Germany 09

Our old landlord asked us sometime in April:"Would you guys like to move out early?" Utterly surprised (He knew Lincoln had a commitment in Spokane through August) we said no, thinking why would we move out early. We had prepared a nice blog for him helping him to find new renters. He got a lot of responses from people already wanting to rent it. Here are pictures of our old house for those of you who have been wanting to see it.

After a lot of thinking we decided it would be perfect to use the money we would not be using for rent to fly to Germany. We ended up moving into Lincoln's parents house the end of May, who agreed to take us in until now, before we're off to Colville. This seems like a long time, but the kids and I got to go to Germany in between for a whole month, while Lincoln was there with us for the first 2 weeks. Our stuff has been in storage in Colville already. It's been nice to be with Lincoln's family and for the kids to grow close to them, though I cannot wait to move into my own house after all these weeks.

It had almost been 2 years since we were in Germany last. It was so nice to see everyone and have the kids get to know my whole family better. They got to speak so much German, it was astonishing how well they handled the whole situation. I'm so happy that they get to speak two languages and function well in both.

Leea slept like this for several hours on the way there...

One of the highlights was that Luca got to go to my old elementary school with my old teacher Frau Fallahi for one week! I had her for 4 years. It was great of her to let him come to her class, even though he was 2 years younger than the kids in her class. They took such good care of him, and most importantly he got to speak German all day long. Luca and Leea also got to go to preschool (3-6) there, but they actually didn't like it. I was hoping it would be a little more fun for them, but they were just sending everyone off for the summer and didn't have much going on. The kids were simply bored.

Luca and Frau Fallahi.

The school grounds with a huge log to climb on.

My parents had tons of red and black currants we had lots of fun picking - yummy!

Mini Zoo in Essehof.

Playground in Braunschweig by the Waldorf Kindergarten.

Tante Eva's backyard. If you can't tell, Eva's obsessed with rabbits. At some point she was breeding them unwillingly. I guess they kept getting pregnant until she figured out how rabbits multiply...Sorry Eva, this was ages ago....

Noa

Ava

Leea

The whole family, without my dad.
Stephan, Matthias, Alina, Eva, Patrick,
Oma Sigrid, Uroma Maria, Lincoln
Noa, Luca, Leea, Rebecca and Ava

Noa eating the good German bread...

We like playing with our food, and Lincoln cracked us up with this little veggie-freak.

Isn't he cute? Here he's got hair as well.

We enjoyed having dinner with my mom's cousin Peter, his wife Karin and Karin's parents Dorchen and Gerd. Thanks so much for what you guys have done for us! You're truly amazing!
Look how much fun a few kids and adults can have with a 200 piece puzzle for kids! :)

Luca and me.

Lincoln and Uroma Maria.

Luca signing his first contract.

Aktivspielplatz Fallersleben. It's a playground kids supervised by an instructor can build things out of wood or other materials. They also have animals. It appears to me that it's for kids socially neglected, as they have lots of instructors there teaching all kinds of things and mostly spending quality time with the kids. It's open to everyone, so we checked it out. Note the wooden VW Luca's sitting in! Folks, I grew up by the VW headquarters, if you didn't know that.

Leea before she lost control of the vehicle and ended up on the lawn.

We loved the zip line best.

A raft somebody had built.

The kids having fun with ucle Matthias.

Lincoln and Luca.

Picking cherries at my friend Ulla's house. This is one of Lincoln's favorite things to do, enjoying the fresh breeze way up high in the tree and eating fresh fruit off the tree. :)

Leea made a present for my little brother Stephan. She put all kinds of stuff from around the house in it. He had fun opening it.

Italian Gelato!

Pirate playground with water pump. One of our favorite places ever.

One of my favorite places in my home"village" (It's more like a small town in US standards.) We used to go here quite often as kids and play in the river and by the old dam.

Huge old tree.

My dad got this accordion from a friend, and Lincoln being a natural could play it right away of course. Here's my mom trying it on for style.