Into the New Year

We had a little snow on Christmas Day; I would not call it "white Christmas", more like "slushy grey Christmas", but enough to make a snow penguin in the yard. That day Marlene lost her 3rd tooth, as well. She has now quite a gap in the front. And the 4th incisor is barely hanging on. We will see, how long it is going to make it; I will keep you updated.

Since Christmas it has been kind of quiet around here. All the big hoopla is done. It has been raining a lot, which kept us housebound, or at least mall bound. We took turns being sick, with my mother still recovering. The girls have been playing with their playmobil castle which has now a carriage and a treasure room. This treasure room gets robbed a lot by Amelia's pirate ship, and even the dragon seems not to be able to prevent it. We have been spending some time in malls and I was surprised, that is was not as busy as I expected it. During a rain break we headed to the zoo. Our all time favorite, besides the Zoomasium (an indoor zoo playground with research and learning station), is Willawong Station, an Australian Outback building, that houses over 150 bird, mostly parakeets. They fly free inside the building and you can feed them with millet on feed sticks. Amelia gave a few months ago one of the birds the name "Paul". Off course we don't really know which one it is, but she always recognizes him again. In winter the zoo is much less busy and so the birds come more freely to visitors. The other day I had five birds fighting over my millet.

Today we went to the International district (the China Town of Seattle) and had some Asian food. In the evening we enjoyed soup at Tor and Jess'. Soon school is starting again and with that, swimming on Thursday nights, which will prevent us from participating. And we saw Karla and Einar. The girls love to play with Einar. They had a lot of fun "sharing" seats.