Ostern bei der Oma

Schneebilder

Der Schnee ist da....

Another year ... another bittercold February. After we were lucky for the longest time with a very mild autumn and early winter, the cold has finally hit us. We don't mind so much. We had fun making several snowmen on the one day the snow came (and the next day it was gone anyway).

We skipped Christmas 2011 at Oma's, instead we went to Oma for a long weekend in early December. Christmas we actually spent at home which was nice... we had a tree for the first time ever and Jessie waited patiently for Santa Claus ("ho ho ho" she calls him) to bring her the much awaited pink camera.

Then for New Year we went to Lisbon ... it was beautiful. It was nice and sunny and there was lots to do. We met a very nice couple with a 5 year old girl who became Jessie's friend. They were great, we had a really good time.

Now Rod has been laid off from Rim and spends lots of time at home studying and applying for a new job.

It was quite good in a sense that Rod's mum finally came to visit us from Mexico and of course, Rod had plenty of time for her. It was great and I think she liked it very much. She was here for two weeks at the end of October.

Jessie has just joined the German Saturday School, it was our second session today. We're hoping to make some German friends and hopefully it will give us more reason to speak German.

n to speak German.

Oma war da!

The new house

I haven't written anything about our move, I realized. It was very stressful, as expected, especially with Jessica around (and with Rodrigo deciding that the first thing to disconnect in the old house is the TV). Now it's all done though and we're more or less happy. Unfortunately, there is always something that isn't right. But we've settled well. The new nursery, St. George's Day Nursery in Hanworth, was a bit of a struggle in the beginning. It's just nowhere as nice as the old one. At the end of day 3, however, Jessica didn't want to leave when i picked her up and this Monday she wanted to go although it wasn't even the day to go.
We still go back to our old neighbourhood a lot and meet with friends and go to playgroups. I've arranged that we still meet with her old nursery friends so that she doesn't lose touch completely. However, on Monday we met with her good friend Sasha, but they didn't really play with each other as expected.

Finally summer

It's June and the weather is finally better and we're outdoors more. Last week I was away in New York for a full week, leaving Jessica and Rodrigo all to themselves for the very first time. I think they did well and had a lot of fun. I on the other hand had a great time at the offsite in Atlantic City as well as meeting some old friends in New York (Griff, Heike) and later Beatris up in White Plains were i got to meet Sophia and Xavier for the first time. It was a great trip.

In less than three weeks we are off to Greece. We haven't had a proper vacation in a long time, hopefully it will be nice, it's a low budget trip to an apparently unspoilt part of Greece with not much there except beach, sleepy fishing towns, tavernas and some ruins. I bought some pool toys for Jessica as probably she will spend the whole day in the water.