Fasnacht 2008

The real Fasnacht came this week! Very early on Monday morning Mama and I got up to go to the Morgenstreich at 4am. This is the beginning of Fasnacht when they turn out all the city lights and parade the lanterns through the street, with everyone dressed up in special costumes and masks and playing the piccolo and the drums. I love it because I love getting up in the middle of the night and I love the music and the lanterns. This year I laughed a lot at the funny ones. Afterwards Mama and I walked home because the trams weren't running and we stopped at the bakery for chocolate bread to keep us going. At 6am we went back to bed!

Tuesday was the children's day and I dressed up as an Arabian princess, as you can see.

I had lots of fun throwing confetti

Throwing it on my friends

And having them throw it back on me

The funny clowns are called Waggis, and they are the best because they give you lollies and toys

The streets are very, very busy

It's a part of living in Switzerland that our family really likes. Here I am on Dada's shoulders for the very best view of all.

Spain and Portugal

Mama and Dada and I have just had the best trip! We went to Spain and Portugal and walked around lots looking at beautiful streets and buildings. We also ate lots and lots of yummy meals. We love tapas! And I love croquettas the best. I ate them nearly every day. Anyway, here you can see me near the cathedral in Sevilla.

And here I am with the cathedral in the background. It is very, very big and we walked all the way to the top. Actually, I ran, because I thought it was fun going up all the ramps. On the way down Mama and I ran and hid from Dada at each level.

The reason we went to Sevilla was to visit a friend of Dada's, called Eva. She is very, very nice and looked after us so well and I had lots of fun with her. I always wanted to show her things. She kept thinking that I was a princess, which was pretty funny. I tried hard to convince her that I am not a real princess, because I wear jeans and my mama isn't a queen, but she didn't believe me. Here is a photo of her in her favourite little corner of Sevilla. I took the photo of course.

Because I am a princess, Eva took me to a palace! It was very, very beautiful and I took lots and lots of photos. Here are some of the ones I took.

This is one of the palace gardens. You can't really show how beautiful they were. There were lots and lots of orange trees that looked really colourful.

This is a pretty photo of a very big, very old magnolia tree that was in the park nearby.

We went out in little paddle boats on the river in Sevilla too. Mama and Dada didn't like it so much but I LOVED it so I swapped over to Eva and her friends' boat and went for a good, long ride.

After Sevilla we went to Madrid, where we stayed in a cool hotel. Of course we couldn't leave Spain without having churros dipped in chocolate and the friendly man at our hotel told us the best place to go. Here I am enjoying them. They weren't all for me - I did share them with Mama and Dada, even though they were so good.

We flew from Madrid to Lisbon for a little look around. We didn't stay long, but long enough to have the best custard tarts we have ever tasted! Mama ordered some for us all to share but I quickly put a whole one away by myself so it became clear that we needed more. You put your own cinnamon and sugar on top and they were just...amazing. Me and Mama and Dada like eating yummy food on holidays, don't we?!?

Finally, here is a view of Lisbon at night. It is very hilly there and very pretty too.

It's almost Fasnacht!

Well, it's one of my favourite times of year again, Fasnacht in Basel. The real parades aren't for another week or so, but today we celebrated our last day at the Kinderhaus before the holidays with a Fasnacht parade. We dressed up as mice and we had a little parade with the kids from another kindergarten who were dressed up as cheese. That was fun, but the best bit was coming back to our Kinderhaus and throwing confetti! We had so much fun and of course we have confetti in everything now.

Other than that I have been enjoying the Winter in Basel. We are still waiting to get some good snow here so I can use my sled, but in the meantime we have been going ice skating every week and I am getting quite good on my own now. You can see me here looking very cool on the ice on a sunny day.

Tomorrow we leave for a week's holiday in Spain. When we get back it is the real Fasnacht so by then I should have LOTS of photos to show you. Bye for now!

Happy New Year!

Well, it has been the New Year for a little while now but anyway... I had the best time celebrating the end of the old year and the start of the new one. Especially because my friend Ariane and her family came from Frankfurt to stay with us. Ariane and I had so much fun playing together for three whole days. Here we are making pictures with the Blo plens I got from St Nik.
Ariane's little sister Zoe was not quite so much fun to play with...yet...but I liked holding her and looking at her and saying how cute she is.

We had sparklers and a special kids' firework to celebrate. That was fun, but even better was staying up and watching the adults party for New Year's. They played a kind of charades guessing game together and then when it was almost midnight they all stood on the couch, eating 12 grapes for the last 12 seconds of the year (a tradition from Ariane's Mama who is Spanish) and then jumping off the couch to jump into the New Year (another tradition from Ariane's father who is Danish). It was very funny to watch. I stayed up so late and even watched the fireworks at 12:30 from our roof. When I went to bed I told Mama that I wanted to party like that on the anniversary of that day every year. She said we could.

I almost forgot. This year I wrote some New Year resolutions! My Dada helped me with some words by telling me how to spell them, but the others I made up the spelling myself. When I finally went to sleep on New Year's morning I told Mama that I hadn't done my resolutions yet. But she said I had all year to do them. I smiled and said "Cool" and drifted off to sleep.

But I haven't even told you about Christmas yet, have I?!? That was lots of fun too. Uncle Anthony came from Edinburgh to stay and we had a nice Christmas dinner together. Mama was pretty sick with the flu so it was lucky Uncle Anthony was there to help her cook. She made yummy food for us and then went back to lie on the couch! I had the best time though and got so many cool presents. Here you can see me leaving out a note and some beer and biscuits for Santa and a carrot for the reindeer.

It paid off because in the morning there were HEAPS of cool things for me near the tree.

I even got my own Yassie-size guitar.

And I got straight down to business, doing my first performance for Mama and Dada and Uncle Anthony.

So that is an update from me. Mama and Dada and me wish all our friends and family a happy, peaceful and healthy 2008. With lots of love from us. xxx

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Boy, do I love December in Switzerland. Because the whole month is Advent, and that means every single day I get a little present. This year Mama and I found this calendar at the Christmas markets, and Mama filled it up for me with cool presents. So far I've got hair clips and headbands and bracelets and cookie cutters and a little book about a girl called Yasmin. The first of advent was very special because my friend Nepheli's mum Effy put a fairy snow dome in there for me. It is so sparkly and pretty and now I keep it by my bed.

We love checking out Christmas markets. A couple of weeks ago we went to Freiburg in Germany to see what they were like there. I went for a fun ride in this Kombi!

On the night of the 5th of December I left my boots out for St Niklaus to fill. In the morning I found toys and chocolate and biscuits there. St Nik must have known that I love the website http://www.uptoten.com/, because he gave me Boowa and Kwala, the two characters from there. Now I love doing shows with them, especially when Dada does Boowa's voice and Mama does Kwala's. Niklaus also came to my Kinderhaus and left a big bag of nuts and oranges and lollies and chocolate. I told Mama that I recognised that it wasn't really Niklaus, that to me he looked like Caroline (who runs the kinderhaus)'s husband.

Mama let me decorate our Christmas tree all by myself. There are ornaments that we bought at different markets, plus ones I have made and even some that you can eat, because when my friends Sophie and Nicole and Isabelle came over the other day we all made spicy biscuits together.

Dada's work had their kids' Christmas party last Sunday at the zoo. I liked seeing the animals but I did NOT like seeing St Niklaus. As you can see, I was not sure about him at all, and when he tried to talk to me I didn't say anything back.

I didn't mind taking a present from him though.

Too busy to blog!

Hello everyone, I just looked at the dates and saw how long it is since I blogged. I am sorry, but I have been too busy having fun to stop to write it all down! But now here I am and here's what I've been up to. My first exciting thing to tell is that we went to Frankfurt for a weekend to visit my friend Ariane, who has moved there. It was her 3rd birthday and Ariane's mummy Amaya and my mama made this special "Alina" cake for her. It took a long time to make, but a short time to eat. We had a lovely weekend with our friends and it was especially exciting because we got to meet Ariane's new baby sister Zoe, who was only 2 weeks' old! I liked her a lot, and if you want to you can go to Ariane's blog and see a picture of me holding her.

After Frankfurt it was back to Basel, where I celebrated Halloween for the first time. Some friends invited me to crash a Halloween party and I thought that sounded good so I dressed up as a witch and off I went. On the way there I asked Mama what you actually do on Halloween. She said you knock on people's door and say "trick or treat!" I said, "but we know these people, don't we?!?" And she said no! "So why do we knock on their doors?!?" I wanted to know, but she said she really didn't know because Halloween comes from America and she didn't understand it either. So, it was a bit strange at first but after a while I got the hang of it and quite liked going into people's homes and getting lollies from them!

Mama had to drag me away from trick or treating because we had a train to catch. We went on what I called the "sleep train" from Basel to Copenhagen. It was so cool because we had our own little cabin with bunk beds and a shower and toilet and everything. We ate dinner in the train restaurant and in the morning the train man brought breakfast to our room. I loved it.

We had 4 fun days in Copenhagen. One of them we spent at Experimentarium, a kids' museum with all these cool science experiments. We stayed for hours playing with all the stuff - here you can see me inside a bubble!

We also visited the National Museum in Copenhagen and I dressed up in clothes from a long time ago. It was funny because I had taken my shoes off to put on some others they had there and then I saw another girl wearing my shoes! She must have thought they were from the museum but really they were mine. I didn't think they were that old-fashioned...

Here I am pretending to be a knight. I also wore a medieval robe and pretended to be a viking on a ship.

I liked it at the harbour. I even saw a ship with a pirate flag on it there. I wondered if there were real pirates on board.

One of the days we took the train to a town called Lund in Sweden, to visit a friend of Dada's, who he studied with in Iceland but hadn't seen for 15 whole years. Dada's friend had a little girl called Lisa. I thought she was really nice, especially because she let me play with her toys. I'm not sure what she thought of me though.

After Copenhagen we visited Berlin. Dada had a conference there so Mama and I hung out together and with my babysitter Anna, who has moved to Berlin from Bonn. We thought Berlin was really, really cool and didn't want to leave when it was time go home.

But home wasn't too bad either. When we got back the annual Autumn Fair, or Herbstmesse, was still on in Basel. Dada hadn't seen it so we took him there one night and went on the merry-go-round and ferris wheel and played cool games where you win prizes. So much excitement and it's not even Christmas yet!

Even more fun in Perth

Well I am back in Switzerland already but I thought I'd share a few more photos of the fun I had in Perth. I had the best time at Alexander's house. Mama and I stayed there for 5 nights and I got a good chance to explore my wild side.

Xander and I made lots of funny faces and played at being dinosaurs, chasing our mamas and Nana around the house.

Everyone spoiled me at Alexander's house. The night I came Aunty Lee and Uncle Paul and Alexander made a special cake with a Barbie in it, just for me. The skirt was Bombe Alaska, a kind of ice cream cake that you bake in the oven. It was pretty spectacular.

As you can see!

Xander and I had fun at the park, throwing things in the stream and pretending to fish. Usually I got Alexander to do any dirty work, and I acted as more like a sort of project manager. It was the same at his house if we made mud mixes or anything. Xander likes getting mucky, but me, not so much.
After all that playing it was nice to have a rest every now and then.

It was sad to say goodbye to Xander on Sunday but lucky for me I was whisked off to "high tea" - a special afternoon tea with friends with yummy cakes and sandwiches and things.

And then I went to stay with my Nonno and Marilyn. Their house was great, and I had lots and lots of fun in their backyard. Nonno took me for the best rides in his wheelbarrow. My favourite thing was to pick lemons from the tree and then play catching games with them. One day Mama showed me all the things she used to do in the backyard when she was a kid, like handstands and bendbacks. She was kind of sorry the day after.

Nonno and Marilyn really looked after me, and Nonno made the best schnitzel ever. One day they took me to the art museum to see an Egyptian exhibition. It was totally cool, and I got to make a Pharoah's crown. Do you like it?!?

Now I am back in Basel. I'm happy to be home, because I really missed my dada. Also, my granddad and Granny Bob are here, so it still feels like I am on holiday. I did really well on the flight home, I slept for most of the long flight and watched lots of TV on the second one. The only time I wasn't really happy was when I saw the business class seats. I really, really, really, really, really wanted to sit there but Mama said I wasn't allowed because it costs a lot of money. I told her we could use all my money box money but she said that wasn't enough. It just didn't seem fair.