Laowai

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I must be making something or I’m not happy. For some reason I got a bee in my bonnet about cardboard dollhouses this week. I made two for the girls. And then, since we haven’t been using the space much, we transformed the area under Bea’s bed into Playmobil and dollhouse land.

This was all an elaborate exercise in laundry avoidance.

It’s that time of Fall when all the kids carve a turnip and parade around town singing a turnip song.

Here are the turnips (or the Rabelichtli) in progress. I’m getting better at carving them. It’s different than doing a pumpkin – it’s all about making the shapes look good when the candle is inside and then the whole thing glows. Some of the parents make some really spectacular ones with little swiss houses, trees, angels – all sorts of traditional motifs.

Here’s Bea with her class and her teacher, Frau Rutishauser. They’re getting all organized for the parade.

This gives you an idea of what the turnips look like all lit up. It’s really magical to see all the kids walking along in the dark chilly night. They are all quite proud to be holding their Rabeliechtli.

Me too says Claire.

Each year when we carve pumpkins I think of this photo:

This was Bea’s reaction right after I cut open her pumpkin and she glimpsed the goo inside. Seems like yesterday.

Someday we will go trick-or-treating like normal Americans. I look forward to that.

Yesterday we were all ready for a busy afternoon. We set out for Claire’s dancing/singing class and then we were going to go trick-or-treating on our way back. Then Bea started acting quiet on the train ride and she said she was feeling sick to her stomack. Oh no – that’s one of my greatest fears – a sick kid on a train. She was looking pale and even shaking a little. So we got off at the next stop and headed for home. She seemed fine soon after we got home but I didn’t feel like getting on the bus to go to the other side of town and it was almost too late to trick-or-treat anyway. Uhg – this is a long boring story. The short version is that we didn’t go trick-or-treating AGAIN even though I was all prepared to do it this year. So I called Brian, who was on his way home from Germany, and asked him to buy some candy. And then we had a treasure hunt with clues that lead to candy after dinner. So even though I had a moment of feeling completely deflated (drama) – the girls were happy.

Herea are the pics – first the carving:

Now they are ready for their little treasure hunt:

CANDY! I don’t think it’s the sugar that makes them crazy – it’s just the anticipation of gobs of treats to eat. Claire doesn’t even know what’s happening, but she still bounces off the walls when she hears the (powerful) word – candy. 

I know the weather was conspiring to make Halloween difficult for a lot of people in the US this year. I hope all our much missed trick-or-treaters in Michigan had a fun time.

I finished Bea’s costume the morning of Halloween. I really get a kick out of making costumes for the girls and seeing how much fun they have with them. This one took me a long time to make mostly because I labored over piecing the stripes. I wasn’t sure I had enough fabric until I got it together and then the stripes didn’t end up matching very well. But of course Bea doesn’t mind if her stripes are matched – she had a huge smile on her face as soon as she put it on. My favorite part of the costume are the recycle bin bug eyes – they were all Bea’s idea. 

Here she is – about to take flight – buzzing

…when it’s not bitter cold with gail warnings. We all went to Lausanne last weekend so Brian could run in a marathon. It seems like a lovely town. But, the weather was a bit of a bummer for sight-seeing and a major stress for people who were about to run 26 miles in it. It started snowing and blowing the night before the race and poor Brian was really worried he would freeze his hiney off. It was too cold and blustery to do much – I didn’t even feel like getting the camera out because I was too busy jamming my hands into my coat pockets. The girls didn’t mind hanging out in the hotel room while Brian was running and running and running… We went down and met him after he finished. Watching people just after they crossed the finish line was grim. He did it! But his whole body was shivering and his teeth were chattering for a long time. 

Claire’s quilt is done. It went together pretty quickly. I’m looking forward to having a cute little twin bed to put it on.

Jennifer wrote an article for a Dow Corning blog – about Grandma Dice and her innate conservation sensibility. Jennifer points out that while there has been a trend to use re-usable grocery bags lately, Grandma has been re-using plastic bags since they were invented. It occurs to me that it was a bit of a conflict of interest when Grandpa worked at Dow and and Grandma was washing her (Dow) Ziploc bags to use them over and over. Ha. Jennifer makes lots of other good points about how Grandma and her generation got a lot of things right when it comes to conserving and recycling.

You can read it here. 

Here are Grandma and Grandpa celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary. Wow – now that is sustainability!