Laowai

I’m almost done with Claire’s stocking. I really like having something like this to pick up in the evenings. Busy hands calm my mind.

We’ve been visiting Christmas markets whenever we can.

Brian is excited by the stands with huge chunks of cheese and lots of cured meats.

And Bea is holding his horse on a stick below. When in Rome. She also has her candy cane that cost about $3.60. But how could we not get if for her – it’s all she wanted and she was so excited.

Bea and Claire rode a little train. Claire didn’t enjoy it so much.

We’d like to see this one at night. Those are lights hanging down.

We walked around the city on Sunday. It’s all decked out for Christmas.

You can ride on a tram with Santa:

Bea with her camera face and her traditional, over-priced cookie from the Christmas market. Not sure what the story is with these cookies, but we had to partake. She said it’s so pretty I don’t want to eat it.

Hey where’s my cookie Mommy?

Crazy people doing the Santa swim: 

Making a candle (and another strange face). It’s beeswax so it smelled so good.

The place where you can leave your candle if you want to come back and finish it later. Like candle coat check.

We spent our weekend decorating the house. Bea is so, so excited it’s hard to contain her. Claire is happy just pulling ornaments off the tree.

We seem to be stuck in perpetual Fall here. We can’t see snow in the mountains. It’s warm and sunny. And there were sailboats out on Lake Zurich today. I can’t complain really but, come on, it’s December now. Can’t we get some of that fluffy stuff that has been falling in Michigan?

So we went down to the lake to enjoy the warm weather and feed the ducks today.

Feeding frenzy:

She loves that hat. She’s always finding it and asking me, in her one and a half year old language, to put it on her. Or she’ll try to put it on herself – that’s cute.

This is a crummy picture, but it proves that she is actually, finally, amazingly beginning to walk. That’s a sand box she’s walking in. They cover all the sandboxes here in Switzerland. After this she realized that the lake was just over there and then she was really mad when I wouldn’t let her hang out on the edge of the ledge. 

I feel that Claire has been neglected a bit on the blog lately. I want to take some photos of her cute face and it’s funny little expressions but the days are flying by and she also has a pesky runny nose that doesn’t make for very nice close-ups. I did get a few shots of her today just before we had to dash out and pick up big sister from school. She showed off all her tricks.

Peekaboo

Clapping her hands

Where’s your belly Claire?

Pointing

Waving her hands in the air and just being her super sweet animated self

She’s a bundle of energy and trouble and smiles and I love her.

It’s not been a quiet week because we have been sticking close to home. It’s been a quiet week because I got a cold and lost my voice. I’ve been whispering for 4 days now. Strange. 

We made some salt dough christmas tree decorations. I’ll show you the finished ones soon. Bea asked if we could get a tree this year and since we will be here through the 23rd of December it seems to make sense.