Arne's Pre-Birthday Party

Today, we pre-celebrated Arne's second birthday! (It is truly amazing how fast time flies by when you have children... They were just born and tiny babies - whoops - they suddenly are real kids!)
Here is a picture of the lucky birthday lad with his proud parents!

For this pre-birthday party, Anna and us were the only guests, thus making party heads for the kids was not a great effort. I will rethink my ambitions as soon as these parties start to imply more children...
Arne and Anna were enjoying the birthday muffins! ... or better to say, they intensely enjoyed picking and munching the Smarties from the the top the cup cakes!
Anna diligently assisted Arne when he was unwrapping the gift.
The kids soon enough enjoyed the reading of Mira Lobe's "Das kleine Ich-bin-Ich", one of my favorite children picture books, which also became a top-reading book for Anna! (I can highly recommend this lovely book!!!)
And here is the little Ich-bin-Ich waiting to be caressed:
A lot of fun and playing concluded this wonderful afternoon.
Dear Arne, we wish you a happy, happy second birthday! Thanks for being such a wonderful friend for Anna!

Stechlin Lake

Last weekend, Kamil forced us to a rather spontaneous getaway to the Grosser Stechlin See. I truly was not happy about packing us up for a short 2.5-days-trip and leaving my daily routine... But in the end, I was sooo happy that Kamil really insisted on taking us out to a new beautiful place, which we all enjoyed in spades!
After several weeks of really hot weather with temperatures way over 30 degrees Celsius, we savoured the cool and fresh air and winds, which this weekend provided us with! The Grosser Stechlin See is a magnificent lake with incredibly clear water. With almost 70 m depth, it is the deepest lake of the federal state Brandenburg. This blue water was a welcome change to the greenish broth, in which the waters of the Havel have turned due to the high temperatures and the blooming algae...
We spent most of the week-end outside in the nature, where Anna did not stop to discover tremendously interesting things...
A playground with a twisted slide offered endless fun for Anna.
And at our accommodation site, Anna found many new friends, especially Lea, a wonderful and clever 8-year old girl proved to be a fantastic baby-sitter!
Fresh air makes hungry! Though the combination of food (apricots with sausage) seems a bit weird...
Kamil and Anna enjoying their ice-creams.

Grandparents Time

In June, Micha's parents came for two weeks while Kamil was attending a conference and working in Taiwan. Though missing her dad, Anna profited from this long period by getting spoiled by her Oma and Opa.
For example: Computer-addict Opa found a way for Anna to follow the incredibly important Soccer World cup by setting up a TV-channel via the Internet:
Omi never got tired to give Anna a good swing at the Storchenhof in Paretz.
They have a wonderful playground at this renovated farm house with toys, trolleys and bikes, and a bunch of farm animals to see! Here is Anna pretending to be a tough biker...
At the windmill in Werder:

In July, we enjoyed the one-week visit of Kamil's parents, and again, Anna got all the spoiling that is usual and appreciated for grandparents visits.
Dziadzio was reading books to Anna:
Babcia, Dziadzio, Daddy and Anna getting refresh in the water:
Fooling around in the Park:
Thanks a lot to all of Anna's grandparents to spend so much time with her and to give her endless love!

Happy Playmates

We are so grateful that Anna has many wonderful playmates, with whom she loves to play and laugh! Here are two recent pictures of some of them:

(from right to left) Anna and Pia admiring Leon


Anna and her beloved friend Arne:

Anna and Arne are getting along so incredibly well, that we often wonder, what the minimum age for legal marriage in Germany is... ;-)

Marillenknödel

Summer time = apricot time = time for Marillenknödel!!!