2010 St. Martins Zug

Here is the video from Landon's St. Martin's Zug.

Our trip in Rhodos. Sorry the music is louder then voices. You'll just have to listen closely.

How Time Flies

How time flies. Landon is now 4 years old and Alianna will be 8 in a few short days. It really isn’t until you look back at the pictures that you realize just how much they have grown and changed. The top picture of Landon is him at 4 and the next one is him at 3. And for Ali the top is her at 7 and the next one is at 8. My baby boy is now a little man and my sweet little girl is becoming a sweet young girl. I love them more with each day that passes. They are each a blessing and special in their own ways.

Alianna is very strong willed and stubborn. Hopefully someday she will use that power for good, but for now we need to tame her back somewhat. She is excited about school and learning the clarinet and has also begun a dance and gymnastic class. She needs to do something with her endless energy level. She is having an art themed birthday party where the kids will paint on canvas and eat yummy cake. We had to keep the party small this year so unfortunately we are seeing some hurt feelings. It was a tough choice, but the art studio is very small. I hope the other kids soon forget about it.

Landon has begun a new school this year. While he enjoyed his German kindergarten class, he was really struggling with his speech. With his delay in English, German was just adding to the pressure. So we enrolled him in a private, British kindergarten. He has also started speech therapy and continues with his physical therapy for his other delays. We have seen huge improvements since the summer and hope it is only the beginning. He has so much potential and so much energy. His new teachers are just wonderful with him and seem to have much patience. I have also begun trying the P.L.A.Y. therapy I crashed trained in while home. It is a lot of work, but when I see him engage and laugh with me, I can’t help but become re-energized. We are working on colors right now, or should I say colours now that we are learning British English. I hold up a gummy bear and ask him what color it is. If he gets it right he gets to eat it. If he is wrong, I eat it. He has some very interesting colors. Have you ever heard of gre-ellow? That what he ways when he isn’t sure if its green or yellow. He waits for my reaction and then changes the word half way through. It is also very cute the look he gets on his face when I eat it. He gets all sad and whines, “awww Mooommm that was my gummy bear. Give it back!” I say nope, get the color right next time. Tough love.

So what have we all been up to…
We went to the States from July 16 to August 17. It was a great trip. We enjoyed our time with family and friends and as expected the time went by too fast. We thought for sure a month would be long enough to see everyone, but we still missed seeing many friends. I guess that means they will have to come here to visit. We were lucky enough to time seeing a large portion of Larry’s extended family. His cousin was having a baby shower while we home and he was able to surprise her. It was a really special day to be there and a great chance to see so much family at one time. The kids loved playing in the lake and spending time with their cousins.

We miss some things that home offers, but overall, not too much. We did our typical fill your suitcase with affordable clothing and shoes and we made sure to stock up on Twizzlers and Cheerios. But we are used to the food here now and have either found ways to get the things we really want or we just do without. Much like the TV. I was really excited to watch TV and catch up on missed shows, but in the end I just didn’t have the time and enjoyed spending my time doing other things.

As expected, leaving was very hard, especially for the kids. It was hard watching them say goodbye knowing it would be another year before we return. But they are strong and most of the crying stopped by the time we boarded the flight. The flight was typical Northwest only now the plane says Delta. The flight attendants pass out inedible food and then take forever to collect it. Then they sit back and chit chat and hope you don’t ask for anything. Come morning they quickly toss you something that resembles breakfast and then hurry you into landing mode. Only to have to wait forever to make it through passport control and even longer to wait for your luggage. We had way more luggage then arms to carry it and still had to make it onto a train. Needless to say we were all happy to be home, sad to have left and sore from the process in between.

So what is ahead? Alianna’s birthday party, hopefully a date night and then we are all excited to be heading to Rhodes, Greece for the fall break. Of course there will be pictures to follow.

We love hearing from friends and family, so please remember to send an email every now and again.

Can you believe it's been 2 years!

June 25, 2008 we landed in Dusseldorf. June 25, 2009 I wrote about our first year. Now June 25, 2010, we are two years into our adventure and what an adventure it has been. This past year we watched Landon begin kindergarten and Alianna begin 2nd grade. We enjoyed our trips to Spain, a couple to Austria and several to The Netherlands. We have seen more of Germany in a 3 hour radius then most of our German friends have seen in their lifetime here. We were visited by both sets of parents and a few friends from home who found there way to us while on business. We have been blessed with friends who bring or send us goodies from home and those who continue to email us to let us know we have not been forgotten. We were evicted from home for 2 months and now moved back in. There is never a dull moment.

For most of the year we have remained healthy, but we were hit hard a few times. Alianna became very ill just before Christmas. A 104 degree temp. for over 3 days and a doctor who made a house call. Landon has had a rough time with his allergies and chronic bronchitis. We continue to work with his doctor in helping him fight off his runny nose and horrible cough. Larry has done an excellent job keeping with his running routine and continued to run through the very cold winter. He is now training for a special run here in September where he will run 16 km through the city and over the 7 (maybe 5 I don't remember) bridges here in Cologne. And believe it or not, I have started to run! I don't like it much, but I love the company of my girlfriends so I keep going. Plus my love for bread needs to be balanced.

The kids have really enjoyed school. Alianna is playing tennis and the blöckflute (recorder). Her favorite subject is math and she loves story problems. She has grown at least 2 inches, but Landon is catching up quickly! Landon has changed the most over the past year. He potty trained in April. His speech is improving and since he began occupational therapy, he is able to understand directions much better. He still has a long way to go to catch up to his peers, but he makes progress everyday. Just this past week alone he has begun speaking German at home. Instead of saying "I" for himself, he has been using the German version "Ich". When I asked him where his was going today, he answered, "Ich pee-pee machen." (I am going to pee). This is a huge step for him to make a sentence! Since we were unable to find a special education kindergarten spot for him, he will remain at the same school and go to therapy twice a week and hopefully have speech therapy at the school once a week. With this extra attention our goal is to catch him up developmentally to his appropriate age over the next year.

Larry is enjoying his work and his German has also improved much over the past year. Funny thing is that our English is suffering! We are so used to speaking slowly or speaking in sentences that a German will understand that we have started saying it to each other. Larry told me the other day, "I'll ring you later to let you know when I'll be home." RING me later? What American says that! We need to get home quickly!!!

I am also doing well. Yes, my German still stinks. I lost several of my friends over the past year to the economy. We are one of the few Americans left standing on German soil. I had to stay goodbye too many times. But fortunately I made a few friends who live here permanently and I have also made some new friends recently. One friend in particular I meet while walking down the street one day from Alianna's school. She was with her boys and the older one was riding a scooter. Alianna noticed he had the exact scooter she did and asked him about it. This lead to a conversation with the mom, who luckily spoke English. When asked where they bought their scooter she said,"Oh, it's from the States. A place called Toys R Us" I said really, where were you in the States? She replied, "we just moved back from living in Michigan for the past 2 years." Of course my next question was where in Michigan. Her reply, "Ann Arbor!" Now that is not a coincidence! What are the chances of walking down the street in a city of one million people and running into a family who just moved back from Ann Arbor, Michigan! Then it turns out our husbands work together and I was actually introduced to her a year ago when I was home for Easter. It is more then just a small world. Our paths were meant to cross!

So I think I covered all of us. We are excited about our visit home. It has been 16 months since we were on American soil! If we are lucky maybe we will be coming home with the World Cup Soccer trophy! Alianna is a big fan of the games! One more year begins today. After our visit to the US we will see Rhodes, Greece in the fall and ski the Alps for one final time over Christmas. Somewhere we still need to fit in Paris and I won't leave until I see Berlin.

Here we go...I can't even imagine what this year will have in store for us!

Alianna's Musical Performance

In the middle of May, the first and second classes at Alianna's school performed a musical all in Spanish - La Granja de la Amistad (the farmyard of friendship). It was a story about animals, each one which is represented by an instrument in the orchestra. Not only does this musical teach the children the sounds of each of the orchestral instruments, it also sends a very strong message about friendship, peace and acceptance. The children learn that the world would be boring if we were all the same and that they can all be friends, despite their differences. It was a great evening. Alianna played a white pony in the farm. If you look close to the left of screen at the end of the group she has white hair and a brown face. The video is of the children singing the finale song.

Keukenhof Gardens Slideshow

We had a wonderful time this year at the gardens. It was fun to see it at a different time of year. We went back 2 weeks later and although those pictures are not in the show, the gardens were transformed again. Nature can be so fascinating!

Could the madness be coming to an end?

It is now April 15. It was around Feb. 20 that we had to move out of the castle. So after 2 months we have come full circle and will move back to the castle over the weekend. It was a very long and hard two months. I have never been knocked down so many times. Every turn we made we ran into an on-coming train. The experience reminded me much of our experience with infertility. We would be hopeful that we found something, have to wait for the answer only to be disappointed that it wasn't going to work out. And then finally we found a house and after 2 weeks of negotiating, it fell through and we lost it.

I have mixed feelings about going back. I was ready to move on. We had packed many of our belongs and the emotional ties we had were gone and replaced with anger. Larry and I both kept looking for the lesson to be learned out of this. We always figure God is trying to teach us something. But we just couldn't and still really can't figure it out. Larry was listening to Joel Osteen and as usual his message hit home. He says sometimes God uses us to teach others lessons. So we started to think about how our problem might have helped someone else. We came up with a few ideas. It still doesn't make the situation sting any less, but we are hanging on to the idea that somewhere someone benefited from our trials.

I hope to settle in soon and I look forward to having a reliable internet connection and telephone again. I miss keeping in touch with family and friends and hope to be back on track soon.

Joel also gave us some other food for thought. He says, "Bloom where you are planted." I figure we are obviously planted in Geyen for the next year so I will do my best to bloom like the tulips at the Keukenhof Gardens.

What just happened?

So my head is spinning and I can't help but wonder, "what just happened?" Here we were celebrating karneval enjoying our time here and next thing I know we are evicted out of our house and forced to move some place new. This has been a nightmare! We have been living in a temporary location for 2 weeks now and it seems that we are no further to finding a solution. The construction on the fire doors is being completed today and the house will cleaned Friday and Saturday. But we still don't know if that is enough to let us move back in. There is something wrong with our bedroom but no one knows what the problem is. How can that be? Everyone we ask says they have to check with someone and then they don't get back with us. How hard is it to find out this answer?

As for our house hunting it is a daunting experience. You have no idea how blessed and fortunate we are in the US when is comes to housing size and ammenities. I guess if you lived in a big city it would be similar, but to me I just don't know how people do it. So far we have been shown shoe boxes for houses. i can understand why Ikea is so succesful. Problem is we have our furniture here and can't afford to buy new Ikea creative furniture. Then it becomes a problem of the drive. The main highway here has been under construction for 3+ years and the sign says it will be completed in the end of 2012. When we first arrived it said 2011. As you can imagine it becomes a parking lot during rush hour and so we need to avoid it for Larry's commute (not easy). Then there is the problem of both kids going to different schools about 15 minutes apart. One house we looked at yesterday would have worked out, but I would be in my car from 1:45 to 5:00 everyday picking up and shuttling around the kids. And Larry would need to take the construction route of the highway. Next we looked at a place out in the country. It was nice but the people have lived there for 30 years and have so much stuff it will take them until June 1 to move out. Plus there is a pool. Nice idea, but with Landon impossible. And we would be isolated from everything. After that we saw a nice place if we only had one kid. There were 2 bedrooms total. The age difference between the kids makes it too hard for them to share. Landon gets into Ali's things and does great damage. Plus it would be difficult when we have visitors. Much of our furniture would need to go into storage.

So that is the scoop. The only places left to see are in the city with no yards for the kids, spiral staircases and parking issues. Larry is still trying to negotiate with the owner of the original house we wanted, so I will try to stay hopeful. With each passing day it becomes more difficult.

Here are a few pictures of what used to be our comfy living room.

Enjoying Karneval!

 

Alianna's Class performance of Cinderella

Landon playing one of his favorite games

Christmas morning

Some more pictures

So here are some picture of Christmas...

Happy 2010!

I haven't posted anything in 2 months! Sorry! Let's catch you up to speed...
We celebrated Thanksgiving at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Cologne with a few other American families. The turkey was pretty good, but the pumpkin pie was something I can't even describe other then, YUCK!

December was off to a good start with St. Nikolaus Day. The kids enjoyed their little gifts and Landon had a fun visit at school from St. Nikolaus himself. Then my poor little girl became very sick. For two weeks she was down and out. The Christmas market at the Junkerburg was very nice, but Alianna could not enjoy it. We actually had a house call from the doctor to check up on her because her 104 degree fever would not go down. So she could only watch out the window and it was pretty sad. Thankfully she recovered in time for Christmas and no one else in the family became ill! I love Purell!

On Christmas Eve I gave the family my special gift! I bought them a little fire kit for outside so we could make smore's! With my prayers being answered, a work friend of Larry's was coming to Cologne and he agreed to bring marshmellows, Hershey's chocolate and graham crackers! I was so excited to be able to surprise all three of them with this gift and a surprise it was. We even introduced Frau Schumacher to smore's. After a fun day of smore's and playing the kids were off to sleep to wait for Santa's arrival! He came and our presents was that the kids slept until 7:00! We spent the morning opening gifts and playing with toys. Alianna's favorite was the Wii Sing it with Hannah Montana songs. Landon loves his kitchen and Handy Mandy pj's. Larry got a terrific watch and I love my tall, brown leather boots.

Christmas dinner was also a huge success! We ordered a fresh turkey from the butcher and it turned out great! Fresh cranberry sauce, green beans and finally a great pumpkin pie! We were all fat and happy!

The next day we packed up our gear to head out to Austria for a week of skiing. We left at 6:20 am for a 6 hour drive and less then one hour into it we were at a stand-still on the Autobahn. A large accident ahead shut down the road. And German's don't believe in routing people off. No, we just sat with the car in park for another hour. In the end it took us 8.5 hours to get to Lofer. And as our usual luck when it comes to vacations... there was no snow! End of December in the Alps and NO SNOW! We skiied a little, by going up as high as we could, but it was icy and way too many people. We enjoyed the time away, but not quite the ski vacation we were hoping for. Maybe next year. We think maybe we will try the Italian Alps.

Ok, I think we are up to date. The kids are back in school, my german lessons resume tomorrow and the Christmas decorations have been replaced with karneval ones. We are hoping to escape karneval this year, but not sure yet where to go that is affordable. Landon will participate in his schools karnevalzug on the 7th of Feb. so the kids will still get some candy and get to dress up.

I have included some photos and once my computer is working properly again I will try to upload a new photoshow. Until then Happy New Year!