Marlon's 7th tooth and his first 7 steps

It's been a while...
We are now on the beautiful island Maui, Hawaii. Marlon's 7th tooth broke through on our one-year-wedding-anniversary-day and one day later he walked his first 7 steps all by himself. ;-))) The past days he's been kind of lazy, but that's alright. It's been great to stay in one place for a while, now. Espescially because we had to train Marlon to go to sleep without mommy, which works pretty well most of the nights, by now.
Washington was awesome! Seeing so many friends, host family and familiar faces from 1992/93, walking through my old high school and so on! 4 days we spent with my host family, which was great! I so much wish we would have had time to stay longer! My host brother, Scott has 3 kids, by now and my host sister Carrie has a little son, too. Even most of my friends from back then have kids. It's normal of course, but it was so strange in a way, because in my memories they are all around 15 to 18 years old and to me they didn't seem to have changed much, except for the kids part. 4 days we stayed with Sean and Susan Martin, which some of you might have met at our wedding. One day there, they held a nice BBQ for us, where I got to see lots of people from my time back then. Another day we went fishing up in Canada and I caught an unbelievable 20 pound Salmon. Thanks to Sean, who helped me get that thing onto the shore! It was delicious!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Espescially because all the guys that had been fishing there all day didn't catch anything. I call it beginners luck. I had been throwing the rod for an hour already and thought to myself..."just one more time", and then the Salmon bit. Wow! Marlon also loved the stay on Sean's and Susan's farm, because there were chicken, dogs, cats and a horse.
Before we flew over here, we visited Holgi, a friend of mine, in Seattle, who was so kind to share his rather small place with us, his parents and his sister. It was pretty snug, but very nice to see them and spend some time with them. We took it easy, didn't do any sight-seeing, just hung out around the near lake and visited.
Since the 5th of August we're now here on Maui, slowly exploring this polynesian paradise. It can't really be compared to the rest of the U.S..
The water is warm, so we don't need any wetsuits for surfing, we just go in our swimsuits. The waves are rather small, since it is summer and the big waves come during the winter time, which is good in a way. Of course we'd love to see some bigwave action, but then we wouldn't be able to go in the water ourselves.
Juergen has recovered from an injury in his leg. Some surfer ran over him and the fin ripped quite a big hole in his leg, so we had to go to the emergency room and have it sutured. Only for administration we already payed 700 dollars or so. The total will probably be more than 2000 dollars. Isn't that ridiculous? Compared to that, Germany is cheap. So don't comlain... ;-)
Unfortunately I am not able to post any pictures at the moment, because my external hard drive doesn't work in this internet cafe. So I will post them when we are back in Germany. There are also some missing in the previous post.
On the 15th of September we will leave from Honululu, Oahu and make our long way home to good old Germany and look forward to see some of you, again!

ALOHA from the islands of Hawaii!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!