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 twice a week.  H

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 week and earlier on 2 other d

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 nuts and partially because we had to g

I don't usually write posts like this and this is not a rash decision, but I felt like I kind of had to do it.  We are definitely not religious people, but our kids went to Catholic daycare that had nuns as care givers in their first years of life, then Ilya went to Jewish preschool which was a great experience for him and for our entire family as we made some really good friends at the synagogue.  We are open to religion and religious institutions. Last fall, we looked all over Frankfurt and its surroundings for schools for Andrei for next year.  The search did include private schools as well as state-funded ones.   All the schools we saw were nice and friendly even though it was clear that some of them were not the right choice for us or for the school, but then we shook hands and left. One school, however, was down right nasty when I meet with them.  When I came across the school online, it seemed like it might of been a good match with offerings of extra German cl

Last year Andrei studied Bad Soden am Taunus and it means we ALL studied about it to help Andrei get ready for his test, I thought I would share the information we’ve learned since it's kind of neat.  We really do enjoy our area with everything it has to offer. Brief history: 1191 – first mention of Soden anywhere “Sode” means salt/soda production and for extremely long time the town was known for its salt/soda with the main purchaser being Frankfurt.   In 1812 the salt production shut down since Frankfurt went elsewhere to shop for their needs and the fire broke out in the factories. 1701 – Frankfurt doctor discovered spring water is good for health and Soden became known as a spa town.   At this point (2018), we unfortunately do not have any spring water pools but we do have an awesome pool. 1839 – Wiesbaden and Frankfurt train line was created.  Wiesbaden in the capital of Hessen and is only about 30 minutes away from us by car 1843 – train station in Bad Soden wa

Last part of our Spain trip with my friend was Toledo.  It was highly recommended by many people as a must see when in Madrid.  As with many other things - things did not go exactly according to plan!  We did not buy tickets in advance because when we looked online, it seemed like the trains were going nearly every hour so we figured we'd just show up and buy tickets.  We did show up,  but buying the tickets was much harder as the train station has several different ticket offices and it took us a while to find the right one and of course by the time we found it, the train we wanted to take left and we had to wait  for the next one.  We decided to grab some brunch and nearly missed our train because the platform was pretty hard to find (as stupid as that sounds!). The train trip was nice and short and when we got off the train, there were several tourist busses from which we picked one that seemed the best for us and took us to the scenic parts of Toledo and then left us in th

For the 3rd year in a row boys participated in Lauf für Mehrsprachigkeit a couple of Sundays ago.  Thankfully the weather was pretty nice this year and Ilya's school while sponsoring the event, did not participate in the entertainment section of the run.  In the past years they played on flute, danced and singed and while it was fun, it was pretty long and the stage is a bit small and gets crowded. Last year Anton participated in the Bambini run which was 200 meters but this year he got upgraded to the elementary school-age run which is 900 meters and he ran that together with Andrei.  Ilya got upgraded from 900 meters to 3 km.  The upgrades for both of the kids were my decisions and I have to say that everything was successful. Andrei and Anton run together and I told Andrei to keep an eye on his brother in case Anton has problems with breathing.  Anton ran most of the way but told us that he walked a little bit in the middle.  Running is not Andrei's thing AT ALL so putti

Prior to Madrid , my "undisclosed friend" and I went to Barcelona (short and easy flight for me).  We stayed in hotel which had great reviews and great location, but the room itself was extremely dark despite a window.  It was also lacking WiFi.  My friend did not take appreciate that :)  I arrived kind of late at night so we just grabbed dinner and it was delicious!  The pictures are a small sample of what we got - tapas and easy to share.  Sangrias were had as well and they were huge! The following day we starting exploring Barcelona and started with a walk through the Food Market and grabbing a bag of salami-style meats for morning snack. After that we decided to wonder the streets and look at Gaudi buildings.  Gaudi buildings are hard to miss in Barcelona because 1) they are odd-looking and 2) there are crowds of people standing in front of them taking pictures.  We, of course, joined those crowds :)  We only went inside one of the buildings and hon

This week has been rough.  Chris was away in Iceland so I am on my own and while it's usually not a problem this week has been a bit rougher than normal so here is a break down of what happened.  Needless to say no pictures :( Monday - I had an appointment with Ilya's Russian teacher at 7:30 in the morning which went well.  Ilya is doing a pretty good job in the class, he understand verbal communication but it's hard to find him books to read because his vocabulary is still lacking.  Anton has German class every Monday where I have to take him to the class at 9:35 and pick him up at 11:15 at which point he goes to kindergarten. During the class I took Chris to the airport.  Andrei had an eye check up and we waited for over an hour and then left because we had to go pick Anton and Ilya up.  That got rescheduled for another day in May but overall I need to find another eye doctor for the kids.  The receptionist did apologize which was nice because it's so no a German t

Since I have not had the chance to write anything about scouting, this seems like a good time since Andrei just transitioned from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts.  We originally joined Cub Scouts because our friend worked it out so both boys can attend on the same day and because we thought it would be a good idea to get the boys into an American activity with American boys.  Ilya joined Wolfs and Andrei joined Arrow of Light so Ilya is the oldest in his den and Andrei is the youngest.  Ilya is really enjoying the Cub Scouts.  It really seems that getting the badges the the belt loops is a great motivator for him to read and do the assignments.  The requirements are very structured and organized so Ilya can do most of them on his own with a little guidance from me and an occasional drive to things like botanical garden.  The Wolfs have 5 requirement adventures and they include things like learning about American flag, learning about God (very open vague adventure), physical activities, ob

This was the last of stop of the March adventures and the friend I went with does not want to be disclosed but we had a blast.  We were in Madrid for 1,5 days so not a whole lot of time; however, Madrid was charming and really really cold.  After we checked into the hotel, we wondered throughout Madrid and made our way to Retiro Park.  It was fun - we weren't so tired yet and the weather was beautiful.  It's similar to many other European parks with the statues in the middle of well laid out paths and a lake in the middle. Look at the beautiful sky! After the park,we went to Prado Museum - it was the only museum we visited in Madrid, but there are many more for those with more time.  Prado Museum has free entrance 2 hours before it closes but you have to be ready to wait in line.  The line moves quickly but they do give each person a ticket and we probably waited for around 30-40 minutes which means once we got into museum we only had a little over an hou

Seemingly as of late I have no time to do anything for anything but minimal survival and as I was thinking it was time to drop this blog, I got a "signs' that I should attempt to keep it up. March had been fun but busy - Chris and I went to Portugal (Porto and Lisbon), I went to Spain (Barcelona and Madrid) with a friend, and all of us went to Burg Rieneck with Cub Scouts. Easter brought some interesting discussions to our house.  We do not discuss God or anything religion related unless it's either relevant (we are going to Vatican or such) or they ask.  Ilya had some questions earlier this year when Cub Scouts were doing their Duty to God requirement and he was the only kid in his den not to attend church or say prayers.  I told him that if he is interested we would take him to a church and he can learn all about religion. Spring is finally here and it's awesome!!!  We are at the park, we are biking, Andrei got new roller blades and enjoying the weather. Part o

Life was busy with us going to Portugal, my mom was here for 2 weeks and I am heading out to Barcelona and Madrid today.  And we got 2 new appliances in your home yesterday and everybody is really excited.  We got a new induction oven.  For comparison purposes - first pictures is the old fridge, second is the new upgraded version.  American style with water and ice always available - I no longer have to ration how much frozen food I can buy!  

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 really close to us), I pay 15 euro