Uploaded pictures and Kelsey Creek Farm

I tried to keep my promise - I inserted some pictures in the last blog I wrote - see the blog "Pyjama Day and more"!

Today we went on a preschool field trip to Kelsey Creek Farm - a farm in the middle of urban Seattle. We had beautiful weather and had a good time. Narne enjoyed the animals while Theda and Jonte went on a guided tour with the group.

Narne watching some chicken

Theda as "Superstar"

At the end of the field trip they had circle time outside. Theda brought "Pueppi" (her beloved doll) today and showed it to the kids since it is her "superstar" week at preschool.

Pyjama Day and more

I, Katrin, haven't written for so long and there are tons of things to write about. So where should I start?

Summertime (= daylight saving)
We already went back to summertime last weekend. So for two weeks the time difference is only eight hours to you, living in Germany, Norway, which is quite practicle for phone calls during the week :-).

Besides timewise Theda and Jonte decided to have summer now, too. They have been pulling out there shorts and T-Shirts and try to convince us to go barefoot in their shoes. Being in the US, it is sometimes hard to reason because they saw and see kids running with shorts almost in every weather. Even during our coldest week in Seattle (-5 degrees Celsius), you could see kids in dresses (without nylons), without jackets, without hads. So having temperatures around 12 - 16 degrees Celsius - it must be time to go in shorts now!

Due to the mild weather, we have been spending a lot of time in our yard, preparing it for spring. Sunke prepared our second raised bed, which we had used as compost during the winter. We bought some more plants last weekend e.g. blueberries, strawberries. We seeded peas outside and tomatoes, avocado and watermelon inside (to put outside later). We also have been harvesting our winter salad and our raddishes. The broccoli looks like broccoli now, but needs to grow bigger yet to feed us.

We also semi-finished the project of building a sandbox. It can be used now - only a board to sit on is missing yet. I opened the first package of sand yesterday and all three kids were absolutely lost in playing for probably an hour - magic!! Unfortunately the sand is very greyish-dirtlike - but they seem not to have nice smooth yellow sand. If they have sandboxes on the playgrounds here (usually they have wooden chips), you only find this grey sand - well, I guess we can live with it. The kids don't mind.

Preschool
... has been very exciting the past two months. They had a field trip to the Seattle Zoo. Another time they took a bus ride downtown to the International District and visited a Japanese supermarket "Uwajimaya" - I have been there and it is worth seeing: Little Japan in the middle of Seattle.

They celebrated Chinese New Year, learning about lion dancers and all the traditions associated with it (so did we). At the same day, they also celebrated Valentines Day. It must be a tradition at preschools and schools to send every class mate a Valentines card. So did we. I learned about the tradition two days before the Valentines Party. So we were busy creating 20 cards. So at the Valentines/ Chinese New Years Party each child had an individual mail box (which they had made during that week). The kids were busy putting their cards into twenty different boxes. The most exciting, of course, was to take the boxes home. Theda and Jonte were totally lost in all the mail (and candy and tatoo pictures) they got. (And these forty cards are still flying around in our house.) At the party itself it was a crazy mixture of cultures. The food was Chinese Stir Fry. Everything in the classroom was decorated with hearts. And my favourite activity (which I was responsible for): decorating chinese take-away paper containers with valentines stickers and putting chinese fortune cookies inside. No wonder that Theda and Jonte were totally confused about these two holidays and kept mixing up Chinese New Year and Valentines traditions, since both holidays were completely new to them.

... and this week has been similar exciting. On Wednesday they celebrated the Irish St. Patrick's Day, wearing something green to school, having a baked potato potluck, going on a snake hunt, getting St. Patrick's Day face paintings and do other fun things. And today was Pyjama day. Theda and Jonte could first not believe: Wearing their pyjamas to preschool?!? At the end of the day, they were sure: it was great to wear their pyjamas to school! They even played with it on the playground all afternoon! (Welcome in America!) Another highlight was a family bringing their fairly big snake to the preschool playground. The kids could touch and even hold the snake - even Theda did! I watched with some distance ;-). I hope to get the picture of it soon.

Other than that Theda and Jonte have been very excited about being a "super star". Every child has a super star week which means during that week they can bring something from home to share with the other kids. At the end of each day in circle time, they get to show their favourite item. They can talk about it and then they can pick three kids to give comments or compliments. It is really special for them. Jonte already had his week at the end of February. Theda will be super star next week.

Another thing I have been enjoying and learning from are the parent meetings and the parent education sessions. We all went to a talk about Sibling rivalry held by Vicki Smolke. For those of you interested, you can download the handouts here:

http://coops.northseattle.edu/index.html

That is by the way also the homepage of the Coop-System in general. Just in case someone is interested and has time to screw around ;-). Is there anybody having time???


There are only two more months of preschool left ... and I am already a little sad. The program will end at the end of May. There will be no school until September. And since these programs are designed for a one-year participation only, I have been busy to figure out, what we will do next year. Theda and Jonte could go back into the same program with the same teacher, but all the other kids would be gone (most of the 5 year olds will start what they call "Kindergarten" at the Public School - one year of preschool in the German sense, and others join other programs).  So I have been looking for alternatives. We'll see what we end up doing.

Narne
... had not the greatest first birthday. He was sick and felt miserable, he missed his father being gone to a conference and we all were glad when the day was finally over (not to say when the week was over and Sunke came back from the conference). Though Theda and Jonte were extremely excited about his birthday and made him a birthday crown and a woven paper "cloth". It was really important to them to give him something for his birthday.

Other than that he has become very active. I am amazed by how much he is trying to copy from his older siblings - often little details. He loves to make Theda and Jonte laugh and is waiting for their reaction. He loves to play with balls, all kinds of balls, throwing, rolling - he just loves it. By now he climbs up everywhere - you can't leave him out of sight for a second - because he is quick. He wants to get everything and if it does not work out the way he had planned, he can be quite upset. I would say the fun, but exhausting second year has just begun!

Anne
Sunke had already written in his last blog: Our first German visitor was here! It was great to have my "little" sister Anne here, who spontanously decided to come over for two weeks. It was a great chance to finally see and do some of the things we hadn't done so far. E.g. we went up the Space Needle - a tower built for the world exhibition in 1962. We had great weather and therefore a fantastic view. Since we had a double ticket, Anne and I went back at night. Due to Anne's love to shopping, we found some very nice shops.

 Spaceneedle

 

 at Carkeek Park Beach facing Puget Sound

 eating "real" burgers on the last evening

Saying "Good Bye" at the airport

Katrintime
A mother in preschool initiated a book club and I joined. We meet about every 4 to 6 weeks and it is a lot of fun, at least the last meeting was. The first book we read (I am still reading) was "Sputnik Sweetheart" by Haruki Murakami. The next book we are reading is "American Wife" by Curtis Sittenfeld. Just in case you sometimes don't know what to read :-).
Through a friend I started to go to the YMCA, who has sport facilities including a nice swimming pool. They offer a bunch of classes like yoga, pilates ... and ZUMBA - dancing to Latin American Music as workout! I tried it twice now and it is a lot of fun.    

Kindermund des Tages
Katrin: Theda, vielleicht schneide ich morgen deine Haare.
Theda: Nein, ich schneide dir deine Haare.
Katrin zu Jonte: Oh, oh - wie das wohl aussehen wird?
Jonte: Ganz cool!!
Katrin zu Theda: Wie moechtest du denn meine Haare schneiden?
Theda: So wie Jontes Haare.
Jonte: Dann haengen sie dir nicht mehr im Gesicht. Ich mache das mit der Nagelschere. Dann bin ich ganz schnell fertig.


I plan to upload some pictures during the next days. It is just too late now. Have to get some sleep. Have a great weekend!

A day on the beach

Saturday was our day on the beach - perfect spring weather. Katrin went dancing and shopping and we collected precious stones and pieces of wood. I just asked Jonte what to write about the day on the beach; he came up with the following:
"I shared all my sand toys, there was a girl that stumped on our sand castle and the boy that did bite me, though it did not hurt much" - Now here is the full story:
Jonte shared his sand toys with other (smaller) kids on the playground, negotiating everything in English. He seems to stay much much calmer with his temper when he is in 'English mode': one girl stumped over and over again on their sand hill and Jonte just kept telling her 'don't do it', 'no, don't do it' - she never stopped but luckily lost interest in the sand soon and moved on.
Another boy did bite Jonte in the hand in the moment we wanted to leave the playground to head for the beach, since he did not want to give the bucket back. He stayed calm and just said 'NO'. I guess he was too surprised about the boy to really get angry at him. At home he regularly gets angry on me and needs my hands - I have to hold out my hands and he tries to clap them as strong as possible to get rid of his agressions, until we both crack up laughing because our hands hurt a little bit.
Anyway there was not much trace of a bite on Jonte's hand, thus I expect it wasn't really strong. Down on the beach we were just by our self, the kids digged some channels and had a lot of fun with a stream running, or rather dripping across the stones. We had lunch between piles of driftwood and enjoyed the cloudless sky until Narne got really tired and we headed home.
And here are the corresponding images:

 

Jonte with Olympic Peninsula in background.

Narne tired already.

Theda collecting stones.

Narne digging.

Watching seagulls.

Always plenty to do and see on a beach!!

Lucky we did enjoy that perfect day - back to Seattle winter weather tomorrow, a couple degrees above freezing and rain, rain showers and drizzle are the forecast for the next 4 days.

Spring and the last weeks

We don't want to deny it, spring did start in Seattle a couple of weeks ago. At first and then for some time we gazed with disbelieve to north Germany, Kiel, and all the other places that got huge amounts of snow. Even the East Coast got covered again and again and again. Well we accepted our fate of warm wet weather and withstood the rain. Slowly temperature did rise, reaching 14°C daily, the sun is peaking through the clouds more and more and the forecast for the rest of the week is marvelous, thus we don't want your snow from Europe and East Coast any more, we regard this winter to be over!
 (I wrote that 2 weeks ago and it got better and better over here ;-) ! )

To share our love for spring here are a few pictures from our back and front yard, how it looked in the last few weeks.

 Veggies!

 

 

A few of many crocus, tulips sprouting next to them!

 

Many trees and bushes in blossom - showing off two of them!

 

 The kids enjoy the warmer temperatures!

But now more about the more important, or at least more interesting things in life that did happen over the last weeks we did not write about so far. (Is there anything more important than weather? Climate?!! - oh right and family)
Theda and Jonte bubble along in English as if they have done so for years. Their vocabulary is amazing, growing daily, and the fact that puzzles me most is that they use mostly correct adverbs and conjugations not only nouns and verbs (or at least correct to the point that my English knowledge allows me to rule on correct and incorrect).  By now they talk among each other nearly as much English as German - crazy! I wonder if their main peer language eventually will switch to English or stay in German ... or rather when it will be that way.

I really was looking forward to and then enjoyed the Ocean Sciences meeting in Portland last week - meeting many people I haven't seen for ages - interesting new up-to-date science talks - catching up on Labrador Sea research I did not focus on for about 2 years and getting more into the current SubAntarctic Mode Water stuff and also Oxygen Minimum Zone and tropical pacific oceanography (I won't go into detail about these here and now). Overall a great motivating but very exhausting week!
Unfortunately due to the conference I missed Narnes first birthday. Katrin has had help with the kids by her sister Anne, who was our first Europe visitor. And from what I heard they had a week full of highlights and sightseeing but also demanding kids - I guess Katrin will soon have recovered and write more about that experience and great visit.

Still note worthy is the fact that I signed up for an alpine scrambling class with the Seattle Mountaineers. Katrin talked me into that, and I really enjoy it. It all started with friends we made through the kids in preschool. In short: the women got talking and kind of decided that the dads should take this class together that probably is great fun. Well after 2 evening classes (equipment recommendations / requirements and mountain navigation theory) as well as one field class and 2 hikes I am quite enthusiastic. To be honest I am really looking forward to the next weeks of more scrambles, snow and rock, coming up. Getting into areas I normally would not go, never see - getting to know people with similar interest, thus you always find fellows for day hikes or short weekend hikes.
Especially Jonte would like to join me right away. He is really into it, seeing all my gear, ice axe, helmet, backpack, compass - he is very determined that he is going to be a mountaineer and for a few days constantly was one around the house.
Many pictures from all kind of hikes to come - pretty sure about that!