Knorr Family Adventures

We've been in Iceland for 3 days now and have had some really amazing adventures but also learned some random tidbits about the country.  We arrived on Saturday before Easter, never really thinking much about the whole Easter aspect.  Well, a lot of the country (and some of the touristy stuff) shuts down for 5 days from Thursday to Monday to celebrate the end of winter.  Just like in Pennsylvania, the alcohol stores are owned by the state and thus were closed.  Yes, after a flight with Anton a glass of wine (or two) is very much needed :) The  sun rises around 7AM and it's still light outside at 8PM - personally I love it.  On other hand, we had about 4 inches of snow on our car this morning, March 29! A lot of things are smallish in Iceland so we've seen a lot of stuff so far - National Museum of Iceland, toured old Reykjavik, did the Golden Circle, went to Whale Museum, Maritime museum and Volcano House.  The boys were absolutely freezing yesterd...

Chris thought that maybe it was Christmas somehow all over again but no, it's just Ilya's birthday!  It fell on Thursday which was the last day before the Easter break in school so I made a cake (keks really) and Chris made chocolate ganache.  Must of been good because nothing came back home!  We also all went out to a teppanyaki restaurant which was great.  Not much else because we left for Iceland and then America about 48 hours after the celebrations began. 6:45 in the morning! Brothers had to join in on the action Loves his shirts

Before we left Pittsburgh, Andrei had occupation therapy where he worked a lot on his handwriting and other related services and he progressed really well but still had work to do.  His handwriting is pretty awful to begin with and it really matters here in Germany as the kids get older to have nice legible cursive.   The German pediatrician gave us a referral and told us about a center that should provide those services and after it took me forever to fill out tons of forms, we finally had an appointment back in August.  Two days before the scheduled appointment we got a phone call stating that the person we need to see is on sick leave until October and there is nobody else that we can talk to (apparently).  Ok, kind of pretty frustrated but I reschedule for October (keep in mind that I originally called them in the spring).  So we finally went and the first time, we met with the person and she gave us many more forms to fill out and told us to come back ...

It’s been a while since I did the “random” post about things we see or sometimes don’t see in Germany. Two out of three kids are sick and I haven’t slept in 3 days so please forgive the typos and grammatical errors ... Most Germans have about 30 days of vacation per year, it is not PTO.   It’s actual vacation time.   On top of that there are about 8 days holidays.   PLUS on top of that if you have 1 child, EACH parent gets 10 sick days; for 2+ children each parents gets up to 25 work days of sick leave.   Single parents get 20 days for 1 child and up to 50 days for 2+ children.   Moreover, when Chris had his appendix removed he was in the hospital for 4 days and then on mandatory home rest for another week and a half.   Yes, it was mandatory because he was not allowed to even show up at the office.  If you want to quit your job, you have to give 6 month notice.   I am not sure why in the world you would need that long to transition out. ...