Mother's Day 2008

Emeline in the Park--May 10, 2008 (above)

Cupcakes for my cupcake for Mother's Day 2008 (below)

Well, in honor of Mother's Day, I baked some yummy rainbow chip cupcakes--with rainbow chip icing. Now, if you don't live overseas you cannot fully appreciate the pure extravagance of using some precious cake mix from the US and real icing on an event other than a birthday. In honor of our first Mother's Day together I stripped Emeline down to her diaper and gave her not one, but 2 iced cupcakes which she ate with great pleasure. She was laughing and squealing with pure joy as she made a huge mess. I ate not one but 3 cupcakes right along with her! (Calm down, healthy people, she hardly ever gets sweets like that--she eats bird seed bio muesli for breakfast!!!)

Yesterday we had a picnic and went to the aquazoo. I will blog more about the aquazoo later. We have season tickets to go, so it is one of our regular outings. This Saturday Chris came along with us, and we had a picnic in the park beforehand. We have had unusually pretty and warm weather here for over a week--really that is unheard of. It has been warmer this week than it was the whole of last summer. Emeline and I have been out every single day soaking up the sun while we can. I am becoming German in that respect. When the weather is fine, the Germans are outside enjoying it and making the most of the sunshine while it lasts. I even let Emeline go without her shoes for a bit, and she loved it. She has been playing in the sand and getting totally filthy this week. We have been to several different parks--she loves playing outside.

I have begun to make a new German friend who has a baby boy not much older than Emeline. I am so thankful for this, and she has been taking us all around and showing us things to do--she grew up in the neighborhood we live in. She has invited us to go swimming next week at an indoor pool in our city. We had 3 play-dates last week. She even bought Emeline a "Hello Kitty" shirt just to be nice. She has been going out of her way to include us and invite us places. She has also offered to help us score a place in a baby play group that her sister leads (this class already has a waiting list for when Emeline will be 2!!). I am a bit overwhelmed at her kindness to us. It is not the norm. It is nice to be the one being invited instead of trying to do the inviting all the time. It is not that Germans are not nice, it's just that they are not usually quick to include outsiders in daily life--especially foreigners such as myself. Of course, we have known her for almost a year. I believe having Emeline has made all the difference. Now we have much in common with our little ones. I am hopeful that this is a door opening for our family here in our neighborhood. May it be so--and the beginning of many good things to come!

P.S. I am working on getting some videos uploaded to the blog. I need to figure some stuff out, and then I will post them--hopefully soon. It is easier to video Emeline than to take pics, because she is always in motion! Also, I will post pictures soon of our visit to the tulip gardens in Holland.