The Eckardts - eckardts

School has started and it's been a strange transition from summer with very few routines to school which comes with buckets of 'em. I thought I'd be wandering around the apartment at a loss due to the sudden quiet after having them 24 and 7 for over two months. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared since they decided to start off with Ramadan timings - so school starts half an hour later and ends an hour earlier. That was nice because we hadn't used an alarm clock in forever and I was dreading it. Ramadan also means that some of the activities start later so more children can participate.

Ethan has only a few new kids in his class and one of them is also named Ethan, from Pennsylvania. They've already had half a dozen playdates and get along very well. Zoe has gotten to know Elizabeth outside of school better which thrills her because she likes her so much. Not sure why that didn't happen so much last year! Making up for it now though. They both got teachers who are new to the school and that's taken ME a while to get used to.

Ethan auditioned for a part in a singing/acting group but there was far more talent than space in the group so he wasn't selected. I am so proud at him for even trying out! He may try out for the elementary musical later on. He joined the Basketball program though which starts in October. Zoe joined Lego Club which she did last year with her brother and enjoyed.

I have been using the time before everything really gets underway to churn out tons of stuff in my creative studio. I've been making plastic collage wallets, canvas bracelets, quilts, iPod/iPhone cozies, coffee cup cozies, felt bags, etc. I get into such a flow that it's time to pick the kids up at school before I even know it! That is my definition of a great day.

I started running again tonight after a break of (whisper) nearly 10 years. I'd been rollerblading but it's not nearly the same for toning. It went well tonight despite near 100-degree heat (at 10pm even), an iPod that was threatening to conk out, and the feeling that my face was swelling up about to go thermonuclear at any moment. I will be back again tomorrow for more pain.

peace out ~

We are back from Germany and the run up to the first day of school is hitting us full force. Where did the summer go? It flew by like it had somewhere else to be! It's already time to buy school supplies and make sure they have enough clothes. How can this have happened? it honestly seems like it went by faster since we stayed here over summer rather than went to the US.  China seems like so long ago though - weird!

So in a week Ethan and Zoe will be back in school on Ramadan timings - shorter day. I'm not sure what I will do with all that free time! Ha! I know exactly what I will do with all that time. Work on my patterns and projects to get ready for the Christmas fairs that come around in December. This is the busy season and I'm trying not to look it in the face until I have to: School starting, Cub and Girl Scouts, Fall Festival, Halloween, Ethan's birthday, Thanksgiving, Bernd's birthday, our annual cookie decorating party, Christmas, NY's! Life turns into one big TO DO list at this time of year. I only exhale once Christmas is passed. Grandma and Grandpa will come to visit so we have that to look forward to! That reminds me, I have to make a Christmas quilt to hang in the dining room for that party!

Anyway, Germany was a fun break from the heat. It was COLD when we got there. Not ski jacket cold but sweatshirt cold definitely. I got to see twin baby sheeps that were only 30 minutes and 60 minutes old! They were insanely cute! Aslo got to feed a baby sheep milk from a baby bottle. Saw 2 wild deer and tracked them across the field until they saw me 100 yards away and finally bolted. The kids got to ride on a harvester in a wheat field while I peeled and ate the kernels on the side getting blasted with chaff. No warthogs thank goodness. We hunted slugs in the backyard after rainfall and enjoyed a profusion of flowers. We visited Uncle Josef's honey farm and the kids got to crank the centrifuge to extract their own honey which we brought home. 5 jars of it! Two of the jars had white white white honey which was deliciously like frosting. Amazing! We saw cows but never managed to actually get to touch one. They were too far from the fence. Drank icy water from a mountain stream. Oma dn opa were doing better healthwise which was great. Yeah it was a good break.

Now the countdown to my shower has run out so I'd better go. Taking the kids to the pool today!

Never let it be said that I don't like spontaneity! When my husband suggested, out of nowhere, why don't we go to Germany next week and hang out for a while, I was game. Now I've been to this part of Germany before but there are many parts I haven't been so I immediately started looking them up to see if we could make a day trip to Schloss Neuschwanstein or Rothenburg ob der Tauber (both too far!). Even France was too far. New country stamps in the passport are always good! Brussels, which looks beautiful from online pictures, turned out to be only a 3-hour drive away which is TOTALLY day-trippable! Alas, my husband has it in his mind to take the kids to an amusement park an hour away instead. UGH! I love rollercoasters but if you ask Brussels or rollercoasters, seems a no brainer to me. DESPAIR! So we leave tomorrow and at some point I have to pack. We are going on some new airline - Elite in conjunction with Germany's Blue Wings fleet. Great price deal. I saw you can fly from here to Dusseldorf and from there to Moscow for under $1,000. Always looking to get lost in a strange place I guess. So we will be off for a week and back later. Maybe I can update from the road.

I had used all the webbing from the Key FOBs and the little bits leftover weren't enough to make any more from - not that I had any more hardware anyway. I figured I'd keep them and ask around town if any shops stocked this but my daughter snatched up the fuschia one and pretended it was a bracelet which gave me a great idea. Why not make them into bracelets? With buttons even better! So I made a few this morning to get my creative juices in a torrent. Of course now I don't want to stop to go see a movie. But family calls and they come first so to the theater we will go!

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My brain seems to be firing all synapses lately. Ideas seem to be coming at me from everywhere at the same time and it's all I can do to write them down before the next one arises. They are coming from every angle - comments people say, magazines, the way light falls on something. I'm not questioning it; better just to revel in the avalanche I figure. I am finding the limited number of hours in the day to be supremely frustrating. Even if I did have the kids underfoot needing food, dispute arbitration, batteries changed, etc. I am sure there STILL wouldn't be enough time to finish all I want to in a 24-hour period. I find myself at midnight surprised it is so late and unwilling to stop for sleep. I do manage to force myself to shut off by 2am (although admittedly once it was 4am and only because the first call to prayer of the morning created a wave of guilt in me) and crawl into bed, but my brain still buzzes for another hour or so. If I could get by equally on 15 minutes of sleep, I wonder at what I could accomplish!

I am trying to change an ingrained habit (disorder) that's plagued me for years. That is going guns blazing into a project I get fired up about and when I'm about 75% of the way through, changing gears as another idea infects my consciousness and not finishing the first project. The enthusiasm for a new project is not a bad thing, but the distraction it causes me and the trail of UFOs I leave behind, stress me. It's as if they sit silently scolding me from the shelves. Even if I can't see them. So I am trying to start and finish things in order. Don't know how long it will last and it's not always easy but I find if an idea strikes, I write it down in a book of things to revisit. It is a constant conversation to reconvince myself that this is a good way of living but I did manage to succeed once. I had ordered the materials for 50 Key FOBs and just yesterday at the pool, managed to finish the 50th one.

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I think I've finally mastered taking a shower in summer here. No, I haven't been stinking up the place for the past month and an half. Summer to most SAHMs means getting to sleep in a bit but until recently, that wasn't the case here. Every week as summer gets hotter and hotter you have to wake up earlier and earlier to take your shower to avoid being scalded. The ground water somes out of the pipes so hot it can give you 2nd degree burns. So after much experimenting, I've discovered that if you turn off the water heater - period - we're talking like until mid-October, you get 4 minutes of bearable water. You have to turn on the water and leap immediately into it - at this point it is unpleasantly cold and that sucks but it beats the alternative. Quickly soak your head trying not to let your body get under the stream (too cold). Shampoo lightning quick and rinse letting the water run all over you as it's already heated up at this point. Turn off the water immediately. Then put the conditioner in and use soap for the rest of you without water. Wait the two minutes trying not to shiver. Then turn the water on half power and race against the clock. It will still hurt by the end but at least you can shower after 8am.

it seems I never get around to renaming all the China pictures I took. Even with the reduction, there are just so many. I did manage to post a few for those out there who have been waiting.

Today we went to the Abu Dhabi Summer Fun thing and it was alright - the kids loved it. I thought it was too pricey with having to pay for individual rides inside and then the coins you buy in one place are no good in other zones. Thought that was pretty slimy. Zoe was too short to go on many things by not meeting the height requirement so we spent a lot of time waiting around for Ethan to be done. He tried swinging on the trapeeze, flying down this very high zip line, wake boarding. They both were able to run in these plasticky hamster ball things wher you climb inside and you can see out but are basically a rodent in a ball. those were great fun to watch, as was the velcro suit bouncy castle where you throw yourself at a velcro wall and stick there.

Tomorrow we are headed, with some of the Cub Scout families still in town, to see Ice Age 3 and then over to Abu Dhabi Pottery to see about signing them up for some classes.

We are back from hopping all over the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong. I've never done a trip with so many internal relocations. We flew to Beijing, flew to Yichang, boated down the Yangtze River, flew to Guilin, took a boat down the Li Jiang River, flew to Guangzhou, by train to Hong King, flew to Beijing and flew back to Abu Dhabi. I think it was this part of the trip that had us saying enough is enough by our return to Beijing and ready to get back home. However, waking up this morning, I was disappointed we didn't have any tour scheduled for entertainment.

We really enjoyed the entire trip and have every intention of going back to Hong Kong to enjoy it more. Not enough time there. Highlights would have to include the Great Wall (and my inability to move for the next three days), acupuncture, Guilin's greenery and pedestrian lake by night,wading through a rice paddy with fish, snails and leeches, a cave full of tremendously impressive formations, Hong Kong's everything (I especially liked Mong Kok), and the Summer Palace lake. WILL POST PICTURES SOON!

It always seems like we look forward to weekends so much but then we find little in the way of entertainment. The temperatures are too hot outside to go out and hang around, not to mention we have a gravel lot in front of the apartment building leading directly to the street where cars, regardless of the little kids playing out there, race through constantly. I'd be perfectly content to sit in my Creative Studio and work hour after hour until bedtime but the kids can't stand for that very long. They want to go and see and do! The plan was to go ice skating but Bernd is asleep because the medication he is taking makes him dizzy. So, despite the fact that I detest these places, it looks like we will be going to the kids' play arcade at Marina Mall to kill a few hours. Guess I can always watch some How It's Made episodes on the iPod or read a few books. Oh well, there is always tomorrow.

I did get started on a fabric box to hold all of the postcards I've been making and hope to collect from swaps with people around the world.

I suppose I SHOULD be packing for China but it still seems so far away. 2 1/2 weeks is a long time to me. Maybe I will take my guidebooks and list of cities and see what there will be to check out when there. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do!

c ya!

As hard as it is to believe, another school year is drawing to a close and summer is approaching. Why sugarcoat it? Summer has slammed full-force into the Arabian peninsula with regular 100+ degree days. That is a little daunting considering we will be staying put this summer instead of our usual trip to the US. Why are we doing this? Well we have been making the same trip yearly for several years now and want to mix things up a bit and take advantage of the ridiculous number of other countries close by that we've never been to. We started last year with India, followed this past winter with Jordan and will spend the first two weeks of summer in China. We seem to be on a Wonders of the World kick lately (Taj Mahal, Petra, Great Wall). It is truly a blessing to be so close to so many interesting places.

But before the bags are packed and the passports are at the ready, we have to finish the year out. The kids have library books to be returned, assessments to be taken, crazy dress theme days to participate in. The year doesn't seem to slow down until it comes to a crashing halt. Guess that is a good thing.

Thanks to Leslie for sending the Shutterfly website thing to us! Not having to handcode all the site features gives me hope I can update it more regularly.