Holiday Home & Entertaining Kids

February 11, 2014 - We moved into a temporary home until our apartment in the Stade city centre is made available on March 1^st.  The house is located in a little Holiday village where many Germans go for vacation.  The house is very cute and quaint.  It is located right next to the River Elbe and has a beautiful walking path along the riverside.

The biggest struggle was our inability to communicate both locally and connecting to the Internet.  For a while it was very refreshing to have extra time with no appointment, chore, activity, or responsibility.  We managed to sleep a little longer, get dressed a little later, walk a little slower – all of which I needed a good dose of.   A day consisted of many outdoor walks, childrens puzzles and games with family movie night which always consisted of a Disney movie since that is the only thing we brought in our luggage. But after the first week we were in need of a little more activity and most of all severely missed the communication and dialogue with family and friends.   You never fully realize how alienating it can be at first in a location where you can’t make small conversation with a neighbor or stranger in a store, or tune in to the conversations around you, or read the signs on the streets or papers, or understand what the television channels are saying, or even search the internet for local activities. 

We managed and overall found fun in the small things again.  Not to mention found our way to a few local activities for the kids.

A picture of our holiday home

Kids running up and down the hill

We found a local reptile museum nearby.





The geiko was very photogenic

 

Karis wanted me to take a picture of this lizard to show her best friend Ava since it has a dinosaur look to it.

Cashton loved the turtles

We also went horse-back riding.