May 14, 2010

The Snake



Today I finally found this picture of Theda holding a real snake on the playground of their preschool. A neighbor kid brought it. (I had written about this earlier.)

May 10, 2010

Mother's Day and more

No time to write much, but wanted to share these pictures with you. We had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday. The weather was beautiful. So after a nice breakfast, we headed to the islands northwest of Seattle and ended up going to Deception Pass State Park (a 90 minute drive). We had a beautiful hike and spent about three hours in this little bay, collecting shells, climbing, enjoying the view, snacking ... and coincidently meeting some friends from Seattle with whom we spent the rest of the afternoon.








And here are some more pictures taken during the past weeks:

Beginning of April - Theda and Jonte (and Narne) decided it is time 
to take their first bath in Lake Washington

Easter egg hunt - fun with German chocolate bunnies

Jonte harvested our first carrot last week

Sunke checking our vegetables

What else do you need than a stick and some water?

One of our favourite birds: a "Stellar's Jay", but the kids call it a "Blue Jay".

Our tree in front of the house in blossom (called "dogwood")

dogwood blossoms

Happy Spring to everyone!

May 04, 2010

Busy

I can't believe, it was March when we last wrote in this blog. So sorry. I guess, we are busy. Sunke is almost every weekend at least one of the days gone to climb up some mountain, learn about first aid in the mountains etc. while I am entertaining our kids which has been exciting (of course, it always is). But since around Easter they are riding bikes and have been very excited about it. There were days where they got up in the morning and the first thing was: getting dressed and bike around our house. So I have spent a lot of time in Seattle's parks, loading bikes and stroller into the car, unloading, biking, loading everything up again - it has become a routine. This morning we went biking on the Burke Gilman Trail - one long and popular bike trail through North Seattle. 

Since it is our last month of preschool, there are a lot of activities, field trips (e.g. bug hunt with a naturalist, ferry boat ride, visit to a fire station) and social events (e.g. pizza party). By the way this week is Teacher Appreciation Week. It is an American Tradition that every day, week, month is dedicated to something special. This week the work of teachers is honored by giving gifts, bringing cookies and cakes etc. I guess German teachers would love such a week!?!

Last weekend a good friend from High School in Wisconsin visited us and we had a lot of fun. Since it was raining in Seattle, we drove across the Cascade Mountains and found pure sunshine in Leavenworth, an imitation of a Bavarian town. We had a Bratwurst im Biergarten, but I guess it made us long even more for the real stuff. The setting of the town was picturesque, though, as you can see the surroundings of the family pic taken below.



Sunday we spent in our favourite park at the Puget Sound - Carkeek Park. On the pictures you can see Jonte in front of his favourite slide going through a salmon as well as Theda.



Narne is doing fine as well. Practicing how to kiss, how to blow and taking his first couragous steps, but wouldn't call it "walking" yet.

Other than that we are expecting our next visitors at the end of May. We are excited!

Another project of Sunke: MIMOC, a Monthly Isopycnal/Mixed layer Oceanic Climatology: http://www.uea.ac.uk/~afz11amu/mimoc.html