Laowai

I’ve been thinking a lot about Bea starting school while sewing her penguin backpack. It’s going to be a big change! She will go every morning and also Monday afternoons. We went for a school visit last week and it’s a charming little school with only two kindergarten classes in the building. She’ll eventually be walking to school all by herself – I hope her penguin will keep her company.

The pattern is from the book Little Things to Sew by Liesl Gibson. Bea wanted the penguin backpack as soon as she saw the picture in the book. Instead of sewing the straps I cheated a little and used the straps and hardware from an old backpack that I picked up at our brocki (like a Goodwill store). 

We’ve been spending many afternoons at our strandbad lately. Lots of splashing around in the pool, wrapping wet little bodies in towels, taking ice cream breaks and keeping track of sand toys. We come home with that sun block covered and sun kissed feeling skin. 

Claire thinks it feels great to get naked after our afternoon of fun in the sun.

And then it’s back to work – dirtying the windows with those sweet, grubby little hands.

The aftermath of patriotic cookie making.

Hope you have a great day in the USA!

This week Brian is back in Evanston for some meetings. It’s always hard when he’s gone and it makes me wonder how single moms manage. I fluctuate between enjoying the evenings to myself to tearing my hair out because the girls seem to be smothering me. Hmmm… funny the word mother is inside the word smother. 

Anyway we haven’t had a bad week really – we just look forward to having Brian back soon. Here’s what we’ve been up to.

Lately I’ve been hanging a few clothes out on a clothes line – mostly because I feel like our dryer is hard on our clothes and it’s quicker to hang them out. Bea was fascinated and hung a bunch of wash cloths and dish towels out the other morning. The cool air in the mornings has felt so nice this week. Maybe I hang clothes out there just as an excuse to be outside.

The grapes are growing. And hollyhocks too.

Watching the sea lion show at the zoo with some new friends. Claire fits right in with those beautiful blondies.

I’ve wanted to make a long pretty night gown for Bea for a while. This is what I came up with using an old flannel sheet and a new online pattern. It has one pink button on the back.

We got to see some ugly ducklings.

Tomorrow we will be making some stars and stripes decorations and getting out our American flags. Have a happy Fourth of July.

Bea loved these stepping stones that were near a restaurant where we ate this weekend. They reminded me of the stepping stones in the pond around the Alden B. Dow home.

 

We seem to see lots of interesting things in the sky here. More than just mountains, we can regularly see hot air balloons. We saw that medical helicopter. And we saw some cool paper lanterns that had a little flame inside the other night. 

And now we can add really cool Swiss military jet planes too our list. They put on a show over lake Zurich yesterday and it was so cool. The big sound made me go out on the patio and look into the sky. For more than a half hour six planes looped and zoomed all around us in formations. It felt like they were putting the show on just for us.

It was pretty difficult to get any good pictures of them – but we did get this picture of Bea in her interesting jet plane watching outfit. Ha.

That’s what my kids are consuming this week.

I’ll explain…

We have three doors out onto our patio and I like to have them open in the summer. Especially on cool summer mornings, I like to let the house fill with fresh air. Well Claire has learned to climb the step and go out onto the patio. It’s not dangerous – there aren’t any stairs or places for her to fall. It’s just that she has developed a taste for dirt. Twice now, I’ve looked away for a couple minutes and found her out there shoving handfuls of dirt from a pot into her mouth. Would you like some water to wash that down Love?

Yesterday we went swimming. We always have to buy an ice cream after swimming for a while. They have a big poster with all the ice cream novelties – I let Bea choose what she wants. Yesterday she wanted to try the Coupe au Kirsch. Kirsch means cherry – I know that – looks like a cup of cherry ice cream. So she ate more than half of it before I took a taste. And good God I said -that’s ice cream with cherry liquor! Oh golly – what kind of Mom am I? It never occurred to me that there would be alcohol in there. The people at the ice cream counter must have thought the Coupe au Kirch was for me. Bea seemed fine and after a while my friend and I had a really good laugh.

Here they are dirt and liquor and all.:

Today we went to the Tour de Suisse. It was the last stage of the race –  a time trial through the town of Schaffhausen. There’s something about being there so close to all the people that you see on tv. As we made our way to the finish area we spotting Mark Cavendish on his way to the starting line, some mechanics were walking around with official badges carrying some really expensive looking wheels. And we saw lots of riders warming up outside their fancy team buses. There’s a great buzz of anticipation in the air. So fun! We settled into a good spot about 400 meters before the finish line. Bea looked forward to getting free stuff like hats and cow bells from the vendors. And of course we took lots of pictures.

The riders really don’t look as young and fit in person as they do on TV… just kidding. This is a goofy German guy who befriended Brian.

Here are some real riders heading into the finish.

Here’s the big Swiss star Fabian Cancellara – he won the time trial.

Here’s my favorite rider – handsome George Hincapie from the USA.

We were right after a big bend in the road so several bikers nearly ran into us when they went a little too fast into the 90 degree corner. That made it more exciting.

This photo is for Aunt Donna. Christian Vandevelde – another rider from the US.

And Here’s Levi Leipheimer – he won the whole race.

Here come the sweeper truck – the race is over – time to go home.

 

Here’s where we show Daddy how much we love him with an impromptu heart-sprinkle-chocolate-pancake.

Thats a lotta love.