2006 Year in Review

Well, 2006 was a pleasant year for the Ebners. With many of the challenges of moving to a new country behind us, we were able to turn our attention to enjoying our position in the center of Europe, in an exciting capital city with loads of culture and history. We were all relatively healthy, we had a new baby boy and for much of the year a 23 year old Swede as part of our family (see pic. Kids look happy, huh?).

Fritz continued his job with Xerox, working from a (very) little office in our apartment (and occasionally some local cafe hot spots for a change of pace). He likes his work and managed as always to make a valuable contribution despite being so far from his coworkers. To add a little structure and human interaction he took a few German courses during the year.

Jackie continued on as ‘Hausfrau' extaordinaire. She also tried to work on improving her German a little in spare time and did stuff with the kids schools or get some excercise when she could. She joined a Badminton club (which she LOVES) and drank lots of coffee with her local Berlin sister (Sharon). Here she is with sisters Sharon and Sari, (who came to visit a few times).

In September, Grace our oldest, entered the public German American school here (the JFK Schule). It was a big deal, with a sweet ceremony called ‘Einschulung’ (schooling in), where the children parade around with big cones filled with sweets, erasers and the finest german pencils. Grace enjoys school and has a great teacher (Maria). Here are a few shots:

She also learned to swim this year and received her ‘Seepferdchen’ (Seahorse badge) by passing the early swimmer test at the local city pool, very exciting. She trains with the Gymnastik club once a week and enjoys playing with her cousin and best friend Sophie as often as she can.

But reading signs is still not top on her list (says stay off the grass)

Zoe now 3, moved up from her day care group and started at the ‘Kinderladen’ (co-op preschool) that Gracie went to (Murkel- which means something like Rascals in German I've been told). After a month of overlap with Gracie, she was on her own and quickly made some of her own friends there. She mastered skipping this year and rides a bike with training wheels. She loves to tell imaginative stories (like about Dovie her imaginary dog). She has started a sort of collection of little stones, stuffed dogs and unicorns.

Our little man Lukas had his first birthday in May. He now has a mouth full of teeth (finally), walks and is coming along just fine with his training of us so that he gets whatever he wants without using a single word. He is smart, funny and a general cutie pie who gets lots of love and black and blue marks from his big sisters. He LOVES ball and has quite a left foot and he is just starting to get into everything with wheels.

Now for those of you that want the blow by blow and for our own memoris sake, read on....

We took a few nice trips this year and also were pleased to have visitors come to us. We started the year off with Jackie and the kids along with Hanna heading for the sun and fun in California Oma and Sari gave them the grand tour of Palm Desert including; golf cart parade, 70+yr old Rockettes(with a bathroom break intermission), the desert and children's discovery center. After that the crew decended upon Jackie's bro Barry and family in the Bay. It was great to see them again and to also connect with lots of our old friends and neighbors up there. We love all you guys and it was SO good to see so many of you. The weather was great and walk on the beach at Half Moon Bay completed a good trip.
The next big vacations were in the summer. In July we went camping in Italy along with Sharon and her family and a bunch of Germans. Oma flew in from NY and met us there for a week. She was a real trooper and once we found her a 'proper toilet'; she settled in to her campervan and made new friends every day from all over the world (including 'Happy' who took a special shine to her). Lage di Bolsena is the 5th largest lake in Italy and the largest volcanic lake, pure blue water, cheap beer, kids program, sun. The surrounding towns in Tuscany/Umbria made for some fantastic day trips.
In August we roadtriped through Denmark and Sweden to deliver Hanna back home after a year as our Aupair. In Copenhagen, we spent a day in Christiania, a hippy hold out from the 70s and the home of the Christiania bike, worthwhile visit. Sweden was beautiful. A highlight was Astrid Lindgred Welt (the author of Pippi Longstocking and other beloved (to everyone but Americans) childrens’s characters.) It was the complete antithesis of Disneyland, uncommercial, quiet, in nature, everything in Swedish, but the children absolutely loved it. We spent a week with Hanna’s family near Bora(with a little circle over it)s, Sweden. They were great and treated us well. Went in the sauna every day where Hanna’s father Lars whipped Fritz with a wet Birch branch....It was good. On the overnight ferry back to Kiel Fritz saw the awesome site of the huge offshore Danish windfarms.
We took a few small overnight roadtrips, exploring the area around Berlin (Brandenburg and Saxony.) We stayed overnighted at a crazy old castle in the hills near Dresden which had its own authentic little torture chamber with tools, and a list of sentances. It appears that most everything ended with death; but the different crimes and the method were the crux of the sentence.
In March, Jonna, a friend of Hanna’s from Sweden came to visit for the weekend on her way to Spain and ended up staying for 3 months. It wasn’t bad at all, since she is a great cook and we all enjoyed her company.

In March Pete came to visit. Fritz was sick like a dog for the first few days, which was boring for Pete, but afterwards they went on a little road trip to Dresden and saw the flooded Elbe. It was cool, though also caused millions in damage. Just the Lions heads from the Lions that guard the steps to Schloss Pilnitz were visible. The bridges were closed, and we got very lost because lots of the roads were also closed. Zoe asks for Pete often, and sometime says out of the blue ‘I miss Pete’.
Easter we drove down to visit Eric, Heather and the 4 kids in Bad Hamburg and had a cool Easter egg hunt on a friend of theirs’ farmhouse and again on the lawn of the local castle. The kids enjoyed playing and the grownups drank some nice wine. Then in September, Just Eric and Heather came back to run the Marathon. Here is Eric looking like theres no pain.

May came ‘Bowma’, Mary Jo. We had a nice quiet time, took a day trip to Weimar and had our picture taken with Schiller and Goethe.
Sept. along with Aunt Sari's Einschulung visit, Eric and Heather popped through to run the Berlin marathon. We made big signs and cheered them on. It was fun. Grace gave high 5's to a bunch of the runners.
In October Annie and Olesia came to Europe. Jackie met up with them for some good wine and a funky Eastern Block spa experience in Budapest. Then at the end of their trip they stopped through to tour Berlin for a few days.
On 11-11 Jackie’s turned 40. The shock was nicely offset by a weekend getaway alone with Fritz to Riga, Latvia. It’s a cool town and bills itself as the Paris of the eastern block or something like that. They just finished preparations for the 800th year anniversary, so everything was clean and lots of stuff rebuilt from WWII damage.
To end the year we did another trip to the US this time the East coast with a visit to NY, where we caught up with some of Jackie's UB buddies, her parents in Central Valley and Fritz’ mom and our whole crew of friends and family in Rochester NY. We spent about a month trying to settle ourselves on the idea of moving back there in the summer.
Yes, it looks like our little Berlin adventure will be coming to an end in June of 2007 and we will be moving to Rochester where Fritz will continue to work for Xerox. It will be sad to leave behind the city life, and the friends and family that we have here. BUT, we are looking forward to being closer to so many back in the States and to making a go of things in Rochester.
So, if you haven’t visited us yet in Berlin, hurry up! And for the rest of you we will keep you posted on our new information once we get settled. We really do love to hear from all of you when you write, email or call so thanks and please keep it up (even though our correspondences can be a bit time challenged.)
Lots of love to you all,
Jackie, Fritz, Grace, Zoe and Fritz Lukas