We've been au pair hopping our way across northern Germany leaving Eva's home on Sunday the 1st of August for a short drive to Monika's home in Schloss Holte (yes, I'm really behind in my posts -- we're in Sweden now!). On a map, we started in the northwest and are slowly making our way to the north central area near Hannover. Then our plan is to shoot north to the Baltic coast.
Our intention was to leave Eva's by 3:30 or 4pm and arrive at Monika's by 5. But, we can't quite to seem keep on schedule, so we left a bit later.
Monika was our second au pair, and she is now married and has three children -- a 2 1/2 year old boy named Julian and twin 11-month old boys -- Jonas and Max. Yes, she is busy...in fact, she needs her own au pair!
After arriving, Monika and her husband Mirko put the twins to bed and prepared a barbecue for us. We had a great dinner and spent time catching up and looking at photos of Monika's stay with us in PA. Adam and Daniel didn't have much memory of Monika -- she left our family when Adam was only one -- so, the photos were a terrific way to tell them the story.
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| Monika and her husband Mirko. |
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| Monika and 2 1/2 year old Julian. |
We only had one night with Monika -- she would have liked us to stay longer, but we knew she would be so busy with her three children and didn't want to overburden her. We stayed the night and into the next afternoon.
The kids loved jumping on the neighbor's trampoline...and the also loved spending time with Julian and the twins. Julian, like any two year old, is still learning words and how to put together simple sentences. As a result, we were really able to observe how young children can easily learn languages at an early age. He was completely open to us using our English to name simple objects around the house (he repeated most of what we said) -- the same as he was open to his mother teaching him the German word for the same objects. And, because his German was so simple, we actually understood some of what he was saying...and he taught us some words!
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| Julian, Jonas (back left), and Max. |
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| Jonas and me. |
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| Hannah and Max. |
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| Peg and Terry help out with feeding the twins. |
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| Adam, Daniel, and Hannah with two on-the-move twins! |
Our one outing for the day was a trip to the center of town for some ice cream. The town was small but quaint, and the walk was just long enough for the boys. Monika pulled Julian in a wagon while Hannah pushed the twins in their double stroller.
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| Hannah pushes the twins in their stroller. Monika got each of them an empty cone and then dabbed the top of each in her ice cream. They didn't seem to know that they didn't have a full ice cream cone! |
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| Monika and me. It's been 7 years since I've seen her. |
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| Adam, Daniel, Monika, and Hannah with Julian. |
The day ended too quickly. We needed to leave by late afternoon to arrive at Johanna Finke's in Wasbuttel in time for dinner.
4 comments:
Monika looks so happy and her kids are really cute. Hard to believe it's been so long since she was living with you.
You're right Rhon. She is really busy but is really happy! Her husband is great (well, he's as helpful as husbands can be :)) Her kids are all wonderful - she's a great mother. And, yes, we hadn't seen her in about 8 years. It was amazing to see her again.
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