Knorr Family Adventures

Pictures from Christmas Red-head, blonde, and brunette - all mine!

We moved into our new about a week ago and it's been absolutely chaos since then.  The movers moved all the furniture in last Monday and unpacked a whole lot of boxes and built our stuff (like beds and bookshelves) on Tuesday.  Chris was also home on those 2 days which was absolutely necessary due to all the craziness.  On Tuesday we were also supposed to get a washer and a dryer.  Unfortunately, only dryer arrived.  Washer ended up at our house on Thursday night.  And while Chris tried to pick large ones, they are still really small.  By now (day 9 at the house) we have Anton's room completely done with pictures hanging, guest room and boys room are 95% complete with all the furniture but nothing on the walls to make it "homey" yet.  Our room, the office and the entire living space is a manageable but not really pleasant to be in.  I am hoping to make a serious dent on our crazy home by the weekend. The first paragraph never got published ...

I am clearly posting from a while back. We are currently having MY MOM in Frankfurt who has come to help me while Chris is away on his diving vacation in the Caribbean.   While we are busy dealing with kids and trying to find a place to live, we did take half a day to go see historical Frankfurt as well as the city center (which are actually kind of together).  Frankfurt was completely destroyed at the end of WWII and very little was renovated to its previous glory.  One town square plus a couple of streets leading to that square.  Frankfurt is mostly newer, almost American style city.  We also did take a bus tour that lasted about an hour and was pretty uninspiring.  Many times when I come to new city it helps to take a bus tour to kind of get the high level picture of where to go and what to do.  This was clearly not the case for this tour :) My main problem with Frankfurt so far has honestly been the lack of sun and nearly daily rain. ...

Many people ask about food in Germany and honestly before we moved here I heard a lot of comments about how German food is supposed to be really good.  Our experience so far has been that the food is pretty good, but you do have to get used to certain things.  We are in the land of sausages so actual hot dogs with soft skins have been kind of hard to find.  Most of the "hot dog looking things" are actually sausages with a rather crisp bite to them.  Sour cream has also proved to be difficult to find but we solved that one by going to the Russian store.  Another thing that Chris and Lusha are missing is cheddar cheese.  For some reason cheese tastes really different and we haven't found something we really like here yet.  Kids are ok with German ranch dressing but Chris would prefer the American style.  We are telling the kids (and ourselves) that we came here for a different experience and it certainly does include trying new foods. The things t...

We've been in Germany for a month now.  It's definitely been up and down, but overall no regrets.  The boys are in school.  Well, 2 of them.  Anton is still doing his "settlement period."  On Monday they are going to try to put him down for a nap, I am not too optimistic that he'll sleep but it's a start. We are also moving into our new home on Monday.  We actually get the keys on Saturday and will move all of the stuff from this apartment over the weekend, and the truck with our stuff is supposed to arrive at 8:30 sharp.  There is also a lot of other stuff that is happening Monday and Tuesday.  Internet and phone set up is supposed to happen on Monday, washer and dryer along with installation are coming Tuesday, and I guess as part of our move a handyman is coming Tuesday morning to install some lights. That means we have to buy most, if not all, the lights on Saturday and Monday nights.  Everything is closed on Sunday. We are absolutely...

It's that there is nothing to write, it's more like there is no time when I am not exhausted to write about them so here goes a bit of random ... Anton dropped 40" LCD onto his head.  Anton is fine, LCD - not so much.  And since it's a rental place, we have to replace it for around 479 euros.  We are going to keep the broken one and try to see if we can fix it but since we are moving out of here in a week, we just need to have it replaced. When I came to United States, somehow all my family managed to pack in terms of shoes were none, the only shoes I had were the ones on my feet.  Apparently, some things are genetic but I managed to do a little better.  I managed to pack 2 pairs of slippers for myself!  Thus, for the last month I've only been wearing one pair of tennis shoes and I am really tired of them.  The rest of my family fared a little better with an average of 4 pairs. Speaking of thing we never packed - thermometer!  When your kid h...

Anton has had bronchitis for about 2 weeks now and it felt like it was getting better with him barely coughing.  Somehow over the last 24 hours he has really went down the hill with constant coughing, attempts to throw up and wheezing.  Saturday night going into Sunday morning Anton slept from about 8PM to midnight and then again from 1AM to around 4AM at which point he was coughing really bad and having trouble catching his breath between the coughing.  After about an hour of deliberation and a couple of phone calls, Anton and I headed out into the dark Frankfurt night to find German Children's Hospital. Thankfully, Anton fell asleep on our drive which was about 20-25 minutes long.  Then we get to where GPS is telling me the hospital should be and I don't really see anything that resembles a hospital.  Kind of out of options as it's 6AM I parked the car, got Anton into a stroller, and walked into a building that had some lights on.  They, thankfully, spo...

Anton has started "settlement period" at his new school here in Germany.  I have to preface it with the fact that he goes to the same school as the other boys but in the preschool/nursery part of it.  Here is what I was told about the process - first there is a meeting between a parent and teachers to get all information regarding the child.  Then for 4 days a parent is going into the classroom and it's just one of the teachers, parent (me in this case) and Anton are in the room together for an hour.  After that I am allowed to leave the room for about 15 minutes at a time slowly increasing time for Anton to stay in the room by himself. Now what really happened.  We met with the teacher, I stayed with him for one day and on day 4 he spent 3.5 hours at preschool all by himself (well, with other kids and teachers but without me).    He did absolutely awesome, never cried even when I left.  His teachers are shocked at how fast his "integration" is ...