Last weeks summary

Alright, Katrin did mention that I do plan to write something about our Halloween experience in this blog, thus I better do so. A small summery of other things that happened during the last weeks can be found further down, as well as some humorous dialogs we had with the kids.

Halloween! The kids got a pretty good introduction to Halloween in pre-school. The art work, music and whole content in the last two weeks before Halloween was all about, bats, pumpkins and other Halloween 'utensils'. Katrin tried to prepare via a library book about tradition, history and mystic. And myself? Well except some stories during lunch time I had none - do you need any? I guess not, I had my family telling me all about it. Then two days before Halloween we had the pumpkin carving party at pre-school. In absence of any idea about a costume and time to make one I decided to just go as a doctor. I plundered the kids first aid and doctor play box, put on white trowsers, white socks, white shirt and done. At least two people I met were puzzeled in the first moment, asking if I came straight from work ... (sure, with a stethoscope around my neck ... feeling the pulse of the ocean ;-)!). And the kids at pre-school loved my outfit, constantly one was sick, needed an ointment or medicine or wanted to take over. My 'utensils' soon were spread among the kids, but somehow always returned to me after a while. Most of the costumes were really good, much more thoughtful, more effort put into and way more appealing than mine!
On Halloween Katrin went out with the kids to do 'Trick or Treat' while I stayed home with Narne, since it was his sleeping time. As Katrin told me, the kids were a bit shy and unsecure at first. They soon joined with a group of older kids from up the road they knew from playing. And very soon the penny dropped - they started running from house to house shouting 'Trick or Treat' ... trying to harvest as much candy as possible. Being back home they had to try most of it ... . We had some pretty candied kids that night and the next day. We allowed them to eat as much from their candy as they decided to only on the first day. But Katrin and I helped as good as we could reducing the pile and thus it was no longer a topic a couple of days afterwards.
The costumes of the kids that knocked on our front door varied quite a bit, from hardly disguised to completly unrecognizable, from scary to wonderful, from selfmade to bought and from perfect idea to well, just a costume. I definitely had fun opening the door and seeing who was there. One of the older ones that came to the door was disguised as skeleton - but Jonte told me that that surely was not a skeleton but a well known bone-pirate! (Jonte: "Das war ein Knochenpirat!")

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The Sunday after Halloween (2 weeks ago already) we had perfect hiking weather. Thus we went up into the montains to see the remainders of the first snow that came down a couple of days before. We wanted to do a short Mirror-Lake hike at Snoqualmie pass. Driving the I90 into the cascades we had great views enjoying the drive. After the pass we had to turn off the highway and drive a 'few miles' on a forrest road. They should have put a sign on stating: 'Careful driving techniques recommended' or 'Good dampers required'. It was a 10 mile drive along a road with many puddles. Many many puddles, several of them even one foot deep or more. The chassy of the car did hit the ground at one stage. Maximum speed was less than 20mph, thus it took us significantly more than half an hour for those last 10 miles. Surprisingly we found that even that far into the woods, in nowhere, quite a few shelters and camps were set up - it looked as if there do live people on a permanent basis, I wonder if that is true. Anyway on that road the kids started moaning that we did drive already for too long and that they want to get out of the car immediately - to our 'non' amusement that turned into I don't want to get out of the car at all as soon as we arrived at the trailhead. Still we managed and after a couple of minutes, after feeding everyone and getting winterly dressed up we started walking. We felt like walking through an old river bed - the first snow a few days ago and the wonderful sunny day did turn the steep gravel road into something that looked like a washed out river bed with a little stream flowing along here and there. It was a great hike and the ids had a lot of fun - and we returned to the car after 1 mile down the trail. Why? Well there was this little stream ... the trail led directly across. It was not really deep, but the melting snow made it flow quite fast - too fast for the kids. Thus we enjoyed the shortened hike with no final location. And going back the puddle road I already knew at which stage which side of the road has the less deep puddles. Next time we go there we definitely make a video of the road.

(Narne enjoys the hikes on my back.)

(The stream we did not cross. You actually can see the trail on both sides.)

(Snow is always fun!)

(The road that looked like a river bed.)

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And at last for today, here is a summary of the last weeks what we did not mention so far:

We managed to plant more than 200 bulbs in our back yard. I originally wanted to distribute a share of them to the front yard, but they all ended up in the back yard. Why? Every cut with a spade in the front yard showed 3-5 bulbs. I don't know the type, but looking foreward to spring to see what is going to come up.
It will hopefully provide us with a colorful front and back yard.

In the yard roses, the rhododendron and the dahlias started to flower. Due to lack of water there was nothing flowering when we moved in, but drop watering and the occasional hose did help most of the plants to last to the start of the rainy season. Now it rains pretty regularly - the last weekend even severe. Never the less it is warmer than in Kiel, and the amount of rain is pretty similar to some years in Kiel from my point of view.

By making contacts and friends with many people around, we slowly fill our house: We got a basket for playing basket ball in the back yard, Lego and a kids shopping cart. (Didn't we bring ALL our kids stuff with us? Didn't that already make up most of our belongings? Well it keeps growing incredibly fast!)
We even got a matress for the kids to play and guests to sleep on, a couch and many other things for the kids from new friends.


Here are a few dialogues we had with the kids in the last week. We started to write them down, so we would not forget all of them. I guess I will pretty soon take them offline again - don't want to post to embarrassing stuff, they might not like as they grow older:
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Katrin and I were talking about former times, how we used to cook things.
J.: In former times we were apes then humans.
T.: Right! We were first apes, then babies and now children, later human.
- Kids a bit confused, how can apes turn into human babies and get into the mothers belly? -
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On our way to Mount Rainier hike the kids are talking in the back of the car.
(J. got a small plasitic survival tool with a beer opener)
J.: With this beer opener I can open beer.
T.: Only when you are grown up, not yet!
J.: Yes, when I am a school kid and drink wine, then I can use my beer opener to open beer.
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Katrin and the kids are talking about age.
Kids: How old are you?
Katrin: 30 years.
Kids: How old is daddy?
Katrin: 33 years and he will turn 34 soon.
Kids: When daddy is 34 he will probably look as old as great grandpa Heinz.
(He was 86 - I thoroughly checked if I can find a gray hair on my head the next morning - none so far!)
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Katrin and the kids saw an electric tricycle. The kids wondered about it and Katrin explained them about solar energy and that our car goes on regular fuel. Further that this does pollute the air, thus we try not to use it, if not neccessary. Next day Jonte comes inside from playing outside:
J.: "Outside there is yucky air."
K.: "Why is the air yucky Jonte?"
J.: "Because we did drive with our car such a long way yesterday."
(We only went for a very short 4mile drive to the park)
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J. is a postman for Halloween. Everyone in the house is getting mail delivered regularly.
J.: "Here is mail for you"
T.: "Oh, thank you"
J.: "Nothing special, just advertisments"

More pictures of the pumpkin patch field trip

Sunke wants to write more about our Halloween weekend. That's why I am just going to put some more pictures from the pumpkin patch on the blog.

Spiders, bats, ghosts and more ... just Halloween

We just returned from our Halloween pumpkin carving party at Theda's and Jonte's preschool - now we have three sleeping kids in their beds, two carved pumpkins lit by candles and two tired parents in the house.

Coming Saturday, October 31st, will be Halloween and it seems like the entire country is going wild. In the past three weeks at preschool the topics were: bats, Halloween and pumpkins. Thus Theda's and Jonte's English vocabulary increased dramatically the past weeks in that direction. They talk about spiders, bats, ghosts, pumpkins, ... (and since tonight they know about vampires and talk about Dracula - I think they do not really understanding what they talk about, but they got Dracula teeth from their teacher).
Furthermore our front window of the house is decorated with cardboard pumpkins the kids made at preschool and on the steps to our door we put pumpkins as this is one of the traditions. Other houses are heavily decorated with ghosts, witches, skeletons, or other scary things.

Last Sunday Theda and Jonte were invited to their first Halloween party. They dressed up as postman and princess. Yesterday there was a field trip with the preschool going to a pumpkin patch which seems to be a must-do before Halloween. They had all the different farm animals there and a hay maze we luckily did not get lost in. Aftre some time on the farm we went onto a tractor ride to the pumpkin patch where each child could pick a pumpkin. It did not rain and we all enjoyed the day outside (not Sunke, he had to work :-( ).

...  next thing was tonight - we took the pumpkins to preschool to carve them at the party. The party was a lot of fun. All kids and most parents were dressed up. Besides carving there was food, games, a costume parade and at the end all pumpkins were lit with candles.

Tomorrow there will be no preschool. So we have one day to relax before we go for "Trick or Treaty" on Saturday night. As you see this has been an exciting time!

Besides all this, we are enjoying beautiful fall days in the garden and at the different parks in Seattle. Last Saturday we made a trip to the Cascades and had a nice walk on an old railroad trail finding two geocaches on the way.

 (animals in our backyard) 

(Magnusen Park)

 (walk on the old railroad trail - the "Iron Goat Trail")

 (Theda and Jonte are proud and happy about their caches)

Furthermore Narne has been very eager to figure out how to crawl. He gets on his hands and knees rocking back and forth. We are as excited as him about this!

progress and frustration

I knew this day would come some day and the day came. Two days ago, when I brought Jonte to bed he said that he would like to go back to Kiel again. He wants to play and live there again. Asking him why, he answered, he doesn't understand all the kids and can't speak English. I could feel how sad and frustrated he was, which of course, made me feel sad - especially knowing how social Jonte is and how he loves to interact with others and be part of a group of kids and realizing that the language barrier is in his way right now and what stress that causes him. Theda instead is convinced that she can already speak English :-). The truth is that they pick up a lot of words. I am impressed by how they also pick up words and sentences and use them by intuition. About two weeks ago, we left the house to go to preschool, we sat in the car and I started driving and Theda and Jonte were shouting "Bye, bye house. See you later". One block further up, Jonte asked: Mom, what does "See you later" actually mean? So he used it in a correct way, but didn't really know what he was saying. When they play together, mostly in the mornings, they speak in their fantasy-English-language and it sounds like English more and more. They often play preschool and they sing the preschool songs. I also started to read more English books (since we got simple children books from the library last Saturday) and I hardly have to translate - often the pictures are explanation enough. Though they don't speak English yet to other people (as far as I know, except "My name is ... and I am 3 yrs."), I think they are on a good track.

I am convinced about that, especially because another day came which I expected to come some day, but honestly I didn't expect it to come so quickly: Jonte started to correct my pronounciation of English names. The other day he corrected me, when I talked about our neighbor Terry and today I could not pronounce the name Sam right. In his eyes I just couldn't do it.

Other than that days are exciting. Yesterday (Tuesday) I went to Home depot together with Narne while Theda and Jonte were at preschool. I wanted to get more wood to build another raised bed which we can use as a compost during winter and we will turn it into a vegetable bed next spring. And I wanted to get some construction material to cover our raised bed during winter. Since I had a hard time transporting all this material through the market with Narne, I found some guys working at home depot - I told them what I would like to buy, they collected it for me in the market and brought it to the loading zone, while I paid and pulled into the loading zone. They loaded the material, fixed the steel construction fence-like thing on the roof of my car and I could go. How easy!!!

Also yesterday night, we had the first parent meeting at the preschool. These parent meetings take place once a month and are part of the parent education program at the North Seattle Community College. The coops are run by the Community Colleges and so we as parents are students at the College and get credits for taking part in the preschool/ parent education program. Besides talking about organizational stuff at these meetings, each meeting has a special child-raising, early childhood developmental topic. There is a special parent educator with an educational and/or psychological background who observes the preschool class and who leads these sessions. Yesterdays topic was "Development of our children" - how have they developed during the past three months?, what are celebrations and what are challenges in living with the children. I found it really nice to step back from daily routine and think about these things and to once more realize how wonderful these kids are. Some of you having kids or working with kids might be interested in this link:

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/homefamily/children/development/ages_stages.htm


Now it is late at night. Friends and family in Germany and Norway and South Africa and wherever you are, you are about to start a new day, as we go to bed. Tomorrow will be another exciting day: Theda, Jonte and I will go to a children's play at the Children's Theater downtown. We go with a large group of kids and parents from the preschool and we will see the play: "If you give a mouse a cookie". So I am curios and very much looking forward to this.

Narne will stay with Sunke at work and hopefully take his noon nap there, so that Sunke is not too much distracted from work. Narne has overcome his grumpy days and is quite relaxed. He is excited to push himself up, standing on hands and feet - and we are all excited as well. He practises a lot and we will see when he actually will move forward. Other than that we finally made him eat his evening cereal. Over the past month we have tried to offer him various things: cereal with applesauce, cereal with orange juice, "swedish milk" - he was not convinced at all about this and mostly made funny faces when we once again tried to get the spoon or the bottle into his mouth. Today I tried the plain rice cereal without anything and he ate it! So hopefully he is stuffed and I get longer nights!

Sorry for not loading up any pictures - I really need to go to bed now!

already quite American

This might scare you: I got up this morning, headed into the kitchen just about to start the yeast dough for fresh buns. Jonte came in and complained - he does NOT want buns, he WANTS pancakes (Jonte: "amerikanische Eierkuchen"). After figuring out, what everyone would like to eat for breakfast - Theda wanted scrambled eggs, Jonte pancakes, Sunke didn't care - he just needed his coffee and since I love pancakes as well, we made pancakes and of course had them with maple syrup (Theda got her scrambled egg, which she ended up not eating because by the time I served the scrambled egg, she was stuffed with pancakes).

For lunch we had hot dogs (Jonte's suggestion while eating them: We should try growing sausages in our garden.) For coffee time we had fresh donuts from one of the popular donut places in town which happens to be located just down the street ... and they are really good! So make sure we go there when you come and visit us!

But we are hopefully not totally lost yet: for dinner we had German Schnitzel, Broccoli and potatoes!!

Other than that we had a great day. Since Sunke is quite busy writing an abstract for a conference in Portland in February which he has to turn in until Tuesday, we gave him some extra time to work at it and the rest of us walked to the library, which reopened today. The libary closed for remodeling just when we moved here and since then I have been waiting for it to open. The libary happens to be also just down the street and it is a nice walk to get there (taking back roads and not the busy 35th avenue). On the way, we collected leaves, counted pumpkins and looked at the decorated "Halloween houses". Then we were welcomed at the libary with apple juice, cookies and brownies! It was easy to get a libary card, which is free and you can lend up to 50 items. It got a huge kids section and that was the only section we checked out today. But I am really happy - that will be a great location to go to during rainy season.

After having been to my first yoga class yesterday (restorative yoga - one hour of lying around in different poses, not moving, just lying, changing poses every 10 to 15 minutes - one hour of peace in the middle of the day!), I got some more time off this afternoon. I went to a hairdresser which I longed for for a couple of weeks now. Since I had to wait for half an hour until it was my turn, I got a latte macchiato in the coffee shop right next to the hairdresser, sat outside in the sun and had time to read a book (!!!), which I started to read in Kiel before we started our packing procedure.

Sunke and the kids spent the afternoon in our garden, removing weeds, watering plants,... We are very amazed that there are still flowers who start to bloom at this time of the year e.g. our roses. Our vegetable seeds which we put in our raised bed are already sprouting and especially our broccoli plants are fairly big. I just talked to our neighbor Terry today and she suggested to cover the raised bed in a few weeks when it freezes at night. So we will think about how to cover it and build something. (I probably get quite old that I am so excited about gardening :-) )

The kids also had fun watching Bob (very nice man who build our bathroom in the basement). He came in the afternoon to paint the door of our garage. And when he was finished, they saw Terry, our neighbor, outside and played with her and her two cats. When I came back from the hairdresser, they were "helping" her mowing the lawn. It is nice to see that they feel more and more comfortable to interact with the people although they might not understand everything.

The kids are sleeping now and we have to clean the mess of the evening, do some laundry, press the leaves which we collected today and press the limes (Limetten). When Sunke went to Costco, he brought an entire sack of limes. (I was asking for one or two limes, but since they only had XXL packages, we now have to deal with an entire sack of limes) And before they spoil, Sunke had the idea to press them and freeze the lime juice in ice cube containers. So that is the program for tonight! I hope you are all well and also enjoy a nice weekend!

Apple week

We just got home from our first dinner invitation. Sunke's colleague John and his family invited us yesterday to come to dinner today. They have two sons, aged 4 and 7 - a perfect fit to our kids. We had spinach calzone and it was a very nice evening. I can imagine and hope that it was not the last time that we met. For us this was also a good introduction into Halloween traditions. Their entire house was already decorated - pumpkin in front of the house, spider nets and ghosts everywhere - even a ghost in a cage hanging down the ceiling in their living room and if you yelled at it, it made really spooky sounds. I expected Theda and Jonte to be scared, but they thought it was hilarious - we will see how they sleep tonight :-).

Yes, it is fall - and that means getting ready for Halloween. In front of the houses you see more and more pumpkins. Theda and Jonte get really excited about the pumpkins on our morning walks through the neighborhood. I think one of the next days I will go to the store with them and get one for our house. Since they also want me to cook pumpkin soup, we can use pumpkins anyway. The stores are filled with orange and black candy - candy is piled up everywhere - just like before christmas and easter in Germany.
... so slowly Theda and Jonte have to make up their mind how they want to dress for Halloween and we have to get costumes ready for them. (Sunke thought, we could skip Halloween this year - but I think there is no way - they are already too excited about it and learn about it in preschool and I guess it will be the dominating topic during the next weeks.)


And since it is fall, the topic at preschool this week is "Apples and the letter A". Yesterday they made applesauce, today they tried different kinds of apples (one mom told me, that Jonte really liked the apples and had quite a lot of them) and tomorrow they will press apple juice.

By the way I made some pictures of the preschool from the outside for you and I hope to catch some inside shots later.

But the actual big news are: Narne got his first tooth on Sunday! He is quite grumpy during the day and wakes me up at night two to three times. So lets hope that will get better soon again!

Other than that we are all very tired at the moment. Theda and Jonte are quite tired from their preschool experience. The preschool time forces us to give up their noon nap which they could need right now so badly. Narne doesn't get a good noon nap on preschool days either and I am trying to handle these tired kids which results in me being really tired as well - so I try to sleep as much as I can - so sorry, if it takes me a while to answer emails right now.

So hopefully more soon - I'll go to bed now.