The basement will be shown once we occupied that and made it worth living. (and as soon as I managed to win the war against these evil creatures and made their territory ours .... ! Give me the flea gun, I have an appointment downstairs!! Am I getting carried away? I don't think so, I am getting serious. Well MAYBE I am a bit overanxious, I must admit. - to be honest, as soon as the construction work is finished downstaris we plan to make a kids-play and office room downstairs, as well as a little guest appartment. Downstairs is a bathroom and kitchen, so any of our guests can have their own retreat zone.)



After the twins gave a tour through the house they had their own go at the camera and did two more videos of the house - actually very amusing! I will try to post them somehow within the next days. Narne as you will see in the pictures below is no longer satisfied with being "just" with us, he wants to take part in every activity - his own way!






We even manged to harvest the apple tree in our back yard.


Katrin did write most of the news so I will stick with the photos and the first work report. I got an inside office with no windows what I have to get used to, but it is a nice size and I got extremely good new computer equipment to work with. I share the office with another postdoc so I hope that will be quite productive. So no longer looking out of the window, dreaming more important things than work. Many older scientists told me lately that the postdoc was the most productive phase, ... before you have to deal with all this administrative and managing stuff - let's hope it is the same for me. I am motivated, I just have to use this motivation and get going!
Talking about administration - it is quite a task to be hosted as a foreign national at a US government department - NOAA officially belongs to the department of commerce. I don't want to know what would be necessary for a normal position. Well in the end my social security number was issued and mailed to me faster than expected and arrived only 4 days after applying for it together with my Washington state drivers license - that made it possible to get a temporary key for the doors. Up to that time I officially had to be escorted through the building and was not allowed to walk around by myself. The whole story I will be willing to tell over a nice wine or two.

The working atmosphere is extremely nice, relaxed! Only one thing is surprinsing - for research there is extremly low concentration of coffee in the air. I got told that this is due to the fact that it is a goverment place, but nothing sure yet. I got my instant coffee for the first weeks and will keep my eyes open for a possible improvement on that - I am not allowed to forget to take milk with me in the morning; otherwise I have to drink black coffee all day ... which I prefer not to.
The morning bicycle commute to work is FUN, the afternoon ride home is challenging. Why? Well steep downhill in the morning, opposite after work. What is steep? Once I get out my racing bike and the cyclometer will tell us the exact values, for the moment go with these approximations: distance: 2.5 miles (~4km), a drop of 280 feet (85m) in just 0.7miles (1km). On my way to work I need 8 min from door to gate and 16-20 on the way back. I am looking foreward to the times on the racing bike. So far I had to carry quite a few things to work and back, thus the racing bike was no option, yet. But as soon as I only will have to carry my lunch there - it will be an option.

Not much news otherwise - I treated myself with a shiny new toy - an iPhone. I am quite happy and very satisfied. Except some start up problems - AT&T made it possible that I was incapable of sending and receiving any text messages!! Wow did not know it is possible to switch messaging off, well it was for AT&T ... but they realized after a while. The only hassle was that they made me come into the shop to change that - because on the phone I cannot identify myself without a Social Security Number!?!?!! ... Why SSN in the first place and why in the world is it necessary to identify myself if there is something WRONG with an item they sold? Well, customer phone service much below average on AT&T concerning my point of view! The same day I had those "issues" the first electricity bill came in ... shock.. we are supposed to have used 600kWh in 6 days. In Kiel we reduced our electricity consumption to 2000kWh a YEAR. It took a bit longer to solve that and in the end was my fault .... here in seattle the currentmeters installed have 5 dials. Well as person dealing with research instruments of all ages I read them and send in my readings. I did not realize that every 2nd dial turns into a different direction, not all clock wise.
Luckily they were able to sort out that problem after two days.

As you can read, some hick ups at the start, but it is going already quite smooth. We feel like home already - and I start to think 1 liter milk packages are ridicoulous small - how did we cope without the gallon package? ;o) !

Getting settled

It is my turn today - I, Katrin, finally make it to write something into the blog since I have written daily blogs during the past days – but only in my mind.

Today is Sunke’s first day at work and my first day alone with three kids. Right now they take their nap at noon time and all three kids are sleeping at the same time! Great! It gave me the chance to nap as well, do our laundry, make me a cup of milk coffee and now sit at the computer and actually write.

Sunke’s parents, Jann and Hanna, left about a week ago. They have been such a great help - we don’t know how we would have done everything without them. They took the kids shopping, to the parks, played with them at the beach,…. Jann did all the driving since we ended up having only one rental car. So besides giving us all the rides to view houses and get all the other things done, he did all the major grocery shopping – he loved shopping and quickly figured out where to get what. If you missed Jann, he was shopping, just to buy more things which we needed for our new household or the yard or … And Hanna, besides entertaining the kids, has been cleaning our entire house and started to get our yard into shape!

In between we took some time off to have fun and to discover the surroundings. One day we drove up the Olympic Peninsula, mostly always along the water, but we also got some great views of the mountain range and the valleys. We had delicious fresh smoked salmon and just enjoyed the nature. Last Sunday we went to the Seattle Woodland Park Zoo (except Sunke who stayed home to fight the fleas) – seemed to be a common Sunday family activity, since the Zoo was packed! We experienced some real highlights e.g. a brown bear taking a bath sitting right at the window screen, so you could touch him through the window – and I once again was reminded: bears are really big and I really don’t want to meet them during hiking! Another favourite of mine (and Jonte) was seeing two fish otters playing being in and out the water – that was just fun watching.

So when Jann and Hanna left last Wednesday, it was hard to say Good Bye. Fortunately the kids don’t understand yet what it means to say Good Bye, so they were not sad. They think if we want to see them, we just fly to Germany, since it was fun flying anyway.

Since they left, we have been on our own – and without a car. Sunke has been organizing a lot of stuff taking his bike and it seems like he loves it! The hills are really, really steep, but it is a great challenge. So he managed to apply for his social security number as well as for his American Driver’s license. Both he will receive in about 5 days. He also arranged that Internet and telephone will be installed tomorrow (Wednesday, Sept.2). Hurray! I am looking forward to have new possibilities to be in touch with you, but also to get other things arranged like finding a preschool for Theda and Jonte – one we can actually afford and which has still free places for them or alternatively find classes they can attend like gym, music, etc. At least that is on top of the list of things having to be organized next.

Other than that we tried to have really calm days. Theda, Jonte and Narne seemed to be very overwhelmed by everything. So we tried to get back to a routine they could rely on. We had a lot of playtime and since the weather has been just great, we spent most of the time outside, either in the yard or going for little walks. We discovered a swing hanging from a tree where Theda and Jonte love to go (it is actually private but the owner let us use it). On our way we have come in contact with our neighbors. There are some more kids up the hill (we live at the bottom of the hill) who were introduced to us. It is really easy to get in touch with everybody once you meet them outside which happens rather rarely – we are often the only ones going for walks. But meeting the neighbors and other kids has been fun. Fun is also our view from up the hill: if nice weather you can see the Cascade mountain range on the one side and on the other side you see the mountain range of the Olympic Peninsula! It is absolutely unbelievable. I am still starring at the mountains not being able to grasp it. I really like our neighbourhood – it is green wherever you look. Since most houses have yards, there are a lot of trees, also a lot of really large trees, and bushes and gras. Another nice thing is that most streets actually have sidewalks! – Unfortunately they are quite narrow, so often it is not possible to walk two kids and a stroller next to eachother – ok, I admit perhaps this is too much to ask for, but it makes walking a little bit more difficult.

The past two days we discovered two different playgrounds. Especially the one we found today is great – a big variety of possibilities including nice climbing challenges, different swings, … Theda and Jonte were really happy. Besides playing they always watch and listen to the other kids – of course, they don’t understand much yet. When we get home, they often pretend to speak English – they just make up their own language which is always funny to listen to. And it reminds me how I and my cousin pretended to speak Russian when we were little. Other than that Theda and Jonte are always proud to say Good Bye to people or when leaving a shop. I think they are really desperate to learn more English and I wish they will be soon with other kids playing.

A challenge of the past days has been to satisfy Narne’s desire to eat real food. He has been longing for it for a while, but I denied it in the transition process. I wanted to keep things easy and handy. But once we moved to the house, I started to cook the classical mashed carrot. He likes it – but he would rather have real food. When we eat, he is really unsatisfied trying to grasp everything he can reach with his little fingers – and by now he has developed a strong will! So we (especially Sunke) decided to give him a raw carrot, apple or hard bread to chew on, so that we can have some peace while eating. Other than that he turns on his belly as soon as you put him down. He pushes himself up really high – today he even managed to push up his belly and bottom, with the result of sliding back afterwards – too bad, because he tried so hard to come forward. Another new thing is that he tries to make different sounds and sometimes it even sounds like he is singing a song – it is really cute.

An adventure has been grocery shopping - figuring out prices and what is cheapest in a huge supermarket and under the pressure of having three kids with you. We found food quite expensive, especially food we are used to like milk, yoghurt, cheese, olive oil – so we really try to look carefully what we buy. We figured that often it is cheaper to buy two instead of one. So we now buy two gallons of milk (equals approx. 8 liters) at once – that is the only way to pay a reasonable price for milk. So the challenge is to store these two gallons underneath the stroller among all the other items and push the stroller home!! No wonder that most Americans take their car to go shopping.

But a positive shopping news is that we found Nutella right away and it is affordable – so at least we have a happy Sunke!

Besides that we are enjoying Seattle, the great weather and the excitement of everything being new (for me also the excitement to relive parts of my exchange year).

P.S.: The fleas are almost gone. Once in a while we find one, but let’s hope that we manage to hunt them without using more strong pesticides.