Nick and Ben’s Birthday

On our first day here in Germany Ben and Nick woke up to their 9th birthday!  Happy Birthday boys!!

Thank you so much to those of you who gave me your birthday cards before leaving and those of you who posted them here.  It was lovely to be able to make Nick and Ben’s birthday breakfast special and letting them know how many people thought of them while they were at the other side of the world.

We had a great night of deep sleep here in our apartment in very comfortable beds.  We LOVED our breakfast of toast & jam (four varieties supplied by Tante Ingrid  non the less!) and some cereal and then proceeded to eat for the rest of the day.  Ingrid had baked some yummy nut sticks which Nick could eat, too.  My cousin Birgit had arranged a lovely afternoon tea (or ‘Kaffee und Kuchen’ as we would say here) birthday party at her house with balloons and decorations and two children from the immediate neighbourhood who will be in Nick and Ben’s class from next week.  More home baking, lots of Gummibaerchen from Haribo (OMG there is a whole section in the supermarket with an enormous variety…our suitcases will be heavy on the way home!!!) and great presents, including a HSV soccer ball.  That’s a good team, or so I am told…

The boys felt really lucky and were telling me on the way home how nice everyone has been to them.  All three of them collapsed into bed when we got back to the apartment and were asleep within 20 minutes of arriving back.

Today is already the 2nd November and they had more presents….our friend Sabine in Auckland (who bakes those amazing gingerbread trees that can be found at our house around Christmas) is originally from Norderstedt and she had organised her lovely mother to bring us over a present today, which was a total surprise.  We were told to be at Birgit’s house and then the door bell rang and a familiar face walked in, Sabine’s mother whom I had met in Auckland a few times.

What a big surprise and she gave us some tickets to visit the ‘Miniature World’ here, which was on my list of things to do while in Norderstedt.  Oh, and more Haribo were there, too!!

So thank you Sabine for a very well executed BIG surprise!!

Other than that we didn’t do an awful lot today, but sorted out some chores like checking out the local gym, but that won’t work for me, so I will have to walk the boys to school, then keep on walking and do some sit ups and press ups here in the apartment, as well as some yoga.  That’s ok, the children will be at school from 7:45am until 12:30pm for the boys and a little longer for Tessa, so I will have some time.

I got a stash of cash from the bank to pay for the apartment, which I did tonight, we tried out the bike that Tessa will borrow from Ingrid and that seems to be all good and then the children all played some board games with Jana at their house.

Thank you to Ingrid who has done a seemingly endless amount of washing since our arrival.  We are now back to normal and will give her a bit of a break.

Oh, and we have already been at the supermarket twice which I find very exciting and a lot of foods bring back memories from years gone by.  Not to mention the Christmas stash which is already in the shops and looks very, very, very delicious in deed.  So that’s it from me for tonight.

We have exactly twelve hours time difference from NZ so when it is Saturday morning 8:00am in NZ it is Friday evening 20:00 in Germany.  Oh and the other exciting thing is that I have now got WiFi in the apartement and I don’t have to run down to the lobby anymore to write these blogs and check for emails, yeah!

Gute Nacht

Tanja

xxx