3 Kings' Day and snow

On Wednesday it was 3 Kings' Day. That meant two exciting things happened. The first was that La Befana came. She is a witch who comes down the chimney and brings lollies and little presents to Italian kids. Since I go to Italian school now, she came to me too! She brought me a book and some jewellery making stuff. The other exciting thing was that we got to eat 3 Kings' cake. This is a special cake you eat on the 6th that has a little king hidden in it somewhere. Whoever gets the king gets to be the king for the day, and everyone else has to do what they say. Guess who got it at our house? Zahra!!!

Now luckily we had two cakes at our house. That was because Mama wanted a French one too, because she thought it would taste better. (For those who are interested, she was right!!!) Anyway, guess who got the king in that one? Me!!! Yay!!!

Meanwhile we have been having a lot of snow. There was so much on our balcony today that we could have a good play in it out there. Here is Zahra sitting in it.

And me next to a mountain Dada and I made together. If you look very closely you can see something else too, I have lost one of my top front teeth! I love it because it makes me look even witchier than ever.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! We thought we better tell you what we got up to at the end of last year. Zahra took her first walk outside with real big girl shoes on. She couldn't really walk, but since then she has been practising a little bit inside. Mostly just standing up on her own for ages and then taking a couple of wobbly steps before she falls down again. It is very cute.


Dada's cousin Holly came to visit. She had been living in England, working at a boys' boarding school, so she popped over to say hello. I made friends with her straight away and liked having her around for the weekend.

My school did a Christmas concert. I was a gnome. If you really want to, you can play "Where's Wally?" and try to find me in this picture!!! I had to say one line in Italian. I loved singing all the songs.

It snowed! Enough to take Zahra for her first sled ride. Dada took me on the sled to school too, which was very cool.

For Christmas we went to Colmar in France, and went to the Christmas markets there. It was lovely and cold and nice to have a warm hot chocolate while we walked around. Mama had a warm orange juice with spices in it and I liked that a lot too.

I wanted me and Zahra to have a photo with Santa Claus.

Zahra also went on her first carousel in Colmar. It was a beautiful old one and she liked it a lot. So did I. This plane went up and down when I pressed a button.

We went for Christmas dinner in the restaurant at our hotel. Zahra wore this pretty skirt that Mama's friend's Mama made especially for her. So sweet.

It has been raining a lot the last couple of days and we have been enjoying hanging out at home and doing all the things we don't normally get time to do. Mama has been reading me lots from the Roald Dahl books I got for Christmas (I think his books are SO funny). And Zahra and I have been doing some yoga together! Here she is doing cobra pose.

And this photo is from today, when Dada gave me a little guitar lesson. I learned my first chord.

2009 was fun and we are looking forward to 2010. We hope it is a good one for everyone!