AmyJ’s blog

Last year, after several years of frustration trying to get those blankety blank gingerbread houses stuck together in such a way that they would actually be fit for a gingerbread man to live in, I gave up and we just made gingerbread men and ate them.  It was perfect.  No tears, no waiting for the frosting to finally dry, and I didn't have to find a place to store all the gingerbread houses for the rest of the Christmas season.  I was hoping it would become the new holiday tradition, but apparently the children had other ideas.  They started asking before Thanksgiving if we could please make gingerbread houses again this year.  Gingerbread men to eat, but houses to decorate.  I said okay, because, after all, Christmas is for children and I am a sucker for those adorable faces.  But oh, how I dreaded what I knew was to come. Then my friend Jenna came to the rescue with what to me was a rather radical and avant garde idea.  She said she didn't bother with trying to construct the houses with frosting.  She used hot glue.  I honestly think I heard the Hallelujah Chorus.

Chris was not thrilled with this solution.  He seemed to think it was cheating, that it somehow sullied the sanctity of gingerbread house making.  But I think it had just been too long since we had tried it last, and he didn't remember the awfulness of my temper tantrum when each house I had just put together would slowly fall apart as I was trying to assemble the next one. Oh, I shudder with the memories.  So I ignored his protests and pulled out the hot glue gun.  And it worked pretty well.  There was one roof that slid back off that I had to reglue, and I admit that Sophie's house completely fell apart two days later.  Although I am not sure if that was due to the glue not holding, or the fact that she was ripping off candy rather aggressively at the time of the collapse.  At any rate, I am definitely doing it again next time and hereby recommend it to anyone else thinking of building these things.

 

But of course, for the actual decorating of the houses, I still used frosting.  I mean, the kids were going to want to eat the candy later and I didn't want there to be a chance that they would ingest any glue.  Our cousin Madeleine is here visiting us from the States, so she helped apply frosting on two of the houses, while I did the other two. 

I didn't make Alexandra a house this year, she is still pretty young, and honestly, she was content to just stick a token piece or two on Noah's house.  I take a pretty casual approach to the house decorating.  I don't care if it's aesthetically pleasing to anyone else, as long as the child is happy with his/her creation.  Also, I say absolutely nothing about how much candy disappears into their mouths, rather than on the houses. I set out the full bowls on the table at the beginning, and when the candy is gone, we are done.

Here are some pictures of the kids and their finished creations.

  Sarah immediately started eating hers as soon as it was complete.  I think the frosting is kind of disgusting tasting, but she licked off an entire roof!   Decorating is definitely a messy business.  We were all a bit sticky afterward, and a change of clothing was a priority for all involved.   But we had a great time, and the houses looked very cute all lined up on the side board in the dining room. 

As promised, a little video celebrating the true meaning of Christmas.  In case you were wondering, Alexandra is baby Jesus, but she refused to get in her manger, Noah is Joseph but he wouldn't wear a costume, I am a donkey but you can't really see my costume, Sophie is Mary, Sarah is the angel Gabriel, Maddy (our cousin visiting from the States) is a shepherd and Nick is a Wise Man.  Chris is the heavenly host. :)

Wednesday, December 10, we headed up to the school at 6:30 pm to watch the unveiling of the "Unterstufe" Advent window.  In our area of Switzerland, they lump similar aged school children into one group and give them a name.  Unterstufe for all the Kindergartners through 3rd graders, Mittelstufe for the 4th through 6th graders, and Oberstufe for the 7th through 10th graders.  They will often have activities that are just for all the children in that group.  In this case, the Unterstufe group took time during art lessons in school to craft some decorations for the schools Advent window.  Only the other kindergarten class participated, as Noah's class was busy doing their dwarf thing. :) Which was okay by me.  The teachers and some of the older kids in that group put the display together in front of the large patio window during regular school time .  It was blocked off from inside the school by large curtains, and from outside the window by the metal shutters.

Before the big unveiling, we were treated to a little concert.

  All four classes, along with the teachers, sang several songs, including the Swiss version of Jingle Bells, which has become one of my favorite winter songs.  Basically, it lists all the traditional Swiss Christmas cookies and their respective delicious attributes.  Super fun and easy to learn!  The whole crowd joined in on that one.  Then we walked over to the side patio and waited for them to turn on the lights in the display.  

It always amazes me that year after year, given limited resources and a bunch of squirmy kids to work with, these teachers always manage to come up with truly beautiful designs.  And the kids are always so excited and proud to show you the parts they made.  Sarah and Sophie both made angels this year, and Sophie also got to make a star.  This is Sarah's angel,

Sophie's was too far back to get a good picture of through the crowd.  After we all sufficiently oohed and aahed, we were treated to some delicious warm Punsch and treats baked by the kindergartners.   The Punsch is almost always too hot to drink at first, but this time someone had gotten smart and added a bit of cold water to each glass before serving it.  Made it the perfect temperature instantly, and no burned tongues. Hurray!

Roughly translated this means Advent coffee break.  All the kids in Noah's kindergarten brought home invitations to visit their classroom the week of December 7 through December 11, after 10:15.  I did not go the first day, and Noah was very upset.  I promised him I would come on Tuesday AND Thursday, if he would please just stop crying. He did.:)
This was a new situation for me.  I had never heard of this type of thing and wasn't sure what to expect.  But I dressed up Alexandra in a cute little outfit, got spiffied up myself, and headed over there at the correct time.  This is what greeted me at the door.

  He sewed that hat all by himself, by hand.  Pretty darn cute, isn't it?  The aprons were made by their teacher.  ALL the kindy kids were wearing them.  It was adorableness overload.  But it just kept getting better.  Noah took me by the hand and proudly showed me all around the kindergarten.  This is where his drawer of unfinished worksheets was, this is the binder where his finished work goes, would you like to look at it, Mama?  Here, sit down.  And then he pulled out a chair for me.  What a little gentleman.  He showed me the baby mice in their house, and told me the sad story of how the mama and one died, but the rest are still alive, and another mama mouse adopted all the babies.  We saw them all cuddled up and sleeping together for warmth and comfort, I suppose.  And he showed me where their food was and how every day at snacktime one lucky kid gets to serve the mice fresh vegetables and fruit.

Next, we went over to the play area where he showed me this beautiful nativity scene their teacher had brought in for them to play with. 

The super soft sheep were Alexandra's favorite.  I couldn't decide between the sheep, and the cute little Baby Jesus asleep on a bed of real hay.  The kids were allowed to move the figures around however they wanted, as long as they stayed on the table.  Then the teacher rang her gong, and Noah took my hand and led me to a table to sit down.  There were a lot of parents there, so we didn't have any room in the special "resturant" the kids had set up.  But there were plenty of others in exile, too, so it was very friendly and fun. Each "zwerg" took the drink orders for his or her visitors and then brought it, along with a cookie.  They had several different kinds of tea, as well as an espresso machine for those who wanted something a bit fancier.  I ordered peppermint tea, knowing it was Noah's favorite.  He and Alexandra drank most of the tea, and we broke the chocolate cookie in three pieces, so everyone got a taste.  When all the parents were finished drinking, eating and chatting, the zwergs cleared away the dishes, washed them, and returned them to their special spot in the restaurant.  They may not be learning in the traditional way, but they are definitely acquiring lots of useful knowledge!

We were then treated to a little concert.  All the zwergs gathered together, Frau Huber got out her guitar and they sang us a couple of Christmas songs.  Don't you just want to squeeze them all?

After the singing was over, the children could show us around some more, or just hang out with us.  We stayed for quite a while, playing in the sandbox, coloring, and petting the mice. 

But eventually I had to leave in order to get home in time to make lunch.  It was a really fun visit, and I am so glad I got to experience it.

Sunday, December 6th, was St. Nikolaus Tag in Germany.  Here, though, he is called Samichlaus.  Normally, we go up in the evening for a walk in the forest with the other families, and Samichlaus comes down with his donkeys and Schmutzli, his helper.  Then the kids sing songs or tell him little poems, and he passes out bags of treats to everyone.  But since it was on a Sunday this year, we didn't feel it was appropriate to join in the festivities, so we told the kids that we would set out the empty bags when we left for church and when we came back, he would probably have filled them. 

I had the empty bags, that we reuse every year, all ready to lay out as we walked out the door.  But imagine my complete and total surprise when I heard the kids screeching with delight already.  Sarah opened the door to get her Sunday shoes, (we have a really nice shoe cabinet in the house, but with so many people all the shoes don't fit, so some are left outside the front door on the landing) and found that Samichlaus had already come! 

There were 5 golden plates filled with all the usual goodies.  He even brought them little chocolate figures of himself.  What a wonderful, fun surprise.  We brought the plates into the house, and then went to church all excited about our fun discovery.

Thank you, Samichlaus, for the wonderful treats!  Since it was Fast Sunday as well, the kids ate many of their goodies for lunch. 

The next day they took whatever was left of their Grittibaenz and ate them for Znueni at school.  Grittibaenz are what they call the bread man you see on the right of the plate.  It's made from a slightly sweeter Zopf dough and sprinkled with sugar chunks.  I know, it looks like pretzel salt, but I promise, it's just sugar.  In their Advent calendars, the girls got Samichlaus ponytail holders, and wore them to church. You can see on in Sophie's hair. I couldn't resist, they were just too cute, and the beards are sooo soft!  (I am very much a tactile person.)

Aack!  I totally forgot about Sarah's ballet performance.  Probably since it occurred in the middle of all the Thanksgiving hustle and bustle.  Her teacher wanted to organize a little recital so that the students could show off their skills, and the doting parents and grandparents could "ooh" and "aah" as much as their little hearts desired.  It wasn't a big production, no fancy costumes or anything.  Although there were some cute skirts she had the girls put on over their regular leotards, and if they wanted to put on a little makeup they could.  Also, their hair was supposed to be styled a certain way, depending on which dance they were in.

Sarah's ballet teacher combined it with a piano recital from her friend's music students.  In fact, some of the numbers had the ballet students dancing to music the piano students were playing.  That was very nice.  Because of the larger group, the recital was held at a school a few towns over that had a nice stage and good sized auditorium.  Unfortunately, there were more fans than at first supposed, and it ended up turning into standing room only accomadations.

We got there early because Sarah needed to come 45 minutes before the recital started to practice and get into costume.  Chris was coming straight from work and meeting us there.  The kids and I picked out awesome seats and everyone was behaving very admirably.  To fill the waiting time, I asked each child what they wanted for Christmas and wrote it down on my special list.  It was actually kind of fun.  Chris arrived about 10 minutes before the scheduled start time and everyone was happy to see him, of course. We thought it was a bit strange that there were so few people in the audience, the Swiss are known for being super punctual, and it was cutting it pretty close.  We didn't get too concerned when the dancing didn't start right on time, everything Sarah's ballet teacher does seems to start late.  But we couldn't figure out why this one couple was still setting out more and more chairs, when it was obvious not that many people were there to watch the performance.

The dancers, Sarah included, finally came streaming in to the auditorium, stepped up on to the stage and did their cute little Hungarian folk dance.  We thought it was so sad, that not many people had come to see it.  When they were finished we all clapped extra loud to make up for the strange silence from the other parents and the general emptiness of the room.  Then the kids all filed out and we waited for the older dancers to come in... and waited...and waited.  The kids were starting to get a bit antsy at this point, so I finally leaned forward to look at a piece of paper lying on a chair that had the start time written on.  Yeah, the performance actually started an hour LATER than what we originally thought.  What we had just clapped our hearts out for was the dress rehearsal.  And people weren't late, we were just super, super early.

The kids all groaned when I informed them it would be another 45 minutes before the actual show started.  They had had enough, had already seen Sarah dance, had even clapped for her, and wanted nothing more than to go home, have dinner and go to bed.  After a few whispered parental conferences, we decided we would all go home, and I would come back to watch the REAL dancing and bring Sarah home.  Sophie decided she wanted to come with me to support her sister.  After grabbing a snack at home for her, we drove back to the school.  Only now there was no parking, no empty chairs and we ended up standing in the very back for the entire thing.

Still, Sarah was adorable, we got to see an older girl from our ward also dance, and it gave Sarah a taste of how amazing it will be when she can do some of the fancier moves.  At the end of the whole thing, Sima (the ballet teacher) and the music teacher passed out roses to all their students and the audience clapped for each child individually. 

Took forever, but the kids ate it up. She is a little blurry, but you can see how Sarah made sure to always look and smile right at the audience as she went around the circle! :)

Wednesday night, Chris announced that he was taking Friday off of work and we were going shopping.  Well, all right!  That sounds like my kind of fun.  We got the kids all ready for school and out of the house, then enjoyed a leisurely breakfast with just Alexandra and us.  Then we headed out to the town of Spreitenbach, also known as the home of my very favoritest store, IKEA!

For the past 8 months I have been redecorating my craft room.  Well, in my head at least, I have.  First I tried to find more furniture that matched the beautiful mahogany pieces I had gotten from a friend who was moving.  Alas, no luck.  I even scoured the expat forums, where people try and get rid of stuff before heading back to the States.  I also stalked the Swiss version of Goodwill, since it seems to be mostly old(er) people who have that type of furniture.  Don't worry, I am totally okay with being old-fashioned.:)

At any rate, since I couldn't find more matching pieces, I decided to go with something completely different.  See, I have these two really nice, super sturdy bookcases that hold all my scrapbook albums, most of my paper and my stamps.  They are a light grey, and there is also a worktable that matches them.  I also have a white worktable, and then these two dark mahogany pieces.  I just wanted it to match a bit more, be more inviting, since we spend a lot of time there as a family, when the kids are playing and I am crafting.  Also, it is our guest room when we have guests, and I wanted it to be a more pleasant place for them to sleep.  Perhaps it would encourage them to come more often and stay longer.

The ceiling in that room is made of wooden beams, not too dark, but not light either.  So I decided that all mahogany furniture would be too dark and oppressive in there anyway.  so then I wanted to have everything be either white or the light gray.  I would really prefer all white, but those bookshelves are just so well-built, it would be a crime to get rid of them, so I compromised. But getting rid of the mahogany stuff, meant I would need to replace it with something white that could hold a lot!  I am blessed to have a lot of crafting supplies, some of my friends call it my store.  It isn't as packed as other rooms I have seen, but still, I have the supplies to make pretty much anything I want to.  So storage, but pretty storage was a high priority.

And of course, town dump day was a couple months ago, so that means everything that had been stored in the old furniture was now lying on the floor in semi-tidy piles, getting stepped on, rifled through, and just not looking nice at all.

Well, at IKEA I found just what I wanted, the Expedit bookshelf.  They come in several different sizes.  For where I wanted to put mine, I would need the one that was four squares down and four squares across.  They didn't have any of the woven boxes I wanted to put in the individual cubby holes, but I can go back and get those next week.  It was pretty heavy to carry up all our stairs, 4 flights total to get up to the craft room. Chris must really love me. :)  We put it together that afternoon, in a surprisingly short amount of time. 

And then I got to have fun loading it up, and getting stuff off the floor finally.  My goal is to get it all in shipshape before our cousin Madeleine comes to stay for three weeks over Christmas.  I will post after pictures when I reach my goal.  

Every year our town has a fun little tradition to help count the days until Christmas.  They send out a sign up sheet sometime in October and who ever wants to can volunteer to decorate a window or part of their house for Christmas.  Then they assign each person a day, and at 6:30 every evening, that window gets lit up and stays lit up until Christmas. We meant to sign up this year, but then things got really hectic for me, so we missed the deadline.  But several other people in our building signed up to do a window together, and were assigned the date of December 2. 

The kids were really excited to be there at the unveiling, there was going to be carol singing, warm wassail and cookies.  Unfortunately, it was also right during swimming lessons.  They were so disappointed, that I made an executive decision to skip lessons for that night.  Hurray!  They had been playing in the snow all afternoon, and didn't come in until it was completely dark outside.  I had them all hop in the shower, as sledding is sweaty business, and then they automatically got dressed in their pajamas to eat dinner.  Well, the window unveiling was outside, so this presented a small problem.  We ended up putting their snow pants and jackets on over their pajamas and going downstairs just before the festivities started.

Our neighbor, Herr Gut, plays in a band, so he had his electric guitar and amplifier set up outside to provide accompaniment to the carol singing.  Our little neighbor, Laura (age 9) also had her clarinet out and played along.  It was very nice.  We all cheered when the lights were turned on the display, it was so pretty!  Although, it wasn't technically a window.  Instead they had decorated the bushes, tree and grass area next to our building.  It was very well done, though.  And the fact that they were out there setting it all up during the snow blizzard the day before made it extra impressive. Why I haven't taken a picture of it is beyond me.  Must get out and do that today.

We munched on cookies, drank our wassail and chatted with the neighbors.  Some of the kids also borrowed our sleds and made use of the sledding track our kids had built that afternoon.  I just love our little town and the opportunities they provide for people to come together and get to know one another better.  And it strengthened my resolve to sign up next year to do a window for sure.  I am already planning the design in my head...

As in years past, we celebrated Thanksgiving by taking the kids out of school for the day and inviting the missionaries over to eat with us.  We used one of the two joker days each child gets every school year.  These are basically "mental health" days.  You can use them whenever, for whatever, as long as you give the teacher a week's notice.  I didn't write the reason on the notes I had the kids give to the teachers, but they are a smart bunch.  When the kids left on Wednesday, most of the teachers wished them a Happy Thanksgiving! :) 

All morning long they would ask me, "If I were at school, what would I be doing now?"  A day off is so much more enjoyable when you know every one else is sitting there taking a math test, or whatever.  The kids didn't just play around all morning, though.  They were each taking turns helping me out in the kitchen.  Nicholas broke up all the bread into tiny little pieces for the stuffing.  Sophie assembled all the cute turkeys and glued them on our napkin rings.

  She and Sarah set the table and decorated the fireplace.  Noah helped me make the rolls.  And all the kids took a turn making the pull aparts.  Some people call this monkey bread, but we call it pull aparts, because you have to pull them apart to eat them. :)

A few days before Thanksgiving, we got a call from the missionaries wanting to know if they could bring an investigator to eat with us.  They were meeting him for an appointment earlier in the day, and since he was an American, living alone in Zurich, they felt bad that they would be leaving to go eat a nice meal and he wouldn't.  I am embarrassed to admit that I did hesitate just a tad before saying yes.  The whole reason we do Thanksgiving alone and not with the big group from church is because we like it to stay intimate.  But, really, how horrible would I be to say no?  Hector ended up being a very nice man, and a very attentive audience for all the children's antics.  He was missing his large family, full of nieces and nephews back home in America, and our kids helped fill that void.  Of course, I had to seat him next to me, as Chris isn't the best at small talk with strangers. :)

 

We bought our turkey in Germany, as usual.  The store we go to has these giant huge turkeys, plus geese, duck, and rabbit for your holiday dining pleasure.  But what I love is they also have these special "baby" turkeys, that are pretty much the size of a large chicken; a bit over 5 pounds.  Perfect for my family of non-turkey eaters.  It isn't Thanksgiving without turkey, but only two of us really like it, and two others will have a small piece or two.  What my family loves is ham, so we always have that as well.  But it was still big enough that there was enough for all our guests, and a bit of leftovers. 

Having guests also meant that I could go ahead and make three different kinds of pie instead of just two.  No one but me likes pecan pie, but if there are other people willing to help me eat it, I will go ahead and bake one.  The missionaries brought over some homemade brownies as well, which was perfect.  Only Nick eats pie out of all my children, but they scarfed those brownies down lickety split!

 

Elder Schulte passed out different colored feathers and had us all write two things we were thankful for on them.  Then we glued them to his hand drawn turkey and hung it up.  The kids also played a wild game of Pin the Hat on the Turkey, courtesy of Aunt Liz.  It was originally hanging up on the wall near the table, but after the second kid crashed into the corner trying to manouver the turn around the chairs, we moved it to a different spot.

 

It took me the next two days to completely recover and clean up from all that cooking, but it was totally worth it.  And the best part?  There is still cranberry ice in the freezer to snack on.    

After my adventures at the airport, I rushed home, where Chris had been hanging out with Alexandra.  We drove him down to the train station, and then went to the department store in town.  I let her pick out two different packages of big girl underwear, and then we went home to start potty training.  Now, it's a pretty big decision for a little girl to decide what her first pair of underpants are going to look like, but I think she did a great job.  She chose some super pink, super frilly Barbie ones.  That's my girl!

The trusty training potty had been hanging around in the playroom for a while.  Every time I would see Baby near it, I would tell her that she was going to learn to go potty like the big kids soon.  So it wasn't a complete surprise, when I carried it down to the living room and told her that she wasn't going to wear diapers anymore.  As happened with every child previously, the first day went great because it was new and exciting.  The second day was a bit tougher, with many accidents and her sometimes refusing to sit on the potty at all.  But that is where the bribes/rewards came in.  If she sat on the potty, didn't have to do anything, just sit on for longer than 10 seconds, she got a treat.  If something went in the potty, she got double.  Works like a charm, every time.

I try not to leave the house the first few days, so that there is less chance of an accident and less temptation to just put her back in diapers. It is a short sacrifice with a huge payoff.  By the fourth day, we were out running short errands and she was officially potty trained.  Take that, giant diaper corporation.  You have officially lost a customer FOREVER!