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.