Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! Here's a little bit of Sophie's artwork to celebrate. (Mommy helped with the first turkey, but Sophie was totally in charge of the choice and placement of the turkey parts on the second. The second also obviously needed a slide and a rainbow, so those were drawn in.)

A Day Trip to Saarbrücken, Germany

A couple of weeks ago, we took our first day trip (without students) since the students arrived. Ian had wanted to go to Saarbrücken before the leaves fell, but it wasn't in the cards, but we did get there soon after. Saarbrücken, it turns out, is a shopping mecca for the French. The main street is blocked off to traffic and is home to rows and rows of stores. We took the opportunity to do a little shopping ourselves, and then took a walk around the town.

When we arrived, it was much colder than we thought it would be, so we immediately stopped in Cafe Schubert to warm up. Sophie had been begging for a doughnut, so we ordered her a Berliner. As you can see, she thoroughly enjoyed it. (Ian's added caption: "Sophie isst einen Berliner!")


Ian and I ordered coffee and hot chocolate, and I just couldn't resist taking a picture of the little trays they came on. I was especially impressed by the whipped cream that came with Ian's coffee. (Yes, I am easily impressed.)


They also had a little confisserie with all sorts of yummy cakes and petits fours:


This was my favorite...I'm not sure which occasion calls for hedgehog cakes, but they sure are cute!


After our little pit stop, we ventured onto the shopping street. Almost immediately, Sophie found what she called a "carousel," but what was really a carnival ride. It wasn't too expensive, and the man at the window gave me a discount on two tickets, so we let her ride on it twice. Ian found this strange sign that says that they'll accept Deutschmarks (although they have no value any more):


First the train:


Then a speedboat:

We took a couple of short videos of her going down the hill. It was hilarious because she would have such a big grin on her face and she would squeal. (You can hear this squeal if you can listen past Ian and I arguing about how to use the video function on the camera!) Watch for the boat to come around the corner.

We did buy a few things, but something we definitely didn't buy were the very overpriced Converse Chuck Taylors--90 Euros (or $114) for a pair that costs $20-40 in the US!

After shopping and some lunch, we ventured out to the other parts of town, which included, as always, a short trip to a park.

We then crossed the river to see some of the sights...










I also found my current Facebook profile picture in Saarbrücken. This was an actual cutout advertising the daily specials for a restaurant in town.

By the time we got back to Strasbourg, it was late, and we were hungry, so we stopped at McDonald's. Ian ordered the famous Royale with Cheese:


I'll leave you with this picture of this strange mannequin we found in a store window in Strasbourg on our walk home that evening:

Let It Snow!

Today was our first day of snow here in Strasbourg, and let me tell you, Sophie was excited! As soon as the snow started to stick, we headed out for a trek around town. Sophie came back wet and cold, but full of energy and happy. She's still talking about making another snowball to eat next time it snows! (Most of the snow had melted by this afternoon, but it was still beautiful for the couple of hours it lasted.)

Sophie is getting ready for our walk in the courtyard of our building:


A couple of views from good ol' Rue de l'Ail:


If you look really hard, you can see the cathedral in the background of these pictures:


And a proud mommy moment--I taught Sophie to stick out her tongue to catch snowflakes.

Plumy Park--A Perfect Park for Wintertime

Last week the playgroup that Sophie's involved in went to Plumy Park, and indoor park here in Strasbourg. It's in a big warehouse-type building, and it has climbing areas, ball pools, a carousel, a carnival-type swing, and a big jumping house. Sophie had a lot of fun, and although most of the attractions were a little too old for her to do by herself, she still had a great time (with my help).

I successfully kept her away from the large climbing attraction for a while, but the allure was too great for her. I had to run after her to help her up...her balance just isn't good enough to pay attention once she gets to the top.


Here we are going down the very large slide:

This is the area that is made for Sophie's age. She had fun there, but as you can tell, it's just not as exciting as the attractions for bigger kids.


She chose to ride in princess carriage on the carousel:


And she was brave enough to ride on the swing. I wasn't sure that she wouldn't start screaming half-way through the ride, but she loved it enough to ride it two more times!



This will be a great place to take her in the middle of winter when it's just too cold to go outside.