annikas und christians sicht der dinge

Since a few weeks now Christian works as the accountant for a major building project at our church. He got used to it quite quickly and enjoys the challenge. From September on I will be back working too. I’m going to teach baby signing classes. For the last months Aimee and I have been going to such classes and after the summer I will leading the same – this time without Aimee. I’m looking forward to it and will have to learn a lot of songs and signs over the summer.

Nearly 2 months ago Annika’s cousin Kristin arrived in York. She is 16 and does a term at a local secundary school and dives into a german-english experience abroad. And for us it means we have a babysitter in the house – quite useful. Quite interesting to have a baby and a teenager at the same time. One of them is tired early at night, the other one is tired early in the morning. But it works really well and we hopefully find some nice things to do over halfterm.

Über Ostern waren wir ein paar Tage in Deutschland. Jakob wurde getauft und Christa wurde 50. Das waren genügend Gründe für uns in die Heimat zu fliegen. Obwohl wir nachts um 4 Uhr losgefahren sind und den Anschlussflug in Frankfurt verpasst haben, war die Anreise relative unkompliziert und Aimee fand alles sehr aufregend. Jakobs Taufe war sehr schön und Aimee hatte irgendwie die fixe Idee, dass sie für die musikalische Gestaltung des Gottesdienstes zuständig war. In Hildesheim hatten wir sogar die Möglichkeit, Christians Opa zu besuchen, den unsere Kleine mal wieder völlig um den Finger gewickelt hatte.
Nach all den Feierlichkeiten hatten wir uns sehr auf ein bisschen Ruhe in England gefreut. Nachdem der Rückflug sehr unkompliziert verlief, war die Passkontrolle in Manchester schon was besonderes. Mit uns zusammen ist ein Flieger aus München gelandet und auf einmal standen wir zwischen einer ganzen Truppe Anzugtypen mit roten Schals. Es stellte sich schnell heraus, dass Bayern München ebenfalls durch die Passkontrolle wollte. Leider sind wir weder Fans dieses Fußballvereins noch hatten wir ne Ahnung, wer all diese Typen waren. Phillip Lahm konnten wir noch erkennen, aber dann war es auch schon vorbei. Aimee fand den Troubel nicht sonderlich toll, da sie bei der Landung aufgewacht war und im Tragetuch langsam zu sich kam.

For Aimee’s dedication we had all her 4 grandparents with us. We had a good time together even when unfortunateyl we all had to fight a cold. That made Aimee very clingy and it took her while to get used to her grandparents. But the cold is gone and the spring has arrived. We are now waiting for our first spring flowers to blossom. We planted some last autum.

We are uncle, aunt and cousin now: Jakob Lewin is born. Congratulations to Daniela and Karsten.

Everybody complaints that recession really hits the tourism. I don’t know what they are talking about. We definitely can’t complain about not enough bookings. From the middle of December until the middle of January we had 12 people staying with us for 17 nights in total.
1. my brother Björn and his fiancé Christin (the perfect christmas presents delivery service)
2. Janet & Colin, Anna’s parents (they couldn’t fit them into their house, so they stayed a few days over Christmas)
3. Oliver, Dominic and Janet (see 2.) (they had a one night sleep over while their little sister Hazel Amelia was born)

4. Andrea & Flo (they just had to meet our lovely Aimee before they spent a few days in London)
5. Conny, Malte and Phil (Conny and Malte helped us with the move to York nearly 3 years ago and we were delighted to finally meet their awesome 16 months old son Phil. Especially Aimee loved having a big brother in the house.)

24/12
Christmas Eve in York means for the Nowratys to play with Aimee, set up the Christmas tree, play with Aimee, feed Aimee, cook Christmas dinner (ham in cherry coke), looking at the snow, singing Christmas carols, being on skype with the familiy in Germany, unwrapping presents with the familiy watching over the internet, unwrapping more presents and then going to bed early. It was great.
25/12
We went to church to a lovely service where all kids brought their most favourite present, the adults did a nativity scene, lots of carols and a few mince pies. After that we had a propper English Christmas lunch with everything from turkey to brussles sprouts. Anna and Richard invited us over and it was lovely.
26/12
Boxing day was with a few families from church und a lot of left overs from Christmas. It was really a relaxed gathering and a wonderful finish of a very special Christmas.

Last Sunday we had the Bickersteths over for lunch. We had a fun time with guitar lesson, den building and popcorn. We really enjoyed the time and fellowship like this is always very special to us, because we are not able to do it too often due to Christian’s working hours.

We are just back from Germany. We had a really nice time. We went to see both pairs of grandparents and even aimee’s great-grandparents. And with her smile she won them all over – no surprise to us.

In Malente even uncle Torben was around, because of a broken jaw. First we had the golden wedding anniversary of my grandparents followed by the wedding of my schoolfriends Nina & Ole. It was a lovely day and being the maid of honour made it even more special. After all that we were quite glad to be back in York to get some rest.

Christian was off today so we made a daytrip with the whole family. We made the best out off the good weather and went to Knaresborough. It was quite an adventure because we had to lift Aimee a lot of stairs up and down (she lay comfortly in her push chair). She really enjoyed it – it was ok for us. We went to see Mother Shipton’s cave. It’s a cave and a petrifying well. If you put a teddy bear into the water it will be petrified within three month. If you do like teddy bears it looks a bit cruel to be fair. At the museum you could even see a petrified hut of John Wayne.

We got the call yesterday morning: we’re staying for another year in our house. Our landlord is willing to renew our contract and he does not even increase the rent. Now we can start thinking again about putting some curtains up in the livingroon, maybe.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.