More trough photos
O catching gold fever
Sarah always loves water play
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Sutter's Mill- Eureka!
When we told the kids that we were moving to Germany (3/17/12), we realized we had a mental bucket list of places we wanted to visit before we left California.
Sutter's Mill was near the top of our list.
We headed for the hills the moment that school let out early during spring report card planning week on 3/21/12. We got to share the day with J, O, and M Grimes. We had a really great time.
O and D Learning how to pan for gold
Found some gold - Eureka! Each of the kids brought home a vial
with at least one gold flake and some amber chips.
with at least one gold flake and some amber chips.
The American river at Sutter's Mill (the kids wanted to play in the water most)
A
M
S
David and O in front of Sutter's Mill replica
M, S, A and M stumped by the beauty of the place!
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Maschsee Magic
By Friday the kids were about done with all of the bureaucratic monotony and we decided it would be nice to have some fun on the Maschsee, which is a man-made lake located near the heart of Hannover. We rented a couple of paddleboats (Tretboote) that resemble floating slug bugs. Awesome.
Jon, David, and Sarah battled Mom, Allison, and Shelly for bragging rights. After half an hour of furious pedaling, we found it was much nicer to bob along and let the kids do all the work.
Home in Hannover
Well, we made it.
After weeks and weeks of preparation, we closed the door in California and started our journey toward our new door in Hannover. Amazingly it was only 17 hours door to door, which is about the time it usually takes for us to drive from the Bay Area to Arizona. But this feels like a long way from Arizona...
We arrived to find balloons and a welcome poster placed on the front door by our friend K. Here are some of the quirks about the house:
The house we are renting is furnished. If it is at all representative of German taste, then it would seem that Germans have some unnatural fascination with locks. As we stepped into the house, accompanied by our relocation assistant, the kids disappeared into every corner and started producing skeleton keys. Not just one or two, but lots of them. There are probably 75 in the whole house, including furniture and doors. So here we are trying to have a serious conversation about all the important points of the house with the relocation assistant and the kids are trying to play Narnia. Put those keys away already, you're killing me!
Jutta, our German tutor in California, told us on many occasions that the refrigerator would be small. She wasn't kidding...think about the fridge in your dorm room. The days of buying 4 gallons of milk at Costco and stuffing them into the fridge are over. We can deal with about 4 liters of milk. Fortunately the Lidl market (apologies to my brother Brian) is just around the corner.
There are more stairs than we ever could have imagined. The house is less than 20 feet wide but it goes up - way up. Washer/dryer and a bunch of other miscellaneous whatever are in the basement, kitchen/dining/living room are on the first floor, us creaky parents and little Sarah are parked on the second floor, the older girls are on the third floor, and David is waaay up there in the loft on the fourth floor. You can't yell down the hall to call for dinner or tell the kids to settle down - you have to physically go there. Beverly resorted to opening the front door and ringing the doorbell...unfortunately that trick only works once.
After weeks and weeks of preparation, we closed the door in California and started our journey toward our new door in Hannover. Amazingly it was only 17 hours door to door, which is about the time it usually takes for us to drive from the Bay Area to Arizona. But this feels like a long way from Arizona...
We arrived to find balloons and a welcome poster placed on the front door by our friend K. Here are some of the quirks about the house:
The house we are renting is furnished. If it is at all representative of German taste, then it would seem that Germans have some unnatural fascination with locks. As we stepped into the house, accompanied by our relocation assistant, the kids disappeared into every corner and started producing skeleton keys. Not just one or two, but lots of them. There are probably 75 in the whole house, including furniture and doors. So here we are trying to have a serious conversation about all the important points of the house with the relocation assistant and the kids are trying to play Narnia. Put those keys away already, you're killing me!
Jutta, our German tutor in California, told us on many occasions that the refrigerator would be small. She wasn't kidding...think about the fridge in your dorm room. The days of buying 4 gallons of milk at Costco and stuffing them into the fridge are over. We can deal with about 4 liters of milk. Fortunately the Lidl market (apologies to my brother Brian) is just around the corner.
There are more stairs than we ever could have imagined. The house is less than 20 feet wide but it goes up - way up. Washer/dryer and a bunch of other miscellaneous whatever are in the basement, kitchen/dining/living room are on the first floor, us creaky parents and little Sarah are parked on the second floor, the older girls are on the third floor, and David is waaay up there in the loft on the fourth floor. You can't yell down the hall to call for dinner or tell the kids to settle down - you have to physically go there. Beverly resorted to opening the front door and ringing the doorbell...unfortunately that trick only works once.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Memorial Day Weekend
We spent a lovely Memorial Day weekend with friends at Lake Tahoe.
Talk about wild weather - it snowed late Friday and into Saturday morning, so we got to enjoy a winter wonderland (in May!). By Saturday afternoon a few blue patches opened up and we ventured out to the rock throwing beach and played some mini golf.
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| At the rock throwing beach |
On Monday the skies cleared entirely - the snow was gone and you would never guess that it had been snowing just a day ago. We headed down the west shore of the lake to Taylor Creek. A short hike landed us on a sandy beach and it was water play for the next few hours.
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| This is what guitars were made for |
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| Ducks in a row |
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Got eclipse?
Take a look at this...today we saw an eclipse, and we didn't even burn our retinas! Mom noticed that the light outside was getting kind of weird and we remembered that there was supposed to be an annular eclipse this weekend.
We are in the partial eclipse zone but the effect was still pretty cool...the light outside dimmed, the temperature dropped, and we cooked up our EclipseCam to have a look.
It's easy...we used two sheets of paper, one with a small hole and the other as the projection screen. That way we could see the shape of the sun without looking at it directly.
Too bad S missed out...she was passed out on the couch taking a nap.
We are in the partial eclipse zone but the effect was still pretty cool...the light outside dimmed, the temperature dropped, and we cooked up our EclipseCam to have a look.
It's easy...we used two sheets of paper, one with a small hole and the other as the projection screen. That way we could see the shape of the sun without looking at it directly.
Too bad S missed out...she was passed out on the couch taking a nap.
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Wednesday, May 2, 2012
We have a Haus
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| Dining room in foreground, living room in background |
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| Kitchen |
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| Front door |
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| From the street |
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| Looking east down Bregenzerstrasse - that's a sidewalk on the left and a dedicated bike lane on the right |
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