Spring Pictures

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The first BBQ of the season, much enjoyed by everyone. The little half Germans love grilled sausages. :)

A Portrait of the Princess as a Young Girl, courtesy of her big brother.

With temperatures up to 27° Celsius, we are enjoying the great outdoors. It's supposed to cool off again, but for now we're happy!





After they ran through a patch of stinging nettles. Ouch!

And what do you do when your foot looks like this?

More of this! :)


I've been running with pain for about a year (got tendonitis in my foot from too much running and having bad feet), but hopefully not much longer! Every few weeks a sports physician comes to my gym (he is a member and avid runner himself) and offers to help members with their training, so I went to see him. He wasn't too impressed with the orthopedic insoles for my running shoes I was prescribed last year, so he prescribed me new ones. I also got shots in my foot to reduce inflammation (the bruise formed after he "got a little too close to the vein" with one of the needles), an ankle brace for running, a prescription for 10 ultrasound treatments to loosen up my ankle joint (no idea when I will fit those in), and he told me to get this Nike Free shoe and wear it during the day as much as I can. It imitates barefoot walking and helps strengthen foot muscles.

So, maybe if all this helps I will run a half marathon yet! There was one in Ingolstadt last Saturday, a big, fun event with 3300 runners. A friend from church placed third of all the women, she finished in an unbelievably fast 1h:26 min.

May and June are going to be so busy for us. Lily's birthday coming up (we'll have two parties), Oma Karin will arrive this Saturday and stay for a week, more visitors will come mid-May, Finn will do a 2-week swim course with daily lessons starting at the end of May, Lily started weekly speech therapy with a speech therapist from Canada who specializes in bilingual children (Lily has pronunciation issues), and, oh yeah, I'm registered for two triathlons, so I need to find time to train. I'm not so worried about the sprint one, but the Olympic distance one will take me at least 3 hours to complete, and there is no way I can pull this off without proper preparation, especially the swim. On the other hand, I will be wearing a wet suit and hopefully that thing will keep me afloat a little. :)

Weekend Fun

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I went to camp last weekend, and this is what I packed:

It was three days of triathlon training and I had so much fun. There were 11 of us in the group, and two trainers. Some were beginners like me, some had quite a bit of triathlon/marathon experience. I was the only one not riding a triathlon or racing bike, but luckily we biked in two groups and I could easily keep up with the slower group. We usually swam in the morning, and did a combined bike ride/run in the afternoon. It really helped that they videotaped our swimming both above and under water. Let's just say, I have a lot of room for improvement. :)
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My first triathlon will be on May 30, in Munich. It's the sprint distance and the swim will be in the pool. One of the trainers from last weekend is the organizer of the Ingolstadt triathlon on June 13. They've been booked out since last December, but I asked him to change my registration from sprint to Olympic distance, and since a pregnant lady just dropped out he could change it. Now I have about 7 weeks to prepare for a 1.5k (just under a mile) open water swim, 40k (25mi) bike ride and 10k (6.25mi) run. I admit the swim freaks me out a bit, especially the open water part. But I'm so excited to be doing this, and so lucky that Neil is so supportive. He took great care of the kids and the cats all weekend.

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And when I came back Sunday night Finn had a new skill to show me! I am so happy and proud of my big boy. We took the training wheels off his kiddie bike a week ago, and he was very upset. But thanks to his daddy Finn learned to ride his bike in no time! They are still working on getting started, but stopping without falling down is going really well already.

So, If Finn Won't Listen...

... it is NOT because he can't hear! As some of you might remember we had a referral to a special hospital in Munich for further testing of Finn's hearing, as it was suspected that he had profound hearing loss, possibly deafness, in the left ear. I finally got around to phoning the hospital last week and got an appointment for today. I was told to plan in 2-3 hours. So we packed a lot of toys and snacks, prayed that his ears would be fine, and headed south this morning. Both Finn and Lily did really well the whole time - AND: Finn passed all the tests! His hearing is good in both ears. I think it helped that for some of the time I chose to stay in the playroom with Lily, so Finn could really concentrate on the tests and on what the doctor wanted him to do.
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So I think that if sometimes he does not "hear" us it might be because he is concentrating so hard on what he is doing at the moment. His preschool teacher has also observed this. And sometimes I think he just plain chooses to ignore us. :)
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When we were done at the hospital it was lunch time, and guess where the kids wanted to eat. The golden arches were beckoning. They were so excited about the toys in the Happy Meal, currently dragons from a movie playing in the theaters. We frequently talk about food, what we should eat to grow well, and what foods are "treats" for only once in a while. While Lily does not really care about fast food (she only likes the fruit juice, apple slices and chicken nuggets), Finn loves cheeseburgers. He decided he needs to talk to the cooks at McDonald's so that they will make the food not only taste good, but also healthy. And today he wandered around the restaurant and I saw him talking to a family. When he came back I asked him what he had talked about with them, and he said, "They look like they eat at McDonald's every day (read: chubby), so I told them the food here is not good for their bodies." I'm sure they appreciated the advice. :)
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Finn's German is very good now. He is not shy anymore about approaching people and telling them what he thinks they need to know. Or asking store clerks for a drink when he is thirsty. When he doesn't know a word in German he will say it in English but use German grammar with it and pronounce it a bit differently, "Germanized". It's pretty funny sometimes.
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Last, not least, here are a few random April pictures.

Lily, after she took a nose dive on the playground ("Mama, look, I look like a clown!":

With the hat she picked out at the H&M store:

Ready for a walk in the rain:


Boo!

I.am.smiling, mom! Finn with one of his favourite books about a dolphin named Finn - and before a much needed haircut.

Today - his new dragon was having "supper", the poor thing has to survive on paper towels in our house.

Easter Sunday

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In keeping with German tradition, Finn and Lily did not get a filled Easter basket, but an empty one and had to look for the treats and gifts themselves. Which, as you can see, was a lot of fun and very exciting. We hid some stuff around the house for them to find before church, and then took a walk in the forest in the afternoon where they found a few more things. They got some candy and lots of playmobil - some from Oma&Opa and some from us. And they never noticed the Santa Claus wrapping paper on two of the presents I had saved from Christmas. :)

HAPPY EASTER 2010 FROM FINN AND LILY!

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Easter preparations and Good Friday

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We are really enjoying our Easter break with the long 4 day weekend, especially Neil. It's so nice to be able to spend time together and do things as a family. Here are a few pictures:

Easter cupcakes we made for Finn to take to preschool last Thursday. Finn and Lily helped decorate, and more jelly beans found their way into their mouths than onto the cupcakes.

On Good Friday we spent a lot of time in the yard and dyed eggs.

Lily said she was NOT tired and did NOT need a nap. But suddenly she grew very quiet and next thing we knew she was fast asleep.

So while Lily and Neil rested Finn and I made Swedish Easter bread

and decorated some more (Finn did not want to have his picture taken :)

And after the sleepy heads woke up we all enjoyed some fresh baked sweet bread with butter and jam.

Gardening

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Now that it is finally warmer out (well, some days are really warm already while others are still quite cool) we've decided to get our little yard in shape. Our grass especially is pretty pitiful - there is so much moss! So we bought a tool to get some air to the grass roots and get the moss out and put a mixture of "moss killer" and fertilizer on top, along with new grass seed. It was hard work, Neil did most of it and had open blisters by the end of the day. Not used to hard work anymore. :)

And even Finn and Lily helped with operation "moss extinction": they did a good job cleaning it out from in between the patio stones - for about 15 minutes or so.

We also bought nice potted plants for the patio, and the kids got to decorate a couple bushes with Easter eggs. Hopefully everything will grow nicely. I can't wait for our beech hedge to turn green again!

You know what day it is today?

Right! It's April Fool's Day!

So to those of you who got this picture in an e-mail this morning

and sent us their congratulations:

Sorry, folks, but I gotta do a few triathlons first. :)