Birthday Boy

"Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to You..." (I have a video of all of us singing, but believe me, you don't want to hear this, pre-coffee and all.)

YAY! I got the Ghost Pirate Ship! (And yes, Finn thinks those glow-in-the-dark zombie pirates are cute.)

Engineer at work

Two engineers at work, trying to figure out how to build the Pirate Ship.

It took a while...

Finn is FIVE! He had a wonderful birthday. Oma and Opa were here (arrived Sunday and stayed until Wednesday), and Finn got a lot of the things he wished for. We're no doubt doing our part in keeping a certain German toy manufacturer in business. :)

After we sang Happy Birthday to the birthday boy and all his presents were opened and assembled we had breakfast and then headed to Finn's Paradise, aka Playmobil Fun Park. I'll post some pictures of that later.

Summer?! Helloooo? Can you hear us?

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The other day they said on the radio that the temperatures we are experiencing this August are actually not all that untypical. It's just that July was so hot, that now August seems like fall in comparison. Whatever. Poor Finn was getting worried that we somehow, inexplicably, have missed his birthday - which he knows is in the summer. When I told him that his birthday is, in fact, next week, he said, "Yay, and it will be summer then!" Hopefully! At least the coming weekend is supposed to be really nice and warm.
And what's up with all the rain? You know SOMETHING is not right when the mall play place won't take any more kids (guess others had the same idea), so you take your kids to the shoe store and there are four shelves with sandals on sale, but all the rubber boots are sold out. And guess what we wanted to buy? Exactly.
On top of that, both kids are still battling the colds they came down with after that super-rainy/cold Zurich triathlon experience. Now that Finn's cough is finally gone he says his ear hurts. Great. Have I mentioned it's also incredibly windy out lately?
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So, we've been spending quite some time at home. We do crafts, color, play, read, watch movies, cook, bake, make incredible messes (them) and clean them up (mostly me). On a typical day Lily manages to hurt herself spectacularly at least once and has a couple brilliant ideas. Like yesterday, she strapped herself into her doll stroller, fell over backwards and hit her head on the tiles so hard it shook the house. Which didn't stop her brother from doing the same thing, only he fell forward and almost knocked his teeth out. As for a brilliant idea, while I was finishing my lunch she and Finn went upstairs to play at the playmobil table, which was all fine and dandy until I discovered they were silently filling the playmobil pond and swimming pool on the table with water from the bathroom. Thankfully, I can always call Neil and talk to a reasonably sane person for a while. Of course now that our phone is oozing the grape juice Finn poured over it (it's working and I won't stretch my luck trying to rinse it) I don't talk for long. Too sticky.
And then, at the end of a long day, while Neil is upstairs wrestling Lily into her pajamas, I sit on the couch enjoying one of the kids' popsicles, trying to ignore the battle that is raging upstairs. But, unbeknownst to me, around the corner, Big Blue aka The World's Most Ungraceful Cat is treading on forbidden territory - the dining room table - resulting in a previously half filled water glass now shattered in a million pieces on the floor. One of which will be found by my bare footed daughter the next day, despite all the late night cleaning efforts.
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That's when I feel like this:

I laughed so hard when I saw this the first time, and I still do. The picture is titled, "Give Mom the break she deserves today - Happy Mother's Day", and you can find it here http://www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com/
If you ever need a laugh look at the family photos there. It's therapeutic, as it makes your own family seem almost normal in comparison. Almost.

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BUT - when the weather is nice there is no stopping us, we're outside most of the day. Like today. We met with some of our English playgroup friends at a café where the kids could play outside and bounce on an in-ground trampoline, and we had such a nice morning. It's right downtown, but I usually park further away, because I like walking and so do the kids. I'm amazed time and time again how many wonders there are in the world when you see it through the eyes of a 3 or 4-year-old. Although I admit I sometimes fail to see the wonder in a pile of dog poop on a leaf. Oh well.

Finn hanging out with little Sophia this morning

Nationalities present: Australian, British, US American, Canadian, German and all kinds of underage dual citizens. A lovely bunch of ladies!

There was this market thing going on, so we couldn't see the trampoline very well from where we were sitting. Which in my case wasn't a problem, because I could always HEAR Finn and Lily. On our walk to town we had bought drinks at a store and the kids picked water bottles with a "whistle cap". The.greatest.thing.ever if you ask them, and I promptly prohibited usage at or near our table. Other trampoliners seemed to be a bit annoyed, I wonder why?

On our way back to the car we took the shortcut through the castle courtyard. Finn loves that you have to go down a ramp and through a door in the wall, and insists there are dragons in the dungeons down there. Which makes Lily hold on a wee bit tighter to my hand. And then the cannons - can't pass those without sitting on them.

A nice side effect of all that walking and bouncing. But Lily is NOT napping, no, she wasn't tired AT ALL, she just needed to rest her eyes for a bit. :)

Thus restored, it's on to better and bigger things - the running bike!

She wanted nothing to do with that thing for the longest time, but since Jana spent the weekend at our house (a post for another day) that's history! Once she set her mind to it Lily figured out how to ride it very quickly. Her balance is improving every day and she is getting pretty fast.

And Finn loves his little bike now. Again, he didn't want to ride it for months, but now he loves it. He has learned how to get going by himself (he needed some help with that until a few days ago), and even rides it down ramps and steps now.

Finn telling Blue about the great day he had. (And letting Blue lick his hair in return, eew.)

School's out for the summer!

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Hi! It's me, Finn - just thought I would update you on what we are up to these days. We both had our last day in Kindergarten and Zwergelpark (preschool and playschool) on July 29th and now Lily and I will be home with Mama until mid-September. It's great! We are doing lots of fun things, like

painting

making cool animals with iron-on beads

or cutting out pictures, coloring in our coloring books, and of course playing with our toys.

Sometimes we dress up to go out, but we have to plan in a bit more time to get ready because Lily wants to do everything "BY HERSELF"! She is such a big girl (she thinks).



I really like playing with the little lego pieces for big boys now, so Mama had a great idea. She took Lily and me to IKEA where she bought some things and then Papa and I went to work! We built a lego table for me!

I love it!


And Lily got this big wooden table for her playmobil. It is so much nicer than playing on the floor.

Sometimes Lily needs a little snooze during the day, but most days she doesn't nap anymore. I think Mama likes it, because now Lily goes to bed with me and is not up until 10 or 11 at night.

I love staying home with Lily and Mama. I can sleep in and we can all have breakfast without Mama telling me to hurry up all the time.

Most mornings we go to our little bakery after breakfast. Mama buys fresh milk and bread and we ALWAYS ask her to buy us candy. Maybe if we just keep asking she will say yes one day?

The other day we were SOOOO hungry after that LOOOONG walk ALL the way to the bakery, so we HAD to have a snack. Lily picked a wiener and I asked the lady for a bun with salami. She put LOTS of slices on, yummy!

If the weather is nice we spend a lot of time outside. We love our little sandbox!

Sometimes I help Mama with the laundry, she really likes that.

One of our favorite treats: popsicles!

Lily still loves her tricycle.

And I often help Papa spread out that leaf pile with my tractor. :)

We've had quite a bit of rain and cool weather lately, and even Mama refusing to fill up the pool for us can't stop us from going for a swim! Who says you can't have fun in a rainwater puddle?