Last Spring Isaac and his daughters Diana and Louisa came to Köln for a visit. They usually fly here (from Moscow) once our twice a year. It’s always great to see them! Those crazy straws are a hit with kids from all over the world! they brought us some yummy treats from Russia One night […]
Play Dates
It’s SO hard to say Goodbye
Funny thing about girls this age- when they have to say goodbye at the end of a play date, they act like it’s the end of the world. It’s about a 10 minute process- they just can’t let go. It’s kind of sweet, actually. After this 10 minute goodbye, Quinnie’s friends begged their Father to […]
Easter 2015
We spent Easter vacation in Italy this year, but before we left we made sure to dye eggs and do an Easter egg hunt with our neighbors Ella and Louis. You can’t buy these plastic, fillable Easter eggs here, so whenever I break them out they’re a huge hit with all the kids. They were […]
Sleepover and Easter Prep
One of Quinnie’s best friends is Antonia. They’re in the same class at school, and desk mates. Anto (as her friends call her) really helped Quinnie a lot when we first moved here and Quinnie didn’t speak, read, or write German. Quinnie caught up very fast, and that’s partly due to Anto’s help. They were […]
Valentine’s Day 2015
The night before Valentine’s day Quinnie’s friend Matilda came over for a sleepover. The girls had a blast making Valentine cards for some friends and family (I’m still finding glitter and tiny sequins all over the place!). watching a “scary” cartoon Luckily I had an extra heart basket for Matilda (for their morning Valentine’s baskets). […]
First Snow!
This winter we finally got some snow! I can’t tell you how excited we all were- especially since we didn’t get any in Köln last year. We spent most of the day outdoors because we knew it wouldn’t last. Quinnie catching snowflakes on her tongue / Ella making snowballs We randomly ran into our old […]
Fall/ Halloween 2014
You can tell we’d just moved (and our lives were in chaos) by how badly I documented Halloween and Fall (my favorite season no less!). The few meager photos in this post are pretty much all I have to show for it. Halloween was kind of a bust this year again. We have yet to […]
Goodbye Ebertplatz Park!
As excited as we are about moving into our new neighborhood, we sure are going to miss Ebertplatz Park. The commute to school was long, but it forced us to walk through this beautiful, leafy park, and to pass by the duck pond every day. We will still be able to visit it, of course, […]
More Fun with Isaac and the Girls
In the middle of Köln there’s this cute little pond that has swans floating on it. During the warmer months they have these cool doughnut shaped pedal boats that have huge squirt guns on them. The girls had been asking for a while if they could go on them. With Isaac and his girls visiting […]
Bubenheim!
Bubenheim is an AMAZING mostly outdoor kid’s paradise. It’s about a 35 minute drive from Köln and super cheap (I think we paid about 6 euros per child for all day play!). These pics are from a few different visits this summer. One of the visits was with our friend Isaac and his two daughters […]
Köln Arboretum
Trying to get all of the pics from summer out before wintertime (sorry for the sporadic posts- it’s very time consuming unpacking ALL of your family’s belongings and making a new place feel like home… Last month we had our friends (and soon to be new neighbors!) Achim and Claudia and their kids Ella and […]
The Girls Lately
About every 6 months I like to purge my photo folders of the pics that I like, but haven’t used in any blog posts yet. There are LOTS. So I’ll also do separate posts for each of the girls soon. But this photo post is about the two of them and what they’ve been up […]
Outdoor Beaches and Pools in Köln
Since we mostly stayed in Köln during summer vacation, we checked out some beaches and pools that would help us cool off and beat the heat. The pool culture in Köln is pretty amazing. I have no idea how may pools there are here-but there are MANY. And these pools aren’t just pools. Most sell […]
Playdate with Matilda
Every once in a while the stars align and both Chloe’s and my schedule work out so that we can have a play date after school for just our big girls. They love it when there aren’t any younger siblings around to interrupt… The girls at school pickup- begging for a playdate dress up is […]
Easter Preparations
I am big on holiday traditions. I always looked forward to all of the holiday rituals we had when I was growing up, and I want to do the same for my girls. It’s been pretty challenging this past year since most of our belongings are still in boxes (construction on our new place has […]
Pony Rides in Stadtwald
Just found this batch of pictures from October and they were too cute not to post even though they were taken 5 months ago. We met up with our friends Chloe and Axel and their kids Matilda, Annie and Mimi at the Stadtwald. The Stadtwald is on the outskirts of Köln and is a huge […]
Our new apartment
Around Easter we should be able to move into our new apartment that is being built. As much as we love The Weckschnapp, we’re looking forward to being able to finally unpack everything and set up our own place. Every time we tell anybody from Köln where we’ll be living they usually just look at […]