An Unexpected Weekend

As my last post dealt with food different than I would be eating in Des Moines, IA, I felt I should add a quick update based on the conversation I had with my Swiss neighbor. We started talking about our kids and food and I mention how Rachel now rolls her eyes and says "not Chicken again!!!" when she gets to the dinner table. And my friend mentioned how they had 'pferdefleisch' on sale this week at the grocery store and her daughter also is grumbling about it. Well - 'pferde' is horse. Please remember that we are NOT living in North America right now and a whole other realm of meats is enjoyed on this continent. Good old aged beef is hard to come by here - thus the whole chicken issue. I laughed and told her that is probably one meat that I will not eat (not the only one, just for this story's sake) and she smiled and said - because you can ride on it? She seemed to understand that we don't find it an appealing part of our diet for cultural reasons. I'm thinking it would be really tough although it does look nice in the package - many of us reach for it thinking it's a fillet until we see the little animal outline on the label. I'll have to get some pic's of that sometime - handy when you don't know the animal words yet. :)

On to the weekend:
We were supposed to visit some castles in Germany but Kendra decided to submit to the stomach virus going around on Friday. I called Bart and let him know we were definitely not driving to Germany and we got all the reservations rescheduled without any hits to our pocketbook - last minute cancellations can be costly.

This is the dear little one pre-illness posing with one of her weekly masterpieces on the dry-erase board.

So in light of us finding ourselves with 2 days of free time unexpectedly, we did what any normal family might do late fall. We slept in. And then I got to drink my cappuccino in bed - and Bart even brought me a fried egg w/ croissant - IN BED! It was heavenly. I might add that this is Sat. morning, K had been able to sleep thru the night after 12:30am and was on her way to recovery with Mom & Dad asking every half hour if she had been drinking her water. I was not neglecting my sick child for the luxury of breakfast in bed.

Once we roused ourselves, we (Bart) got on to the lurking task of 'winterizing' the rest of the out of doors stuff and then we tackled the storage area and my closet. It feels sooooo good to have all of that done. Bart has a US trip coming up and with the family schedule lately - the timing was good.

But I noticed something as I cleaned out my wardrobes and switched summer things for winter things (as I am vertically challenged, I have to switch things around so I can reach what I want to wear without aid of a footstool) - I have a color issue. You can see below - and don't think I would have shown picture's if I hadn't just cleaned it ALL out (including the big bag to kleidersammlung - think Goodwill). Aside from blue jeans and a few red items - all my winter clothes are shades of brown, green (dark), cream or black. My summer clothes are a little better - I throw some pinks and light greens in.

This was news to me. I thought I wore more colors but I don't. Hmmm. But I like the colors I wear so it really doesn't matter. So much so, that I plan on buying another black long sleeve T in the States in Dec. Because maybe, one of my other 7 black long sleeve T's just might be on it's last legs, or is dressier, or too short, or.... any number of reasons. Bart will now read this and insist I don't need an 8th black T nor a 7th shade of olive green/brown T. But if I can get it cheaper in the US, I should really do it!!! Do I dare count my short slv black T's?

My frivolous paragraph for the day. :)



By Sunday, K was feeling much better and R had enjoyed hanging onto the sicky coattails as they watched episode after episode of 'The Suite Life of Zack & Cody', 'Hannah Montana' and 'That's So Raven.' In fact, if you like, Bart and I could sing any of those theme songs. Yup - and tell you which are our favorite episodes. As if we didn't get enough eye candy via TV, we decided to go to the IMAX in Luzern and catch 2 movies: The Alps and Deep Sea. We reserved our tx ahead as the IMAX is very popular on Sun. (esp. as there are no stores open and the weather is cold).

If you decide to catch an IMAX film and The Alps is showing - it is excellent and gives you a view of why we personally love the mountains in Switzerland. And thanks to the geological expertise of my mom's husband, J, we were able to quickly mouth the answer to the question "what are the rocks/mountains made of in Switzerland?" which was voiced in the movie. That answer being "limestone, limestone, and limestone - oops here's a bit of granite too." My words, not J's - he did impart some good knowledge of such things while he was here so our "tour guide" repertoire in the mountains is improving. Again - excellent film and if you can't get to Switzerland to see them in person, it would be the next best thing.

So the weekend turned out well and K is off to school and I am making lists of things I would like Bart to 'smuggle' back in next week.