Geneva in March (under construction)

Talia gets braces!!!

Here's the before photo!

 And after!

I brought Davina with, which might have been a mistake. She's probably getting braces later herself and she's fascinated with anything mechanical so she was very into the whole process. The only issue was she kept gasping and asking Talia "Does it hurt?" every two minutes. Other than that, it went smoothly (thanks to some Ibuprofen taken an hour prior).  

Talia's First Group Competition (under construction)

Talia's first group competition was held here in Strasbourg. I decided to volunteer to help and Oceane's parents made these posters to hold up. On one side, it says "Allez les filles" (Go Girls!) and on the other is the name of the girl, which can be shown when it's her turn. Her dad also had these T-shirts made but not my black one. That was for those working and I had to turn it back in. Davina wore mine but I regret that I didn't get a picture. It was a dress on her!

Supportive brother with sign.

This is the "buvette" or where the drinks and food are served. I joked that I should be doing drinks (ex-Flight Attendant, my area of expertise!) but they wanted me on crepes. Not my area of expertise but luckily, they were already made up. I basically had to heat them up and then put whatever they wanted on them. Most asked for Nutella and the 5 kilo jar was gone by the end of the day.

Daniel did not work it but they came to visit and I snapped this photo.

The girls' turn to go on.

Carnivale and Snow Excursions

Both girls did excursions to the snow. Talia is doing skiing on Thursdays but due to the cold, has only gone twice. Davina's class just went up and played in the snow for a day, so she brought the sleds. It was overcast but the teacher said the snow was perfect. 

Davina wanted to dress up for Carnivale. Because of the French school break, they usually don't have school on Mardi Gras so she took advantage. I'm not sure what the princess plus Hawaiian Lei were supposed to be but I didn't get into it.

It was still -4C so that kind of messed up the look, having to wrap up over it.

A late arriving birthday present. Reading the card...

Book with cute animals. Thank you Tata Guk!

Davina's Birthday Party

Davina's 8th birthday party! We had to have it on the Saturday, the day before her birthday because of Talia's competition. 

I had this mask-making craft, since the following Tuesday was Mardi Gras. Some kids came in costume. 

Cake and ice cream eating.

Big brother helping.

I ordered a butterfly pinata from Amazon. Of course, it took ages to bust! 

Fariah giving it a shot. Finally, it broke in half and Alix went up the stairs and shook the candy down on the other kids so that they could scoop them up. 

f

Snow!

The snow finally arrived. It wasn't much. What was the Big Story was the cold. I've never seen -11C in my car the 12 years I've been in Strasbourg. It was frigidly cold and my car battery died one of the cold day. We were having a very mild winter when this big Siberian chill swept down. Eastern Europe was having record deaths and terrible frost bite (more because of their large homeless populations in Russian and Ukraine). We just buckled down here in Alsace.

Talia's "extreme" gymnastics snow angel.

Someone's about to get it from Ronnie!

This is the snowman that Davina made. He only came inside for the photo and then was relegated to the balcony, where he stayed for quite awhile.

Here's the frozen tributary of the Rhine.

Note the birds walking on the ice.

Andre's Engagement Party

A friend lost his wife over three years ago. She was my age and recently, he got engaged to a divorced woman, another parent in the Jewish school his son attends. It was a new experience for both her and us because it was a Sephartic celebration. 

They put henna on people's hands. It stained a little and smelled good.

Too much excitement for the kids!