June 2012

In June 2012 Finn is exactly double the age of Lilly: Finn is 32 months and Lilly is 16 months old! Wow, how does the time fly by. Finn was 16 months when Lilly was born and now she is that old. Unbelievable!

I thought as this might be as close as I ever get to writing a baby book (I do envy all of those well organized and dedicated mothers that write everything down and document really well - I unfortunately  never seem to have enough time for anything) I would write some things down about Finn and Lilly during this time, June 2012.

Finn:

• He is a happy, curious, lively, adventurous boy.
• He loves to be outside and play and run and jump on the trampoline.
• His favorite animal might be a cow - he is really fascinated by them.
• He is in a total dinosaur phase: he loves his dinosaur books, T-shirts, animals, pretending to be a dinosaur, etc.
• He is a pretty good eater. His favorite food is fruit, especially apples, bananas and strawberries.
• He always has been and still is very well spoken. He uses words like also, favorite, bigger and smaller, etc. And you can have conversations with him.
• He can translate from German to English for Ben :-)
• He can count to 10 in German, English and Spanish. And he can "really count" things.
• He knows his name, phone number, where he lives as well as who is everybody around him.
• He is still not potty trained :-( But we keep working on it....
• He is a great sleeper.
• He loves books. He likes us to read them to him, he reads them to himself and he reads them to Lilly.
• And he loves his iPad! Nothing without the iPad!

Lilly:

• She is a crazy, wild, amazing girl.
• She can walk and run forwards and backwards and she can jump with both feet off the ground.
• She is a great eater: she eats everything all the time!
• She loves to use a fork to eat and she drinks out of a cup.
• She wants to do everything Finn does.
• She likes books, but she does not like TV at all (maybe yet)
• She loves to pretend she is on the phone
• She can say many words already: mama, papa, oma, opa, kira, aus, danke, sit down, boots, nein, mine, alissia, aurel, hannah, etc.
• She loves jumping on the trampoline and she is very fond of the sandbox.
• She is very fond of her Oma.
• She loves her pink boots - she brings them to me every morning to get dressed to go outside.
• She can be pretty stubborn.
• She is best friends with Kira, my parents dob.

River

It is summer now. Which means it can get hot during the day, but it usually cools down at night again - something I like about living in the Alps. Especially as there is no AC here. 

There a many public swimming pools in Austria and we have been to several - something I really missed in the US. There was only the Y in Nashville, which I liked but it was small compared to the pools we have here. And in the North End we had the pool by the Charles River. Which again was great for its location, but nothing compared to what kind of public pools we have here.

But you actually do not even need the public pool in Alberschwende. About a 5 minute drive from our house we have this beautiful access to the river, the Bregenzer Ache. The water is cold and clear and the rocks are perfect for throwing them in.  At some spots there are little sand banks perfect for playing.

I had not been to this place in many years and I am glad we "found" it again. I am sure we will be back there many times this summer.

Inspecting the river

We did not bring bathing suits so we just went without

Ben wished he had brought a bathing suit

Soccer - our champion

While whole Europe is watching the European Championships, we were watching the Vorarlberg Finale for U13.

Raphael, my brother's oldest son plays in the under 13 team of Schwarz Weiss Bregenz and he is their team captain (proud aunt). They had an amazing season and were playing in the championship game last Saturday. We were all very excited for him and got prepared: we made banners for him and for his team, we brought noise makers and my brother brought big cowbells to ring.

It was a very tense game (just like all the recent Euro Games) and after a 1:1 they went into penalty kicks (no overtime for them). And Raphaels team was able to secure their win. Congratulations!

Here are some pictures from the game. The photographer from the local newspaper also liked us and my mom, Finn and Lilly were in the papers the next day.

Finn and Lilly with my mom and one of our banners 

 Our cheering section

 Raphael and his winning team

Here you can see Ben, my brother and a friend ring the cowbells for the winning team

Boedelesee and Hike

There are a lot of smaller mountains around the area that have nice and easy trails for hiking. One close by is called Boedele. It is a little ski resort in the winter and in the summer it is nice for some short walks.

We went on a Friday late afternoon. We first walked to the little lake on top of the mountain pass. It is a small lake that has lots of fish in them. Unfortunately we did not see anybody fishing - Finn would have loved that - but we saw lots of fish in the water. We walked around the lake and then continued our hike up to a little hut.

We have been to the hut before (winter and summer) and the last time we were there Finn fell into the stream and we had to borrow some pants for the owner of the hut. We returned the pants and enjoyed some nice dinner there: beer and schnitzel!

There was another little boy having dinner with his grandparents and all the kids just ran around the whole time. They had fun.

Come Lilly, let's go an see the fish! 

 Ben and Finn on the other side of the lake.

Lilly is just hilarious 

And this is our new stroller/ bikecarrier: our kiki croozer

Holundersaft

In the spring and summer lots of things grow in our garden as well as on the fields. One of my favorite thing is "Holunder". They are big bushes that grow on the side of the woods or streets or fields and you can make delicious sirup out of the blooming flowers. 

Ben has always been fascinated by this and so this year we got to make our own "Holundersaft". It tastes delicious with water or with Prosecco for the grown ups.

Ben went to pick a bucket full of flowers

We like to add oranges and lemons to our mixture (nearly every family has their own recipe)

Lots of sugar and water added

Then it needs to sit and rest for at least 48 hours (again, every family recipe is different)

Filling up the bottles lasted a long time

Finished product. Yummy!

Art Time (and finally Pinterest)

The other day all of a sudden it got very quiet in our house - and that is not normal with 2 kids under the age of 3. Normally there is somebody screaming or crying or laughing or singing or reading or talking. 

I did not notice for a minute or so - I guess I was enjoying the peace. But then I got suspicious and I went to check on the 2 little ones. And of course they were causing trouble. Apparently they were bored that day and they decided to get our arts and crafts box out and start painting. 

Finn had gotten a hold of the finger paints and he had squirted big gulps of paint onto the (thankfully) paper at their play table. Lots of purple as he really enjoys that color. And as Finn does not like to get his fingers dirty he used a truck color. Which Lilly of course had to copy because she can not lack behind in anything.

They were actually really good and did not get too much paint all over :-)

Finn and Lilly's art project

The truck is great for driving the paint around

Their finished products were great and I kept some sheets (as they had done several). 

But some others I used for a project that I had seen on Pinterest. And I got it ready for Ben for his fathers day present. It turned out really cute and I am glad I finally used something from Pinterest.

Swim Class

Another activity I signed us up for here in Austria is swim class. It is not really swim class as Finn and Lilly are too little to learn swimming yet. It is more like "getting used to water class". And that is just perfect for us. 

The same group that offers our gym class is offering swimming and we enjoy it. The teacher is great. Her name is Judith and Finn really likes her. There are about 6-8 kids in our group and we always do something fun each week. 

We start off the same with a little welcome song and then we hold on to our rope and go to the water together. We cool off and get wet by playing some games.  We then spend most of the time in the water with different activities. Sometimes we climb out and jump back in, we dive to get some toys, we have races to pick up some fishes, etc.

At the end we finish off with a song again and the "rocket": throwing the kids up in the air and catching them in the water. Lots of fun!

Welcome song

Holding on to the rope

There are some fun fountains to play with

Medieval Festival in Feldkirch

The third largest city in Vorarlberg is called Feldkirch. It is a very old city with cobble stone streets and a Medieval Castle called Schattenburg overlooking it. 

This cute city yearly hosts a Medieval Festival with old fashioned foods, music and crafts. We went to check it out on a Saturday morning. Unfortunately we were a little too early for most of the events, but we got to walk around, pet the donkeys, drink some Met and eat some good food.

The kids explored the Medieval cage

Part of the castle in the background

The kids loved the donkeys

Franziska and Guenter joined us for a Met (honeybeer in a clay mug).

Real games for the "big kids"

And we tried some yummy food

EKIZ Summer Party

When we got to Austria we immediately joined the EKIZ (Eltern Kind Zentrum) in Alberschwende. It is similar to our MOMS Club in East Nashville: they have weekly breakfast gatherings, several parties throughout the year for special events, work shops for moms and kids, etc. 

The best thing about it is that they actually have their own location where they can meet and have events. It has several playrooms for the kids, a meeting/ eating room and a great outdoor playground. 

Last week we had our annual summer party and the weather was beautiful. It was nice enough to have the water on for water play and the bubble machine was running. Several moms had brought different good food to share as well as icecream cones for everybody (moms included). 

We showed up after our afternoon nap and stayed until the very end. The kids had fun running around, playing in the sandbox and chasing the bubbles. And of course enjoying the yummy food - Finn ate 3 muffins and 2 ice cream cones!

The bubble machine was a big hit.

Lilly in her cute bathing suit.

Finn posing.

There was major construction going on in the sandbox.

Hiking Brueggelekopf

On a nice Sunday morning a few weeks ago, we decided to explore our "Hausberg". Brueggelekopf is the highest mountain in Alberschwende and you can see it from our living room. You can either hike up or ride up the single chair lift which takes about 15-20 minutes. We decided to take the kids on the chairlift up and my parents hiked up. 

Finn had fun on the chairlift and saw lots of cool things - Lilly was about done after 5 minutes. The remaining 10 minutes were pretty long for us....

On top of the mountain you have a wonderful view of parts of the Austrian Alps and you can even see the Bodensee. There is a nice restaurant where we usually stop for a beer or radler. This time the beer for Ben was free because he helped them set up some tables and chairs :-)

They also have a great playground for kids. Finn and Lilly had a great time playing with the other kids that were there. 

We then all hiked down together and we took turns carrying Finn. He can get pretty heavy after a while. My mom carried Lilly and she fell asleep.

The best thing about our little excursion was that we could walk straight home to our house again.

We will do this more often in the coming months!

Lilly in the Ergo on my mom's back

We took the "short" route down along the edge.

Cows everywhere!

16. Dornbirner Sparkassenlauf

I did not like to run before we moved to Nashville. In Nashville I discovered that I actually really enjoy running and I got into a good work out routine with some awesome girls. We had a great group and I loved to run with them. 

When we moved I was really sad to say good bye to them and I was afraid I was not going to run as much - and I don't. It is different where we live now and getting to the gym or going for a run is more complicated. 

But thankfully my nephews like to run and we decided to participate in some runs together this year. With having made that promise to them I know I need to go out there and run at least once in a while.

Last week we participated in the Dornbirner Sparkassenlauf and the boys did an awesome job.

We have a few more to go this year!

Before the run with our numbers on.

Our whole cheering crew is there.

Lilly got a clapper to make lots of noise.

Fire station

In the US we had visited the fire station with the MOMS club. We had one close to our house in East Nashville. Finn had always loved walking by it on our way to the playground.

In Austria most of the firemen are volunteers and they are usually helping when there are fires and car accidents.

A few weeks ago I read in the papers that they were having a Dad and Granddad Day at the fire station on a Saturday morning. I immediately signed up Finn and his friend Vinzenz (and their dads) to visit the fire station in Dornbirn. 

The boys had a great time and loved being there. They ran around the whole time and were checking out everything. The firemen were super nice and gave a tour of the place and the kids were able to touch and try out many things.

The fire station in Dornbirn is pretty big.

Finn and Vinzenz are trying on the helmets.

Climbing the ladder.

Finn found the water.

They all got to shoot the water.

Great-Great Grandmother

My Great Grandmother was an awesome woman. She was a great cook, a great mother, a great housewife. She could knit and sew very well and made many things for her kids, grandkids and great grandkids. She was also very stylish and cool.  For vacation she would ride the Vespa to Italy with my great grandfather. Doesn't that sound awesome? Crossing the Alps on a Vespa. How cool was she!

I did not get to know her very well as she died shortly after I was born. For my wedding I did get a beautiful  necklace from my aunt that she had inherited from my great grandmother and I love to wear it. 

But my great grandmother had made me several dresses when I was born. I have some cute pictures of me wearing the dresses and my mother was sweet enough to keep some of those for me for the time when I would have a little girl. Thanks mom for being thoughtful!

Sometimes people say that Lilly looks just like me. What do you think? To make it easier I dressed her in the same dress that my great grandmother had made me.

Lilly 2012

 

Ulli 1978

Here she is wearing my dress and holding the picture of me wearing the same dress. I love it!