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!
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