Musings of Amy

Sophie changed teachers at the beginning of the school year, and so they had a goodbye celebration with all the kids, their families, and the teacher.  For about two months before hand the kids had been voting on what they wanted to do as their final activity.  Should they go camping somewhere?  How about a day at a big water park?  Maybe swimming at the local pool and then a sleepover at school?

Frau Göldi explained why some of them weren’t possible either logistically or financially, and then let the kids vote on the activities that were feasible.  In the end they went swimming at our local pool and then had dinner and a sleepover at the school, complete with a movie and goodnight story.  We parents were invited to the dinner part (partly so we would provide it heehee) and it was then that we gave Frau Göldi her big gift.  All the parents had contributed money and we bought her a special apple tree for her garden.  Her husband said that that is where she loved to spend most of her free time.  That, or riding around the countryside on her motorcycle.  Yeah, she’s pretty cool. 🙂

I cut out flower shaped from cardstock and tied them with ribbon.  Each child was given one, and they wrote their good wishes and thanks on them, and then she called them up one by one to read out what was written on their and hang it on the tree.  Some of the kids, for example Sophie, did not want to read their message out loud, and that was also fine. It was very interesting to see how much Sophie grew to really like her teacher.  When my neighbor found out Sophie was going to have her for first through third grade, she told me all kinds of horror stories about her.  She was just awful, never did anything special, agreed to help you out to your face and did none of it, blah, blah, blah.  I didn’t pass any of this on to Sophie, just remained positive and upbeat.

Turns out she was the perfect teacher for Sophie.  Frau Göldi actually wanted to be an artist, but it’s tough to make a living from that, so she became a teacher and just did art for fun.  She used it a lot in her classroom as well.  And as Sophie loves art and crafty stuff, she had a ball.  They did go on outings, although not tons, but still, enough.  And she was very fair.  She loved Sophie, too, since Sophie was a hard worker, didn’t need to be told things more than once, and was neat. 🙂

It is always a little sad when the kids move to the next level at school.  We have had three years to get used to this teacher, get to really know them, and truly appreciate them.  Fortunately, the group of kids she is with stays the same, so it isn’t all new.  And with the way my kids were born, we will have the same group of teachers four times!  It’s just Sophie that didn’t fit the pattern.  She was very excited to see that she will still have Frau Göldi for two hours this year as well.  She will be teaching “Werken” or shop class, for two hours every Friday this year just for Sophie’s class.  Hooray!

After the excitement and business of the previous few days, Sunday was a welcome change.  We went to church and then stayed at home doing pretty much nothing. 🙂  Well, Chris and I did nothing.  The kids were busy playing a game.

  A game they invented themselves.  They decorated the board, they drew the cards, they made the playing pieces out of clay, and they made up all the rules.   It took about a year in total to complete, because they would get so far and then have to stop and wait for me to procure more supplies.  Or they would forget about it a bit.  But it’s been finished for a year now, and they love playing it.  Guess I don’t need to worry if the creative gene has been passed on or not, huh?

Sarah turned 11 this summer, and as most of you know, she is a HUGE Harry Potter fan.  She has read the entire series four times total, in both English and German. So it seemed pretty natural to have her birthday party be Harry Potter themed, since that is the age he first entered Hogwarts.  We had so much fun looking up lots of different ideas on the internet and deciding which ones to use for the party.  And since I started really, really early, the prep work didn’t get too overwhelming until right at the end. 🙂

When the girls arrived at our apartment, they first had to go through the barrier. I had seen where people had painted a brick pattern onto the paper, and although that would have been neat, our walls were plain, so it would have looked weird.  At least that is what I told myself when I ran out of time to execute it.  Behind the barrier was the sign welcoming them to the correct platform to take them to Hogwarts School. As the girls arrived, they were sent to Diagon Alley to do their school shopping. There were wands, each one different, but all magical.  And there was enough of everything that Noah and Alexandra also got one.  They love Harry, too and didn’t want to get left out.  The wands were made from rolled up copy paper, and decorated with hot glue and paint.  So simple, but so cool looking!

They also needed a cauldron, although not to do potions in.  We used black bowls for that.  These were to hold all their goodies! The cauldrons used to be white yogurt buckets, that I washed out and spraypainted.  I also attached little round balls on the bottom to make the feet.

I must give a special thank you to Julie S., Megan and Kirstie for supplying black blankets and Dementor masks at the last minute.  Without these added touches, the party wouldn’t have been nearly as magical.  Thank you all!

The girls would be attending different classes and needed something to write answers on, so they each picked out a Monster Notebook of Monsters.  The fur was leftover from the puppy parties two years ago and we picked up the notebooks for super cheap last summer when we were in the States.

There were also witches hats for everyone that I had sewn from black felt.  I used Sarah’s head for the pattern and happily the hats all fit!

When most everyone had arrived, we sat down in the Great Hall and got everyone sorted.  We used a fancy witches hat that had a walkie talkie in the top for the Sorting Hat.  Nicholas was in my bedroom with a list of all the girls and which House they should be assigned.  When I would loudly call out each girl’s name, he would wait a second and then talk into the other walkie talkie with their House name.  I had House Crests that were laminated with string for them to wear around their necks.  Then we feasted, under an Enchanted Ceiling, naturally. I didn’t have quite enough black fabric to cover the whole ceiling, but the effect it gave was quite nice, nonetheless.

We had bought a Harry Potter cookbook while in the States that contained English recipes for a lot of the dishes named in all the books.  I chose some of the things that were served at the original Welcoming Feast in Book One for Sarah’s party.  Don’t the girls look so cute wearing their hats?  The best part was how often I caught Sarah smiling during this party.  She absolutely loved it and that made all the work worth it.I found the little goblets at our local Brockenhaus, like a Goodwill for 50 cents each.  Score!  There was even real pumpkin juice to drink.  It was really good, but the favorite all around were the pumpkin pasties.  So delicious and so fun to eat since I made them miniature sized.

After dinner we attended class.  I had two houses attend one class together and then they switched with the other two houses.  So first half of them went outside for Care of Magical Creatures with Hagrid, aka Chris.  He took them on a short walk around the building and through the garden where they looked for all the pictures of strange creatures he had hidden.  They weren’t supposed to call out any names, just write them down in their notebooks.

Meanwhile, I was giving a Potions class. The girls had several different ingredients (mostly plants the kids had picked from the yard)  to choose from, all labeled, and they could mix them in the cauldron bowls to their hearts content.  The first group to discover something special, however, got extra points. The salamander blood was really cabbage juice and if you added ground up unicorn horn (baking soda with glitter) to it, it would bubble up.  If you added Dipsum, or white vinegar, it would change color.  Very fun. Then we switched groups.  The ones I had, went down to Chris, the others came up to me.

The third class was History of Magic, taught by Professor Nicholas. He decorated the classroom himself.  Looks great, I think.  He read questions from a quiz that I had downloaded from the internet.  It was full of trivia questions from all the books.  The girls wrote their answers down in their notebooks and then he corrected them.  Each correct answer was one House point, just by like Care of Magical Creatures.

Meanwhile, I was in the other room for Defense Against the Dark Arts. They had to practice the Expecto Patronum spell for a bit, and then tried it out on a real Dementor! They are all sitting pretty calm right now, but most of the time there was lots of screaming, laughing and running around.  We got a bit loud and Professor Nicholas told us to be quiet more than once. 🙂  Then we switched classes again and did it with the other group of girls.

While I cleaned up the Feast and got the cake ready, the girls watched part of the first Harry Potter movie.  Originally Sarah and I had chosen a really cool looking cake, decorated with fondant, that looked like Hogwarts Castle.  I even bought the stuff to make the fondant and the castle turrets.  But I just simply ran out of time to do it justice.  Oh, and the cake was totally crumbly for some reason.  Would not stay together at all!  So, I asked Sarah what she thought about me making her cake look like the one Hagrid makes for Harry. She loved the idea, lucky me, and so that is what we did.

The cake was simple enough that most kids ate it.  It was certainly less sugary than the pupcakes, and they inhaled those. Then the girls opened presents while I tallied up the points to see which House won the House Cup.

There ended up being a tie, so we had a second trivia quiz to determine the winner.  Sarah and Slytherin House won!  The prize was their choice of nail polish.

To end the party, the girls all got to go shopping at Honeydukes. Getting everything ready for this, was probably my favorite part of the whole party.  I did buy three new candy jars, but since I had been wanting some anyway, I didn’t consider it too much of an extravagance.

There were Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, Chocolate Frogs (that were filled with peanut butter) ,Chocolate Creams and Bubble Balls.

In another area there were Sugar Wands and Acid Pops. It went over very well, indeed. Since the cauldrons were spray painted with just regular old paint, I gave the girls clear cellophane bags to put their candy in, and then that bag went into the cauldron along with their other treasures.  I put absolutely no limits on the stuff, they could take whatever and however much they wanted.  There was still plenty left over for my kids. 🙂

Then they munched on their treats and watched more of the movie until their parents came to pick them up.   It was such a fun party to prepare for and to throw.  All the girls were so appreciative and excited about everything, it was nothing but happiness all around.

In case you haven’t noticed, all the events from the last three posts all occurred in the span of 3 days.  On Saturday, day 4 of this crazy busy week we had two huge events, a soccer tournament for Sophie and Sarah’s Harry Potter birthday party.  I may be pretty awesome but even I can’t manufacture more time.  So unfortunately, in order to get everything done on time for the party, I was not able to attend Sophie’s tournament.  But the rest of the family went twice, once at the beginning and once towards the end to cheer her on.

This was an event organized by the soccer club of Aeugst, Sophie doesn’t actually belong to a team.  Any kids that wanted to, signed up, and then the organizers divided them up into teams.  She had participated once before two years ago and loved it.  So she was excited to be able to do it again this year.

Don’t you just feel so bad for the kids having to school in this hideous setting? The beginning of the Swiss Alps there in the background, lush green hills everywhere else.  So not fair. 🙂

The girls loved cheering for their sister.  And it must have worked, because she and her team played very well.  So well, that they ended up coming in first place!  She was thrilled.  And since it was the club’s 10 year anniversary, all the kids received t-shirts as well as their medals.  I would let her play soccer on a real team, but most of the games are on Sunday and that just opens a whole can of worms I don’t want to deal with, so this is a good compromise.

July 6th was the big celebration for all the kids in Alexandra’s preschool who were moving on to kindergarten.  They do not call it a graduation, thank goodness, but it is definitely a goodbye party. It is also the last one of these I will ever attend.  Tradition states that I should be sad and bereft that my last child, my baby, is growing up.  But I am just too excited about the prospect to be able to muster up even one tiny tear.

I was with my kids 24/7 for almost 14 years.  Their needs always came first, as they should have, and I was fine with that.  I did it happily.  I loved being there to cuddle them when they needed it and sometimes when they didn’t want it but I did. 🙂  I can honestly say I don’t have any regrets about “wasting” their young years, and maybe that’s why I can look forward to the next phase with nothing but excitement and anticipation.  I never wished away their baby years, but now that they are over,  I am one happy  mama.

So this goodbye breakfast was a milestone for both Alexandra and me.  Margaret has been a friend of the family ever since Sarah first started going to Speilgruppe 7 years ago.  And Rosario is the only reason Alexandra agreed to go in the first place.  I was happy when she started teaching two days a week this year, because Alexandra only liked class with her.

There are a record number of children in Alexandra’s age group.  26, I think.  To put it in perspective, Sarah and Noah’s classes only have 18 and 16 kids respectively, and at one point Nick’s only had 14.  So 26 is a huge number that will really test the limits of the teaching staff when they start attending regular school.

Because of the large group, they held the breakfast outside, in the shade on the school playground.The preschool provided all the food and we mommies just got to eat and enjoy each others company.

(The above photos are the work of Alexandra)

They also had a couple games for the kids since they were all finished eating much quicker than we were.

We gathered all the kids together for a group shot, but with so many it was impossible to get everyone looking at the camera.  It will be fun to look back on this when Alexandra is in the 6th grade and see how small everyone in her class was!

The kids had painted bags with Margaret and Rosario a couple of weeks earlier, and they passed these out at the party.  Alexandra is now using hers as a gym bag for Kindergarten.  Margaret is the lady holding the paper butterfly in her hand.  The official name of the preschool is Spielgruppe Raupli, which means playgroup caterpillar in English.  Since the kids were moving on to kindergarten they were now butterflies, and every one had crafted their own butterfly to give to the teachers. Alexandra is also holding a bag of homemade playdough, her gift from her teacher.

And this is the famous Rosario.  Alexandra even asked for a Barbie last year, a “pretty brown one like Rosario”.  Of course she got one.Thank you for all the years of kindness, German lessons, and happy hours.

Since the kids and I celebrated the Fourth at Julie’s, we felt like we missed out on our family celebration.  So we celebrated on the fifth. 🙂  It’s not like we do anything super special, but it’s the tradition that matters.  And that makes me happy, actually.  I am glad my kids notice the little things I do to make a holiday special and look forward to it.  Makes the work totally worth it.

So, we had our Independence Day hamburgers, as usual. I have started grilling onions to go on the burgers because Nicholas loves them in all forms.  Plus we’ve watched too many episodes of Man vs. Food featuring hamburgers with crazy stuff on them.  A plain burger just seems naked now, somehow.

We also had our standard red,white, and blue drinks as first seen in an issue of Family Fun magazine.  Or we tried to.  I couldn’t find the blue Powerade at all three stores I looked at.  It was there last year, gone this year.  Hmmpphh!  So we tried to improvise with Berry Blue Koolaid, but the sugar content wasn’t right and it didn’t stay separated very well.This was the best one of the day.  The rest mostly looked purple.  Oh well, it was still fun and tasted delicious. 🙂

I still wish my kids could have the chance to experience this holiday in the States, but with the school holidays being how they are, that is not likely to happen.  But at least we can use sparklers and little fireworks here that I saved from New Years Eve and no one complains.  That is a definite plus.

This year’s 4th of July celebration with friends was a rather subdued affair.  It was also the goodbye part for our good friend Julie who was moving back to the States with her kids.  She has moved away once before, but that was different.  It was just to England, and she was able to come back and visit quite often.  This is a permanent move and we will only be able to see her for a day here and there when we go back to Utah, which isn’t all that often.

Plus, I will be honest, I wasn’t as attached to her back then.  I was busy with small children and didn’t have a lot of time to hang with friends, aside from book club and church activities.  But now she has become the anchor of our social group.  We usually got together because Julie organized it.   We made quilts for people because Julie thought it was a good idea.  We learned how to cook fancy food together because Julie wanted to eat it.  We read two books a month for book club because Julie never said no to any book.  We even ran a half marathon together because Julie thought it would be fun.   And she guided us in her caring, funny, determined way and we loved it.  Now we are lost at sea with no anchor, drifting and trying to find a new captain to take charge.  But no one will ever be able to replace her.  She is a true force of nature, in the most positive sense.  And I am already jealous of all those lucky ladies whose lives she will enter and make better forever.

So taking all that into account, it was hard to feel festive and party in our usual way this year.  Typically, though, Julie organized fun games for the kids to keep them occupied and make it fun, no matter what.

Plus, for my kids at least, there was her dog to cuddle and love on.  And a trampoline to jump on. Julie was busy on the grill cooking up lots of sausages, and every one brought lots of yummy sides to share. The adults mostly sat around chatting, as usual, and the kids ran around completely unsupervised.  Just what should happen at a large gathering like this. I know, I know.  I needed a pop of red, but I just didn’t have anything appropriate.  Maybe next year.

All that running around made the kids rather hungry and they seemed to inhale just about everything we set out. And in keeping with tradition, I brought my usual flag cake.  Used a new vanilla paste for the cake and it made all the difference.  So delicious and moist.

Yes, someone took a taste test bite. 🙂

Happy birthday, America and goodbye, Julie.  You are both amazing!

On the very last day of June, Sarah had her violin concert for the year.  She has made a lot of progress and worked really hard on the song she played all by herself.  She practiced for weeks, and for much longer than the required 20 minutes a day.  Often she would come into the kitchen while I was cooking dinner and give me a little concert. 🙂  This helped her to build confidence, since she usually likes to practice in private, and also let her practice memorizing the piece, since there wasn’t room for the music stand in the kitchen.

Sadly, I was not able to attend the concert in person.  My good, long time friend Julie was moving back to the States and the ladies were heading just across the border to Colmar, France for one last girls weekend.  But Papa recorded the whole thing for me, and everyone else attended to cheer her on.  From the video, it sounds like she did a fantastic job!

She doesn’t even look nervous, does she?  She had two piece to play.  One by herself, as I mentioned, and one with a whole group.  This is the first one.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/WsM8woilFSE[/youtube]

The second song was played by a whole group of kids playing the exact same thing.  I think they only had one time to practice it all together, but it sounded beautiful!

[youtube]http://youtu.be/tgoeCZbEqQE[/youtube]

Congratulations, Sarah.  We are super proud of you!

To celebrate the dedication of our new ward building, a week of festivities was planned.  It was a little much, in my opinion, as we were expected to help out in several different areas, but never asked if that was okay.  sigh

Anyway, the biggest celebration was on Saturday when we had a pinewood derby and simultaneous carnival. The derby was advertised several times in the local paper and the cars were available to purchase at a kids clothing store in town.  They also had the woodshop at the elementary school open on two different nights for people to come get help carving their cars and you could use their paints to decorate them.  That was really fun, and the kids had a great time planning on what their cars would look like.  Chris and Alexandra made their car look like a tube of mustard.  Nick and Noah went with a Batmobile, and the girls had a rainbow/peace car complete with geode.

There was a huge turnout, including lots of people from the community.  Just look at all those cars lined up waiting to be raced. Two of our cars are on the bottom row, right side.  Can you find them?

During all this hub-bub I was off in a classroom running a carnival game.  They had told the Young Women we would need to supply 2 or 3 games, so we decided on a bowling game, and then a bean bag toss.  I had been saving juice bottles for a month to use for the bowling game. But then it ended up that we had to do only the bean bag toss.  Kind of a mess and the way it was handled made me not want to show up at all, but I swallowed my frustration, mostly:) and ran the game for most of the day.  When the race officially started, I snuck out to watch for a bit, since no one was playing games during that time.

The cars all raced in several different heats, and at one point two of our cars were pitted against each other.  I honestly can’t remember which one won, which is probably a good thing.  It took quite a while for all the first and second heats to be run.  I mean, look at all the people who showed up to participate!

It was really exciting when our friend, Max ended up winning third place.  We found out later that there was some spray people were using on their wheels to make them go faster.  We did not use this spray, but will definitely be procuring some for next year.

Lunch was provided for a small fee, and the kids enjoyed their sausages very much.Yes, she eats sausage now.  But only this kind, no other. 🙂

Along with the carnival games and racing there were also places to do a craft and to get your face painted.  Alexandra and Sophie took advantage.

Sophie is holding up a prize she won at the Wheel of Luck, as well.  The kids had a fantastic time and hopefully it helped to spread lots of good will throughout the community.

Every time I told this story I just had to laugh.  It is just so full of stereotypes, how could I not?  You see, my avoids-team-sports-at-all-costs son broke his finger playing basketball, at Young Men’s.  Don’t worry, I didn’t laugh at him, I was all appropriate pity and concern.  But inside, I was just thinking of all those church ball jokes I heard growing up in the States.  Obviously they are based on true stories!

It was a gorgeous evening, so instead of working on Duty to God like they had planned, they decided to go outside to the nearby park and play a little basketball.  Just as they were about to quit and eat their watermelon it happened.  Nick got his finger jammed when he went to grab the ball.  His finger was poking out at a strange angle and they all thought it was just jammed.  So they told Nick to pull on it to try and get it to go back in place.  Which he did.  Ouch!   The leader, Jacob, is so good with the boys, especially Nick, and always tries to make things fun and interesting.  You can tell how much he cares about the boys.  He felt horrible that it happened on his watch, so to speak.  I tried my best to reassure him that accidents happen and that we weren’t upset at all.  Poor guy.

Anyway, we went to the hospital that night, and they took some x-rays.  Sure enough, it was broken.  And broken in such a way that a piece of the bone was completely separated from the main part, from one knuckle to the other.  Which meant that Nick needed to go to a specialist to get it set.  They just put a split on it and wrapped it up at the ER, and made an appointment for us with a hand surgeon at a bigger hospital in Zurich.

They ended up needing to operate and reattach the piece of bone with a screw.  The operation was over pretty quickly, but he was very drowsy from the anesthesia and didn’t really wake up completely for about 4 hours.  I just sat next to him and read the whole time.  The best part of this whole ordeal is that he got out of P.E. for the rest of the school year. 🙂  Which meant he got home a whole two hours earlier every Thursday.  That was a very nice bonus.

Now, I will give a warning to the squeamish.  I am going to post a pic of his stitch.  It is not bloody and it’s just one little stitch where they had to put in the super small screw.  But some may not want to look, hence the warning.

It has since healed with no complications at all. The surgeon asked at a follow up appointment if he wanted the screw removed, but it isn’t bothering him, so they are leaving it in.  Nick did need to attend about 4 physical therapy sessions to help his finger straight out again, but now you can’t even tell anything happened to it.  Amazing.