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....