Beginnings

Yes it is that time of year again. The last 6 weeks seem to have just flown by. A few highlights are:

*Desi turned five!
*My brother Brian came to visit for 4 weeks.
*We spent several days in Duhnen (our summer house).
*We spent a week on a lovely island called Amrum.
*We went to Legoland in Denmark (and our license plates were stolen).
*We went to Heidepark.

Even with all that exciting fun summer has come to an end. At least for now hehe we are leaving for Florida on september 10. :)

Kindergarten has now started. German kindergarten that is. It is more like preschool in the US. Desi is now in his last year! He is Pate this year which means a younger child who is new this year is paired up with an older child and the older child shows them around and introduces them to other older kids. Desi is so excited to be helping out a younger child.

Desi on his first day:

Also i wanted to insert a little update on our language issues. I mentioned a while back (May i think it was) that all the 4 and 1/2 year olds were tested (on computers) to asses there language abilities. The results were not available to parents. A letter would only be sent if the child needed special classes. Everyone was sure Desi would recive a letter. So we spent the summer (in the back of our minds) waiting for this letter. Well i am proud and pleased to say that Desi did not recive a letter. A sign was posted in the Kindergarten saying the money for the classes was due. I think can safely say that our little bilingual boy is progressing just as well as his monolingual peers!

lots of love,
amy

Dino boy

Desi is having a Dinosaur themed birthday this year. This is the picture we took to include on his invitation.

Father's Day

Today was father's day. This was the first time Desi and i were able to put together something special for Maik to show him how much we appriciate all he does for us all year long. We made a pretty card and t-shirt with Desi's handprints all over it. We still have to figure out how to seal the paint as we used finger paint that washes off. Oh well it is the thought that counts...right? hehe.

breakfast in bed.

wake up sleepy papa!

Papa opening his present.

Desi was so proud!

Desi and his papa

Later on we went to Strawberry festival that was taking place across the street from our house. It was nice, except for one of the bouncy houses where desi was told he could not jump because he had glasses. I don't understand that at all. we have a personal (very large) bouncy house at home and desi's glasses have never been a problem. i was a bit ticked and desi was very hurt, but we moved on.

Desi climbing the tower. he was afraid to go any higher even though he did really well!

Bouncy house land!

Desi bounced to his hearts content.

wait a minute!

awww i just want a picture!

yay! hi desi!

i am still learning with my camera. it felt the net was more important.

maik coming down the huge slide.

Maik and desi had so much fun playing!

This last picture is us walking home. the rain came out of nowhere!

Needless to say by the time we were home, we were all soaked through. It was fun though. That evening we grilled and just hung around. it was nice to have some down time and just be the three of us.

Happy Father's Day Maik!

lot's of love,

amy

Guess what!

I got my abitur. well ok i found out on wenesday, but still i passes. I even got a wonderful average. I have 2,3 (1,0 is the best you can get). I am so happy and really proud. I am so very thankful that God moved a mountain (or rather a heart of stone) so i could have this. I know in the grand scheme of things this is a tiny rather insignificant problem compared to children caught in war zones, missing planes and all the other things people deal with on a daily basis, but for me this is huge.

lots of love,
amy

Desi's Birthday Book

Wow have i been busy lately. It is really hard to change my routine over from school and being mom and just doing enough to get by to being just mom and really working hard for my family. in short everything is crazy.


So i have been working on a project. I call it Desi's birthday book. I just cannot throw away a birthday card or any card for that matter and have sooooo much stuff from desi's birthdays so i though this would be a good idea.



I started with a binder that i didn't really find pretty.





Then i used my digi scrapbooking stuff (the kit i used for this is Swing on a Star from Ziggle and PPD from Scraporchard).



I printed everything out and taped it all down. Then i covered it with clear packing tape. It looks laminated onto binder. Here is the finished cover.







The inside is a bit more interesting. I just can't throw away cards and that is where the idea came from. I really wanted a way for desi to look back and see how much fun his birthdays were and see all the cards people wrote. When blogger decides to quit wrecking my colors on the pages then i will add those too. update later.

A boy and his bike

In germany an important mode od transportation is the bicycle. This is my bike. I love it and i usually take it to and from school and well anywhere near except grocery shopping. i think my basket is a bit small.

my bike

Naturally Desi would need to learn to ride a bike. So we started working on leaning. Here he is at two with his first bike.

That was fun, but not really helping him so we went on to this. In german it is called a Laufrad, but i have seen them called Likeabike in the USA. These are awsome. They teach balance and coordintation. oh and they can be used to scare the crap out of moms!

Desi as he zoomed past me

Due to the Laufrad when it came time for Desi to get a real bike and learn to ride. The moment he tried out to ride the two wheel bike at the store he was able to. Here he is about 5 months after he got his bike on our ride home from kindergarten. This was take 3 after i crashed, then desi and i crashed into each other. talk about trick i was trying to film, ride, and watch for cars. hence the no breath! hehe.

yep my little boy is all grown up and riding a two wheel bike! I can't believe it.

A couple of days ago it was so nice outside. Desi told me that his bike was very dirty and he wanted to wash it. How responsible!

The finished product. He was so proud! He really does love his bike.

lots of love,

amy

Abitur

So i know i have been gone for quite a long time. I do have a really do have a good reason. I have been working on my abitur. I would like give you a slight look into the madness that is the abitur.



(Sidenote: still having issues with my pictures uploading, but i figured out how to get this one!)

So as i said i have been studying to for my abitur. I think for anyone to really follow and understand how i ended up at this point i have to tell you a little bit about myself.

I am 22 years old. I had my son at age 17 and while that undoubtly made things harder, i persisted through (some rather hard circumstance that i may tell about at another date) and graduated high school at age 18 in 2005. That was all fine and dandy. i missed honar graduate by o.5 gpa points and i also failed to achieve my International Baccholorette (sp?) diploma by 3 points though i got all my certifecates except in Psychology (sp?). So even though i wanted to be an honar graduate i did recognize how lucky i was to be graduating at all considering my circumstances

While in high school in my senior i fell in love with my husband. He was an exchange student took my son and i back to germany with him the summer after graduation. This was supposed to be only a 5 week vacation. Well as you can see it turned into a bit more than that. His father asked me if i wanted to stay and learn german for a year and go to univerity here. This was a hard decision. I had a one year old toddler, i didn't speak the language, and i was already accepted to a collage in the USA. I finally decided my decision would come down to one thing: money. Specifically if i got the scholarship i was counting on to pay for my tuition (on top of tuition and books, i was going to have live away from home, pay for an apartment, food, all those associated bills, plus day care.) I ended up not getting the scholarship because of the IB program i did not meet the science requierment and was not allowed to have the scholarship. At the time it was free to go to University in germany and i was looking at starting life with at least $20,000 in debt. I chose to stay.

So I went to apply at the University which was loads of fun. They would not accept my diploma they said it was the equivelent of what german childeren recieve after graduating the 10th grade. My ACT score were also not high enough (i had a 24 i needed a 29 or 30 out of 32 points to get in). They said the only way i could go to unversity here would be to do the Abitur which i believe is truly the equivelent of a collage education in the USA. It is three years long and is more work than i ever thought.

To bring this around to a point. The past 3 or 4 weeks i have been preparing and taking my Abitur exams. My exams were:

English: topic: Utopia. I liked this topic, but i was dissapointed by the text in the examine. It was not well written nor was it like any of the practice material. I definantly do not feel i did my best.

Biology (in English): topic: Genetics and Evolution. I thought this exam was well structured the question were fun to work through, but i almost ran out of time. I really enjoy biology.

Wirtschaft (Economics) (in German): topic: Markt, Preis, Wettbewerb (Market, Price, Competition) and Globalisierung (Globalization). This was a nightmare. Not only were the question about other topics than the ones we were told i am bad in the class anyway. I do not understand it and doing it in a foreign language did not help. I only need one point on the exam to pass. The catch is that i actually have to score three points to pass because they will take of the maximum two points for my german mistakes. Did i mention how bad my german is.

These were my written exams. To point out a few things on the above picture: My beloved pink tea pot that is thermal so my tea stays warm, it is sitting on top of my two biology books and below that is my fuzzy blue phone ( i had to call someone to explain a math thing in Eco to me), my importants notes on princess note paper (i love disney princesses) hanging on my window sill, the candy wrappers really thought all i ate was candy to keep the endorphines coming, Economics for Dummies that book really helped me understand some things, two full binders worth of information that i need to know, my three-eyed-fish blinky sitting in my childhood jelwery box, my thomas kinkade background regaurdless of your feelings about his reasons for painting they are calming pictures and last my oversized belle cup from disneyland paris. those are all my essesntials from studying.

These things are stating to pile up again as i study for my oral exam. The class is World Studies and the topic is South Africa. I am very nervous.

I spent a lot of time over the past two weeks in prayer. Specific prayer for my exams. Please add me to your prayer list that i get my abitur. Also that i have focus and clarity in my oral exam. thanks in advance.

I wanted everyone to know that i have been itching to blog, but i feel so guilty as i have 100 other things to get done. i really need to keep up with this. I really enjoy writing and well i love reading everyone elses. my last exam (the world studies one) is on May 5th. please keep me in your thoughts and prayers then.

lots of love,
amy