Marble Track

We now have our first marble track! Though it was a gift for Florian, Anna, Kamil and me are the ones who are playing and enjoying this wonderful toy at the moment. But I am sure that Florian will happily play with it soon enough! It consists of wooden cubes and blocks with channels, which offer thousands of possibilities to build exciting marble tracks. Usually, I would not advertise for certain products, but in this case, I really want to mention the company producing such a fine, intelligent, sturdy and well-manufactured toy: Cuboro! Yes, it is really, really expensive (what else do you expect from a Swiss company ;-) ) but worth every cent! I am totally convinced, that you will find us playing with this marble track for many, many years! We now have the child-version "Cugolino" but we are waiting impatiently for an occasion or rather an excuse to buy the adult version... When is Father's Day again?

Various from March

This is just a post of miscellaneous pictures from the last two weeks:

A lovely bouquet of flowers my brother send me for my birthday:(Thanks so much, Christoph! The flowers survived two weeks - the chocolate only two hours...)
Florian is watching over daddy's sleep:
Florian and his friend Helge:
Anna savouring a chocolate covered rice cookie:

Couch Sandwich

Finally, after two years of having a living room without any decent sitting place (instead having plenty of space for playing, lying, cuddling, running and bouncing), we got a real couch! I spent the first two afternoons with the kids upstairs in our ameliorated living room and tried not to move too much from this heavenly place!
And here are two picture of couch sandwiches:

First Bike Tour

After a long and dark winter, spring has finally arrived! The first warm temperatures invited us to test our bike hanger with the two kids.
And yes! It worked out nicely and the children seemed to feel at ease with it. So we went for a short excursion, of course with a stop at a restaurant, which offered a playground for Anna, a beer for Kamil and a hot chocolate for me!

Carnival

Though neither Kamil nor I are really into celebrating carnival and wearing fancy costumes, we love it if it's for the children. So we went to a carnival party at one of Anna's friends. (Luckily, the parents did not have to come disguised...)
Anna wanted to be a mouse:
The ears were easy to make. But it was the first time for me to sew jersey material. (I did not sew the shirt, but just the mouse applications.) Quite tricky to do if you have no clue...
For Florian, we decided to disguise him as a Bavarian because we were invited at a Bavarian family. This was easy to do as I had all these clothes in the closet and just had to combine it the right way! Poor boy, he looks a bit scared being a Bavarian... ;-)
Anyway, we had a lovely carnival party and the kids had lots of fun - especially with eating all the candy!

Grandparents' Visiting

My parents came over for a visit, much to our all delight! Anna was happy to have Omi and Opa to play with, Florian enjoyed being endlessly held, rocked and caressed, I myself really appreciated all their help with the kids and the household, and Kamil was delighted to have a really happy family!
Omi and Opa in love with their youngest grandchild:
Maybe the locks did the trick - "Wenn diese Locken nicht locken?!?"
Omi was celebrating her birthday while they stayed with us - Happy Birthday, Omi! Anna was great in singing the birthday song: "Zum Geburtstag viel Glück..", but missed to change to the appropriate name: "....zum Geburtstag, liebe Anna, zum Geburtstag viel Glück!" Omi never minded!
The weather was brilliantly sunny - but incredibly cold due to a freezing eastern wind - a rare chance to see my dad wearing a cap.


The Havel was frozen, again. Anna enjoyed throwing pieces of ice onto the frozen river, where they fragmented into thousands of glittering crystals.