So long, Farewell, Aufwiedersehen, Goodbye

I promise I didn't do the Sound of Music thing on purpose. But the twins do love that song. We have to sing it every night before bed and Philippa always says the "no" part of Liesl's line.

It still hasn't hit me that I'm leaving. Sunday night, the family had a kind of surprise going away party for me, except all my friends that haven't already left couldn't come. Which was like 3 or 4, apart from Rachel and Max who were there anyways. So it was just us, the grandparents and Sigrid, and Sonja, who was staying here the first month I was here. We sat out in the garden and grilled, and they hung up the Texas flag that hung at the capitol once. It was really nice, and I'm glad it wasn't a big thing. I don't like being the center of attention. I'm going to miss a lot of things here, and most of all my kinders! I love them all a whole bunch!

Greta's still convinced she's coming with me, flying away on the tram and eating ice cream and fries in the airplane. Johanna would come, but she told me she doesn't have enough money.

Tough Mudder Nordwestdeutschland

The first one ever in Germany.

Tough Mudder: the picture version. I'll probably write a real recap soon. But it was a ton of fun!

from their facebook page

before

after 18km and 19 obstacles

cartwheels! 

walk the plank

electric eel

spiders web

funky monkey 

I finished the last half basically crippled

Color Run

Gritta asked Rachel and me a while ago if we wanted to do The Color Run with her in Hannover. Of course we did! We made a team with Laura, who was the au pair here before Rachel. She ended up not being able to do it because she's been having some pains and the doctors don't know what it is, but Laura's boyfriend (also a former apprentice) Nils was able to take her place.

I was on my tip toes. Why am I so short...

Rachel stretching after running her first full 5k!

Done!

We definitely have Tough Mudder in the bag if we could do this!

Happy Birthday America!

I need to get this video to work


They both say this, and I also got them to say "USA!". Except the best version so far has been more like "you say say!"

Happy 4th of July!

Bummer

A lot of you probably know that after many, many, interviews I was offered a position with the Washington Reading Corps in Seattle. It was the first job to get back to me in Seattle, and one I really wanted to do, so I wrote back right away and took it. I wrote to all the other positions I was in the middle of applying for or waiting to hear back from and told them sorry, but no. Or course, every time you're offered an AmeriCorps position, they have to tell you it's contingent upon passing the background check, and funding coming through for the following year. But it's usually not a problem, especially if a program is pretty well known and supported, like this was. It exists (existed...) in every county in the state and has been around for a while.

Last night, or rather this morning, I got home at 1am and rolled sleepily over to check my e-mail before I slept because I like to disrupt my sleep with technology. And I saw this.

I couldn't really believe it was real, and spent an hour sending e-mails back to places I had already said no to and applying to new positions. But the e-mail was still there this morning. So, I'm back in this exciting job hunting game, and will probably have to suffer through more interviews. I've even started looking up child care jobs. I'm telling you, I'm destined to be lifeguard4lyfe. Or nanny. Lifetime au pair? my worst nightmare. I think I'll
sell crafts with all the other homeless people in Seattle.

Sunday Picnic

We had to get out of the house with the kids last weekend, because we were going crazy, and so were they. The start of the strawberry season means working Sundays, so here we go. We made a picnic and took the kids to the town hall in Hannover, where they have a playground and lots of grass to run around.

we made them hold hands all the way there until they were happy

the closest we got to a family picture

magnus

future rock climber philippa

greta

henriette

johanna

philippa waits for no one

sharing your chewed up leftovers is caring

she was pointing at a "fart"

cheez

my real partner in crime, rachel