Omi's Visit

Well, as you know, it has been a while since I have been writing more regularly. The reason was, that my mother was visiting for 3 weeks and we had quite a busy program. It is amazing that my mother has now been coming to Seattle for nearly a decade and we still find new and exciting things to do (or we just do some of the same old things, that are always fun). One of our first stops was visiting the new Sculpture Park of the Seattle Art Museum. It was a Saturday morning and they had an art class for children. First they got to look at and draw Calders "Eagle" and then they went into the studio to model a sculpture out of modelling clay.

An other day we went to the zoo. The newest attraction is called Masai encounter, where you can go up a ramp and feed the giraffes. Marlene loved it, but Amelia was very unhappy after the giraffe had eaten her branch. She cried the rest of the encounter. A zookeeper was there to supervise everything and answer questions. Between Amelia's screams we learnt quite a bit about giraffes. Her day brightened again when she got to ride the carousel.

We took e several day trip to Victoria in B.C. to visit my friend Uli. There is going to be a separate blog about this trip.

All along we had a great time with Omi, who never got tired of reading to the girls and playing with them.

Marlene's Birthday

It has been weeks since my last post. My mother is visiting and we have been doing some traveling, so it was hard to find time for writing. Yesterday was Marlene's birthday. She turned 6 years old! Her father deemed her old enough to get her first gameboy. (I don't know why it is still called "game boy" even if it is pink. I could go on about how stupid the word gameboy is, and what that says about society, but I will safe my ranting for an other time. ) I think Jason just wanted to get Marlene away from playing games on the computer. My biggest disappointment is, that it does not come with Tetris anymore. So I will have to go out on Monday to buy it.

Marlene had decided on a Hawaiian theme for the party. We had a beach party in our yard. She invited a mix of old and new friends. We played musical islands, pin the tail on the donkey, we danced limbo under a stick, and had a water balloon fight (it was too cold for the slip and slide). Finally it was time for cake. It was a Hawaiian Beach Cake. We had found the idea for this cake at Familyfun.com. They are a great source for party ideas and cakes.