Things I'll miss....

We are now officially in the Big Smoke,  Frankfurt am Main. We are enjoying city life again. During the move in week (without kids) we went to 3 different restaurants - Vietnamese, Indian and Italian. It was such a treat.

In the last 7 days we had 3 sets of visitors, so were able to discover the city with them. We are 7 tram stops from the main shopping street. There is a great food market there with all sorts of international goodies. I am so excited to go shopping for some special treats.

Although we are excited to discover our new home town there are thing we will miss about leaving our lil' village - Estebrügge.

• Going to buy milk at the corner shop (10 metres from our front door) and coming back 15 mins later after chatting with several people. It was almost impossible to pop in and out :-)

• The heard of sheep 5 mins walk from the door step.....although I suspect Goldie misses them more than we do. She would kiss them through the fence.

• Giving the "wave or local village salute" to every other car that drives down the street, as you know who they are. 

• Knowing your kids can walk or ride to a friends house or after school activity in realtive safety. Everyone is watching.

• Bridge to Bridge - its just over a 2km walk and it needs its own post one of these days.

• The beautiful black Galloway cows - that we then purchased later for the BBQ. Always good to know where your meat comes from!

• The Este moods and the distinct seaonal changes.

• The local wildlife (and the local kids!). We saw baby ducklings and deer on a regular basis.

The following is one of my favourite photos. I recall it had been raining constantly the whole day. As soon as there was a bit of sun we left the house to take the dog for a walk. It was a stunning afternoon as the sun pushed its way through the receeding clouds.

Most of all we will miss the friends we made. But never fear, the Estebrugger Market is next weekend! We are travelling north to see friends and have a fun weekend. Our guest room was well tested in the last week, so we hope to see some of them down south for some Apfel Wine and Grune Soße - the local specialities.

A rose by name and nature

The roses have bloomed! There are some spectacular examples as we stroll through the village. There were several months of expectation with buds and small bits of green popping up. But now the place is a veritable forest! The barren grey landscape that we walked for months and months is completely transformed.

This is Sabines house with the most enormous climbing rose covering the front of the house.

Its almost 3 stories high and seems to be too heavy to be clinging onto the house but somehow it is hanging in there!

I imagine this was once the front door but now a lovely garden display with very full pink roses climbing each side framing the door nicely.

Hard to capture, but this is part of more than 10 metres of rose bushes growing along the side and fence of this house. Just stunning. Something to put on smile ones face each day ;-) ....even if we are still waiting for a fully fledged summer to arrive.

Visitors

The Aussie Oma and Aussie Opa recently visited. This meant on-tap babysitting. Perfect when you have 3 unplanned visits to the dentist the week they are here ;-(

Our kids relished the time. They were "warmed up" with so many presents from every relative in Australia that you could have mistaken it to be Christmas at our place.

On the last afternoon there was a rush of photo taking. The evidence follows....

I draw your attention to the top left of the garden in the photo. It is a rather large zucchini plant that has about 15 flowers, so we are looking forward to 1001 things to do with zucchini in the next couple of weeks!

M and Aussie Oma above and with Aussie Opa below.

A family picture above. And with the help of neighbour Sabine we managed to get a photo of us all together...although with kids and animals you are never quite sure how it will turn out. Goldie was determined to be in the photo, even if we saw her least attractive side below.

Ami shows her style with a special hair clip from Aussie Oma!

"A" hangs out with Aussie Opa. The animation in her face is due to the fact that she is trying to scare away the monster (Papa Ron) with the mouse attachment of her kiddies computer.

COOL - we zapped him!