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6 months into Germany

Joe and Nora at Maulbronn Monestary
We've been in Germany for just about 6 months now and are finally getting into the swing of things.
 Joe turned 5 last month and we've still been waiting to get him into Kindergarten so he can start learning German before he's in primary school.  He's been practicing here and there with Rachael, but we're worried that not getting him in soon will cause him to struggle catching up down the road.

Outside of the German, Joe's been doing amazingly well with everything else.  He reads at levels way beyond what I'd expect for a 5-year-old and seems to memorize everything he reads and recall it on demand.  Not too long ago he recited an article about Fungi he read in a kids' encyclopedia when we started talking about mushrooms for dinner, which just about floored Rachael and I.  Joe's been reading everything science-related he can find and is particularly fond of tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanoes at the moment.

Nora's starting to string together some basic sentences and can recognize and say most of the basic colors.  She also is turning into quite the princess... she loves wearing tutus, hand bags, and shoes and I can definitely imagine her and Rachael spoiling each other when she gets older.  She's also starting to count and is interested in just about everything.  She'll be turning 2 in just over a month, and I can't believe how quickly the time has flown... I'm sure that 6 months from now she'll be chatting up a storm.  I just hope Joe can handle it...

We've had the opportunity to travel a bit already since we've been here.  We visited Colmar, France a few weeks ago and have a trip to southern Spain booked for Memorial Day.  We also went to Florida for three weeks when I had to make a work trip and we decided to take the kids on a Disney cruise while we were there.  I was very happy to see both kids on the ship... Nora took a liking to Daisy and Donald Duck and Mickey and Minnie Mouse, while Joe couldn't get enough of hanging out in the kids' center and swimming.  It was a wonderful time for me and I'm happy both kids got to go and see their favorite Star Wars characters as well.

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