Not time for many pictures--Woche 8-9

The last couple of weeks, have been spent doing monotonous tasks.  I decided that I needed to get some Spring cleaning done.  I have picked a couple rooms a week for the last month and have cleaned everything out.  It feels good to get everything that clean.  However, it saddens me to note that you can not see a difference in our house.  It seems that the kids are much too fast for me.  They can destroy everything I have worked on in a matter of 40 seconds.


I gave each of the boys haircuts.  It is getting slightly easier and I am getting slightly faster.  Dane notes though, that he will not be paying me.  Apparently, I took too long, squished his ear, and didn't buzz him bald.  Danyon didn't complain much, as he fell asleep in his high chair, watching all the hair cuts.  When it was his turn, he didn't even stir at the sound of the clippers.  I had Dane hold his head and move it where I needed it.  Danyon slept through the entire thing!


We started soccer last week.  The kids are finding it to be a fun change.  They are all enjoying it.  Between all three kids, we were at the soccer field for at least 2 hours every night this week.  It is interesting that the sport clubs here are different than what we have seen in the US.  Life here seems to be closer to what I would call the "Asian Approach".  That is where parents decide for their children at a very young age, what they are going to do in life.  If you are going to be a hockey player, you start at age 2 or 3 and you do hockey--live, eat, sleep, and breathe hockey.  There doesn't seem to be any push to diversify the kids here.  The soccer club is the same.  These kids have all been playing soccer 2-3 times a week, pretty intensive practices, for several years, year round.  We are having a hard time adjusting to this mentality, as we don't feel like we want our kids to have to chose what they will do for the rest of their life at such a young age.  Also, we don't feel like one sport is good.  Developing other skills and muscle groups definitely has benefits, in our opinion.  However, this puts our kids at a disadvantage compared to the other kids here.  But, instead of seeing it as a completely bad thing, were choosing to go with the "our kids have a huge opportunity to improve while they are here" outlook.

April Fool's Day came and went without much ado here at our house.  The only prank the kids pulled was that they colored some letter E's with a brown marker, and put them in a Tupperware.  At school, they each gave their teachers a Tupperware full of brownies!

Dan spent the entire week in the US.  He didn't get much sleep, but he had a lot of fun--even without Grandma's feather bed.  He had lots of work meetings, lots of shopping, and even time to fix the kitchen sink--literally.  We found out from our renters that the kitchen sink was leaking and all of the plumbing underneath was completely corroded out.  Other good news:  since the weather has been so crazy in Fishers this winter, with lots of wind storms, we have missing shingles on the house as well.  We have to get someone to go and take a look at that too. 

All in all, we were so excited to see Dan and his packages this morning.  The kids could hardly stand it.  Dane came into my room this morning not being able to sleep, and not knowing how to pass the time until Dan got home.  Every time Dan goes home, it feels a lot like Christmas when he gets back.  This time, in the spirit of Easter, I was tempted to hide all of their fun little things and make them search all over the house for them.  We were too tired to make that happen, so they just got to get their pile of treats on the bed.