Happy New Year!

 

Upside down

Closing the old year with updating our blog - at least with some new pictures.

 our "bird house"

 4th of Advent: Olympic Sculpture Park and Pike Place Market in Downtown Seattle

 field trip to the Seattle Zoo, Narne got to ride on a carousel

 playground fun

 skiing at Snoqualmie Pass, Cascades

Thanks for a great 2010! We wish you all a happy new year!!

Winter Wonder Land

Pretty cold weather did hit Seattle yesterday and today delivering a thick white cover. Our first snow since we left Kiel in the lowlands. The next days are going to be very cold with temperatures around -10°C at night - let's see if we manage to warm the house to a semi-acceptable temperature. Last year during a one week -8°C period the heating in the house did not keep up, but I tried to close many small air leaks since then. We will see in 2 days ...  time will tell if it sufficient or not. The good think about the cold: the snow will stay for the next two days! That's GREAT!
So far the kids love the snow - and so do we. Having to watch all friends and families in Europe with a huge snow load last January, we really felt left out. Snow in the mountains is not the same as around the house. You do not here any cars, the city gets very quiet, it seems peaceful and one can pretend it is as long as you don't read the news. Anyway a perfect start for the pre-Christmas season I guess.
Since work is in walking distance I put on my mountain boots and took as safety precaution micro-spikes for the boots with me and walked to work. It was great both ways. I did not need the spikes today despite the steep hill, the snow was sticky and not slippery.
And here at home? The kids spend as much time outside as on a warm spring day, they were just soooo into the snow, even Narne! Sledding, skiing, snow fighting, snow stomping ... one thing lead to another and then all over again. Let's see if that eases tomorrow, or if they will even be more outside due to colder, but sunny weather.

Just so you get an impression how much fun snow in Seattle is, here are a couple of images.

Our first Seattle Snow:

Very excited kids.

On my way to work.

Small backyard hill, but fun anyways!

Enjoying every single flake!

8pm. quiet peaceful night

Katrin admiring the snow. 

 Looking forward to the morning after - how will snow covered Seattle look like in the sun?

Halloween

It's been a long time since we updated our blog - probably a sign that we are busy living our daily life... and that we had a busy summer full of visitors and full of little trips.

A week ago we celebrated Halloween. First with a celebration at Theda's and Jonte's preschool and a neighborhood "trick or treat" on Friday, going from store to store. On Sunday, Oct. 31, friends had invited us and we had a fun evening with dinner, a traditional game which we learned and "trick or treat" where you walk from house to house and ask for sweets once it is dark outside.

So here some pictures:

at Theda's and Jonte's preschool:

 

 

Going for "trick or treats" from store to store:

 

in the neighborhood:

At our friends' house:

 asking for "trick or treats"

 counting treats afterwards

... and just some fall day impressions

365 and continuing

It is our 365th day in the USA - one year ago right now we were in a plane from Amsterdam to Seattle - more than necessary to update this blog! A year full of change - growing kids communicating in English, different food, different way of life, slowly emerging into the US culture! For me it is impossible to squeeze the last 365 days into written words, but I still want to write down some thoughts.
So many wonderful experiences, so many wonderful new friends, the Northwest nature. We are still getting to know the US culture as Germans, some things are hard to understand, some are repulsive, but in general most are great - this culture makes it easy to feel welcome, differences are accepted (- at least it feels like more than in Germany). Individualism is everything, but at the same time neighborhood support and fund raising for all sorts is widely spread. And then the constant struggle between total freedom versus total security, two opposites. We observe things that are as socialist as in the former GDR next to total capitalism - we observe a country that is very kids friendly, but on the other hand prohibits you to go into a bar with a kid in a stroller, or even a teenager (- no matter if they were only going to drink a coke) - we observe a country with 2 lane roads through all suburbs and most cars driving as if it is a one lane road - we observe a country with huge petrol swallowing cars everywhere, but at the same time a huge spread of hybrid cars - we observe a country that has a banking system, electric monopoly and telephone companies that work like it was in Europe 15 years ago ... .
For outsiders like us this country is full of controversy - I guess the controversy is a little bit similar to putting Italy, Spain, Greek, Poland, Sweden, Estonia and some other countries into one and give it a constitution ... Europe! Long life manifoldness!! Still there are strong ties within the controversy - on both sides of the Atlantic. It really is amazing getting to know a country from the inside, by taking part in everyday life - for the 2nd time in our life. (For me it has been New Zealand as exchange student for one year with YfU 17 years ago and for Katrin it was a different part of the US).
It took us a while to find the shops to buy groceries that suit us, to find the news channels that give background information without polarization, it took us a while to understand the intention behind actions and words, ... and we still learn and enjoy the gain of knowledge from this culture in the hope to take some of this back to Europe, back to Germany within our self. I often wonder how much our kids will take with them on the long run - how much stays in their subconscious about the experience of different cultures - the acceptance of different ways of live, of all the different cultures in the world.

Alright alright enough inter cultural thoughts and words - how is summer here?...

- one bottle of wine later I reject to write more now and postpone any more writing to tomorrow or soon after. Several pictures and stories to come - life is fast!

The promised family pictures ... two visits to the Olympic Peninsula, many many photos. I already posted a link to some photos a couple of days ago. The only thing I did not post so far were more photos of us being there. So here they are:
-correction 3 visits so far but only photos of the first two visits here!-

You have to stay somewhere overnight - each time it was just perfect!

(flaming up marshmallows)

Dungenous Spit - Strait of Juan de Fucca

waiting for the bigger waves in between to reach our stump

Pacific Beaches Rialto Beach and Beach 4

Tide pools are great! Starfish, sea-anemones, and many small fish.

oh yes and plenty of driftwood!

Since the rain forest is close to the beaches (close in the American sense of distance not the German) we twice combined these locations on one day!

Hoh Rainforest

finally found a very small tree to sit on - the others were just to big

Hurricane Ridge Pictures

seeing this I just want to go out and scramble scramble scramble ... 

so does he ;-) or at least dress up as if!

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!