There is so much to tell!
So much happened in the last months! As mentioned in the last post, we moved into our new house. All our furniture arrived unbroken. Except one piece of a puzzle of Charlotte that we are still missing. I don't think we'll ever find it again.
We bought a used car that has enough seats for 2 children and at least 4 adults.
And then we started our shopping tour: We bought a new 46'' LCD TV, a huge BBQ that can take more than 20 burgers (that's the unit they are counting the size of a BBQ here), a sandbox for Charlotte, a new stroller for 2 children, a sleeping sofa for our guests, a shade sale for our yard, a bike trailer (also for 2 children) etc. etc.
Lots of new stuff that you need if you have such a big house and you are about to get a second child.
In parallel I worked hard to earn the money we needed to buy all that ;-)
In July Marlene and Charlotte flew back to Germany for 3 weeks to attend the wedding of a cousin of Marlene and to meet the whole family (great-grandparents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins and friends,...).
That was the longest time Marlene and me have been departed since we met 6 years ago. So you can imagine how tough that was.
In August my parents visited us! They spent 4 days with us until they started their trip to the best national parks in California. They went hiking a lot and were amazed by the friendliness of the Americans/Californians. At the end they stayed for another 4 days with us in Sunnyvale before they had to leave us again.
For us there was no time to feel lonely because a few days later Jens - a friend of us from Karlsruhe - did his last stop of a 3 months lasting USA tour in our home. It was great having him with us for more or less 2 weeks because for the first time I really went out in the evenings spending some time playing pool or dart, drinking a few beers and talking to a good old friend.
The highlight was definitely the NFL football game we watched in Oakland: Pure American culture!
With all the guests and a few weekends on our own we already saw quite a few places in California such as Sonoma Valley, Monterey Aquarium, Children Museum in San Jose, Venice Beach, Muir Beach, Sausalito, Santa Cruz,... (but still have lots on our to-do lists).
If anybody is interested in what we are doing and where we are going, I highly recommend a few other websites:
My Twitter account:
http://www.twitter.com/happel
My Foursquare account:
http://www.foursquare.com/user/happel
My Gowalla account:
http://www.gowalla.com/happel
And the next guests are coming: End of September a German colleague of me and hi girlfriend will sleep here for 2 nights.
Short summary of this weekend:
After the weekly visit of the local farmers market we've been to the hospital today to take the delivery-room-tour. Now slowly we are getting nervous again, with less then 10 weeks to go. Especially because in the very same delivery room a friend of us got her baby just this morning!
Tomorrow we will visit the Oakland zoo and Charlotte will be able to test all the animal noises she already can do in real-life ;-)
By the way: She already talks quite a few "words". At least we know what she wants to tell us with those sounds. And last week Marlene managed to teach her the first sign in baby-sign-language. She can tell us exactly now if she wants to have "More!".
Apropos teaching (man, this post is becoming chaotic ;-) Charlotte is going to pre-school now twice a week. She still starts crying when mommy is leaving her but she really seems to like it after 3 minutes. I have the feeling that it's really good for her e.g. because she's not so shy anymore: Today in the hospital she just grabbed the hand of another older girl she had never seen before and walked around with her. Amazing!
Next time more about our little darling!!