Sunday night, getting all the stuff ready for school the next day, I was met with protests.

“but Moooooom!  We don’t have school tomorrow.” What?  No school. Why?  What was going on.  Were they sure?

“When we left on Friday they all said: ‘frohe ferien.'” Um.  Frohe ferien = happy holidays.  Oops. I googled the school calendar & sure enough the kids have not one, but two(!) weeks spring break. I’d already been disheartened that the little ones spring break was one week, and Cole’s was another week.  Now, suddenly, I have three weeks of back-to-back spring breaks with kids underfoot.  And no car.

Luckily I’ve got only a week, and then Soren is here!  He’s worked very hard at his new job, working many extra hours, even Saturdays to get his warehouses up-to-par, even over-par.  He’s made a great impression on his bosses & they’ve given him a little comp time.  So of course he’s coming here! God I’ve missed him.  I hate that my big boys are so far away.

In the  meantime, boxes from home make up for missing the actual people just a little.  That and Skype.  Yesterday a box came from my mom, De Oma.  Filled with brandnew “man” socks for Dane (hint: “man” = argyle in Dane-speak).  Two new sweaters and lots & lots of rocks.

Why rocks you ask?  Because my kids love rocks.  They collect rocks.  When we go somewhere with souvenirs, my kids look for shiny rocks and pick those out.  Amazingly they remember each rocks origins.

“That one came from Columbia.  This one from the Grand Canyon. I got that in Lake Tahoe. I got this at Dan Nicholas park.”   It all started with Soren, around age 4, and has since blossomed into a small mountain of rocks.  My mom has the vast majority of the mountain at her house, it was one of the things we left behind when we moved to Germany.  A mountain of rocks is not conducive to making weight when filling your shipping container.  But the pleading for Sorens’ rocks has gotten to record levels, and my mom has started stuffing handfuls of rocks in her packages.  The thing is, Soren doesn’t know his valued collection has slowly been making its way to Europe.  I just know he’ll notice next week.  I imagine he’ll pack them right back up and take them home to California.

27MAR13