Piano recital

Ina, Wiebke and Nils are continuing their piano lessons with Ina's former piano teacher (she had started in first grade) and also Katrin is taking lessons now. Two days ago, they had their first recital.

 

German kids doing crafts for Thanksgiving

Today, we had invited Katrin's preschool group. Unfortunately, it was raining the whole day but they still walked the 15 minutes to our house to have a snack, play in Katrin's room and then make a colorful turkey. They all had so much fun!

Thursday, 11-11-2010 Laterne-Parade

Much larger than last year's parade in Westchester Woods ;-), this year's parade in Laudenbach was led by a rider with a red cape (representing St. Martin, a roman soldier who gave half of his cape to a beggar), followed by a small marching band and then all the children of our village's only elementary school and the three preschools. In spite of some rain and cold temperatures we sang and walked through the village to our school where a big fire pit with colorful flames and sweet bread men waited for the children.

Halloween in Germany

Before continuing to write about our west coast adventure I need to tell about our German Halloween experience. Feeling American now after having lost our hearts in Cary we truly observed this holiday. The house was full of spiders, spiderwebs at our front door, skulls and lots of bats, and of course our ghost in a milk container decorated the whole house, plus ghosts and bats and witches behind the windows.

We carved some pumpkins,

I baked a ton of "fingers" and we had invited the whole neighborhood to a drink and pretzels in the morning (that was really nice although it was not a real Halloween party but more to tell everybody that the Arndts are back). In the evening I went trick or treating with the kids

and Dietrich, with his black curls (last year's wig) sat in front of our front door, drinking red blood (wine) and scaring the kids with moaning sounds from the computer. We had a nice time, the kids had their fun (Wiebke was even at a Halloween sleep over party) but what can I say.... it was not quite the same....

Trip to the West Coast 4

July 7th
Hike in the park to see the amazing Redwood Trees. Besides these impressive trees there are big marks of fire and many many sick oaks.

This is where we leave the coast and go north eastwards. We drive through hilly grasslands and plantations (fruits and nuts) and stay at a campground not far from Santa Nella in the middle of nowhere.

July 8th
After 6 loads of laundry (...) we continue our trip north eastwards to Turlock again through lots of fruit plantations (walnuts) and pass historic Jamestown with his beautiful old houses.

Then we climb up a very high pass with pretty vistas to arrive at an R.V. Park in Groveland with pool, petting zoo, and storyteller at the campfire where we stay for 2 days.

Trip to the West Coast 3

July 6th
We continue our way north along the beautiful coastline. Stop at Piedras Blancas to watch a huge group of adolescent elephant seals and sea otters, not to mention hundreds of ground squirrels...

We camp at our first park: the Big Sur Pfeiffer National Park. As the camp ground is full this is also our first experience with dry camping on a parking lot: we don't have an electricity or water hook up so we save energy and water as good as we can.

Trip to the West Coast 2

July 5th 2010
Heading north on Highway #1, along California's beautiful coast. It never rains in California??? We are not that lucky. Nevertheless it's breathtaking! We camp next to the street just some yards away from the water!!!

Trip to the West Coast 1

July 30th 2010
After a hectic morning with an end of quarter award ceremony at school and packing the air freight in the very last minute (the packer almost didn't come because he didn't have gas in his truck and had to jog to a gas station....)  we got our kids out of their classrooms, said farewell to our friends and headed to the airport.

We had planned to spend the time that our belongings were on the container ship on a trip to the west coast. Unfortunately, our visa was expired so that we had to leave the country first and come back as "ordinary" tourists. Therefore we flew to Detroit, jumped over the border to Canada, spent the night and flew to Los Angeles the next day to pick up our R.V. . To recover from this exhausting start we stayed two nights in Oceanside (1 h south of L.A.) to buy all our supplies and equipment for living more than a month in the R.V. and to just go to the pool and the beach (which was not as beautiful as the beaches that we knew from North Carolina ;-)  ).

Good bye Cary

After a busy time of farewell parties, "end of school year"-events, "start of season"-sport events, and the "normal" craziness of moving we left Cary on the last day of school (June 30st). We had moved out of our home a couple of days before and stayed with our friends down the street so that the kids could keep walking to school and we were close to the packers. In all these turbulences our emotions didn't really reach the surface but I felt a sob in my throat every time that I did something knowing it would be the last time (even the simplest things like shopping at Food Lion) and when I was with friends knowing I wouldn't see them for a long while.

Luckily each kid could have their birthday party before leaving.