Wednesday, November 29, 2006

More Birthday Pictures!

Lunch was eaten at a fish 'n' chips shop on our way back from school. The place opened down the way several years ago, and we've only heard wonderful things about it ever since. And now we know: it really is that good!

We had lasagne (their favourite by far) and a mache salad for dinner, followed by the most ridiculous try at fudge, ever. I thought fudge was supposed to be EASY! And to top things off, Jean-Philippe had to wisk it away from curious hands while the table was being set for dinner. When we came back, it had settled on a decided slope... and bloop! Hmmm...

Here, the pictures pretty much speak for themselves. Of the family prezzies that had arrived before the 28th, there was not one that failed to delight the boys. The boys watched Gramma & Grampa's gift of the Aristocats in their Evie jammas before they went to happy dreams that night. The next day, after Tomi's having secreted away a truck from the Larsons in his school bag and his having got it back home without incident (as in: no BAD! BOYS! at school had dropped it down a drain at recess - the unfortunate fate of one of their Playmobile men); after the boys having swooped down over the leftover lasagne and left nary a crumb for their famished mother; after said boys having been threatened with a nap, due to some petty squabbling... after all of this and more, the aforementioned boys of ours clamoured for the DOG! FILM! PLEASE! DOGS! from their GAMMA! GAMPA! And they got what they desired.*
*The other film they'd received was Lady & the Tramp...

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

TWO! BIG! BOYS! TURN! THREE!

What an adventure - what a happy, happy adventure - this has been!

Monday, November 27, 2006

Thanksgiving Madness

The First Annual Yerkes-Beinert Alsatian Thanksgiving was held last Sunday with utterly untraditional fanfare & foods. It was almost entirely vegetarian (& the only unvegetarian thing was a herring salad, so...), and the horse didn't have to "carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow," due to the festivities falling at the tail end of the longest, mildest autumn ever. We spent a great deal of the evening chatting on the terrace and in the wide-open kitchen, with nary a jacket to cover us and not a goose bump to speak of! It was great fun.

I have always felt fortunate for the family and friends that I grew up with, many of whom I've been lucky enough to be able to see at least once every year or so since I left home so long ago. The friends that I've made since then have been marvelous, too, and I feel especially fortunate for the wonderful friends we have here - and inevitably all the more so when holidays roll around and we are not able to "go home for" them.

We were really happy to have been able to spend Thanksgiving with such great friends, and also ( ! ) with our new neighbour, Lynn, and with Joël's friends-since-high-school, Nahomie and Christine (they all grew up in Guadalupe, and now reside in Strasbourg, Paris and Marseille, respectively).

The following are a couple of photos that help to describe the evening's ambiance.

Lights and luminaries on the terrace:

While some took a smokes break on the terrace, others played Kiw da Wabbit inside (& no, Tomi's not the rabbit; you can see her nose and froont paws tentatively peeking into the doorway...):

And the look of First Love:
The flash was too close to Tomi's face, unfortunately. And you may not be able to see it very well, but that's Eliza's new moon purse. And I should say, in Tomi's defence, that he was copying one of his mentors, Anne-Sophie, wo knew exactly where a lovingly picked and gifted marigold would be best placed...( ?! )

Friday, November 24, 2006

Cows! Lots of! Cows! Many! Cows!

Yesterday marked the official start of a project that the boys' teacher, Muriel, and I are putting together. The idea is to use their classes on animals and food to make a collaborative book (mostly on cows and how their milk eventually makes its way to children's stomachs), combining the children's drawings, paintings and words with ours. To begin the project, the children were taken to an Alsatian biodynamic farm, La Ferme de Truttenhausen, that makes cheeses, butter, yoghurt, herb spreads and many other things, which they sell at local famers' markets and also at the local producer's section of the Strasbourg Xmas Market, which begins tomorrow. (I love the Xmas Market. And I love this family's Xmas Market stand. And luckily for us, this part of the market is practically next door! In any case... Where was I? Oh, yes!) The following pictures are something of an overview of the long day that we had yesterday, while many of you were having lovely Thanksgiving feasts with family and friends. Speaking of which: Happy Thanksgiving!

Here are our boys in the BIG! BUS! MY! BIG! BUS! that took us to the farm:

Here are parts of the scene that began unfolding as we stepped from the BIG! BUS!


Here is Leo (a.k.a, Puck):

Here is a corner of the barn's interior. The barn was a low, thick-walled structure that looked as though it was two centuries old or more...

And here are the boys with their Dally later that night, attacking the pop-up book their Gamma & Gampa gave them, and which we only let them see under close supervision; and even then...

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Rewind

So! This weekend was full of fun and work and buzzing. Though not necessarily in that order. It all started with the party downstairs on Friday night. The noise from downstairs wasn't the problem (and actually, that part was almost funny, since their windows were open, and it sounded as though there were layers and layers of people and music in Grand'Rue); the problem was that they didn't know alot of the 200+ people who came and went, and who had no qualms about waking up the neighbours when the party drowned out their buzzer...

Saturday was spent with friends, painting the town red. First there was the antiques market, followed by the farmers' market (at Place des Rohans); then there was a football/soccer match on the strange and ever-barren Rohan terrace; then a late lunch at a terrible crèpe restaurant (though the children spent most of the time on the empty terrace, continuing the match with whichever stray adult they could wrangle into playing); and a long, leisurely walk home. During the homeward march, Leo and Tomi sat down to do some people watching. You can see their reaction to the return of the early 80s below...


Sunday was spent (by me) mostly painting and (by the males of the household) mostly playing ball outside. It was a grey day, a heavy day, one of those days that require the lights to be kept on for their entire length. I don't mind days like that one from time to time, except that in Alsace, the first one may actually mean the beginning of five months of them. We shall see...

Christmas is coming, by the way. And with it: the Christkindelsmärik, mulled wine, red cheeks and all the rest of it. Which reminds me... that Advent calendar still has yet to be begun. Though I did bring out the fabric and look at it this week...


This is a picture of the Xmas market huts going up and of the boys in front of the Ennen Haus. Because (and speaking of Xmas) one of its floors was occupied by their Aunt Ellen and their grandparents last Xmas, and the boys've never forgotten this fact. Weeks after the festivities had passed and its occupants had returned to their real homes, we were passsing this building after a grocery shopping expedition, and Leo pointed and piped up: "ENNEN! HAUS!" and ran over to try to pull the door open. They yell this every time we go by, now, and every once in a while (like this last time) they try again to pull the doors open. Ach!

And now! Could somebody please help me? I've been looking for the name of this flower for months, now. Does anybody know what this flower is called?

Markers and Brushes

First of all, a few pictures of Leo & Tomi in drawing mode. And this: when I picked them up from school yesterday, Leo sprang into my arms, crying out, "School fun!" When I asked him what he'd done, he said, "Played! Lots of play!" But when I told the teacher, she said that both boys had been so intent and happy with their drawing that she hadn't had them move on to the next activity (to be honest, she wasn't sure they WOULD move on), but let them continue on in utter bliss.


And here are the calligraphised chairs I just painted for a literary café that's opening down the way. Next up: the table. It's been somewhat tedious work (especially since I haven't done any calligraphy in more than two years), but I've enjoyed it at the same time. For posterity's sake, I wish to make it clear that I would never have covered everything in that paper. But that was how the pieces of furniture came to me. In fact, EVERYthing in the café is covered in the same paper: chairs, tables, walls, the ceiling... Oh, and the L and T are, coincidentally, the initials of the café, La Tinta.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Giant Steps For Little Gents

Yesterday, after he and Leo had drawn through nearly a whole ream of paper, Tomi went to the middle of the living room and began dumping the toy boxes out one after the other, organizing the contents of each one on the rug before moving to the next. In the meantime, Leo took yet another piece of paper and began to draw again. Or that's what I thought. He soon called out, "Eh-ohw! Is Leo!" and indicated that it was time for another look at his work. When I did (look), I was shocked to see... an L! Then he said, "Tee! Look!" and drew the next letter. Their drawings recently took on real, deliberate form, but we were still surprised to see this happen so quickly. Later on in the same day, Tomi began drawing very precise drawings, using strokes like those needed for letter-writing. I'll try to snap or scan a couple of their drawings in the next few days...

And here are a couple of surprises in my terrace/indoor gardening career... First off: 2 of the 4 orchid blooms from Joël and Eric's lovely birthday gift of 14 months ago have come back; and the crinkled leaves are working themselves out, ever since I figured out that they were coming in that way due to lack of liquids. And secondly: the hibiscus that Aunt Rosie & Uncle Dale gave us a year and a half ago hasn't ever stopped blooming and blooming and blooming, and sometimes seems to go from one bloom to the next (each a short-lived but spectacular one) for months on end without a break. And thirdly: the Marguerite de Printemps that Jean-Philippe gave me last February, and which went from a tiny snippet of flowery shrubbery to a shrub with hardly an ounce of help. It's great to have had so much luck of late, after so many withered attempts in the past!

Sunday, November 12, 2006

I Smell Winter

& I also found an old Housemartins CD during some preliminary housecleaning this weekend. Coincidence? or fate?

But it's true: when I went out to the terrace (after the find described above), winter was in the air. It smelled of snow and ice and mittens. It also started me thinking of the boys' advent calendar - the one I haven't yet started making. Ack!

Last night, however, spring was in the air again. You could feel the warm layer, somewhere up there in the swiftly moving clouds (which looked like grey duvets, thus furthering the feeling of some kind of warmth). The sky reminded me of those reddish warm greys in a good pastels palette.

Here are the boys, last (decidedly autumnal) Friday:
And here they are on the next - decidedly winterish - morning. They had asked me to make a film of their animals, so that they could watch it. These are a couple of stills from that session. (Unfortunately, I can't put films on this site.)

And here is the painter we pass every day on our way home from school. I imagine that we won't be passing him for several months, beginning very soon. We'll miss him: his set-up, his presence, his kind & glowing smile, his lovely wee works...

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

The Times They Are A-...


You all know very well that I am more than a little encouraged by recent political developments in the States. And since the adjective "conservative" has taken on a number of terrifying faces in recent times, it is good to have proof (see above) that age doesn't necessarily force us to take it on.

Among so many other things, here's to raising the minimum wage, offering universal and affordable health care, retiring with a good pension (or, hey! any pension at all), creating alternative energy supplies, offering excellent and affordable education, actually leaving no child behind, ending wars that continue to claim precious lives every day... Here's to all of that and a whole lot more.

Here's to big change.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Ich bin ein Berliner!

The boys had their first of the many French school breaks at the end of October. So we celebrated by taking off for a week chez Härry, who now resides in the beautiful, ever-changing city of Berlin.


DAY 1: Departure & Arrival

The boys were very excited to be going to Berlin and seeing "Big! Boy! Härry!"* - though a bit miffed that we weren't going to Beaune or riding bikes with Gamma & Gampa. We had a great trip, once we found a room in a no smoking section of the second train, and arrived happy and ready for adventure.

* They remembered how tall Härry was when I showed them but a head-shot from one of our first blog entries, before we left to see him. Afterwards, they kept yelling, on their tip-toes, with their eyes wide open and their hands raised as high as possible to indicate great height: "Härry! Big! Boy!" and variations thereof.

DAY 2: Der Zoologischer Garten

Since they had been such excellent travellers the day before (by foot, by train and by bus), we started out with a day devoted entirely to the boys. The first two pictures are of a moment towards the end of the U- and S-bahn ride to the Zoo. The second is of a few moments at the Zoo...


DAY 3: A Day Off

We started out with nothing but aimless rambling on our agenda. And we ended up doing an astounding number of things, all within a square kilometer or so of Härry's house (which, it has to be admitted, is smack-dab in the Mitte of things, so...). Uhm... the slide picture needs a bit of explaining. See, the boys went up and I stayed below, the better to catch them on film and in my arms. But the slide was SO slick that I'd barely caught this one of Tomi (the first and only boy to go down, as it were) before he was thumping into me and spraying sand for miles around. It was terrifying and hilarious at the same time. Well... Tomi may only have seen the one side of things, actually. At any rate, we stuck to the smaller, less slick slide after that. And the last picture is a kind of tribute to the Panimixers.



DAY 4:

We did alot (a children's museum and an immense exhibition hall (where I saw Munkacsi photos with Tomi and Jean-Philippe saw Franco-Germanic contemporary sculpture with Leo; and where the boys put on a happening in the gallery café afterwards - stunning, all three shows), but took not one picture. So here are a couple of extras from the next day...


DAY 5:

More museum-going, as you can see below. We spent almost the entire day there, and - what with edible art and all - the boys had as great a time as we did. Afterwards, we walked to the Reichstag: a stunning walk, the length of which has changed to the extent that it's not even recognisable to what it was only five years ago. There was an enormous queue at the Reichstag, so Jean-Philippe approached a guard, who took one look at the wee boykins next to him and directed us to a side door that took us straight up to the cupola - and saved us a very chilly hour's wait! Afterwards, there was a tour around the Brandenberg Gate and the changed scene around it, which brought us to Glühwein and Leibnitz cookies (something for everyone) and then: home-again-home-again, to an evening in with Härry.


DAY 6:

We took our time in the morning, got ourselves and things together and headed out, shedding a tear apiece as we did. We'd had such a great time. And the boys were marvelous; really excellent company and such good sports (aside from a couple of tired moments, but hey! we expected so much more of that than we got, so... no complaints from this corner)!