K's sister, Aunt K, was our first visitor here in Lux! She came to visit us for a week right after Christmas, but that deserves its own post, of course, so I'll hold off on those pics.
This winter has had been filled with lots of snow and sickness. In January, The girls and I each took turns with some kind of nasty sickness that wiped us each out for a few days at a time. When it was my turn to be sick, I could barely get out of bed. When K got home from work, this is how he found us. That's how sick days go for moms! I wonder why this bug spread so quickly through our family?!?!?!
We've all spent lots of time playing in the snow. People keep telling us that this has been on of the snowiest winters they can remember here in Lux. They also say that it is believed that the worse the winter, the better the summer. That's ok by me- I CAN'T wait for summer this year. We do so much walking outside that I'm kind of over the hats, coats, and gloves thing for everyone many times every day. At least the snow provides some free entertainment!
Miss A has hit that magical age when all her teeth start falling out! She's loving it except that she hates the actual pulling them out. She doesn't have much of any tolerance for pain! She doesn't like to actually pull them, so K usually ends up helping out there. She left this last one hanging like this for days, but I think she just lost #5 this past week.
There was a holiday here on the 2nd of February called Lichtmessdag, which in Luxembourgish means something about the day of lights. We wouldn't have known anything about it except that Mr. L made a lantern for it at school and his teacher made sure I knew what was going on. There's some history to the holiday that I won't go into (google it if you're curious), but basically the way it works these days is that you buy these light sticks and then each kid makes a lantern to hang on their stick. They learn a little song, then go knocking door to door. When someone opens the door they sing their song and then the person gives them candy. Basically, it seems like Halloween without costumes, but with singing and lights. Our kids will take advantage of any opportunity to get candy! Miss A didn't learn the song in her class (it was probably assumed all the kids knew it already) and she was pretty worried about it, but Mr.L came to the rescue and taught her what he had learned at school.
There was a week long school break in the middle of February to celebrate Carnival. On the last day of school before the break the kids had parties and got to wear costumes to school. Miss A wanted to reuse her Rapunzel costume from Halloween a couple years ago (and I thought that was a GREAT idea!) and Mr. L wanted to be a superhero.
We celebrated a low key Valentine's Day during the school break. We ate lots of heart shaped food and went to an trampoline jumping park in Germany. We drove home in the middle of a nasty snowstorm, made some heart shaped homemade pizza and Dad even came home early from work.
A couple weeks ago I got to practice being a mom of 5.5. Our good friends took a trip to Italy and we kept their kids for the week. Their girls are 2 and 4. I now know what it feels like to be a mom to kids ages 6, 4, 3, 2, and 1 while also being 30 weeks pregnant (at least for a week) and my hat goes off to anyone out there who really lives that life for real. Man, was I tired at the end of every day! And these Europeans already think I'm crazy going for #4- you should seen some of the looks K and I got when we all went to the grocery store together on Saturday afternoon. Seriously, there were some major double takes and you could see people trying to count them all. Our car was full!
At the end of February we celebrated Mr. L's half birthday, so he is now officially 3.5! We always have a half cake in honor of the half birthday, it's always pretty last minute! The kids try to turn it into more, but I'm just not willing to do more than that! K decorated Mr. L's cake in the few minutes it took me to clear the dinner dishes off the table and he loved it! I don't know why I spend time actually really decorating cakes when you can do something like this and they think its the best thing ever!
The next week we celebrated Miss H's 2nd birthday. Here she is showing us that she's 2. She has an obsession lately with roosters (or at least with the cock-a-doodle-doo sound) lately, so that's what her cake is.
Last week we had gorgeous weather- upper 50's the whole week- and we took full advantage of it. It definitely didn't last because I was outside shoveling snow again this morning. I knew it was too good to be true in March! We spent lots of time at the park last week though.
This past Saturday we went grocery shopping at a new store that just opened right across the border in Germany. Afterwards, there was a sausage stand set up outside the grocery store and people were lined up in droves to buy them! This is a completely normal sight- people seem to go crazy over sausages here. We've had our fair share, but not any since last fall, so we figured why not when they're so cheap? And what else do you do after grocery shopping but grab a sausage and sit on the curb?
This past Sunday in Luxembourg was National Pretzel Day! Who knew, right? I guess the way it works is that on March 10 a boy buys an almond covered pretzel for the girl he likes and gives it to her. She answers him by giving him a chocolate egg on Easter. And supposedly, the roles are reversed on leap year. My boy must like me a lot cause I sure did get a big pretzel!
I'll have to find a pretty big chocolate egg to keep up with him! I don't think he'll mind ;)
And finally, we're still trucking along in the pregnancy. I haven't done a very good job taking belly shots this time around but I feel a little bit guilty about that. Here's one of me today at 31 weeks and a few days.
Thanks for hanging in there with me through this marathon post!
Location:Luxembourg, Luxembourg
