Knorr Family Adventures

I wrote this about 2 weeks ago but never published it. School is going ok but it's definitely been a little bit of a challenge to make sure that everything that needs to get done gets done. Anton is doing ok-ish in school - it's hard for him to sit nicely, some numbers and letters are harder than others (let's just say writing number 8 almost killed Chris :)).  He has occupational and speech therapy at school.  For now we also have him in local swimming classes as well as local soccer club, both of which meet once a week.  Part of him going to those 2 activities are to get him physically active, but part is to keep him involved with kids in our neighbourhood since he goes to school elsewhere. Ilya is slowly finding his rhythm of coming home early, having lunch and getting his homework done.  He has the most extracurricular activities but most of them were chosen by him and he loves.  He  does art class once a week, Cub Scouts once a week and soccer...

It's been almost exactly 2 months since the last time I wrote here.  Our summer has come and gone as well as 3 weeks of school have passed.  The life has been busy but I knew that since all the kids are in new schools and our schedules are completely different from last year.  We are still trying to figure stuff out but anyway ... Our house looked like that most of the summer  Night before school Anton has started 1st grade.  He goes to school for kids with hearing issues and from what I understood the kids in his class are all over the spectrum regarding their issues.  Anton does not have a problem with hearing but his brain does not process what he hears at normal rate and Anton's teacher knows how to work with him which has been good so far.  The school is a little bit further away but he gets picked up and dropped off right in front of our house and it's going good.  He leaves the house at 7:15 and comes home at 15:40 3 times a we...

The last 2 weeks have been INSANE!  The school year is coming to end. Last Friday we had Abschlussfest which is basically a good bye party for Andrei which started at 5PM, Anton and I left around 9PM while Chris, Andrei and Ilya came home around 11PM.  The kids put on a concert which included recorder playing, singing, English theater, dinner, slide show presentation, a gift for the teacher, and lots of running around.  Andrei had his  It was a great way to end the 3 year adventure at his current school.  We have honestly love his teacher and his school.  I adore the idea that he had the same teacher who saw him mature, grow and learn instead of getting used to the new teacher every year.   Last one on the right Anton had a party on the same day at his kindergarten but it was just a general kindergarten party with lots of people bringing random foods so partially because of his nut allergy and the love of Germans to their...

I missed last week (#6) because sometimes life happens a bit too fast.  So here is a quick summary - on top of his chipped bone Chris has bronchitis (so he tells me) and was sick last week.  There is a stereotype of men being sick and I feel like it was based on Chris.  Enough said about that ... Ilya hurt his finger at school and I assumed it was just a bruise except it kept hurting and kept being warm to the touch so we ended up going to ER and it turns out he cracked it and had to wear a plastic protector which made it nearly impossible for him to write.  It made our life fairly miserable last week because he is somewhat a perfectionist and he does get a grade on his handwriting.  Of course, lets not forget Fasching - Anton had 4 parties to get to!  Andrei and Ilya had parties at their schools and neither one was at all excited about it. We have a lovely library in our town.  It's really close to our house ( ok , everything in our town is real...

I will probably never be a person that is able to sit down and blog every day. Just putting it out there to be honest.   Sometimes I think that if I can manage to write 2 a week , then it’s all good, but I rarely manage even that.  Good goal to works towards. Ilya had a bomb threat at his school yesterday.   It’s unlike any American bomb threats because this one was un-exploded American bomb from World War 2 that somebody found at the construction site.   Center of Frankfurt.   Not your typical bomb scare. Ilya at age 8 wears size 39 shoes, not sure of the American conversio, but roughly 8,5.   Ilya’s favorite foods in Germany - mozzarella (I buy baby mozzarella for them and they often have it as a side dish, probably would not have happened in US due to the insane price!), stracciatella yogurt (MS Word just informed me that it's not an English word - it's vanilla yogurt with chocolate shavings), tea, and white wine!   He is nearly a p...

Every Saturday Andrei and Ilya attend English school.  The homework over the spring break was to write about the spring break.  Andrei had more time to do his but has incredibly hard time writing.  Ilya had significantly less time (because his school is so much longer) so we are finishing the assignment on Friday night at 8PM and I kind of cut it short and send him to bed so the ending is a little abrupt.  Ilya We went to Hannover.  Then we went to the Hotel.  We slept in the Hotel.  I tok my medesin.  I red o lot.  Then we went to Dunkin Donut.  Then we went to Royal Gardens of Herrenhausen.  and we saw a Fountain in the garden.  Then we went to Celle.  Then we went to a Restaurant.  It was caled Somreo.  Then we went to the tank museum.  Then we went to th Hotel in Hamburg.  in Hamburg we saw a treir (train!) museum and took a ride on a boat.  We are lunch.  I had pasta.  Then we wen...

Here we are in the middle of December and the time is flowing by so what is going on in our life?  Ok, it's the first of January by now!!! I have been really busy with studying German, working on getting certification of being able to teach English as foreign language, learning how to work with certain needs that we have in our family, and generally keeping afloat that sometimes seems like a complicated task on its own.  Getting ready for Christmas was crazy busy time as well.  Starting now (January) I joined an online reading club which I am super excited about - one book a month, sometimes there is a theme and I get to pick the book, sometimes there are specific books.  For January, I choose Chronicles of Narnia which I never read before. I've also been trying to sell/give away/throw away things we don't need or use.  The chance of us moving within next 3 years is not a crazy possibility and I don't want to drag things along that we don't actually want. ...

For some reason, while I wrote this a while back, it never got published.  So here it goes ... better late than never even if it's 2-3 months late :) Why are extracurricular activities so hard to figure out???   Balancing out individual interests versus having free “boring” time and time driving around… Here is what we figured out so far. Anton, age 4, attends full day kindergarten – has speech therapy and swimming lessons.   He was actually the easy one :)  I am not sure how much speech therapy is helping him but we don't pay for it and he is essentially getting one-on-one German class for 45 minutes.  Swimming - he LOVES.  Andrei, age 9, attends 3 rd grade at German public school – on Saturdays Andrei has English school and swimming.   He will also have chess but we are trying to switch the clubs since last year he went on Fridays at 6PM about 15 minutes away and the timing was really hard.   This year we are hoping to go to the local...

It seems it was yesterday that I was writing about the first day of school, but the kids just went back to school after their fall break. Andrei came home at 11AM on the last day before vacation after 2 of his classes got cancelled in order to start vacation early.   I wasn’t exactly ready since in theory he was supposed to have normal day today until 12:20. Surprise! LOL Both boys had Elternabends (parent meetings) and I learned that Andrei will have sex education before his class trip in June.   When I asked his teacher what exactly it entails, she did not understand my question even though I tried several different times in several different ways – she kept saying “normal stuff.”   I guess I will figure it out later.   Other than that, Andrei is doing sufficiently good.   He’s had several tests – 2 in German and 1in math.   He is still not getting grades in German but what I found to be interesting is that the kids are learning to use dictiona...

Last weekend Andrei and Ilya ran "marathon" with their Ilya's school.  It was called Lauf fur Mehrsprachigkeit which roughly translates as Running is Multilingualism. The sponsors of the run are bilingual schools around Frankfurt including our school Katharina die Grosse Schule amongst Italian, Spanish, and Polish schools to name a few:)  I signed up the boys to run 900 meters; Anton could of done 200 meters but didn't.  Adults can do either 5K or 10K run and again we didn't do it.  Maybe next year?  Ilya's school also put on a little show where they sang and danced.  Oh, and unfortunately for us it was the most miserable (weather-related) day in over a week - it rained, it hailed and it was freezing.  Andrei had 2 pairs of socks, 2 t-shirts, 2 sweaters  and a jacket on; and Andrei being Andrei he decided to walk part of the way!  Ilya's results - 5:49, 34th place out of 60.  Andrei - 6:20; 25th place out of 66.  Pittsburgh mara...

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

When the father is away, the kids have fun ... Ilya and Anton are both sick but at least nobody is in the hospital.  (knock on wood)  This is everything I gave out last night and funny enough it has a combination of American, German and British medicines!  The little black box is to check that Anton's oxygen is staying up. I kept both of them home from school today and they are both passed out on the couch right now.  

This would be Anton's :)