we are still alive

I have been neglecting the blog far too much, thanks to all who told me they were reading the blog and encouraged me to post more ... before I start moaning and looking for excuses, wasting even more time, I rather start right away with a brief summary of late spring and early summer.

All grandparents visited their grandchildren - oh yes and visited Katrin and me as well. We had a great time with both visits, each time exploring different parts of the Olympic peninsula. The ocean photos from the previous post show a glimpse of the nature there - more will follow at the end of this post.
The Olympic peninsula is mainly a national park with a few small towns around it, in general dominated by astonishing nature: Pacific beaches, alpine mountains, moss mossier mossiest rain forest. A place to explore for many many days, time permitting. During our first visit we experienced a very rainy end of May and June, thus avoided the higher altitudes that were still snow capped during that time of the season anyway. Our second visit in July greeted us with nice summer weather, not to hot, not to cold - perfect for any outdoor activity.
During each visit we saw several bold eagles - well I see them during lunch-break at work sometimes - but seeing them in this wild nature is more appropriate, than at the 'Seattle City Lake' (Lake Washington) and the office buildings. For the eagles - and later again for the two black bears we saw - our camera, or rather the zoom lens was not big enough to get really good shots. All right, on both photos you can see that it is an bold eagle and you can see it is a black bear - but they are more proof of the sighting snapshots than a 'nice animal photo' you would want to print. ... oh well, next time maybe - anyone got a spare 300mm or even 400mm lens you don't need anymore? ;-) ... I see, until then you will have to cope with 'proof' pictures rather than beautiful, or even amazing ones. - At least the camera is good enough to capture forests and nature structures. Here is a small collection of pictures: Olympic Pictures, - more pictures with us within will follow here in this blog tomorrow!

Now here I am, writing all about the Olympic Peninsula and the nature there, well there was more to talk about. With the beginning of summer the preschool year did end, until September the kids are at home with Katrin and our guests, participating in some summer events around town. In September the new pre-school starts and even Narne will go once a week with Katrin into toddler class. We changed the pre-school, following the majority of the class they were in. Several kids outgrew preschool and will start Kindergarten next year, but the majority that stays in pre-school changed school, thus we followed. Oh yes here in the USA it is first pre-school, then Kindergarten, then school, while in Germany you would do Kindergarten, then pre-school, then school.
Kindergarten here is rather the first year at school than the German version of a Kindergarten, they start to learn reading and writing in there Kindergarten - just the naming is confusing for a German.

Summer started here, though we don't get the East coast and Europe heat waves - it is -just right- here. It was the 304th consecutive month on earth with higher than 19th century monthly average temperature - the last month with below-average temperature was February 1985. This June was the hottest on record so far ... though I personally doubt that record will last until December this year ....
To not use too much 'freshwater', we started to capture kitchen water that has no soap or salt in it to water our vegetables, though I doubt we can maintain our 92 gallon a day (for a family of five) consumption in summer - With kids being outside more, needing a cool down, wanting to play with water in the sandbox, explore the flow and feeling of mud ... and the bathtub regularly afterward! Splashing is just so much fun! (pictures to come!)

More? Sure! Though I doubt you want to hear me ranting and talking about the politics in Germany? Well I try to keep informed and no more comment ;-) .. concerning the news I certainly followed the oil spill and whoever still wants to know more about oil spills globally in history and the scientific impact in a short summary can continue reading on this informative oceanography site: http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/oilspills.htm

Alright enough for the day - over the weekend I will find some more spare time to finally post kids pictures, family pictures and add all the information you are interested in that I left out today! We will try that the kids make another video of our house, thus Emilia and other kids following us see more!
Have a great weekend!